#674 - Scott Payne

29:33First generation four-year degree. Bro, a lot of empty diploma frames in our area. My dad dropped down to 10th grade. Did he? And he said he stopped paying attention in the 8th. Oh, 10's good. Yeah, oh yeah, gee, that was a popular pastime in our area. So they just cleared one. I was putting on training somewhere, and somebody was telling me how they just cleared this case. That's amazing. And they did that, and they were able to use that family genealogy to narrow it down to, dude, oh my goodness, this is one of the suspects that they interviewed. And, oh, this is one. Wow. So, yeah. So 30 years later, somebody's getting cuffs put on him.

30:07Dang, let's do it. I love that, dude. Yeah. I feel like you can feel the timeline of existence breathe a little deeper when justice is served. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I like a little bit of justice. And so how long is the whole overall training for the FBI? FBI? Yeah. FBI, it's somewhere around five months. Sometimes it adds another month, but it's somewhere around five months. And what percentage of people do they eliminate sort of along the way? You know, well, it depends. It's a case-by-case basis. There was a time where I would go back and I would, because I was a firearms instructor, tactical instructor, undercover guy and all that stuff, but I would be back at Quantico with my peers who were in those units, and you'd look at the class and you'd be like, look at the last class, and you'd see like half of them failed.

30:49I'm like, what is going on? It kind of ebbs and flows. I don't think half failure is normal, but I'm not there every day, so I don't know. Got it. And when did your undercover work start? Did that start from the FBI? No, it started at the sheriff's office. So once I made vice of narcotics investigator, you have an opportunity to go to undercover techniques or technical surveillance. These are classes that they were put on in Columbia, South Carolina at the Criminal Justice Academy. And once you get certified in that, then they'd let you go work undercover. But, I mean, just picture me. Now, number one, I don't want to mess up.

31:24Number two, you're around a bunch of older guys and gals who are seasoned in street-level buys and all this stuff. And I'm just trying to – you're going to have to show up. You got – you know, it's not up to them to like me. It's up to me to get them to like me, right? Got it. Yeah, you got to ingratiate yourself for sure. Yeah, and it's a tough crowd. Usually is. Military, law enforcement, we're pretty tough crowds. So imagine me, number one, not wanting to screw up. Number two, being scared to death. And number three, thinking about them watching it and not wanting to screw up in front of them, too.

31:55Some like Gary Ward and some of those people, you know. But, yeah. I mean, the first Crack Rock I bought, I was probably 275 pounds with low body fat, you know, just jacked. And I'm like, I don't look like I smoke crack unless I just started. I just started back, you know. I buy a cracker I can drive around for 15 minutes and come back and buy another one I'm not the guy smoking it you know and so so something like that that's a real instance you have to come back and buy another one and would you have to seem cracked out when you came back around well what I was told because I never smoked crack was that it would wear off in 15 minutes that's why they didn't care if you came back and bought again so yeah but they were probably giving me little slivers of soap or something who knows but once I did it the bug got me yeah like the like the undercover bug.

32:45I don't know what it was. It's not lying. It's not like, you know, I, I used to like, it's the infiltration. Yeah. I mean, getting to know people, but during the book process, I can't remember what I used to term it as, but now I just realized, I go, holy crap. I just love connecting with people. Wow. I don't care. Even if you, even if I get called out at three in the morning, cause I was considered a good interviewer. So, you know, to either get information, a confession or, you know, flip them and maybe they work with this and i would go and uh i didn't mind getting called out like that and and i love it the crazier the better i mean rich poor big tall smart dumb i love it all did you guys have groups that would like like say you go on uh like you're get put on an assignment is that what it's called basically yeah for undercover yeah um and they could be very small or they could be bigger ones deeper deeper or shallow ones um do they do you go to like wardrobe and stuff like that like do they have all of that like who creates your backstory how does all that happen i say ultimately ultimately it's on you um and what i teach you what i what i know right yeah you know you're gonna come out i i believe i did used to call the unit i'd go when are you gonna call me for because i was big country even though i'm not big anymore but they'd be like i'd call headquarters and i'd go when are you gonna let me do one of those wall street jobs you know one of these big old tycoon jobs and they're like no and i'm like i can say buy sell you know put a big hat on and have that boss hog fucking long horn on the front of my car rolling in the and they're like no and i go fine because it's my skill set my skill set leads me to backwoods with meth heads and white supremacists and whatever else you know oh yeah dude those are some of my neighbors probably um what what were some of those early spots that you got put into um well early on at the sheriff's office it was the you know you gotta go buy crack rock which was terrifying to me and then it might be yeah Yeah, because I never bought crack.

34:33I'm pulling down there. Man, I barely cracked the window. You know, I was just like, they go, what you want? Because they come up around the car. You only go, what you want? I'm like, I want a 20, you know. He's like, roll down the window, you idiot. You know, I'm like, I'm sliding money through the. You're like, let me Venmo you. They didn't have no Venmo back then. That'd have been good, though. What's your cash at, bro? You know, I'll send it to you right now. Oh, dang, man. That's pretty good. And then type in, what's it for? Drugs. Yeah. Crack. Yeah, but that was the odd stuff there. But I started cutting my teeth.

35:08But when I got in the FBI, my first long term, I mean, I was doing some cameo stuff, which a cameo is basically what it sounds like, like on a TV show. You're there just to help somebody else, or it's a quick, it's not even a full-blown undercover operation. It's just going to be one meet. Like give me an example of that. Like a buy bust, or we're going to deliver. L.A. takes off a huge load of dope. is supposed to be coming to New York. So L.A. gets on the phone with FBI in New York. We're like, okay, what does it look like? We want measurements, all this. We would go build the exact same shipment, and then we would deliver it to where it was supposed to go so we can get the bad guys on that end.

35:44No. And that's just a one-time. I mean, I'm in a truck with an NYPD detective, and we're just dirtied up and going to deliver. So in that way, were you able to bust both ends of the thing? Yeah, yeah. What is the reason that they would do it like that as opposed to just showing up at the actual meet? because sometimes you don't know if it's getting delivered to a fictitious address or where is it going to go. But we were delivering it, and it depends on the assistant United States attorney because everybody's a little different. So maybe this one says, this is all I need to charge them. Somebody might be a little bit more thorough.

36:16They go, no, I want to actually know that they opened the box. Well, how can we do that? Well, let's build something so when we walk away, it's not enough that they take possession. We want to walk away and know that they popped the box before we hit it. And how would you guys know that? Would you guys put cameras in the box? Oh, something. Some tech guy is going to do something. I mean, there's so much technology now. I mean, I don't know what they can do. Yeah. But, of course, my people watch TV and think we can do stuff we can anyway. Is that true? Well, I don't know. It's getting better. I've seen some things since I retired.

36:43I'm not going to say what they are because it's tradecraft, but it really made me want to go back undercover just to use it for a recording device. I was like, I cannot believe. I'm like, you know. Well, they just had those SUVs that they bought. I think they had Israeli technology in them. I don't know if you saw that. there was these SUVs that allegedly can drive by an area and read your phone, basically. Can you bring that up, Trevin? It's probably like if you're on Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and it's pulling stuff off your phones. Israel's Palantir rival is selling$1 million spy vans to U.S. cops.

37:14Is this a recent story? Because this was like three days ago. Oh, yeah, this is good. There we go. Let me see. Cognite, which sells technology to snoop on phone locations largely in Israel and Europe, is making inroads in America by tricking out trucks with spy tech. Texas State Police's purchase of four brand-new Chevy Tahos this March was unusual, not just because of the staggering$4.5 million price tag, but because the vehicles were kitted out with technology that could monitor the locations of nearby cell phones. Made by Israeli surveillance company Cognite, the tech simulates a mobile phone tower, which forces nearby phones to connect to it.

37:51That enables cops to keep tabs on any phones in the vicinity. whether they're owned by a suspect in a case or not. You're going to have some issues there. I'm listening to what you're reading, but I'm telling you, you've got the Fourth Amendment protection. So if I'm going to be able to track you at a minimum, I'm probably going to have to get a court order. A lot of places, a lot of times now, you have to get a full-blown search warrant. Do you think, though, that maybe they're buying these in advance and they know that the laws are going to change? That could be, but I can tell you right now, if somebody's coming by and pulling your stuff and they're actually tracking you.

38:28I mean, like you can, like say if you've got a scanner and you're riding through an apartment complex back in the day, you could pick up different cell phones and stuff. Is that, I mean, is that a Title III wiretap? I mean, if you're using it for evidence, it is. But for us, like that's a huge invasion of privacy. For me, everybody who listens to your phone. A pin, register, trap, and trace, that's just going to let me track your phone and maybe see where you are off of towers. I'll get to see phone numbers coming in and calling in and calling out and texting and texting out, but I can't read.

39:00Got it. I can't read the content. Got it. If you start getting into that kind of stuff, like if somebody puts a camera in your house, that's a Title III. And it's not easy to get. It's not TV. It's not like, hey, I need to be on this phone in five minutes. It's different. Now, you can track a phone in an emergency, or there are some, maybe it's harder, especially if you've got a burner phone, but there are things like if somebody's missing or it's a threat to life or maybe a cop goes down and we're trying, or somebody's down. Amber Alert, something like that. Yeah, and we're trying to do that.

39:34We're not going to be able to expedite it a little bit, but you're still going to get some type of order. Got it. And now sometimes it seems like that police or FBI, they may use these tactics for the moment. knowing that they're not just to behoove them to advance in whatever that moment is to have strategy knowing that it may not hold up in court later well i wouldn't do that uh really i would for me oh but does it make sense what i'm saying i know it does it does but we're like the way i've always done it like do it now ask ask permission later like that's for forgiveness right ask for forgiveness it seems like i could see that being a part of maybe this strategy i don't know well that would be an on the spot kind of thing but generally let's just say for the most part I would not I'm retired I'm not bonded right now but I wouldn't build a bad case or do something like that because that's a violation but if there was a gray area if this is just me personally speaking I'm not saying it's covered it's not covered by policy but there have been horrific cases where girl young girl goes missing uh I'm kicking myself for not remembering her name right now but she goes missing in Florida and everybody's looking for her so you go out and you start canvassing the neighborhood well you might look and you can see hey man we've got like registered sex offenders right here where she went missing well that's the first doors I'm knocking on sorry if that offends you but you're a registered sex offender yeah and it's your trade yeah and and they're and and they uh after the fact they found her she was dead she was buried alive with her with her stuffed animal but in the original canvas they went and talked to the guy at the trailer that was holding her but they never got in so me uh that i would i would violate i'm getting in there if you feel it yeah i'm getting then if You don't have a problem?

41:37You're not holding anything? You mind if I walk in here and look? And if you say no, well, okay, we'll find a way to get in here. Right. But I'm not leaving. Yeah. You know what I mean? Have you had instances like that where you had to trust your instincts? Oh, yeah. Yeah. As a case agent. Well, even as an undercover. But as an undercover, you're in a situation and you're basically playing chess. You're trying to be five steps ahead of them and they're thinking. You're also like tennis. Like I'm serving it to you and I have no idea which way you're hitting it back, but I'm over here going, you know.

42:06I'm that goalie. I don't know what you're throwing, but I'm trying to be ready. As a case agent out there trying to call shots right there on the spot, you know. I had a case in McAllen, Texas, where I was at for six and a half years. And what it was is that they were undocumented aliens being smuggled in. We get the call because the undocumented family is already in Virginia. they had paid for two sisters and a daughter to come through. And what happened is the smuggling organization got them across the river. So you get them across the river, at least in Rio Grande Valley, you get them across the river and then they're usually at a staging location, a house or something, because now they've got to get picked up by a coyote, a walker, and they're going to be handed off.

42:56And now they're going to be walked through the brush around the checkpoints to where they'll be picked up and then carried to wherever. Where this one happened was one of the sisters was physically and mentally challenged and they left her in the brush to die. They left her in the brush to die. And Border Patrol found her. She was 16, but they couldn't figure out a lot. So they called Child Protective Services. They came over and were able to figure out, you've got family. They actually figured out the other family was in Virginia and they were now being extorted. They got them across the river, got them into a house, and now they're calling saying, hey, we already dumped one of your sisters.

43:32your five-year-old daughter's sick, and we're not getting her anything to make her better unless you pay us more money. So they're extorting them even though they paid. In my mind, I think that's truly a victim. Even though undocumented alien is an illegal charge, but I'm not working undocumented alien. I'm working kidnapping extortion. Well, yeah, especially if, I mean, I think there's a moral code inside of a lot of us where you have to decide what's going on. Yeah. And sometimes you can't even decide. It's just a built-in thing. you're like this is how i'm gonna operate in this space right it's a very human thing yeah so in that case particularly we're probably running for three four days non-stop because we're trying to find this phone that they're calling on that the bad guys are using to call the family i've already hit fbi up in virginia and say hey can you go over and give them recording devices all that all the stuff they need and uh it was a honduran family and about that third day we're out and all we know is that the phone, like I said, just location stuff.

44:32It's not, I'm not giving away. Right, you're not getting text messages, you're just getting some location tags. Well, it's not like, it's not always pinpoint. You know, it's not like, hey, that's it, moving right there, 10 feet away. That's not, at least when I was working it then. And we know pretty much that the phone is somewhere in the store. And they're like, hey, it's moving. And then at the same time, four different people come out. And they're all walking into cars. And we've been up for three days straight. and we're all most of us are parents which doesn't matter if you're a parent or not you're still gonna be like but you're you're getting personally involved in this case because it's a five-year-old girl and uh i had to make the call they're like what are you because i was leading it and they're like which one and i'm like look i'm going oh son of a i'm going okay here we are here we are here yeah it's like the mass singer or whatever yeah i'm like come on lord and i'm like hit me and then i'm like let's go with that one and we follow it away and get to a point to where that one stops and then we were able to say yep the phone moved and it's somewhere close to there so then we go in and hit the house but the house didn't have the undocumented people in it it had it had the guy had the ledgers had all the names of course the phone was in there they were trying to flood they were trying to flush stuff and everything we get in there and uh cut the phones on and i call the bad guy phone and it rings and i go it's you so we do a long interrogation and luckily the guy broke and took us to the stash house and we recovered the girl and her sister.

45:59Amen. And of course, we're all crying. All the grown men, my friend who's a female Border Patrol agent, she's like, all of us are like, you know, because we put the young girl on the phone with her Honduran mother and she's like, mommy? And she still had her schoolgirl outfit on. Man, they went to dry. They went to dry. Dang. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace And there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew.

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49:27Do they get pretty intense sometimes? Oh, it can. Yeah, that one did. Because, I mean, you know, it's like. But again, think about it. Say you're, I'm like, I've interviewed, not that case, but you're interviewing somebody that his nickname is El Ocho. It's because the cartel's already cut two of his fingers off. They've been tortured. They've been all this. Me yelling at them? How am I going to work this to where I can get something out of you? I can't chop your fingers off. Right. We have a constitution. Yeah. That would be frowned upon. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, you've hoped to play by the rules.

50:06Yeah. Did you see some pretty severe stuff that came across the border? Like how intense is some of those scenarios and stuff down there? Like you hear so much about the cartels and like the level of violence that's like almost something that we can't even maybe fathom sometimes. A lot of people don't.

50:25They value life a little differently. I'm not saying Hispanics because somebody's going to say, oh, you're saying all Hispanics. No, I'm not. I love. I mean, I've got tons. of Latino friends. But the cartel, at the time I was down there, OZL Cardenas was running it, which once Department of Justice took him off, it actually created a vacuum. Because now everybody's like, well, who's going to run the Gulf Cartel? And then you've got the enforcers, the safeties, that are saying, you know what? We're the ones that kidnap everybody and torture them. We're going to run it. And then you've got maybe the government saying they're going to do it.

50:57And then Senyoloa Cartel comes in and says, we're taking over. And then you just end up with a bunch of heads and bags and vans. Really? Yeah. I mean, it's, you would, is that a real thing? Heads and bags and vans? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you like, it was getting bad enough to where this was shortly after I left, but it was getting bad enough to where, because everybody's vying for the territory. If you're in a territory and you have a decent vehicle, like it looks like you've got some kind of money because there's really not a lot of middle-class you're either low or high and you're going through the wrong territory, neighborhood, whatever.

51:28And, and maybe it's the safety is going, well, you're not one of us. Are you one of the Sinaloa cartel? And they pull it over. And I mean, yeah. And there's been innocent bystanders lost, you know, because they didn't know any better. And, you know. Man, I almost invested in a damn zoo down there in Sinaloa. Yeah. With a buddy of mine. We almost bought into a zoo down there. Well, I mean, I've never been to Sinaloa. So there's probably like a lot of places that are outside the United States. There's going to be, well, it's just like in the United States. It's going to be good and bad. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

51:58My friend Andrew just went fishing down there. And he said he had one of the best experiences of his whole life, some of the greatest fishing he's ever done. Yeah. What smuggling did you see? Did you see any human trafficking? Oh, yeah. We hear about that term so much. What did you see? So when I got there, I was working drugs. Obviously, you're on the border, but you got every federal agency there. Legacy ICE, DEA, ATF, us, FBI. DTF if there's some hotties, huh? Yeah.

52:28It's all kinds of stuff. When I got down there, I was working drugs at first. I mean, it could be 50 kilos of cocaine in a tire. Oh, you didn't see that much? Yeah. What's the most you ever saw, man? I, personally, probably getting to that 100 kilo mark. How much is that? Show me with your hands. Well, a kilo is 2.2 pounds, so 100 of those. Wow. Really? I saw two eight balls once. I know. Way bigger than that. Indestine. It was indestine. Yeah, two eight balls. I used to buy them five at a time, undercover. Undercover. Undercover. Really? All the time, yeah. Dang, boy. But you get deeper and you get into the more serious.

53:05Now you're getting up to like ounces. You're getting up to kilo buys. So you'd see real, that much cocaine. You saw it real. Yeah. Real cocaine. Yeah. Yeah. But that's nothing. And was it hard not to smile when you saw it? No. You smile after the takedown. And then you get the photo. You go up there and do your trophy shot, you know. But that's nothing. Just picture if you were working in Miami. and then like I'm saying where I worked man 100 kilos or you but you go down the border well man you can trip over 500 pounds just riding up and down the river yeah um because it's so porous and stuff but the biggest weed seizure I got was 5 ,000 pounds wow we literally filled up two trucks I mean my truck was loaded I was sitting in the seat like this just but I couldn't even it was just packed and we've loaded another truck that's it was a lot did you even get a buzz driving with because you smell it.

53:56Was it that strong of a smell? Well, yeah, it's strong, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but... Dude, one time me and my friend Billy Conforto, RIP, and he was one of the first gay male prize fighters in America, but he... We got taken out of a car. We had some weed on us, some pounds of weed. The cops pulled us over like, shit. So we put it in our front, like in our pants. Yeah. And the cop was like, I'm going to sit y 'all in the cruiser while I search the vehicle. So he sat us in there and we just had it. Was it reeking though? Huh? Which kid, did you smell it? I don't know why he thought that, but it was like, well, he just put us in there.

54:30We had it in our – so now we're sitting with it in the cruiser. He searched the car and then just said, okay, nothing to see there. Put you guys back in it. You guys take it easy. There you go. So I don't know what made him think it. Maybe he did smell it originally. You lived to fight another day. We got lucky that day. Yeah, you lived to fight another day. And we didn't do too much. You know, we weren't doing anything real heavy over there. And I think back then, if you were gay, you had to be high to even just get through it. It was just a different time. Yeah. If you're prize fighting, too.

54:55yeah but um anyway what were you talking about so so i've seen a lot of the dope stuff but just picture if you're in miami like i just told you 100 kilos and you think that's a lot well what if you bust up in the hole of a ship and you've got 2 000 kilos i mean that you see that stuff and i'm like i've never seen 2 000 but i've seen i've seen some big stacks does it get competitive to be on a big bus yeah sure friendly competition or uh i call it friendly uh you know dea versus as FBI, we always bust chops. And you're working cases together. But then I switched to alien smuggling. Because at that point in time in McAllen, well, I guess in the Bureau, it was becoming a serious topic to look at special interest alien smuggling.

55:42And it's not just, you're not saying, hey, I'm looking for the normal human trafficking. We are looking for people being smuggled in from threat countries. So like your threat countries, Russia, China. And why would they be being smuggled in? Like what is – Well, that's what we're trying to figure out. Got it. Are they up to – are they going to come in here with nefarious plans or are they legitimately trying to get out of where they're at to a better life? Got it. It's interesting to me that like that would be kind of an assignment for you guys, right? Or like that would come down as part of the detail.

56:20Yeah. but then at the same time, you would have the government that would like lackadaisically, it would seem, allow people to come into the country, right? Like it seems like they're trying to play both sides of the scale there. Yeah, I don't like it. Did it ever feel to you like the government was starting some of the problems that you guys were then being hired to go and solve? Well, ATF's fast and furious, that would be a yes. I mean you know there's plenty of documentaries out there and some good books oh is that I'm not even familiar with that Fast and Furious that's when they oh the movie no no no no no that was their operation Fast and Furious where they were it was it was alleged that they were allowing guns to go to the cartel and then those guns would show back up yeah those guns would show back up and one of those guns killed a Border Patrol agent wow But you're smuggling.

57:17So look at it like this. And I'm not trying to bash anybody. No, it doesn't seem like it. I'm going to ask you. Everybody's got, every agency has their black eyes. But just look at it this way. If I released a kilo of cocaine into the streets and it came from me, an FBI agent, anybody gets sick, hurt, killed over that, that's my fault. That's a liability. So I'm looking at it the same way with fully automatic weapons and stuff. Yeah. I just know that I know as a case agent working what I've worked, how hard it is to get approvals for anything close to that. So I was a little dumbfounded at how how that worked out, how the heck that happened.

57:55You know, let me just so our listeners know about it. Operation Fast and Furious, a controversial 2009 and 2011 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sting operation used a gun walking tactic, letting illicit firearms pass to Mexican cartels to track high-level leaders, which failed when tracked weapons were lost and used in violent crimes. Wow. So they let them through to be able to kind of maybe, I guess they would tag them or find some way to follow them so they could know who these people were that were getting them the high levels. But then those were used to kill our own people.

58:27Yeah. Led by the Phoenix, Arizona field office under Project Gunrunner, allowed straw buyers to illegally purchase thousands of weapons with the intent to trace them to major cartel leaders. agents were ordered not to interdict or seize weapons during purchases, losing track of roughly 2000 firearms. They were exposed after the border patrol agent, Brian Terry was killed in 2010 by rifles tied to the operation, resulted in attorney general, Eric Holder being held in contempt of Congress in 2012 for withholding documents through a department of justice report cleared, though a department of justice report cleared him of direct knowledge of the tactic.

59:05So was this, this was happening while you were working. Yeah. And did that scare you? And I'm probably going to get a lot of hate from ATF. I'm sorry about that. I love ATF. I've got a lot of friends at ATF. Well, I have a lot of friends that do a lot of things, and it doesn't mean that their bosses or the people above them may not be having some separate interests at times. Right, and the FBI, we're an easy target, too. They can name plenty of things that that organization's done, too. But, yeah, I was just thinking off the top of my head. And, you know, you've got to be careful because, like, let me use an example.

59:37like I'm a vice and narcotics investigator so in Greenville South Carolina at the time I was there it was illegal to gamble so maybe we identify three major gambling operations maybe we pop one of the ones or go and interview them and flip them but the head of that one is now giving us information on the other two and we're working the other two but you don't want a Whitey Bulger situation where you're letting your source go and wreak havoc for free it's always a you know what I mean it's a balance yeah and that's why when we do stuff like that if if you're providing information we let you know what you can and can't do and i've told many many sources that i've had for 28 years of career um i'll be like look if you do this i cannot take up for you at all but if you call me before it happens i can take up you know what i mean it's kind of that thing understood oh wow yeah are there so when dealing with informants this has got to be pretty fascinating so you dealt with a lot of informants a bunch for me loralize So, operating an informant for me is a lot like undercover, and they mesh.

1:00:37Because when I'm an undercover, I'm essentially being a source for another FBI agent. It's just that I'm not a criminal. I don't have a felon on my record. I'm actually a bonded law enforcement officer. But I'm still going in and getting the information. I'm still getting the recorded stuff. I'm still that person. So, for me, when I'm dealing with sources, I go, you're doing what I do on other cases. But I'm asking you to do it for me. first of all what what people in like towns and regular towns in america are actually end up being like informants or narcs or whatever because dude when i was in school you always hear like ricky's a narc or whatever you don't say narc yeah dude bro ricky it would be like one kid like wore the wrong pe outfit and like that guy's a fucking narc you don't say like narc was the biggest thing bro and people were and sometimes you'd even find somebody who got a snitch yeah snitch who got a little card from like the local police department that said they were helping them and stuff like every now and then they had like this like i don't even think it was laminated bro that bitch got wet and it didn't exist yeah um but what types of people like in towns are actually are the first types of people you would get as informants for for certain things or is that not even a real thing like or like at a high school i'm just trying to think where like i would say it depends on what violation you're working.

1:01:52Okay. If I'm working gangs and I'm working transnational organized crime, which is what I worked for a long time, well, then maybe I'm going to try to find and develop a source that can give me information on this, like, this cart, whatever, this group that's been bringing in drugs that we've heard about. Or what if it's multiple robberies? We're trying to find somebody that knows something about, have you heard any scatter, I mean, any skeletal butt? Maybe you talk to ladies of the night. some prostitute's escorts and say, hey, things like that. But you can also be a highfalutin case. I'm saying highfalutin because look at me.

1:02:28I'm not highfalutin. But it could be like an espionage case. It could be like a white-collar case. And maybe the sources for those are very upstanding members of society. And you can go talk to them and say, hey, I was wondering if you could give me some information. They'd be like, I would love to give you some information. me I'm talking when I say developing sources when I was working I'm like I'm talking about going to somebody that you may never would hang out with that you may think is a piece of trash or not but those people have never liked law enforcement and I'm talking to that person and after a conversation I've heard things you hear things like uh man for a cop you know for a cop you're not that bad or I didn't know there were cops like you so you just it's it's on you but yeah I mean, that's the way I would do it, and I do think it goes hand in hand.

1:03:17If you don't know, in my opinion, if you don't know how to develop and operate sources, I don't think you're probably going to be an awesome undercover. Did you ever have to pick, like, disguises, or was there, like, yeah, did somebody help, like, fit you for a scene? Did they give you a photo or, like, a lookbook? Like, hey, here's what you can wear and not wear. Were there, like, was there ever a thing where you couldn't wear a certain patch? Like if it was like a certain gang affiliation or something. Like how did you manage that? Take me into a little bit of that. It really comes down to the intelligence of the case team that's bringing you in.

1:03:51Hopefully they've done their due diligence. And as an undercover, you can ask those questions. Now, is there a wardrobe department? No. But do we have things in the undercover program where maybe you could get some jewelry and stuff like that? Yeah, we've got that. But as far as like wearing the wrong patch or not, that's going to be, again, ultimately it's on me as the undercover. um like if i if i want to know if i if i want to know like if i ask for a weapon that doesn't come back to law enforcement well i shouldn't just take their word for it i probably need to run that number in ncic to make sure it doesn't come back to fbi quantico because i've been on cases that that happened like what does that mean like it means like it so you got serial numbers on your weapons if they check that in ncic it's going to come back to something right well sometimes bad people have contacts that can run that kind of stuff, whether it's through corruption or whatever.

1:04:43Oh, I see. So if your weapon has your number on it and they see that. And they run it and it says, oh, this is a Glock 22 FBI Quantico. Right. And that's on you. So I was undercover and I had requested a fully covert weapon, whatever. It was supposed to be working with ATF and everything. And I was probably six months in to the undercover. and somehow I was on the call with Quantico and uh asking how we get the way it was it's it's drawn out but basically uh the guy's like whoa at that point in time he goes we really don't have any covert weapon I was I looked I said go run this weapon right now to the trainee and they ran it it's an FBI Quantico and I'm like I'm like bro I mean I could have just carried my normal weapon yeah that goes back to Quantico too but it really is on you but um for me I'll tell you what I have done if I go in and I meet a source I'll ask them like sometimes my beard's this long and I'm long hair which is getting less and less now I'm going to be thinning out here even more soon but the thing is they'll go I'll ask them hey I was on an undercover meet the person we talk for hours I'll come back and meet them again because I'm trying to figure out hey am I the right fit is this going to work because we're going to be basically undercover yeah we're basically going to be undercover together and i'll say does this work and they would look and go nah man that's too dirty we're rednecks but we're clean cut rednecks and i said well what do you do i said how about like a nice goatee is that good normal haircut they're like yeah that'd be perfect man button up shirt untucked i'm like cool now i'm just doing that so i don't look like a like way out of place i want to look i'm mirroring them got it um but for me uh i always stuck really close to who I was.

1:06:30I was always Scott, different last name, but I may or may not have played football in college. I may or may not be a musician and a singer, may or may not be married with kids for your degree, but you can bet most likely I ride motorcycles and I lift weights. Got it. And then you just kind of go from there. Because my jokes are literally the same. I'm just twisting them because it's real to me. I tell the true story. Have you ever been in an instance where you weren't even the best choice for the role, but you ended up in it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can word it a right case, wrong undercover, right undercover, wrong case.

1:07:08But I had a buddy of mine, and he was running. He's an undercover as well, but he was the case agent. And he was running this undercover on like a dirty doctor, selling pills or giving pills for sex, stuff like that. The idea was, because of my background, to come in and be the closer to get this doctor on drug trafficking. And I came in and I basically said I'm a competitive power lifter, but I'm getting older. Bills are getting tight. I need something for the pain kind of thing. I was trying to do that because they had already had a bunch of reporting of like this doctor, like, you know, a woman goes in for a visit.

1:07:43He prescribes her a bunch of pills or whatever. She leaves and there's a used condom in the trash can. Got it. And you're like, okay, all right. And then maybe somebody reports, hey, this doctor tried to do this to me or something like that. So now I'm coming in as a new patient, and I knew a lot of the pill mill stuff because I was working it as a case agent as well. But, yeah, I was just the wrong guy. Like I did the first meet, and then the second time I came back, he starts telling me, well, you know, Scott, sometimes people come in here and they get these, and they go sell them on the street.

1:08:14And I was like, I never said I was going to do that. I said, I'm in pain, man. He's like, what? And I left the meeting that day, and I went to hand over the recording with the case agent who was my friend and I told him I said I'm not the right guy man you don't need me to send me back in there I said I don't know what it is but he does not like me it just wouldn't fit yeah can you feel when something doesn't fit yeah yeah because if you yeah you can feel it especially if you're trying to force it you know and I tried a little bit that day with that guy but he was not something about me I don't know whether he thought I was a snitch or a fed or something or something, but he didn't, maybe he didn't feel he could control me.

1:08:52Um, but I was not the right guy for the job. What are some things as an undercover, just like general rule of thumb that you don't want to do is like, do you not want to talk much? Like, is there like, you know, or I guess, is it case by case basis, I guess? Yeah. I mean, it depends on, I mean, there's actually attorney general guidelines on what we can and can't do. Like we can't be involved in an act of violence unless it's self-defense. Um, you can't like instigate the crime, you know, because I'd be entrapment, you know what I mean? Instigate and run the crime, and then all of a sudden, now you're under arrest, you know?

1:09:24Have there ever been romantic things that happen along the way where it's like there's almost temptation for that? Like where you met somebody and you're like, well, shit, I'm spending half my days in this environment, you know? I've been in situations where, yeah, but you don't do that. You don't do that. I've seen other things where, you know, maybe people fall in love. is just think about it like this. If you've got my luck and I'm doing a deep undercover and I'm at this bar and you start hitting on me and I actually was a single man and we end up hooking up and dating, my luck, that's going to end up being the target's sister or something.

1:10:02You know what I mean? Is that frowned upon? Can you legally do that though? No, it'd be a policy violation for sure. Okay, got it. Yeah, it'd be a policy violation. Now, maybe in like, if you go super I spy, I don't know. I don't know all the CIA's rules. I don't know MI5 and MI6's rules, but, yeah, that would be – it would just be a bad foundation, period. Even if that person ended up not being, I'd rather you bring in your real wife who isn't also an undercover FBI agent. Yeah. Then y 'all just be you, you know, if you got that. Do you think that most of us interact with undercover officers or agents within our lives without even realizing it?

1:10:46I wouldn't say that because literally, like in the biker world, they call it like you got the one percenter biker clubs. They say that if you're an undercover in law enforcement, you're a one percenter because there's like one percent of law enforcement that does undercover work. I see. So you don't think most of us have interacted probably with an undercover agent without realizing it? You might have, based on some of your history. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Depending on where I'm at, I might have. Yeah. I'm surprised we haven't met. I know, right. But if I was at the Oak Ridge Laboratory, no, I'm probably not running into an undercover, I don't think.

1:11:18I don't know. Maybe if you're trying to sell classified material, then yeah. But I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I don't walk around like that. But it's not that common that most of us just regular people have interacted with the undercover agent. in our lives. You don't think so? I don't think so. Got it. But I don't think paranoid either. There are some people who are like, what if everybody in this room is an intelligence officer? I'm like, what if they are? Right. They're trying to get information. I'm trying to get information. Buy me a drink. Yeah. You know? Pay for this steak. Yeah, what is a one percenter?

1:11:52You hear about that term a lot, and that's a gang, a tiger gang. Motorcycle clubs. If you are considered a one percenter a motorcycle club, let's see, after Vietnam War, and everybody should, well, I don't know about these days, Who knows if they know about Vietnam War, but they would come in. Soldiers were coming back, and they weren't treated very well. And there was no kind of a transition thing, you know, or decompression. And a lot of the motorcycle clubs, I mean, they started back in World War II and stuff like that, but a lot of these motorcycle clubs were forming, and they were doing some, you know, rowdy stuff.

1:12:27So the president of the American Motorcycle Association, I think is what it was called, comes out and does this media blitz to say, hey, 99 % of all motorcycle riders are good law-abiding citizens. So they took that as a badge of honor and said, we're the 1%. We're 1 %ers, and it's a patch on there. On there, yeah. So you see 1 %er, you're going to see the big ones, Hells Angels, Outlaws, Mongols. So they like to be the out, they like to be the, well, we're not the one, we're the, we're the non-law about it. We're doing our own thing. Yeah. I like that. So am I saying, yeah, that's the patch right there.

1:13:06Yeah. Everybody always asks, you know, they're like, well, are you saying all one percenter biker clubs are criminals? I go, no, but it kind of goes with being a one percenter. I mean, you know what I mean? Yeah, if you're not. I mean, I'm not saying that means you got to go break the law, but you're definitely not. It's just saying you got an edge. Yeah. You don't care about the law, basically. Yeah, you like to – you got some of your own laws as well. Yeah, yeah. That's what I think. A one percenter. Man, it's all interesting, man, because some of these terms I've heard before, and it's nice to just kind of get to hear them in the use of the world that they're from.

1:13:38Yes. Take me into your experience with the Outlaws, right? That's a biker gang you were involved with where you went undercover. Yes. That was the longest one I did, two years. Okay. I've done – if I look back at my career, I can be like, yeah, there was a year and a half case. That was a year and a half case. You go where the case takes you a lot of times. Or the case ends because something happened. They're like, we're not doing this. Like somebody got hurt or something. But for the outlaws, I was already a certified undercover. I'd already done several undercovers in the Bureau. But I had all the state and local experience, too.

1:14:17And I was already role-playing and helping at the undercover school that we have. and this isn't this is in south carolina uh no no no uh by the time i was doing that i was living in mccallan texas okay got it yeah so when i got when i got hired out of the fbi or i got hired out of south carolina for the fbi when i came out of quantico my first office was new york city which goes back to the sergeant which is funny because i did not pick it as number one it was like 36 out of 56 so when i went back for my pick up my clothes and have the after have the going away party for Scott. I went up to him and I go, dude, you jinx me, man.

1:14:52I'm like, I got New York City. What is wrong? But I was actually assigned to New York when 9-11 happened, but the day of, I was undercover. I was in Texas. So now I'm moved down to Texas. I'm in McAllen. I'm a case agent, so I'm still doing that stuff, firearms, SWAT. Okay, so you're down in McAllen. Yeah, and then as a certified undercover, I can't remember if they canvassed through an email or did I get a phone call from somebody. Because once you start going back and role-playing and teaching at the undercover school, I mean, the best way to describe it is, let's just say, well, it scared me, man.

1:15:26Well, something bit me. My phone vibrated. So I get a call because you're starting to get known. If you're role-playing at the school and— What do you mean at the school? So there's an undercover school? To get certified. Just like to become an FBI agent. I mean, it's not five months. Wait, hold on. So there's an undercover school, an academy. Two weeks, yeah. And you learn how to be undercover. Well, you got to pass. It's not so much that you're learning. It's just that you're learning techniques and stuff. But, Jed, you got to pass. And what are some of the techniques you learned there? Sorry that I didn't grasp onto this before.

1:15:58Like, is it almost acting teachers that are there teaching you? No, no. So I won't give away everything for the school, but I'll give away what's kind of out there. The FBI undercover school is considered one of the toughest certification schools the FBI puts on. Some say it is the toughest. I'll say HRT is the toughest. because HRT is Tier 1, SWAT on steroids. It's two weeks as well for the tryout. What does it mean, HRT? Hostage Rescue Team. Okay. So you can be SWAT in all your divisions. Like I was SWAT in McAllen, San Antonio Division. I was SWAT in Knoxville. But HRT is at Quantico, based out of Quantico.

1:16:37Hell yeah. Hostage Rescue Team. And I mean, they're high too. They train with the Tier 1 teams. It's high speed. My high speed, you know, helicopters, all that stuff. but that one is also a two-week tryout very physical and mental a lot of times at least from what i'm understanding hrt is yeah hrt it's like you just want to get through the two weeks without getting injured and you went through it no no i was going to if i wouldn't have got out of new york city i was going to diet down to probably around 250 pounds and then because there's a lot of running and i was going to go try out that does that mean i would have made it no a lot of people don't ever i don't know if i haven't known anybody that made it their first time but wow but the undercover school is two weeks um yeah what are some of the course like what do you guys so you're gonna the gist is this big on sleep deprivation no days off um that sleep deprivation brings out weaknesses right so you're going to be getting training during the day i might teach a block on the outlaws i might teach a block on white supremacy cases that i've worked maybe somebody else is teaching maybe it's the legal person whatever you're going to get training during the day and at night generally uh the way it was running when i was in it at night you're going to be doing role-playing scenarios you're probably going to get two a night and everybody goes through every scenario that way there's no liability in other words you can't say hey that person's background is drugs and you only gave them undercover drug scenarios got it you know what's like an example scenario you would probably go through they probably wouldn't want me to say that's fair because it'll give it away that's fair but just say this you're getting tested you may die.

1:18:09You may die miserably in a scenario, and then you got to turn around and go, all right, buck up, little camper. We've still got one more for the night, you know? Bro, if you go 0 for 2 in one night, bro. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I will tell you this. I got certified in 2002. I started role-playing in 2003, and I probably only missed a handful of schools in my 23 years with FBI, and I never knew or heard of a 100 % graduation rate. That doesn't mean that it's hazing and none of that stuff. It just means that it's a great certification school and not everybody's cut out for undercover. Understood. What do you think is the number one thing that blows an officer's cover?

1:18:49Blowing the cover? Oh, man. There could be, I mean, bad backstopping, having a bad legend. You slipping up and not knowing your stuff. Like your story or whatever. Yeah, you need to know it. And picture if you're undercover for two years. I'll meet you on day one. Whatever I say right now, I need to remember two years from now. So that's why I stuck close to who I was. Bro. And as I got older, now, early in the game, oh, man, I was making, like, I'd be undercover and I'd be signing my name Scott Payne. Undercover. The P would form and I'd go, I'm Callaway. But then I'd be home as Scott Payne and I would sign Scott Callaway.

1:19:27And you're like, dadgummit. But lucky for me, I ended up getting better at it. And by the time I was, when I retired, I think I had like eight phones. I had like one FBI, one personal, everything else was undercover. Nuh-uh. And I just get so, I got so good because I'd be like, I'm going to say good because it sounds like I'm chest beating, but it just, it was easier for me to do. Like the phone would ring and I'd see the skull and the color and I'd go, okay, that's that case. What's up, brother? How's it going? Blah, blah, blah. You know, that's that case. Dang, man. Yeah. So at one time you were actively involved in how many cases?

1:20:00Oh, man. And so there are, again, I'll say it again. There are men and women out there that have done way more than me. For sure. But I will say that for my 23 years in the FBI, if you were a full-time undercover, like you're not doing anything else but undercover, that was pretty rare as an FBI agent. Because, as I said, I was still expected to run cases and do whatever back in my office. But you were working full-time undercover. I can remember twice. Maybe there was a third time that I was listed full-time undercover in the FBI, but all the other times, it might be two weeks undercover, but I go back home, and then I'm a case agent again, and I've got to run training for everybody and firearms and tactics.

1:20:44You ever do like chef work? Because I could also see you. I just thought of this, man. I'm thinking of ways I could see you doing undercover, and I'm thinking dessert chef. With a hat? Yes, with a hat. because a lot of those guys, you know, they'll have a beard, they'll have some facial hair, they'll have tattoos because it's a lot of artistic. Oh, no, I can put the hairnet on. Oh, totally, yeah. It's artistic people that are our kind of chefs. You know what I'm saying? It's like, that's kind of like an artistic sort of style. Yeah, squirting the, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That frosting pipette. You like the pepper?

1:21:14You put a, you want the pepper? You put a set of handcuffs on a declair, you know? Yeah, I could see you, I could see you doing something like that. All law enforcement thieves was pretty good. Was there pretty, But most of the ones that you did, it was pretty close to who you were, though. Yeah. The exception would be when I got called for murder for hire because I'm a jokester. I got a pretty sick sense of humor. I may know or not. I used to say this like I might not know a lot, but I know funny. That's fair. So sense of humor, jovial. But when I'm doing a murder for hire or what I would call a closer, like if like if you're somebody wanting to do something bad and you're meeting me and you want a bomb, I call that like a closer.

1:21:55Like I'm providing you with a gun that you want to go shoot up a synagogue or something like that. Got it. I call that a closer. So those, my jovialness goes away. I never, I mean, I wouldn't, there's no point in me really building rapport with you because you think I'm a stone cold killer. Got it. And the stone cold killer, those are usually quicker cases too. Have there been some murder for hires that you got involved in? Oh, yeah. Really? A lot. And who's often trying to kill whom? Is there a commonality there? Well, I would say it would be spousal. right? It would probably be the most, but it would be like wife, cheating wife and her, the man she's cheating with solicit me to kill the husband because there's like a$92 ,000 life insurance plan.

1:22:38Got it. I never, the stuff you see in the movies, and I mean, I've known some of my mentors that have done those $100 ,000 payment hits. I'm like, not in my world, man. It was 10 grand. I'll give you$12 ,000 after we collect the insurance policy. I'm like, you're telling me you want me to go kill somebody on your word. Wow. And no, that's not how this works. Yeah. So give me something, you know. And where would they meet? Where does somebody like that usually try to meet you at for the first time? Like, is there a general place? No, I've met them in hotel rooms. I've met them at their place. One of the ones that's in the book, they believed we were bikers.

1:23:22I brought in a task force officer. They believed we were 1 % of bikers, and they were hiring us to do four home invasions and murder, I think, two or three people. But what they do is they knew where the dope was because the son was running the dope and the money. So he knew of four different drug dealers, and he knew where the cash was at, where the guns were at, where the dope was at in every house. so the plan was to do four home invasions and then murder two of them and then I get some money I guess that seems like a lot and she was a wild one man this is later in my career and I like I told you I would joke around and be like with headquarters I'm like how come I don't get to go to like you know overseas and how come I don't how come I don't get to get on big boats you know yeah I can get on one if I'm cleaning it You know what I mean?

1:24:16I'm getting the chum out the back. Yeah, why don't I get the big gig? Yeah, what is this? Oh, I get to carry the luggage. That's cool. Yeah. If I'm in a fancy environment, it's because I was muscle for the main person there. That's it. Amen. Yeah, sometimes you need that guy to stand next to the guy. In the back, you know. Were you ever in an environment where somebody pulled out a weapon and it was really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have been. But let me tell you about Tammy real quick, though. Okay. Yeah, tell me about Tammy. So we go for this one case, and it was in Ohio. And we know we're going to meet the husband.

1:24:48And we thought it was the husband's plan. Because we've talked to somebody, talked to them, and we know that they're looking for somebody to do this kind of thing. You thought it was the husband's plan. Yeah. So we go to the garage, and we're talking to the husband. And he's like, well, it's not my plan. It's my old lady's. And I'm like, well, why are we talking to you then? Where's the old lady? She's like, oh, she's sleeping. We're all staring. Awkward silence. You think I should go wake her up? And I said, I didn't drive all the way out here to talk to no one. We're going to do business. Let's do business.

1:25:20He goes and wakes her up. She hops in the truck in the front passenger seat. They're in the back. She is tweaking. She's clawing herself. Flakes of skin are going everywhere. We're probably inhaling it, you know? Oh, yeah. Oh, you can cook up a little bit of that skin. You can grill you up a little bowl of it. Pork rinds, yeah. Hit it. Smoke that shit. Some pork rind. that's some real poor crimes so we're driving and as she's showing us all these spots she's like talking out fast she's kind of tweaking a little bit at least that's my opinion I don't know if she was on drugs and she's hiring to kill the husband?

1:25:52no she it was her idea she just she I mean the husband's involved but it was her idea so she's the one that gets in the car because it's her son that's driving around the dope for these people got it so she's showing us these spots but while she's showing us these spots she starts talking all this crazy stuff she's like she's like you know I'm really into torture so if you need anybody tortured that you bring I'm really big into it and I'm like okay driving I'm like alright and again it's later in my career I'm just kind of I don't know if I'm nonchalant or desensitized or whatever you want to call it but I'm driving she says you know that you can take I can get graphic on here right because it's graphic okay so she says it's in the book anyway she says you know you can take a hanger and bend it on the end and shove it into the man's penis.

1:26:40Sorry, I hit the microphone. So I said it again. That's all right. Bend the hanger on the end, shove it into a man's penis, rip it back out, and then pour salt in the wound. Nuh-uh. Now, the guys in the back are going, oh, goodness gracious, oh, man. And I'm like, literally two weeks prior to that, I'd had my second lumbar fusion. The surgery was great and an easy recovery, but they had messed up. I had to get dry cath. So as she's describing that, and I'm like, that's pretty much what I felt two weeks ago. So it's hitting home with you. Yeah, so then she's like, and then you can take, there's another one you can do.

1:27:11You can take a PVC pipe and shove it up somebody's anus, run barbed wire up in it, and rip their anus from the inside out. Well, that's insane. Right, and I'm looking at her, and I'm going, we pull up to the red light, and I lean over, and I go, why are you so angry? And she's like, I think one of the lines, I don't know if she used it right then or later, she said, I've been unlucky in love. Wow. So as we're getting. Well, she's talking damn, I mean, she's looking, she's doing like, it sounds like she's doing side quests from Home Depot or something. in Laredo or whatever. Because that shit's, I mean, it's like.

1:27:41I was undercover in Laredo. What is she talking about, dude? She sounds just like an angry ex-Lowes employee or whatever. So we're driving, and I'm like, are you sure you don't want to kill these people? She goes, no, no, everybody knows me around here, but if you need somebody to torture it, I can torture it. But I'm like, oh, my gosh. So we pull up to the next red light, and she says, you know, my husband, I told him to never go on a bender again. She said he was gone for three or four days, up all the time. I think it was cocaine. She said he was using, but went on a cocaine bender. She said he came back.

1:28:11She couldn't find him. He came back. She said he passed out so hard. He didn't wake up. You know what she did to him? And he's a skinny man. She said, so I went and got a two by four and I shoved it under his legs and I took an industrial stapler and stapled his scrotum to the board. And he didn't even wait when he woke up from it. He's trying to stand up, but it's stapled to the board behind him. And he's, he's trying to move and he's screaming for her to take it out. She said, no, he had to call his friend over to do it. we confirmed it with the husband. I thought, man, she's got to be full of it.

1:28:40He said, nope, she did it. And I said, and you're still with her? He said, I ain't never had nobody doing nothing like that to me. And I'm like, well, Dad, come on. Sometimes love is just so violent. I know. So when she said that part, as we're pulling up to stop, because one of the task force officers, he was like, he goes, man, remind me never to piss you off, you know, one of those things, you know. And when we pulled up, you know, all that stuff's running through my head, all the scenarios. And when we pull up, I go, you watch a lot of slasher flicks? And she goes, that's all I watch. And I went, now it's making sense.

1:29:15She's talking about human centipede, like sewing a body into a body. And I'm like, good gravy. I'm like, but in my mind, I'm laughing to myself because I'm going, these are my people. This is what my skill set leads me to. You know what I mean? I go back in the backwoods and somebody's talking, not trying to chastise anybody, but they're talking, they don't have any teeth, and their lips aren't moving. I had to revert back to my family, some distant people in my family to go, okay, now I know what they're saying. This is where I belong. Now I know what they're saying. Because at first I'm like, what?

1:29:48And I'm going, oh, I know what you're saying. Yeah, this way, yeah. I'm translating. Oh, yeah, well, you never really lose where you're from, you know. Just start hanging out with them. I'll get more and more country. Oh, dude, yeah, that happens quick. You go home and you just – Back home. And home comes back to you, you know? Because it's always been there. Sometimes it's just like – it sits on the sidelines. Sometimes it's intermingled with the new places you're at. Was there ever any spaces where you got involved and there was like human – like any type of like sacrificial or like ceremonial stuff that kind of went on?

1:30:24Yeah. Yeah, so working domestic terrorism, we started seeing a shift where a lot of the white supremacist groups were claiming to be Odinists, right? They were claiming to be pagans, but that's not illegal. And I've got some very good friends who are pagans, and they are Odinists. Odinists, bring that up. O-D-I-N-I-S-T-S. Okay. Okay. Odinism is generally a racialist-oriented practice that places the highest fundamental view on the figure of Odin. Odinist pagan usually refers to a Norse-Germanic pagan who centers their practice on the god Odin, but in modern usage, the term Odinist is heavily entangled with far-right racialist groups.

1:31:15In a straightforward religious sense, Odinism is a form of Germanic-Norse paganism that honors Odin as a chief deity, along with other Norse gods such as Thor, Freyja, Freyja, Freyr, and Frigg. Can you give me any better information about it? Yeah, because I'm going to disagree with what that just said because that's what I was getting ready to say. Okay. The pagan part right there, relationship to pagan, I would read that. Okay. Because maybe they're tying the word Odinist to white supremacy, but that was what I was going to say, that true pagans are upset because Hitler used a lot of Odinism stuff.

1:31:53You would see like the Sonningrad. You would see all the Norse-type runes and stuff, but that doesn't mean that they're white supremacists, so maybe you want to read that. Odinism is a modern neo-pagan religion that revives the ancient Norse and Germanic worship of deities like Odin and Thor, emphasizing personal honor, bravery, and a connection to nature, while many practitioners view it as a universal nature-based faith, specific branches and extremist groups have co-opted the movement as a racially exclusive white supremacist ideology. Does that sound? Yes, that's what I was talking about. Okay, got it.

1:32:28So we started seeing a shift back, I guess you can say, because even under the Hitler neo-Nazi stuff, you would see a lot of Norse runes and Norse mythology and stuff like that. What years was this when you were seeing this? Well, I mean, so the base case that I'm going talk about was 2019. We took it down in 2020. Okay, got it. Yeah, took it down in COVID year. So you start seeing that, and I've got close friends who are pagans, and you look at the Asatru community, they are unhappy. The Asatru community? Asatru's pagan. Asatru. Yeah, Asatru. Asatru. So they believe in the Norse pantheon, so what you read, Thor, Freya, you know.

1:33:12Friar. Friar and Frigg and Odin as the Norse. And forget about it. Forget about it. That's the Italian one. There are other pantheons where people might be like, oh, I'm an Egyptian pantheon or whatever. But we started seeing this stuff. And if you go and look at pagans, like back, well, I mean, you can find it in Christianity, too. There were sacrifices, right? We have the Bible that has sacrifices in it. Yeah, Old Testament. So, one of the cases I did, I whistled, sorry. So, one of the cases I did was into an accelerationist group. So, I go into great detail in the book, but it's like, if you ask the average person in America, you know, what do you think a white supremacist is?

1:33:59A lot of them, they may know neo-Nazi. They may know like a skinhead, or they're going to say like KKK, Ku Klux Klan hoods and robes and stuff. That's not what this is. These are accelerationists. And they don't believe that there's a political solution to save the white race. They believe that society is going to collapse either on its own or from man-made events. And they want to speed that up. They want to speed it up through guerrilla warfare tactics like just small hits. Just picture like power grid goes down over here, water systems poisoned over here, train derailed over here. Anything to create chaos.

1:34:35Got it. I'm not saying it's the best game plan in the world. and this may be hard to wrap your mind around, but they came onto our radar from being online and recruiting. So they were recruiting online. And a lot of your accelerations also groups were big on what we call flyering or stickering or postering. So you put up a flyer and it'll be like, save your race, join the base, you know, survivalist group. There you go. And see that QR code? So you'd scan that QR code, and it takes you right to bit shoot, and there's a recruitment video right there. And that's my picture right there. I mean, those are Bibles being burnt right there in that fire.

1:35:16They are? Yeah, if you blow it up, you'll see a holy Bible on that picture. I can dim it down. I don't even want to see that, but I believe that it's happening. And so, and who's the people on the left? That's not that Christmas thing they do on the levee over there in Lafayette, is it? No, that'd be a 20 to 30-foot cross on fire with diesel fuel. I don't understand it, man. I know. There's a lot of history in the Ku Klux Klan. I wonder if we should have someone on sometime just to learn even about it. And there's Matt Damon. Obviously, he was involved. Sorry, Matt. That's clean-cut Scott Payne.

1:35:49Is it really? That's a Polaroid picture, yeah. Bro, oh, my God, I just realized. Yeah, that's not. Bro. Dang, I do look like Matt Damon right there. Bro, you look like Matt Damon right now. No way. I'm not even joking. People must tell you this all the time. No, I used to get confused for Toby Keith all the time. No, B. Keith, dude. You look like Matt Damon. Dude, that's crazy, bro. That picture does actually look like Matt Damon. I didn't ever realize that. Matt Damon's going to play you in your life story one day. That'd be pretty wild. Pretty good. Okay, so you're infiltrating. So you get into this group with a base.

1:36:22So, yeah, how do things escalate, and what are you learning once you get in? And you were telling me that before I interrupted you. Go on. So I'm going in to where they're posting because they're trying to recruit. and it would be like, you know, if you're interested, contact us at thebase1 at protonmail.com. Again, ProtonMail, thinking that it's fully encrypted. I think that was based out of Russia. I'm not sure. I can't remember right now. So I start liking some of their stuff. They start responding back, and then I start emailing. So I go through like a week to a week and a half of emailed questions.

1:36:57Pretty thorough. What can you bring to the table, this, that, and the other? And then I'm instructed to, I mean, my height, weight, ethnicity, all that stuff. And then it says, if you want to read that, oh, Geneva, Switzerland. All right, Proton Mills in Switzerland. Okay, go on. All right. Thank you. So then I'm instructed to download the Wire app. It's called Wire. It operates a lot like WhatsApp. Okay. So I'm told to download it, reach out, and then on a Friday afternoon in July of 2019, I did like an hour and 15-minute panel interview. I couldn't see them, but I could hear like four to five voices.

1:37:37Really? And were you guys going to stand on two sides of a fence or something, or what was going on? No, it was just on the app. Oh, it was online? Yeah, so I'm just listening to them, and they're asking questions. And like I said, I don't know if they're going to tell me to cut my phone on, show myself. And so I was in a club. I'm picturing some damn home improvement type shit where you're standing over the fence or whatever. I jumped in my truck and drove to an abandoned parking lot, and I was making sure I had anything. I cleaned it, making sure there's nothing in there that says Scott Payne or anything like that.

1:38:05Yeah, they could see anything to know where you're at. Just an old truck. So I did that interview, and there was a lot of stuff because the accelerationists, their Bible is basically a book called Siege. That book Siege was written by James Mason. He's a longtime white supremacist. He created Adam Woffin, another accelerationist group. But it's essentially a bunch of interviews, but he idolizes like, there's a lot of Satanism in there. He idolizes Charles Manson, things like that. But there's a lot of that. For instance, accelerationists, let me say this. So accelerationists, you know, you've seen the white supremacists that are out on the streets with picket signs and yelling during pride rallies or whatever.

1:38:54That's not an accelerationist. Per the siege method, number one, that makes you a target. Number two, lets everybody know who you are. Got it. Number three, it does nothing for the cause is what they're saying. So we're going to do those guerrilla warfare hits. Okay. That kind of thing. Bring it up again. See, just want to see that real quick and cite it. Siege. Siege, the collective writings of James Mason, an anthology of essays by the neo-Nazi James Mason. After growing disillusioned with the mass movement approach of neo-Nazi movements, Mason began advocating for white revolution through terrorism.

1:39:30Though the book was reviewed in several periodicals upon its release and was praised and distributed by the influential white supremacist Tom Metzger, most neo-Nazis at the time either ignored or criticized the book. in the 2010s the book found a new audience among online younger neo-Nazis due to the book's republication by the neo-fascist forum Iron March in addition to its promotion of neo-Nazism it lionizes serial killers, mass murderers and Charles Manson Siege advocates neo-Nazi lone wolf terrorism yep so let me go off of that Okay. So the base, I do that interview. They ask me all kinds of stuff.

1:40:16I answer best I can. Again, tennis, right? I don't know what they're throwing at me. I'm just going to be ready, right? And then he tells me, and I could tell who the leader is on there because it's the deeper voice, but it was Ronaldo Nazaro. After they've explained to me what acceleration this is, what the base believes, siege culture, they gave me a 24-hour rest period. And they said, because now I know what they're about. I can decide whether I really want to be a part of it. And they can talk about whether they want me to be a part of it. Got it. And true to the word, 24 hours later on the Saturday, I got hit, ping, something to the effect of we'd like to have you in the organization.

1:40:52And I said, I'd be honored. So they tell me, they go, where are you at? I said, East Tennessee. And they said, well, the closest cell, C-E-L-L, because I know I got a country accent, C-E-L-L, the closest cell to me was in North Georgia. And then I was contacted by the cell leader. But to parlay off of what that said, terrorism, siege. He said, forget all this grandstanding, go more terrorism, lone wolf attacks. So a lot of people don't know this. Al-Qaeda, translated to English, is the base. Al-Qaeda's MO was three to five man cells all over the world training for D-Day, waiting for the phone call.

1:41:32the base's MO, three to five man sales all over the world training for what they call the Boogaloo if they're still calling it that. I've been retired for five years. And when you met them are these guys, are they aggressive like males? What kind of energy did you feel overall when you met these guys? It depends but it wasn't like back in the hammer skin white supremacy heavy metal mosh pit crowd. but I don't want to get too much on a tangent but I will say this when I'm instructing number one we don't like to say the names of the mass shooters we don't want to give them any credit I'll name every victim from Columbine I'll name every victim from Charleston every victim from Buffalo don't want to say the kid's name or the shooter's name but sometimes when I'm teaching undercover I have to because we're talking about a certain thing but what I'll say to people because it sounded like you were like, hey, were these like jack dudes or whatever, all shapes and sizes.

1:42:35But what I tell people is I said, don't underestimate. If I showed you a picture of the kids from Columbine before Columbine happened, what would you say? If I showed you a picture of the kid from the Aurora Theater shooting, orange and yellowish hair, what would you say before that happened? Charleston, bold haircut, skinny kid, but they still killed a lot of people. Right. So don't underestimate because dead is dead. Amen. We had a shooting here in Nashville. Yeah. My buddy, I'm buddies with the guy that had the pistol. The two shooters. I met him through some other trainings, and I'd just seen him, like, within a month of that shooting.

1:43:13And, you know, just don't underestimate, you know. So I meet them, and when I'm, they call me. And what'd you wear to meet them? Did you have to, I mean, how do you even pick out an outfit or whatever? I wore, like, maybe, like, some hiking-type pants, you know. I didn't show up all bikerish, but I go to meet them, and they tell me, they instruct me, you come to Rome, Georgia. I want you to park here. I want you to take a picture of the statue downtown, and then I want you to send it to me. And they're watching. I don't know how many, because at that point, we knew we were going to meet somebody who called themselves TMB.

1:43:45I didn't know he was bringing a guy named Pestilence with him. I didn't know. We just, they're trying to cover me. And I met the case team that I, even though we talked on the phone, I'd never met them before. so I drive down to Rome, Georgia because now I'm being invited to meet them for a face-to-face vet I like vetting in real life because I passed the other one I passed the emails I passed the interview panel now I gotta pass a face-to-face meeting and when I met the case team again we don't know really who we're meeting or where we're going we got an inkling I think but I know we didn't know everybody in the group we did not at all and the weather was bad so it's like I don't know can you get any kind of aerial surveillance not when it's raining and stuff like that.

1:44:31And it's trying to light a cross in the rain too so you're not really going to see Well the accelerations don't do the cross lightings. The KKK does Got it. So these guys are hiding they're all wearing Flechtorn camo because the Flechtorn pattern is German they're neo-Nazis so they wear nothing but the German pattern. That does not mean if you have reflect on that you're a white supremacist. It just means that that's what they wear. So I pull up, meet the case team, and they're like, hey, they want to slap a GPS tracker onto my truck just in case. And I'm like, yeah. Your squad says that. Yeah, yeah.

1:45:02It's my team, my cover team. Let me explain it this way. I was assigned to Knoxville. So I'm an FBI agent in Knoxville. But because the targets lived in Georgia, well, now you've got Atlanta field office and the Rome RA, which is the satellite office out of. So that's who's going to be working those targets, right? So I go down there to meet that cover team or case team, and we talk about some stuff. I make some phone calls, and I see them kind of go under the back driver's side quarter panel. So I don't know where they put it, but I know it's somewhere up in there. I pull up. I can't find a parking spot.

1:45:36I'm going back and forth on wire. Hey, man, I'm here. Look, I found a spot, but it's behind a coffee shop. I'm in a – I think I was in a white Ford or something. I can't remember what truck I was driving on that trip. But give them the description of the truck, and then they go, okay, I see you. And I see them come walking. So what comes walking up is about a 21-year-old and soon to be 21 and a 19-year-old kid. T &B is Luke Ling. He's about 6 '2", maybe 220, 225, but kind of frumpy. And then Pestilence is Jacob, and he is kind of more, not goth, but more like black metal. but he's got BDUs bloused into his eight inch tactical boots and then a tank top of some black metal band you know uh shaved around the sides probably guar one of those instant pussy one of those ones no you I went to no I'm talking like we're gonna talk like probably like uh hell witch sabbat uh satanic goat ritual oh those kind of bands you know that kind of shit yeah and all it is if you've ever been to a concert like that it's like it's just constant walla walla walla walla walla it's a lot of home depot noise yeah it's like what i've seen played when they're trying to break people at guantanamo bay that's what they're playing in the background yeah uh with flashing lights and stuff or like the accountant like the account you know like ben affleck when he's in there cuts it on yeah um so they come walking up and uh you know it's first meet so clearly i'm clean because i don't know what they're gonna i mean if they're doing their wherewithal they're gonna check me right how many times in your head do you go over okay is there nothing like am i missing anything like that would have a lot you know and like i'll self-check i may even have somebody check me for sure i'm i may clean my truck but i mean hey search my truck is there anything on here that would let you know yeah search my truck yeah i mean what if you just got dry cleaning and your tags in there you know oh yeah or prescription medicine and it's in your real name you know so they're walking up there you guys are behind the coffee shop yep and he comes up and he says you know i'm like hey i came in it's white warrior 88 i'm like hey i'm white warrior he's like i'm tmb it's business they've been cool little niceties and then i need you to put your phone in airplane mode i said okay i put it on airplane mode and he pulls out this thing it looks like the geiger counter man had like a triangle card on it it was big all kinds of lights and stuff on it i'm like what the heck is that so he wants me nothing i'm cool he starts wanting inside the truck and i'm like all right as he's walking down the side of the truck that thing starts going nuts.

1:48:05It's getting louder and louder and lights are going off on it. And I'm like, oh no, it's picking up the GPS tracker. And he's walking, he gets right to the back fender. And I'm like, I've already eased my right leg back. I'm starting to get in that stance because I'm like, it's getting ready to go. I'm just, who knows what's going to happen right now. Yeah. I don't know if they're armed or not. I'm going to assume they are. and right when it was going it's going nuts Pestilence says you think it could be the power lines because where we were it was a steep hill and there were power lines right there so he walks over and that thing goes nuts what I found out is that thing picks up it's a$500 piece of equipment in 2019 $500 piece of equipment that picks up everything every airwave there is Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, RF, whatever and it'll color code and different sounds there's somebody whispering loud You know, cellular, yeah, whatever, yeah.

1:48:57So I lived to find another day. He said, hey, follow us to another place. So at that point, I'm calling the case team, and I'm like, you need to shut the tractor off. I'm like, you need to shut it off. And they're like, whoa, we're not sure if we can shut it off remotely. And I'm like, well, you need to try. And they're like, well, if we shut it off, we don't know if we can get it back on. I said, what I'm telling you is whatever he's got is finding it. And if you don't shut it off, it's going to be a quick undercover. And it should be your choice. Well, I mean, they were saying technically. Like they were saying, can you cut it off from a remote?

1:49:27And if you did, can we get it back on? And I'm getting a concern. You don't want to lose me. But I'm like, hey. So luckily. I don't want to lose me either. I know, right. Luckily, they got it off. And I pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned concrete plant. And I pull in. I'm like looking up to the Lord. I'm like, that's funny. How many people have I seen die in a movie at an empty concrete plant? But they wandered me and it didn't go. They wandered the truck and it didn't go off. And I'm like, cool. So then I go. And that's when I start meeting everybody. And then as the months went on, you would go and train.

1:49:58And we'd ever play ball together or anything? Would you guys do any social excursions, field trips or anything like that? All shooting, all training. Really? Yeah, because Luke's dad had a 100-acre property in Rome, Georgia. Got it. And that's where we did a lot of our training. That cell in the Maryland cell would come down and train. And then at one point, we started finding all kinds of things like –

1:50:23You talked about sacrifice. That's what gets me into it. So I'll speed up to that. During the case, you start identifying more and more people. And those people, some of them are outside of the United States. So our world working partners are opening cases on them. Some of them are in all kinds of states in the U.S., but as I explained before, that means that maybe Seattle, FBI is opening a case on the person that's in their AOR. Maybe Detroit's opening cases. Georgia's opening multiple cases. Alabama's opening a case. It just goes. because at any given time, there was a good 50-something people in the base.

1:50:58But the base was more like an umbrella group because every member that I knew that was in the base, they were also a part of another white supremacy group, whether it be Adam Woffin or Green Brigade or, man, was it Sunning? I can't remember the name of it right now. So you were a member of another group as well. But we did training. and that first weekend, and remember, I'm a firearms instructor certified at the FBI. I was the lead tactical instructor for my division, and a 19-year-old kid led shooting and tactics. He led the training, and it was good. It wasn't bad. And I'm thinking, man, how did you learn?

1:51:40I mean, you didn't run the military. You're too young to be in and out, to learn this. He said, no, I think it was mainly gaming, and then his dad took him to a range. But he worked on it, you know, and I was glad that they were safe with their weapons because I didn't know who, you know, what their shooting was. I was standing back when we started. I was glad that they were good and safe, but I was also scared because if they were planning on doing something bad, they were pretty good. Oh, I'd be spooked, man. So one of the big things, like with undercover, you go in there, you've got enough to go in.

1:52:17it's all been approved there's a we've got the reporting and and people are predicated so we're going in but do you have enough to charge them well in instances like this you've been spewing a lot of hate online you've been saying a lot of crazy stuff but is what you're doing just first amendment protected or are you actually planning on doing something bad so sometimes we go in and you might just be in there for six months trying to figure out if they're doing i've been in cases for five, six months, and I come back to the team and go, they're not doing anything illegal, man. It's all First Amendment protected.

1:52:49And we're just spinning our wheels at this point. And when did that turn for the base? When did that kind of – So I got – we were already talking about a bunch of stuff, and I was starting to get the DM conversations going on where it's more private, direct messaging for those that don't know. And what is your wife thinking when you get home on the weekends and shit, and you got like a lot more white laundry or whatever? No dark stuff? Or I come home smelling like diesel fuel from the Klu Klux Klan. They call it Klan Cologne because you can't stand that cross-up without the diesel fuel pouring all over you, unless somebody was holding an umbrella over you, I guess.

1:53:23Oh, damn. Yeah. But okay, so take us back in. So at one point, there's somebody that gets doxxed. And for those that don't know what doxxing is, it's basically outing you, right? And the far left is very, very good at it. They're really good at doxing you, showing up to protest at your kid's school, at your business, at your home, your parents, whatever. And the right, far right, from what I experienced, can't stand that because they feel like they're losing their life and their identity. That's why they're huge on anonymity. So all these pictures you see, if you pull up the base stuff where the BBC and the Guardian was blasting all this stuff, I mean, I'm there.

1:54:04But we're wearing balaclavas. um that one right i'll show you one it was me uh yeah that's me right there i'm on the far right you're in that group photo yeah and who took the pictures did you guys go to a place no no no just one of the guys that didn't suit up um because you're always trying to recruit well how was recruiting going overall did you feel like uh i mean ebbs and flows you get people coming in and then you vet them and then and then some people might drop some people might get doxed so uh so Any women in it? No, none, which was something I kind of— There was a lot of the guys that did not have partners.

1:54:44Oh, you'd have more men in it if you had more women in it. Yeah, but they don't have partners. So think about this. We were talking earlier about radicalization online. Picture, for these cases, I'm just going to say it's a young white guy. Young white man who's probably an outcast. He's most definitely been bullied. Can't get a date. And they're just hating. So then you go on in these groups at night, and this works on the other side too, far left, black separatists, radical jihad, kind of the same thing. You're looking for somebody that's a like-minded individual. Yeah. And that's how they start getting you.

1:55:21Do you think that the media ostracizes white people? Do you feel like it's – Oh, boy, I'm not answering that. Is that a tougher question? Is that a bad answer? No, that should probably give you my answer. Oh, there you go. No, it depends. Look, you don't have to. I was just thinking about it like, you know, I feel like there's a lot of like, I don't know. It's a tough one. It's a tough question. I mean, I'm white. So what am I supposed to say? I mean, am I privileged? Am I not privileged? Did I get stuff for free or did I have to bust my ass to get it? So I don't, I just try not to answer that.

1:55:52Yeah. I mean, I know personally what I've had to do to be where I'm at. Yeah. That's a good point, man. Somebody else might not believe that. Yeah. And it's in the eye of the beholder, no matter what I say. I can talk till I'm blue in the face. If you don't believe me, then that's it. Yeah, we'll think about it another time. But picture, you're in there, you're lonely, and you're looking for, you want to belong. You want to belong. It's human nature to want to belong. Yeah, and to want to feel a part of something. To feel like. Brotherhood. Same thing with gangs. Same things with cults. Biker clubs.

1:56:22It's a brotherhood. You're a brother. Now you're one of us. Oh, dude, it was not like when you were growing up, just having your friends. It's like going to the gym with a friend to go lift with. Anything that gives you some connection becomes a huge part of your life. Yeah. So you get that. And I'm glad you said that because another way to describe what I was describing is isolation. Yeah. Oh, it's that's a believer. When you get isolated, let's look at the jungle, Africa. If you're a zebra that gets isolated, you're a lot easier to pick off. Yeah. You know what I mean? Just say undeniably. Yeah.

1:56:56Isolation is for the devil, man. Yeah. I believe that. You know, it's like, even though like there's things even in my own life, it's like, man, I don't want to go. I don't want to do that. That is not the best part to me talking or communicating to me. Yeah, I'm with you on that. Anyway, carry on. So this guy, a guy gets doxed. He's a member in South Africa. And he gets doxed. And then at that point, one of the members in the base is like, how many of our brothers do we have to watch fall before we do something? and he called for Operation Crystal Knot, which was an actual operation in World War II.

1:57:31Essentially, what they did is if you were not white, you were Jewish, anti-fascist, whatever, they would go down and smash your windows of your business, slice the tires on your car, set stuff on fire. So that's what he was calling for. And some members did do it. They went out and tagged some synagogues with some hate symbols. I'm trying to remember if anybody set anything on fire or not. I remember it being called for or slashing tires. But so now we're starting to get a little bit more. People are actually doing overt acts in furtherance of hate, right? Even though it's just painting. And I mean, but, you know, like I've had some people say, hey, man, I mean, they just painted a synagogue, you know?

1:58:14I mean, to be looking at this many years for a hate crime or whatever, and I'm like, yeah, but what if you were one of those Jewish people that went to that synagogue? And now every time you go there, you're scared to death because you've seen active shooter. You've seen mass shooter events. Yeah. Tree of Life in Pittsburgh. You know, and I know a lot of those people now because I've helped out with Eradicate Hate. And Eradicate Hate's based out of Pittsburgh. And I've actually met and I'm friends with family members of the people that were murdered at Tree of Life. Yeah, my friend Michael the other day was talking about the shooting that had happened in Australia.

1:58:50New Zealand. No, I think it was in Bondi. Okay. I was thinking of the New Zealand Christ Church. No, I think it was in Bondi Beach. Oh, there we go. Yeah, this was in December. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's sad to say that these shootings happen more and more often, and they start blending in my head. Which shootings do you mean, just overall? I mean just like active shooter events. Yeah, yeah. I do remember that. That was the Sikh temple or something they shot up. You'd feel like people, I don't know. Evil's always going to be around, you know? Well, you know, a lot of interviews.

1:59:26Do you think a lot of this of New Age stuff, like say a lot of like, if there's anti-Semitic, if it's Jewish specific hate, do you think a lot of that is coming from like people who have, or do you know actually if a lot of it's coming from like people who have Nazi ideology from like Hitler Nazi ideology? or is it people that are having reactions to some of Israel's tactics and like their government's tactics? It's going to be both because if you're pro— I've got to figure out. I want to word it right because I don't want anybody to say, you're saying all pro-Palestine people or no. But if you're on that extreme side that's pro-Palestine over Israel, well, a lot of those people aren't white, so you couldn't be identifying with Hitler because Hitler's more of the white supremacy, but it's definitely anti-Semitic.

2:00:15Wait, wait, hold on a second. They're hating the Jews too. Do you think that's an extremist view that people are pro-Palestine? No. No, not at all. But if you are going to go, again, if you're going to go to extreme, are you going to be happy that people are being slaughtered and murdered and raped and tortured, you know, and you're anti-Semitic, then you're probably more that extremism side. Got it. But you were asking me if it was like, is it Hitler-driven or is it pro-Palestine or anti-Israel-driven? Yeah, anti-Israel government driven. Like, yeah, just to be super clear. Yeah, man, I think it's just scary.

2:00:49Like, I have Jewish friends that have been, like, who have spoken out about, like, just, like, being in fear. And, like, they're, like, you know. Going to class, you know. And I'm like, I don't, I mean, Hitler wasn't even solid white. And I think he, I mean, you can pull it out. I think it was determined that he had some Jewish in his blood. And then there's probably other ethnicities who are scared of our relationship with Israel and what could happen to them in the future. I get scared sometimes. I think with the surveillance state now, I feel like everybody's getting scared. Oh my goodness, I know.

2:01:20And now the big, I think the fresh topic right now on surveillance is those flight cameras. Yeah. It's like, I... A lot of my black friends are starting to fuck them up. Yeah, I'm not hating on that. I'm not saying do it. Me either. I'm just saying that. The block versus flock, bro. You know what I'm saying? That's where I'm at, dude. You see a flock camera on a cul-de-sac. One cul-de-sac. Why do you need a flock camera? I agree. Are you reading plates? What's going on? Or does it pick up phone stuff? And it's the third party. Here's my concern. Third party company that's not law enforcement. I agree.

2:01:50What are we doing? So what oversight do you have? Do you have policies stopping? I mean, we've got a constitution. That's our law. That's our Bible. Which goes back to, you know, you're talking about the border and stuff. Listen, if I'm a law enforcement officer, number one, I'm a peace officer. Most of the cars used to say to protect and serve. That's your job. You're a shepherd. You should be. You're protecting the sheep from the wolves. I mean, I'm not trying to be all Jack Nicholson on the wall and be holier than thou. It's just my job is to enforce the law. So I used to tell people, I'm like, well, don't hate me because I'm enforcing law.

2:02:27There's been so many people I've arrested or sat down at a table with after they've been arrested. And I'll say, man, you know, I'm not saying I disagree with what you did. I'm not saying I think you're a bad person. I'm saying you're an adult and you made the choice to break the law and you got caught. So here we are. I'm not hating. Did you ever get so deep entangled during like a during like a sting or during an operation or during an undercover where at the end you were like, damn, this is going to be a long day when this bust happens? Yeah, because it's going to bother you. And I'm kind of taking us off a base.

2:03:01I'm kind of taking us off a base a little bit. So let's get back. So there was the doxing going on. Yep. So they did some people tag some stuff. And also during that time, we had a base member who went out in Canada. He was Canadian. And he went and put flyers up to try to recruit. And then somebody answered the recruitment. They had to go through the emails like I did. They had to go through an interview panel like I did on audio, on wire. And then they went and had the face-to-face meet. So this guy that got recruited, one of our members who ended up being called Punished Snake, his name was Pat Matthews.

2:03:39Punished Snake? Yeah. So Pat Matthews, he changed his name several times. But he was, I think it's the Canadian version of our National Guard kind of, but he was being trained. He was a military. He was being trained. And he's the guy. So we get a new member coming in. Hey, welcome, new member, blah, blah, blah, from Canada. I think his name was Mark or something. And he's in the main chat group for about a week, maybe two weeks. I don't think it was more than two weeks. And are you in this chat group every day, kind of? Yeah. Imagine if I wasn't. So I work my job as an FBI agent. I go home. I might have dinner with my family.

2:04:16And then I'm back out on the porch, you know, answering stuff. Or I'm checking in during the day. But they also knew I was a— What's up, fellas? Everybody still racist or whatever? Like shit like that? You want to go commit some hate crimes? But so this Canadian, he meets this guy. This guy gets into the group, and after about a week or so, he comes out. And it turns out that it was a journalist for a paper. No, no. I guess these days, that's probably what the people are thinking. He was a journalist for a newspaper up there. He went and met Pat on his own. and after about a week or two they were like hey this is too deep you pull the chocks right up right so this article comes out and it's basically doxing pat so pat that they come the rms uh royal canadian mounted police rcmp comes to his house takes his guns he's booted from the military thing his parents now hate him i think he lost his job and all of a sudden he disappears wow his truck is found at the border the border of canada and the united states so we're pretty sure he's here but we don't know where right eventually we find him and he ended up being down at my cell he was he was renting out one of the horse stalls under the barn under the the residence on that hundred acre property so i got to go sleep in there yeah so i got to go spend a lot of time down there training and it just got crazier and crazier man it was like and what kind of stuff for the saying or like what like how everything's preparing for the preparing for the boogaloo building your kit i mean a lot of these kids didn't even have i say kids i mean i i was 48 i lied and said i was 44 at the time um because literally there was like one other 40 something i think nazara was 40 something so the leader was 40 something there was one other dude that was in his 40s there might have been two 30 somethings and everything else was 20s and teens a lot of these kids they didn't have a job they didn't have a car they had to borrow a car to come to the training but they were wearing cry precision plate carriers same thing the FBI SWAT team wears they're building their kit up their pistols their semi-automatic rifles their ARs or their AKs and we're coming out and training man moving drills and it may not be the best but still I mean I was looking at a lot of them going holy crap man if they wanted to take on some, if they wanted to do something, they're probably going to get the drop on a lot of people.

2:06:44Right. You know? That's scary, dude. It's fascinating to think that that goes on. So once we found Pat and we had him locked down, so we're like, okay, we feel like we're in control of the situation because we were finding out more and more stuff. Are they plotting something or they're not? There was inklings of things being whispered and said, and we're, as a case team and an undercover, all the case teams. I mean, at one point we had 100 people on a call once a month. That's how many case teams there were in the United States working this stuff. And it was just kind of like, did they mean that?

2:07:14Did they not mean that? You're trying to find out. Are you going to do something bad or are you not? Yeah. Are you just talking trash, First Amendment protected, and then you're waiting for the D-Day, and then it's purge. Yeah. So we get this all started because you asked about the sacrifice thing. So a lot of these guys believed in the Norse pantheon. So they were claiming pagan, but they're white supremacists. They're not true pagans. Got it. They're white supremacists. And we've already had a couple of blots, B-L-O-T. That is the ceremony, the worship ceremony. Did you ever go to those? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:07:53And I'd already been. Pretty cool? Well, I mean, I had to participate. I had to mirror. So I would pray to a god. There were some that we had that had some people leading it that was really – some of them were actually priests in the Asatru family. Just doing what, side jobs or whatever? No, no, no, no. I'm just meaning they've obtained the rank to basically be a preacher. They're a priest, and they can run a block. So I'd attended some, and it might be in the middle of the summer, and you go down there, and you paint runes on your chest, and we'd do the whole ceremony and they'd be like a, take like a piece of wood and carve, carve some runes in it, which were pagan.

2:08:33R-U-N-E-S. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then it would be, but then there would be like swastikas and white supremacy stuff on there too. Oh, got it. And then you would cut yourself and bleed on the wood and then we'd set the wood on fire and pray to our gods until the wood stopped burning. So I was getting in closer. and then it was just going so fast Theo I'll tell you you ever wake up believing it no no not this some of these cats were some of these guys were saying that Hitler's still alive in Hollywood and he's hanging out with 15 foot giant white dudes with red beards and they're just waiting to come back and I'm like for what I mean come on back if you're saying we need to fight right now what's Hitler waiting on Where they milling around.

2:09:22Yeah, come on. Yeah, unless he's waiting for NIL money or whatever. Yeah, exactly. I'm switching teams. Somebody give him a deal probably. But so we get to this point, and it's Halloween of 2019. And we're going to have basically what people refer to as a hate camp. We're going to be there training and training. I did some hand-to-hand combat training there. We'd already started doing firearms. but that Halloween night was a Thursday night in 2019. So we have a few drinks. I go back to my truck. I'm actually charging my phone up because the battery's dying. You know how it is when you go from like sleet, ice, freezing cold, and you hop in that warm vehicle and you kind of just defrost and then you nod off a little bit?

2:10:08I nodded off a little bit. And I wake up to the pounding on my door because I was already pale horse by this time. I switched my code name. And they were like, Pale Horse, Pale Horse, wake up, wake up. I'm like, what's going on? They're like, you got to see this. You're not going to believe it. I come out and they go, hey, remember us talking about sacrificing a goat? And I'm like, vaguely. And they're like, we got one. And I'm like, oh. They went, I mean, not far down the road to a guy who had three. And it turns out that he came out because he hurt them. They were armed. They had their Flechtarn camo on with the balaclavas over their face.

2:10:46I mean, it's a wonder nobody can get shot right there. But they steal a goat or a ram. I don't know. I mean, I've asked people the difference. It was big. It had horns. I don't know if it was a goat or a ram. But I walk up, and they're like, had it in the back of the truck. And one of the members who went by Dima, Dima says, man, this goat's shitting all over the truck. And I said, well, hell, I would be too if a bunch of Neanderthals with Fleck Tarn and Balaclavas just jerked me out of the backyard at gunpoint. I'm like, back on. You know? And then Eisen was going to be running the blot on this one.

2:11:22And I see him over there, and he's petting the goat. And it looks like he's showing it love and stuff. And I walked up, and I said, hey, man, is it bad that I feel sorry for the goat? He says, hey, pale horse, don't let her hear the goat. Eisen was the guy's name? Yeah. That was his codename. His real name was William Bilbrow. Oh. I was going to say, because Eisen sounds like a Jewish name. It seems like a weird name to have. I think it was actually a rune. I can't remember what Eisen stands for. But anyway. Eisen is German and Ashkenazi, U.S. Surname meaning iron. There you go. Eisen. Okay, go on.

2:11:51Sorry. So I didn't know that. See, I should have looked that up. I spent seven months with a guy. Well, shit. But I'd be like, oh, iron. I got it. So he says, hey, don't let the goat hear you say that. And I'm like, okay. He's like, this goat, we're showing this goat love. We're going to sacrifice it to start the wild hunt, and it's going to Valhalla. It's going to be with Odin tonight. This is a good thing for the goat. No negative energy, basically. And don't let the other people hear you with negative energy. I said, got it? Push that beach ball down. Never think of it again, you know? Underwater.

2:12:23Damn. Let's go push it down. So I walk over to, oh, let me say this. The wild hunt in Norse mythology is essentially Odin and other gods going out in the middle of the night and laying the smack down to all their enemies. Okay. But in the version of the white supremacy, he's saying that the sacrifice is going to start the wild hunt for us to cleanse the world of darkness. So if you're anti-fasc and you are non-white, when Boogaloo happens, what they were saying is, if you are not fascist, you are automatically anti-fasc and the penalty is death. I mean, these dudes would talk about shooting their own dads.

2:13:02Like, I'd have to kill my dad if he doesn't. If he doesn't switch to be fascist, I'm going to have to kill my dad. Wow. And then one would be like, I'd cry myself to sleep if I did. Another one would be like, well, I could never kill my parents, so you guys are way ahead of me. So you're hearing all this crazy stuff, and you're hearing Pat down under the barn saying, I'm a ghost. My life is over. I don't exist anymore. Because that's the guy that got doxxed. Doxxed out of Canada. And so can't y 'all bust the group at this point or no? We could, but there's – I'm going to tell you, in my opinion, as a case agent on long-term cases and as an undercover, that's the heart's decision.

2:13:40Got it. To decide when – do we have enough or, oh, this new guy just came in, one more buy, and we can get – it's tough. Yeah, because at what point are you just like playing house or whatever it almost seems like, or White House anyway? Right, but what would we charge him with other than assisting getting an undocumented alien in right now? Now, what charges are you going to come up with? Because there's no federal domestic terrorism charge. Okay. There are federal international terrorism charges, but there's not for domestic terrorism. Got it. So I'm hearing all this crazy stuff. I mean, we can form, everybody that's been doxxed, we can have like a staging location or a clubhouse somewhere where it's all us and we're all ghosts and we just go out and murder.

2:14:17I mean, it's talking about laying out like a homeless person, learning the pattern of the lefty journalist, and then just popping them in the back of the head with a 38 one day and just walk off. Wow. That's guerrilla, that kind of small hit kind of thing. So we've got them, and then we get to that Halloween weekend. So they tell me they got the goat, and I go to my listening device, and I'm like, hey, talking to the case, and I'm like, if you can hear me, I'm pretty sure we're going to go down here and slaughter this animal. I'm racking my brain trying to think if there's anything. I'm definitely not seeing anything federal in my head, and I basically just tossed it to them.

2:14:53Do you want me to shut this thing down, or do you want me to just drive off, come up with a ruse and kind of drive off? I said if you want me to you need to let me know and I waited and I stared at stared at my device and I waited and I waited waited for my phone to ring I waited waited nothing and I went okay I guess I'm heading down in the woods so we head down we carry the goat down it's probably about 12 of us there and is the goat sleeping or it's loud no no we're walking it down but you know yeah so we get down there and uh just doing goat shit yeah doing goat shit yeah so we get down there to what was referred to as a holy spot.

2:15:28The torches are lit. Eisen leads the blot, talks about, hey, we're going to sacrifice this goat to Odin. It's going to go be with the elves and everything. And is it pretty organized, or is the guy reading notes off of his phone? No, he wasn't the best. Now, the other guy I told you about when we were in the summer, I think he was a legit Asatru priest. Got it. I mean, it was led very well. This one was a little choppy, you know? Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, but. God dang. But they're believing it. This is fucking crazy, bro. They're believing it, right? So then he has like a, it's bigger than a machete, but it's not quite a sword, from what I remember.

2:16:06We're all around the goat. He's already given the whole speech about the wild hunt, and we're going to start killing all anti-fashion and non-whites. Because if everybody's white, that'll definitely save, that'll solve the problem. No, it won't. No, it won't. You know? Crazy. You're still going to be fighting. Yeah. You're still going to be cheating. yeah what are we talking about here but uh so i end up we're all in a circle around the goat and somehow i ended up at the back legs and he's already giving the speech and now he's got this blade and he's he's like he's bringing it back with his hands and he's coming down practice swing practice swing taking a breath you can hear somebody say just do it you know and he comes down i'm holding the back of that guy he comes down with everything he's got and all i heard was thunk.

2:16:52I don't think it broke a single hair. I don't know if the blade was dull or the back strap of the goat was so strong. And for that second, I was like, in that split second in my mind, I'm like, oh, this is going to be bad. This is going to get bloody because I'm holding it. And then you hear, it may take two swings. Do it again. You're all just yelling. And then somebody says, has anybody got a gun? I think it was pestilence. Does anybody have a pistol? Fucking pestilence. The rule was is we weren't supposed to bring any weapons down there, but the one guy, Zoom Nat, says, I got mine. I mean, me and Luke, TMB, both were looking at it going, this is like the least qualified guy to be holding a weapon.

2:17:29This dude's been up for like two days straight on Adderall. He worked third shift in Austin, Texas, and drove straight to Rome, Georgia. Uh-uh. And I'm like, and not coordinated. I mean, gun stuff. I was like, oh, my goodness, man. You're the last person down here. What the heck, dude? So he hands the pistol over. Luke takes it from him. It's like Assassin's Creed. Oh, yeah, yeah. So he takes the weapon, hands it to Eisen. Eisen chambers around, kind of points towards the goat, and then turns completely away to pull the trigger. And that's when the instructor in me, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

2:18:01He's like, what? And I go, man, look at what you're shooting at, bro. We're all in a circle on our knees, man. He's like, oh, okay. I know, man. I feel like this is a Larry David sketch, dude. I mean, part of you in the comical side, you're like, I'll let him go ahead and shoot. I'm over here. You know, he's aiming that way. So he takes out, you know. But, yeah, so he puts one right in his head, and then it goes down, and it twitches for a while. And I coax him to, I said, man, why don't you go ahead and put another round in it? Because it was debate of, is it after death twitches, or is it still alive?

2:18:32I said, just go ahead and put it. I said, for the sake of the goat, because you want it to show up happy, right? It's going, I mean, it's a good thing. I'm using his words against it. Right, for sure. Let it get there quick. Yeah, I mean, you know, I thought, so he did it. and then you could hear somebody say, now it's definitely dead. Oh, are we done? No. Now they slice the throat of the goat, fill up a cup full of blood. Nuh-uh. Yeah, and we're all in a circle. And is it warm out or cold out? It is chill. It's cold. Oh, it's better. It's cold, yeah. It's cold because whatever happened that Halloween in 2019, it had been like 60s or 70s, and that day of cold front came, it dropped to like 10.

2:19:09So we're down there, and he, they slice it, they fill the cup up with blood. Everybody's still in the circle except me. I'm holding the flashlight because Eisen decided to bring acid to help with the spiritual journey. LSD? Yeah, yeah. Had the sheet, had the sheet. Y 'all all took a hit or what? No, I didn't. And that was funny because they were like, one of the guys was like, hey, I'm a, how do we word it? I'm a very experienced, highly experienced psychedelic psychedelic or something i'm a professional psychedelic because we think you'd really like this pill horse i said let me tell you something you have no idea what's in my brain you have no idea what i've done on this planet in my lifetime i don't do that stuff if somebody slips one on me and i go on a bad trip every single one of you are going with me damn you know that's the only thing i gotta do that's your call yes yeah i'm gonna use that and then one guy was like he was like yeah don't do it don't put nothing in pill horses drink but i went around and i was shining and he would tear a tab, put it under your tongue, chase it with the blood.

2:20:10Now we're signifying the sacrifice. We're closing the deal here. Yeah, now you're a sick app. Yeah, so now it gets to me, and I'm one of the last ones. Well, by the time it gets to me, Theo, I look down, and it is clotted. It is chunky. And I'm looking at it going, man, I really don't want to drink this, man. You know, I'm like, whew. But I think pestilence, or I don't know if he said it or I thought of it, but I just stuck two fingers deep into the blood, pulled out my fingers and sucked the blood off my fingers. Damn. And luckily, I'd carried a beer down there, and I chased it with that. What kind of beer was it?

2:20:45That night, it might have been Bud Light. Before the controversy. Yeah. Oh, I think, yeah. No, I think it was a Bud Light. But if it wasn't a Bud Light, it was a Yingling Lager, which is what I like. Yeah. That's nice. Damn, brothers. Y 'all down there eating blood and frickin' doing LSD. day i mean what in the fuck is going i know right so we're supposed to get up the next day and train no training was shot what because only like only like two or three people didn't do acid and everybody else was up all night staring at a fire i don't even know what y 'all are training for this feels like the new york jets kind of dude i'm like what the fuck is so they're like we're not going to go handle weapons and be running across fields yeah because they've been up all night and they were hot and i'm like great you just shot an entire day of training you know but I went to go get biscuits for everybody I went to the Bojangles I just had one the other day apparently in Rome, Georgia Bojangles is where it's at because cars will be backed all the way down down the main street directly across the street from Bojangles with McDonald's, there were no cars in it but I went and I picked up about 30 bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits so I'm coming back and all I can smell is that butter that bacon, that cheese, and them eggs that biscuit I go to get out of my truck Punished Snake says Pale horse, you gotta try this goat It is good He's been holding that raw goat over a fire It was not prepared at all I've had some gamey stuff in my life That was the gamiest tasting meat I ever put in my daggone mouth And as soon as I started biting it After smelling the butter As soon as I bit into it I was like, that's not too bad As soon as he turned his head I tossed it to the farm dogs I was like.

2:22:26Yeah, dude, I've had bad meat on some LSD, and that's, you never forget that. You never forget that. Yeah. I mean, I've eaten undercooked duck on LSD. Yeah. And I never forget that shit. Sometimes I still floss my teeth years later even just to get the, I feel like some of it's still in there. So after the sacrifice, they chopped the head of the goat off and were carried around. What the hell is going on, dude? And we took a picture because the recruitment process was this. Whatever video, whatever new recruitment video we're doing has to be better than the last one. Got it. Every time the base got infiltrated by either a journalist or whatever, their offset got better and better.

2:23:07How did that happen? How did we get infiltrated? How did we stop it from happening again? So Saturday night comes. Saturday comes. Now we can start training again. So we're out there shooting and running and stuff, and now it's warming back up. and we go down Saturday night to the Holy Spot and build a bonfire. We burn American flags. There it is. Now, here's the thing. He nicknamed that goat Gar. His name is William Garfield Bilbro. His grandfather's name is Garfield, so he named the goat Gar. So everybody talked about Gar after that. I am back row two left from the flag. You can see my neck.

2:23:49Oh, there you go. Yeah, that's me right there. Showing a little neck, huh? A little neck. Well, yeah, the balaclava didn't go all the way down. Dang. Somebody should have caught that and been like, pale horse, your neck's chilling. You bought that baby clava with you, bro. I didn't know they gave it to you. That's part of your initiation. When you made it in, they gave me the balaclava and the three runes. That smaller clava they gave you, bro. That's a little small for you. I got a horse head. Oh, yeah. So then we go down and we burn American flags and we burn Holy Bibles. and I remember coming back after that weekend and I remember just feeling kind of dirty I mean I've been up, maybe that's because I've been up for four days or whatever, I don't know, the rain and on and on but just the act and just the feeling of that, I was like man I just feel weird Yeah, your spirit Yeah, because I'm like, yeah, that's it because I'm like man I come back to the office and I go, I've been working undercover since 1996 off and on, started street level narcotics I said I have never had to burn American flags I've never had to burn holy bibles and I definitely wasn't with a group of people that went and stole a goat sacrifice didn't we drank his blood at a ritual you know because even though they're saying pagans some of those dudes are praying to satan some of those dudes are playing to like order of nine angles where it's a lot more satanic um and uh yeah it's but that weekend I guess I had passed the benchmark of trust because that Saturday night after everybody's going to bed it's me pestilence and tmb and I kind of ask them a question I go you know a while back of course I know what I'm asking about because we're trying to figure out what it is but a recording that I'd gotten of the case teams and myself we were trying to figure out what they meant and I kind of recircled circled back on that and I said what what were we talking about there and they kind of whisper and I hear pestilence say yeah I think we can trust him so hey phone and airplane mode cool and we start talking and they start telling me about that they've been, they're talking about wanting to do bigger things.

2:25:49They didn't necessarily say we were going to kill people yet, but definitely enough to lead us to believe that we need to stay in this longer because we've got to figure out what they're talking about. Yeah. Right? So let's just fast forward. Fast forward, because this was a fast-paced case. It was only seven months long, but I'm telling you, it was like no sleep for seven months, you know? Yeah. And just running and gunning. so what I find out is the Georgia cell has identified a couple a couple counties over in Georgia that they believed were active members of Atlanta Antifa and anti-fascists right so they wanted to murder them and so when you find out that somebody's getting ready like we're like man what is it that they were supposed to do and I'm like Luke would never answer me on the phone he would just giggle and he goes look I'll tell you to your face I'm just gonna do it on the phone I said you know what I'm cruising through there tomorrow I wasn't obviously I'm like I called the case team you ready to go to Georgia tomorrow you ready for me tomorrow yes I go down wake him up I'm like okay you know I like to joke I like to have fun but when it's time to be do business I'm serious I said so what the F are we doing because he wouldn't tell me they called us they sent out a thing like hey training this we're going on a camping trip blah blah blah bring it looked like he was talking about going out and putting up stickers, posters, flyers.

2:27:12But then he said, make sure you bring your weapons. And then we were all like, what does he mean? What could be going on? So when I met him that day, I said, when I said, what the F are we doing? He says, essentially, we're going to whack some people. And I said, well, that's way different than putting up stickers. And it's something I definitely would not want to drive my personal truck to. That's why I'm asking you, what are we doing? Do I need to bring something that doesn't come back to me kind of thing? Get a rental or whatever. Yeah, so he says, he starts laying it out. But now I'm thinking, because the case team's thinking this too, we've got to slow this down.

2:27:45We've got to slow this down. Because if we wouldn't have found out, I would have been finding out at a camp on a Friday night and how am I letting my cover team know. You know what I mean? Yeah, you've got to hurt your camp. Yeah, I pointed out to him. Because you need some space for everybody to figure things out. So you've got to slow it down. Well, hopefully, yeah. Got it. I understand. So I'm like, I told them, I mean, sometimes the case doesn't allow for that. You've got to take it down right then and there. For sure. But I pointed out to him how little planning he had put into this murder he's talking about because the planning he drafted on putting up flyers was like insanely operational security.

2:28:23I'm like, what's the biggest? I'm just tired of waiting. And I said, look, I'm going to say, I played a. And did he send you a JPEG of it or what? Did he just draw it on something? No, he was just telling me. Okay, so no drawing of it. Yeah, nothing. Oh, you got to at least damn draw it up. So, well, and that's what I told him. I was portraying a site survey specialist, and I said, dude, this is what I do. I said, I can go in and pull demographics, homes, schools, crime rates, everything. And I said, let me find out what's all at this house. I mean, have you even been by it? He said, no. So we start building that.

2:28:54I come in with fake plates. I say, I just took these off of a car in Florida. Throw those on. We go by. We case the place. I'm not leading it. They're leading it, right? and meanwhile Punished Snake has now gone back to the Maryland cell he's up there with a guy that goes by Can't Go Back Can't Go Back was the only one that I really knew in our proximity that actually had a job too he was a truck driver and he had a$6 ,000 thermal scope on the 6.5 Creedmoor and they were talking about now they up there they're plotting the kickoff of the Boogaloo because there was going to be a second amendment gun right gun Second Amendment rally for gun rights in Virginia in 2020, January of 2020.

2:29:37Damn. And they thought, okay, you're going to have Antifa. You're going to have three percenters, militia types, anti-government types. You're going to have law enforcement. What if we start popping rounds into the crowd from our sniper rifles, and then nobody knows who's shooting each other, and they start shooting each other? No. What if that's the kickoff to the boogaloo? I know it's not a lot of forethought or a lot of afterthought, but this is what you're dealing with, right? and i'll say this that's a good plan yeah for what they're trying to do yeah create chaos it's like when you tap somebody on the shoulder over here and you're standing over here yeah exactly you know which dude victor wimbing yanni you know who that is basketball guy oh yeah yeah tall scabber imagine if he does that to people all the time where he would like tap somebody way over there yeah and nobody knows and he's three people over dude yeah imagine in kindergarten or whatever he must have been able to have the most fun anyway back into the story so yeah that's absolutely insane so then we start casing that but meanwhile we're finding out more stuff on this these the cell up in maryland and what the baltimore division does is they do a title three wiretap and they put cameras in that apartment if i thought if if what i thought they were talking about was crazy face to face the stuff that they were sending me that they were saying in that apartment was just them two going i'm like holy crap they're talking about breaking out the saints and what they refer to the saints as your white supremacy mass shooter The Charleston guy, the New Zealand guy, the Norway guy.

2:31:04I'm not saying their names on a purpose, right? But they actually have a scoreboard, and it says the scoreboard, and it's got the mass shooters, the white supremacists, 77-0. That's the Norway guy. I think it's 55-0 is New Zealand. You go all the way down Pittsburgh, 7-0, 9 for Charleston. And it says, when will you make the leaderboard? Wow. You know? These are the stars. Yeah. So on the anniversary of those mass murders, they'll say, happy Saint. Right. If it were me, it'd be happy Saint Payne Day. You know? And it's just crazy. But again, are you just talking trash or are you going to go do something?

2:31:41Right. So now we're diving down to the end of this case. And we're on a time. We're trying to make sure everything gets together. And I'm running nonstop. I go to Baltimore. I drive up and shoot all day with the Maryland crew, trying to tighten things up, make sure we got everything, settle for that, go down to the Georgia crew, have cased the place with everybody in the – I mean, you got guys saying like, hey, are there any kids? And another dude saying, I don't have a problem shooting a comedy kid. You got another dude saying, oh, I'm perfect. I'm an IT. I work nine to five. I look like a normal citizen, but I've been wanting to do this for two years.

2:32:18Damn. Can I pop my cherry? I'm like, well, popping your cherry means something to me. What are you talking about? Yeah. Oh, he actually wants to put a bullet in one of them's head. He doesn't want to just be standing guard. So for this Georgia crew, they had it down to where all four were going to go in. One was going to post in the window. Me and this is what I was instructed to do. Me and TMB were going to go down and murder the family and anything else. But if they want to put a bullet in too, we'll let them take a shot. And then Pestilence was going to set the house on fire and we were going to leave.

2:32:48and that was that was that was number one because they had already started forming a list of liberal journalist uh anchors and i'm like you tell it i said you're telling me that you want to start taking out people uh who are like popular popular they go yeah and i go well it's a good thing we got this family to start and get a little practice run but so you're trying to keep them locked into this so that you guys can you guys can cannot can take action right and you're looking at over at acts okay so what did you do so if you want to come back and say oh we were just talking trash No, you bought catch bags to put on ARs so when you shoot, if you have to shoot, it catches the brass.

2:33:20You don't leave brass. Created a silencer for a gun. Other things like he told us the way it was going to work is we were going to go to a camp, leave all of our digital footprint, all media, all phones, everything there, go to a pay-by-the-hour motel, scrub all our loose skin off. We're going to put on BDUs or whatever. We're going to tape our pants to our boots, tape our gloves to our wrists. he was instructing even put Vaseline on your facial hair so you don't drop anything and he'd even done enough research to where he had read that this would be Luke TMB who was telling me this he had read that for a lot of people the first time they murder somebody they lose control of their bowel so he was suggesting we wear Depends what do you mean diapers?

2:34:08yeah diapers and I looked at him and I said I'll be alright I didn't say I killed anybody I'm just saying I don't need a diaper. Wow. And I'm like, I'll be okay. Just letting them. Let it marinate. So we were able to pull it all off. We came in on a Wednesday. A diaper, man, yeah. Yeah, we came in on a Wednesday, started the arrest. I picked up Luke because we figured that would, I mean, sneaking up on 100 acres. What the fuck? Hold on a second, man. Hold on a second. Yeah. This has gone so fast, man. I mean, it's a long story, but it's gone so, now it's at this crescendo where it's like, this kind of.

2:34:42So what are you, like that day, do you like? I was running on fumes, man. I think I had the flu at the time. My back was spasming because what I didn't realize. Yeah. Oh, if you're going to murder someone, I think you're damn, that's an L5S1 issue. I know, right? Yeah, so I'm like, I had a lumbar fusion in 2002. After this case in 2020, I found out that my lumbar fusion had broken approximately three to five years after. So they were telling me for like 15 years I was going around with a dislocation. I mean, a back that's disconnected. Just a bad hitch or whatever. Yeah, maybe it's broke. There's nothing in there.

2:35:15There's no cadaver bone. There's no disc. It's just floating. The old floating spine trick. That sounds like. So you would hear me on the recording, and they were like, was that you making that sound? I said, yeah. And they go, what happened? I said, my back jerked. You know, I'm walking. I'm like, I'm walking. I go, like that. You know? Brother, you just, you barely keep it together. Okay. So let's get to the end of this story just because we should. Yeah. you guys are driving over there. You're driving. Yeah, so I drive. And you know what y 'all's plan is. You know what's your. Yes, yeah, because for me personally, I was dealing with SWAT teams because they were going to let a SWAT team hit us.

2:35:51So I made sure that, I mean, I go and meet them. They tell me what they're planning on. And as long as I'm okay and I don't disagree with safety stuff, being a SWAT guy myself, you know, and I'm like, okay. I looked at it and I'm like, oh, these dudes are squared away. So I go and pick Luke up for lunch, but we've already laid out all this stuff to where I'm like, hey, man, we're getting close to this thing he's like yeah i said you know i've been thinking the last thing we need to do is be riding around armed and get put on the radar but the cop stopped us like and he goes you know that's a good idea so when i picked him up that day i said hey you're not packing right he goes no no no i left it inside i said me neither man so i'm getting the information getting the intel that he's not carrying yeah we pull around i like my truck has a problem I pull over I go I go if I said that damn because literally it did happen to my truck uh the calipers froze they got they locked and froze and smoke was going everywhere I said if that damn caliber's locked again and he's like man that's a I pull over and I get close to the fence to where he can't get out and then I go around the back of the truck act like I'm looking and another truck pulls up well it's actually an FBI agent but uh he pulls up and he goes hey man you need me help and I look up and I came up with the whole ruse.

2:37:00We practiced it. And he says, hey, man, you need any help? And I look up and I go, holy shit, what are you doing here? And now we're acting like we know each other. He goes, what are you doing here? I go, man, I ain't seen you in forever. I didn't know you lived around here. I go, man, this is a nice truck. And as I'm walking up to talk to him, Luke's looking at us. And then what he doesn't see is the Bearcat, which is the military vehicle the SWAT team uses, and it's coming over the hill. So he's focused on us and I jump into the truck right when they pull up, right when I'm jumping into the truck going, go, go, go, they're right there.

2:37:31They got, I mean, rifles. They're up on the turret. Don't move. And they got him out. No issues. Arrest with no, nothing wrong. And then while that happens, and then they go pick up pestilence at his house. They pick up Helter Skelter, who was the Pop My Cherry guy. They pick him up at his work. He's wilding. And then we keep it quiet because Thursday morning. There's still more to bust. Yeah, because that was Wednesday. Thursday morning, the Washington Philadelphia SWAT team hit Bilbro. The Baltimore SWAT team hit can't go back and punish Snake. And then now it starts coming out. So now it's Friday, and I'm still in the group.

2:38:10I'm just monitoring. And it's Friday, and now the arrests are starting to come out. Like, holy crap, did you see this? Did you read this? And now the affidavits are starting to pop up. And they're like, wait, it says here that there's a Fed that infiltrated this group. And they're like, who's the Fed in the group? and everybody's like has anybody heard from pale horse no no no and it goes on and goes i'm just watching i'm watching somewhere around five o 'clock on friday nazaro roman wolf aka roman wolf comes on and goes he says something to the effect of i'm not sure we could have done anything to pick him up because he was one of our best members and then uh and i was like oh he knows it's me because he's going back and i mean i'm sure he keeps recordings of all the interviews he's done and stuff or at least say on this date I did this and they figured it out and I was like oh he's got me and it says boom you've been removed by Roman Wolf I screenshotted it and I sent it to all the case teams headquarters and everything and I go and I'm out but they were talking we had some other coverage in there that people reported and it turns out there was another dude that had infiltrated that group not law enforcement though was doing it helping you know reporting to you know uh i don't know whether it be the guardian something paper yeah bbc something um so we got copies of what the chatter after i got booted and some of my case team printed it for me when i came in it was highlighted up on my desk it says something like was are you saying the fed was the guy with the deep voice on the cause and they're like yeah and they go there's no way dude that's one of the most solid neo-nazis i've ever been around you know and then the other one would be like oh there was something really endearing about him you know and i look at the squad and i'm like see they do love me these are my people you know but yeah bro yeah and then and then you then you get home and you go ah now i take a shower yeah how long do you take off after that it depends uh because i used to not take any days off but that ended up being my downfall and uh and And then I learned how not to do that to myself.

2:40:15So by that time, I'm long in the tooth. I could have worked until I was 57. That's the cutoff for the FBI. But I was 50 at this point. Or at least I retired at 50. Oh, you look great, man. Yeah, so it was like, you know, I was like, that one I probably took a week off. You know, just relax, chill. Called my pastor, though, especially after that Halloween weekend. I was like, man, I feel kind of, like you said, my spirit. I was like, I feel kind of dirty, man. Am I praying over me? You know? And do you have a family during this? Yeah. Do you still have a family? Yeah, but I'm going through a divorce.

2:40:47Are you? We didn't make it. Not going to talk about it because it's still going through, but— I'm sorry to hear that for you and your wife. Yeah, we're a statistic now, you know? So kids have grown up and moved out, and then I retired, and yeah. Do you feel like the job had an effect on your marriage? I'm sure because my wife was not law enforcement. This was not her world. Essentially, I was her world. So she married me, but you married me, yeah, you married the Bureau, too. I mean, you look back, and doing the book, you had to dive back in because I wanted to be transparent. That's the only way I know how to be.

2:41:31But I don't want it to be all cakes and pies. I want to tell you when it was sad, too, and when it was messed up. so even though we were happy at the time we were doing this book to dive back into times where we weren't happy uh that was tough that was tough man to put your mind back when oh my gosh you know 9-1-1 hang up call cops show up at the house i gotta call my supervisor you know whatever whatever's going on me me going through you know getting stripped in a basement at gunpoint and all this stuff it's just yeah i'm sure i'm sure it did well i know it did uh because it's especially during in some of the cases early on, when our kids were young, like three and one, man, just to get rid of her nervous energy, she'd be moving furniture and stuff.

2:42:12So I'd come home and, you know, you walk in the door and trip over something. I'm like, why does, who put the couch here, you know? Really? There's that much anxiety. Yeah, and the way she tells it is that she finally just had to give it up to the Lord because she could worry about me all the time. But I told her, I said, when it's my time, it's my time. I think I'm good at what I do. I'm not lackadaisical. I've been blessed with this skill set and with this, you know, whatever. I've been blessed with all this, so. Man, that would be so tough. It'd be tough to take somebody you love every day and just let, and know that the whole day there is a risk.

2:42:45Well, welcome to first responder and military. Yeah. I mean. Thank you for saying that. No, you're right. Yeah. I mean, it's, like I said, man, if you're, you think a pitch to hire people is like, hey, we're real high in suicide, substance abuse, divorce, and dying within five years after retiring. Who wants in? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Sign me up. I hate to even laugh at that. I know, but it's like, you know, like, so we got to get better. And you're seeing a lot more stuff. You're seeing a lot more. I don't know if law enforcement is going to open up about it. They should. But you see a lot of spec ops, former spec ops, former law enforcement, and they're getting these plant-based treatments, you know?

2:43:24Yeah, I can't even imagine. I never thought about the stress that spouses and children must feel with a member of their family being involved in a service, in life-risking service. Yeah, I think there should be more. Actually, my wife was saying it from the jump because in the FBI, we have a psychological unit that was specifically created for undercovers. It's called Safeguard. So if I'm an active undercover, I have to be psychologically assessed, mandatory. Got it. And then we expanded it out, and it's being used to do a lot of things. So if you're an agent or a task force officer and you work innocent images, crimes against children, we get you assessed because it's tough to look at that stuff and see that kind of stuff on a daily basis.

2:44:16Had to take a little bathroom break there, man. That's cool. This is the longest episode we've ever had, I think, man. So thank you for your attention to detail and just taking us down some— Being a slow talker? Hey, just taking us down some memories of yours, man. It's nice. It's nice to listen to a storyteller, you know, someone share their story and share stories from their book. I know you had mentioned earlier we talked a little bit about the one percenters. And you had a pretty famed case with the outlaws. Can you take me into that? Sure. Um, again, longest undercover I did, two years. Um, uh, the infiltration, I kind of got, I can't remember again if I got recruited or I saw a canvas, but it was probably just a phone call.

2:45:03Um, because as I said, working at the UC school, at the undercover school, um, if you, in the bureau, if you say, all right, we've got 600 certified undercovers, how many of those undercovers have been the primary undercover on an operation, on one? It's going to dwindle down. More than one less than five, it's going to dwindle down. More than five less than ten, now it's really getting dwindled down. If you get to, like, that ten and over mark, it's generally we all know each other because we all go back to the program. We all help out with the school and stuff, and you know who's active and who isn't.

2:45:34So if somebody reaches out, I went up and did the interview in Massachusetts, in Boston, and I got the gig. we talked about all kinds of things on like what ways to go in ways to not go in i preferred to go in cold which means i'm not being introduced by source go into go to try to make that bump in other words the outlaws were already predicated they've already got the outlaw motorcycle club is a one percenter club it's the probably the second largest hell's angels is probably the largest okay but worldwide and that's that's their that's their colors right there. They refer to the skull as Charlie.

2:46:14Okay, the AOA, American Outlaws Association. They started in McCook, Illinois in 1935. The Outlaws MC is the oldest outlaw biker club in the world with 441 chapters located in 43 countries. The club is also the second largest in the world behind the Hell's Angels. And what made you, is it still active? Oh, yeah. The outlaws are still going strong. And what made you want to infiltrate them? Well, it's the case team. It's not necessarily me. It's that there's a case team and a task force and state and local law enforcement that have been working up there. And they've got different crimes. They've arrested people.

2:46:56But they're at a point now in their investigation where they feel like they can get an undercover or that's the next step to do. Got it. And the whole group, outlaws, is not a criminal organization. There was just somebody that was doing crime in it. Correct. Got it. That's the argument. Like I said earlier, somebody's like, we're all one percenters criminals? Not necessarily, but it's kind of the point of being a one percenter. You know what I mean? Yeah. But like all bikers, you know, I've heard them say, or not all of them, but the ones I infiltrate is like, I didn't join the outlaws to be a beta.

2:47:25Right. I joined the outlaws to be an alpha. Right. I'm going out here. I don't care what I'm doing. I'm an outlaw. Yeah. All private equity people, criminals. Yeah. But so these guys were predicated, the Taunton chapter specifically, Taunton, Massachusetts. And I went up, I interviewed, and I said, look, okay, my idea was just let me go in there. So what I did, because I used to work at gentlemen's clubs, which is an oxymoron, in my opinion, because there's no gentleman in there. And neither was I back then, living in the flesh, as they say. Amen. I know, right? and then you have two daughters and it's all girl dogs.

2:48:05I'm like, y 'all stay away from any pole in this house. I swear. No, I'm just kidding. But I knew how those establishments worked. So I went, I would go in when, like, day shift, when it wasn't, and the outlaws weren't all in there because we knew that they told me the bar they were at and stuff. So that's what I did, maybe two, three times, because human nature is to exaggerate, you know? so the night that they're finally coming in the outlaws are finally coming in coming into the strip club yeah because i'm there now all right so they have a lot of your biker clubs one percenter clubs have a mandatory meeting every week they refer to that as church some clubs that's where they talk dirty business you know you leave your phones outside all that thing or it just might be shooting the bull it might be time to collect the dues whatever but the surveillance team was on I'm already at the Foxy Lady which was the strip club and that's in Oregon?

2:49:02It was in Brockton, Massachusetts so Taunton and Brockton are right next to each other but the strip club's in Brockton so I'm already at the Foxy Lady I'm getting some drinks, I'm telling jokes people are laughing and then here comes like 13, 15 outlaws and they take the whole back wall and the back bar sea of black leather and testosterone right? And originally I'd been told that they weren't allowed to wear their colors which is the vest with the moniker you saw. That's their cut. And that was one of my first questions. I'm like, hey, man, can they wear their colors in the bars? And they're like, no, they're not allowed to.

2:49:35And I'm like, oh, okay. That makes it easier for me. Yeah. Because now I'm just a tattooed dude drinking whiskey, looking at naked people, listening to heavy metal music. It's the same thing the guy next to me is doing. But when they come in and they're all wearing their colors, it changes my approach. Because listen to me, do I sound like I'm from Boston? Absolutely not. As soon as I start talking, they're like, where the F are you from? And I'm like, you know. Deep South. South-South. I'm from South Boston. I'm a Southie. Southie Carolina. Yeah, Southie Carolina. That's it. You know, kakalacky.

2:50:07So, you know, do you walk over around the bar and go, hey, fellas, y 'all ride? No? I'm going to take a butt kicking or something. So I started working, doing what I do, I guess. there was one guy that they had said that was in the group and they had the intel perfect on him. He loved to be surrounded by big dudes. He liked to be the center of attention. So I'm laughing it up and I'm cutting it up and it's getting louder and louder. But I've got people around me that I can see him. It's like fishing. I can see him looking. I'm like, okay, alright. He's paying attention now. I was a bigger dude, 6 '4", probably 280 then and holding it very well.

2:50:48I see him talking to the bartender. Well, what's he saying? Who is that? Oh, that dude's from Texas, man. He comes here all the time. All the time? Two, three times? You know, whatever. But then eventually he yells at me and he says, yeah, there I am right there after a shoulder surgery. He yells at me and he says, hey, where the F are you from? And I'm like, man, down near the border of Mexico. What? So we start joking back and forth. I think he sent me a drink first, called me over. I won't ever start talking. Next thing you know, we're hitting it off. He's giving me cards for the Lobster Festival, which is Lobster Fest.

2:51:27Yeah, they love it. Yeah, Lobster Fest. And it was going to be like the next month. And he said, just tell them you're with me. And so then you just start ingratiating, and you start getting trust. Yeah. They love a lobster, man. Yes. They love a fish that can pinch you. Yeah, man. And me too. I'm a bottom feeder. All of them, man. All of them shrimp and crab legs. I can eat my weight in that stuff. Yeah, I'm a top. Yeah. So eventually you get in and you make more and more acquaintances. And I came in as a site survey specialist, the same kind of thing I did on the base case. But that allowed me to travel.

2:52:04It allowed me to be there and not live there or whatever. I found quickly when I started flying a lot that even in Houston, when I was based in McAllen, there's people that don't live in Houston, but there's so many daggum flights. They literally fly in, work, fly home. Or they might come in for the week and then go home on the weekend. So I said, well, I can sell that because it's true. I mean, I've seen plenty of people doing it. So that's kind of what I was doing. You were living in Texas and flying in for work? Yep. And then eventually they find out that I'm also a criminal. Oh, shocker, right?

2:52:36Because they're already predicated. And what were you flying it for, just to be part of the group? No, I originally said I'm there doing site survey specialist work for investors that are looking to buy a property. Got it. And I would go do that. And I would actually go legitimately go down to the clerk of court and pull records and stuff. Because, again, you want it to look, smell, taste, feel real.

2:53:01But what they eventually learned, or what I portrayed, and what they believed, was that I was a high-ranking, if not the leader, high-ranking member, if not the leader of an international theft ring. And I was moving stuff into Mexico. so it started with some insurance fraud they were report vehicles stolen motorcycles and this is all based on the truth because at that time when i was living in the border i'd already learned through auto theft groups task forces and stuff and from the insurance company that harley davisons and v8 four by fours man the cartel they would steal them all the time So I'm telling the truth, and they do motorcycles first.

2:53:44So they report three or four Harley's stolen. So they get the stolen money from their insurance company. I pay a stolen price, which is usually around 20 % of what the real price would be. And then I'm off. Well, they don't get arrested. And then the next thing you know, it's a truck. And the next thing you know, and then we get full-fledged. Now it's like, when you're coming back, Tex, when you're coming back, I got three things lined up. So you pull up, and man, we would load F-350s. Yeah, steal my wife. Yeah. Yeah, F-350s, stuff like that. But even if you were worried about predication, like if you're predicated, and for the people that don't know that, it just means that we've got evidence that you either talked about it or doing it.

2:54:28So if we have nothing on you, and I'm coming up to bump you, and I'm just going to go, hey, man, you want some marijuana? Or you want a kilo of coke? That's odd, and that's not right. I'm now leading it. But when the first time I walk outside with the president of the Outlaws chapter who went by Joe Dawgs, so he's the chapter president, we walk outside, and he goes, where do you live? I said, McAllen. He goes, where's that? It's right on the border. Next question. How much can you get a kilo of cocaine for? I'm like, about 13 right now. Lives between 11 and 13 on the border. He goes, man, if I could get them for 13.

2:55:00I said, no, you don't get them for 13 unless you come to the border, and then you drive them back up. The reason they cost$25 to$30 up here is because it has to make it here from the border. Not a good drug dealer. Or his math was off. Not a good businessman. I'm like, no, that's not how it works. There's risk involved. Well, it's a good pitch. I want to get it for the same as you. I know, yeah. So the next thing you know, like I said, F-350s, 4x4 Tahoe. So it's a lot of insurance fraud at first. At first. Got it. Then I've gained trust. now they carjack somebody and they're calling me text we got one that is hot i mean it is on fire right now we just took this dude at gunpoint we almost killed him blah blah blah and i'm like don't worry about it i got it and now i'm moving that now i'm gaining more trust right so as the case goes on and are y 'all using code language or like we got a bad lobster up here or something like that you can but what's comical about that theo is i've sat on so many wiretaps and and we've run wiretaps and you're listening or you get on the phone yourself as undercover and you're being all like super operational security you're like okay the the bird is in the cage right i've got three cheeseburgers out back five minutes into the conversation i'm telling you 99 of the time they're just talking openly dirty yeah it's like they start with it you know like you know what i mean yeah yeah there's like a whisper in the wigwam or whatever right yeah so like i had a guy on another case i won't go into it because i will stay on the outlaws but this is what he he's like now Scott you know I don't do cocaine anymore and I'm looking at him going I know man I know he goes I used to do a boatload of it but I don't do it anymore I said I know he said this right here that's just a bump and he goes on and I go you just did cocaine and you said okay and he says you know I don't sell it anymore either I said I know Mike he said I used to sell truckloads of it but I don't anymore I said I know man he goes but if you want them five eight balls I'll get them for 750 it's just like i'm like what i'm like i'm confused so so during this case a guy i didn't tell you about there was actually a picture of him in that picture you pulled up the red shirt red t-shirt i scott town i talked thoroughly about scott town in the book again i told you i worked undercover from 96 to 2022 roughly and how much cocaine you on right there with that bad arm, but look at you grinning.

2:57:20That would be muscle relaxers and pain fills. My God, boy. I'm like less than a week out, I think, right there. Your smile did a gram at least, brother. No, I did not. Just joking. Okay, so Scott Town. So, this is legitimately the closest relationship I've ever built undercover. We bonded so well. It was scary. Like, I mean, I'm talking like we could complete each other's sentences. We thought the same. It was literally the story of that proverbial fork in the road. He went that way, and I went that way, and I easily could have gone his way. And maybe that's why I was good at my skill set in these types of environments.

2:58:05And y 'all was just friends? Well, he went to jail. He was a target. I mean, he was not a patch member. His story was he was going to be patched, but he was also doing some stuff for the mafia. and somewhere his group got pinched and he was looking at time. And at that point in time, he had four daughters. And he said, I don't want to go to prison with my four daughters. And I was like, okay, man, cool. But there would be talk like, man, grenades, bazookas, whatever, rocket launchers, not a bazooka, but a rocket launcher. But those things would talk and then it wouldn't come to. Or somebody would come in talking big and we'd be like, oh, this looks good.

2:58:42And then it wouldn't come through. But after the carjackings and things like that, We start getting more and more because the case team is also running a Title III wiretap. And eventually, we got to the point in the case where I let them know, not all at once, but I let them know that, yes, I did used to be in the drug trade. But heat was getting close. People were getting pinched. And I backed out of it because running everything south, most of the time law enforcement is looking for money or guns going south to trade for dope. Or buy dope. Got it. I'm like, if you got a stolen, this is my story to them.

2:59:20For sure. I'm like, if you got a truck full of stolen vehicles, if the bill of laden, I mean, what's the truck driver know? He sees a bill of laden, he does what he does. I was just talking, blowing smoke, but it kind of making it, making them comfortable, relaxed. I think, enough. But I eventually let them know I did used to be in the dope game. Because from day one, they were hounding me. When are you going to introduce somebody down there? Because think of it. What does a drug dealer want? they want the purest dope they can get at the cheapest price they can get so that way you can step on it and make some money right so imagine having a pipeline in little old taunton massachusetts directly from the cartel let's go yeah right you're getting keys so that's what they saw in you yeah got it yeah and that was all fictional that was my backstory yeah that was my legend yeah but it wasn't really happening right um and like all the stolen vehicles they would think they're going No, we'd make sure nobody's following them.

3:00:13But then that semi would turn around and head up north of Boston or something to a warehouse. And by the end of the case, you got a warehouse full of stolen parts and cars and motorcycles and stolen cars and whatever. Dang, bro. Big trucks. Big trucks. So the case gets to a point like, yeah, sorry. It's good. So I start laying out that I wasn't a dope game. And Joe Dawgs is chomping at the bit, man. And he's like, dude, you got to introduce me. And I started saying, my guy's Manny, Manny, Manny. And they're like, man, if I can meet Manny. Well, the whole ruse was, and this technique's been used, and it was a drug protection.

3:00:52I said, look, here's the deal. I laid it out over a long period of time. But I'm like, look, Manny reached out to me. He wanted my truck drivers to deliver a load into Canada. And the reason I told them that a white guy, the gringo, never got kicked out of a Mexican drug trafficking organization, or international theft ring is because I was the guy with the dirty contacts at the port of entry and at the checkpoints. And, yes, there's corruption. Not all, but I'm saying there's corruption cases on the border. I mean, think about this. Somebody offers you$15 ,000 to do this next. I don't know. If you're broke.

3:01:28You know what I mean? So not saying everybody's dirty, but I'm saying that was my story, and they believed it because why else would they keep me in? So when I did that story about going to Canada, I said, hey, does your guy, do you still have your people at the checkpoint or the point of entry? No, they fell through. I said, I'm not letting my truck drivers do it. I said, but I've been being hounded. We just want to meet them. And I'm like, what if they come here? And we just meet and we help this because we want to make sure nothing's getting ripped and all that stuff. And they're like, yeah, man, that'd be awesome.

3:02:01So that's what we started laying out. Now, Scott Towne jumps on. and Scott Towns I even look at him and I'm like dude why are you doing this what you told me you didn't want to knock there's a strong argument to be made that the reason he did that is because he liked me so much no way because he so you kind of let him into it even just by being buddies it's not an entrapment thing but it's like if you ask him he's probably gonna say something like this um I didn't want to do it and I was suspicious but he knew Joe Dawgs and the other people involved could screw it up really bad and if I got hurt and he wasn't there he'd never forgive himself you see what I'm saying y 'all were close huh yeah tight real tight um but so there's a point in the case and I'm I'm bouncing his daughter on my knee his daughter's one my youngest daughter's one so they kind of are making the same noises and moving the same, but I'm not at home with my daughter.

3:03:02I'm there with his. And you know, you're looking. I know the training. I know. I'll put the training on. But I'm looking at everybody going, man, I love this guy. I mean, yeah, I mean, if he does criminal stuff, okay, but I mean, we think the same. He likes to do this. I like to do it. We work out, fight, ride, all that stuff, man. And... Do you miss him? Yeah. Yeah. You still keep in touch with him? Maybe. Maybe now. after all this came out. Yeah. It's pretty amazing, actually. I've also been trolled by people we put in jail, too. It's pretty funny. But maybe I'll end it on that. But so. I'm looking at the refrigerator, and I'm thinking all these thoughts, and I'm like, man, I'm looking at the refrigerator.

3:03:53He's got all kinds of stickers and magnets and stuff, and I saw one that said WWSD. Now, if you're in the Christian faith, you see WWJD a lot. What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do? Wristbands and stuff. And I looked over, and I go, WWSD? And I looked, and it said, what would Satan do? And I went, oh, no, he's different. He's different. But it was just like a tough guy thing. And then— So he wasn't a real Satanist. No, no. He was just bolstering. Just joking around with magnets. Yeah. But I was like, oh, no, we're not the same. You're going to jail. But I. But is that weird, man, to be hanging out with somebody and always thinking back in your head, they're going to go to jail?

3:04:33Yeah. It sounds like a fucking power trip. No. Actually, it could be. It could give you some stress. It could give you some PTSD. You could start getting anxiety because you're sitting there going, OK, you're fearing the end of the case. You're fearing them finding out who you are. You're fearing this relationship that you built, and I know there'll be plenty of maybe law enforcement or even people on the case that'll be like, I can't believe you're talking like that. Look, man, I'm human. I love that guy. Yes. Well, would it ever be weird, like, if you were leaving a room together or something, and, like, you wouldn't want to walk out first?

3:05:02That would be my fear all the time. I'd always be like, I got to walk behind because I don't want to. You know what I'm saying? What if they know something or they're leading me somewhere? Well, I'll say this. A lot of cops, a lot of cops sit in a restaurant. They keep their back to the wall because you want to see everything. Yeah. When you're undercover, can you do that? I mean, can I come in there and hug the wall with my back the whole way through, or do I just got to look like I'm a normal person? People would catch on. Yeah, so you don't want to raise suspicion. Got it. So the case is going, and we get to the point where we're going to do the drug deal.

3:05:29Got everything lined up, months and months and months. Scott's in. There's some outlaws from Brockton that are in it. There's some outlaws from Taunton that are in it. And, you know, you asked 1 %er, are they all criminals? I mean, you look at the Brockton chapter, let's say most of them had day jobs. Maybe they did time, maybe they didn't. But you go to the Taunton chapter, and out of like 13 to 15 outlaws, one and a half had a job. I say half because that guy was a tattoo artist and a piercer, but I don't think he worked nine to five, seven days a week. It was more like a part-time thing. The other guy had a towing company.

3:06:06Everybody else was a straight thug. All criminal activity didn't make money, whether it's robbing, home invasion, carjacking, theft, dope, you know? Yeah. So. I would do the dope. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd probably do that every car theft for sure. But I. Because I don't even like driving at night that much. Really? I don't love it. So we get. But anyway, go on. We get to the night before. We've lined everything up. And the assistant United States attorney is like, hey, they're talking. are they talking about this in the clubhouse you know kind of thing about this drug deal that we're getting ready to do and all this i said yeah i mean i'm sure we'll talk about it hey you know and from an from an investigative or evidence standpoint it would be good to have because if they're talking about that planning and all that that'll help with like asset forfeiture and getting search warrants for the for the property and stuff so just having recordings of them talking about yeah yeah so i go to the house i go to the clubhouse joe dogs tells me to come over it's the night before we're going to do the big drug deal.

3:07:09They don't know it, but we've got 50 kilos of real cocaine, and we've got 1 ,000 pounds of real weed. Let's go. And we're going to have to move it from one truck to another. Now, snipers are up on the roof. I mean, we got SWAT all in the hotel. I mean, I literally did like the TV thing where you walk in, and you can't see nothing because the projector's on your face, and they're like, this is the guy that's going to be the undercover. And I'm like, yeah, I look a lot like the other dudes. Don't shoot me. just tell me I'll be real still man you know yeah dude I'd be like I'm the guy wearing like the I would wear like a special neck brace or like a maybe like a John Elway jersey or something I would wear something to stand out dude I would wear like a yeah like a Mason Crosby jersey I would wear something that like do not shoot this guy with a crash test dummy full jumpsuit you know bright with reflections on it yeah I'd wear like a suicide boy shirt or maybe not that that might not help that might not help so so uh i remember here's a funny one joe dogs i said hey man we got to be nonchalant we're gonna be out here doing all this stuff i was like hey uh wear wear something that doesn't attract a lot of attention yeah yeah not the way he dressed you walk out there with a shirt that says f that bitch oh yeah in all caps and i'm like that's low-key all right well i mean who Who knows what he'd told her before that.

3:08:29I know, right? So it's the night before. I get there, and they're having church. They're still having church. I'm banging on the door, and it's weird, man. Nobody's coming, and all of a sudden Joe Dawgs does that, you know, like, hey, we're not ready yet. And I'm like, well, why'd you call me over here? Yeah. I'm not thinking nothing. I go. He tells me to take a probate, which would be somebody on probation, or they call them prospects. You're not a full patch member yet. you're you've advanced from hang around status you're trying to become a full patch member so he says hey take probate obi y 'all go get something to eat so we went down to the restaurant got a couple of drinks something he came back and i go into the clubhouse and when i go in the clubhouse i've been in that thing like umpteen time i don't know there's one door i'd never been in now for the listeners that may not know um at least with this chapter if you weren't a patch member which I wasn't um you're not allowed to touch the door you're not allowed to touch the phone but they're giving you drinks for free right I had been asked I actually been told that I need to become an outlaw um but I painted it as like I travel all over the country man I can't have that right that bullseye on my back you know but I'm very humbled by it kind of thing um but so I go in there and at this point in the case it's been a year and a half I'm a year and a half in and my closest relationship is scott town my second closest relationship is at point is the enforcer who goes by who went by the street name clothesline his real name is brian de la vega so that was my second closest relationship my third closest was the president joe dogs and then it just trickled down from there but by this time i've been all over the country i've been to sturgis i've been to you know daytona wherever riding all over the place so I've met outlaws all over actually I've met outlaws from all over the world and uh they were actually recruiting myself in Scott Town because I was bigger than two uh but it's it Boston's a little weird because Boston and North is Hell's Angel territory Boston and South was outlaws territory and they were arts rivals and then you get to Cape Cod and Hell's Angels had a chapter there.

3:10:45So the outlaws were looking to set up a chapter in Cape Cod, but they wanted to fill it with big, strong dudes that could handle themselves. And they were recruiting us for that. So I go into the clubhouse, door shuts behind me, dead bolts, still frame door. The door you'd never been in? No, no, no. This is just the entry door. So if you get inside, you'll see that they've welded metal hooks to the steel frame of the door and put a steel bar across it. So that's going to, from a breacher standpoint, it's going to be a little harder. It'll be tougher to breach. Got it. So I'm in there. I'm having some drinks.

3:11:26And I've been there, like I said, maybe 20 times. Who knows? There's one door I've never been in. And Clothesline, my second closest friend, says, he signed up friend, right? Friend. He liked Scott Calloway. I don't think he liked Scott Payne too much. but he says hey Tex can I talk to you for a minute or he says do you got a minute either can I talk to you for a minute you got a minute I'm like yeah so as I'm walking he grabs an ashtray and a lighter and or he tells somebody to and we turn in and it is a very tight stairwell it's a very to call it a basement down there is being very generous more like a cellar cross base I couldn't stand up straight in it but it's a northeastern home kind of split level and as I'm walking in chocolate scott another member comes in right behind me yeah chocolate scott this guy yeah they call him chocolate scott or or or black scott but the thing is is uh he looked like a black guy and what you can't be in the outlaws oh yeah you can't be i guess i was assuming he said he said he looked like he said he said he was indians but they named him chocolate scott oh yeah um That would be my name.

3:12:35Yeah, so as soon as I turn in behind clothesline and Chocolate Scott comes in right behind me, I know something's not right. And now it's really tight, and you get down there. It was a little bit of a false start because there was something down there that another member of Veg did not want me to see. And they come down. So going down those steps, I'm already getting an adrenaline dump, like I was talking about earlier, right? We come back up. I'm not free to leave. Outlaws everywhere. They're hiding whatever they needed to hide. I'm not sure what it was but then it's like okay let's go back down so I get down there and so they take you halfway down they take you back up yeah they take me down it's almost like you're surprised probably but they're not ready yeah yeah because if I see him doing a movement that's like hey get out and I'm like I don't know what's going on but I'm looking for plastic on the floor I saw a rope and I'm like oh great.

3:13:31You saw a rope? Yeah. And you gotta be thinking I'm getting out of here then. No, I wasn't. What did you think they were gonna do? I didn't know yet. But even if you saw a rope? Even if I tried to leave. I mean think about it. Like if I see a rope at all I never see a rope, right? 13 at all. And they got guns. They already showed me their guns. Oh got it. Yeah, so I'm basically at gunpoint. Okay. So I go back up and we walk back down and that's when we get down there and Clothesline says, hey, there's a lot of shit going on. It's my job to take care of my brothers because he's the enforcer. And he says, I need you to take all your clothes off, everything, boots and everything.

3:14:11And would you have on boots or sneakers? I had boots. And he said, I need you to write down your full name, your date of birth, your address, your wife's name. He goes, I'm not going to ask for your kids' names even though I can find them out if I need to. and he goes everything social security everything i said okay but you can hear my voice already because i'm having an adrenaline dump my voice is higher my throat's tighter i'm hearing that i'm hearing that underwater auditory exclusion it's going wolf wolf bro i would be so scared my time dilation my eyes are clicking everything i'm hearing is going i need you to write down your that's what i'm hearing it's like on one of those boxing video games when you're about to get knocked out or whatever and you're like and it starts to get kind of blurry yeah yeah so and did you write your real stuff on there yeah no no i didn't i didn't but i forgot my middle name because of this dress i forgot my middle name was uh uh andrew did you just make one up no no i should have that'd been a smart thing to do but but then again maybe not if they're really going to run it yeah right so i'm like i'm going scott calloway scott calloway scott calloway and i go scott joseph calloway and i'm like nope i'm going through this rolodex in my head it feels like it's eight minutes it's a couple of seconds um and then i remembered my initials and i remembered oh i'm scott andrew calloway but what i did is like when we talked about shootings and stuff and and officers not knowing that that they did it certain things same thing happened to me but it was on a verbal thing i would have never known i said this unless i didn't listen to the recording unless i listened to the recording but while i'm forgetting my middle name i turn and i go And what else do you need?

3:15:52But it sounds like this. And what else do you need? Because I'm freaking out. All right. Yeah, my diction's terrible. Talking through my nose. Higher pitch voice. And then I hear them yell, what do you need for that website? And I go, oh, okay. Because I'm listening. I'm still listening. Even though I'm freaking out, I'm like, oh, okay. They're going to write this down. They're going to run me. They're going to Google me. And back then, they had like a whosarat.com you could go to and run. Were you on there? No, no. But I said, okay, I'm feeling better. Feet Finder they had, too. Yeah, right? So then he says, and then I need you to take all your clothes off.

3:16:24Everything. Oh, damn. They want you on feet behind. He says, because I got to check you for a wire. Here's the issue, Theo. I was wired to the hilt. Nuh-uh. I had two recording devices on me and a transmitter. And I won't say where, what, but. Fuck, you was a damn iPhone at that point. Yeah, well, back then. No, I mean, you were one. Yeah, yes. I mean, all that shit you had on you. and back then that would have been like circa 2006-ish 7-ish they were big on Nexttales so you know I know yeah great radio yeah but terrible to call somebody on bring some milk on I could key you up in Japan and it'd be like what's up hey you know fine but if I tried to call you we couldn't hear nothing I'm like I don't know it sounded Japanese yeah I'm like I don't know what you're talking about so damn so they trying to strip search you they did and were you wearing Underpants or boxers, you think?

3:17:17Boxer briefs. Nice. Yeah. The comfort of a boxer, but the support of a brief. Yeah. Look, I got them on right now. I do, too. Pretty cool. And much like that night, they're not white, which I was happy. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, if you'd have sold them up. Sold them up, yeah. You know what I'm saying? A little of that back bay chowder, son. Well, I tell them, I say. So were you joking at this point, or were you scared? No, I was scared to death. I was scared of that. I joke about it now, but I was scared of that. So you took your clothes off? You can hear. So what I did is I took my coat, and it was cold because it was like November, so I probably had like more than one T-shirt on.

3:17:54Took all that off. Took my boots off. And I dropped my underwear and jeans down to my ankles. I never kicked them off. So from the ankles up, I'm completely naked. They checked me for a wire. He missed one thing that I had in my sock. It was a device, but, you know. Um, so I go, he pats me down and I'm having that adrenaline dump, right? Everything's slow motion. I can feel my heart beating. My, my man parts felt like they were in my throat, you know? And are they calling you f***ing it or anything? Are they calling you names and shit? No, no. But during the talk, there's, that's a good question.

3:18:33Cause we, at least the way I was trained, you just don't want a vapor lock. You don't want to get the deer in the headlights. Let's at least keep talking. At least keep trying to find something. Right. Find a way up, get some information. What are you doing, guys? What's this about? I did. I go, should I ask what's going on? And they're like, hey, man, this is some precautions, blah, blah, blah. And what he says to me, he goes, trust me, man. He goes, I like you a lot. He goes, but I've got my doubts too. He said, if somebody accused me of being a Fed, I'd probably smash them in the effing mouth.

3:19:01And I said, I'm not. I looked at him. I said, I'm not happy. And he goes, I wouldn't be either. But what you can't see is because we know each other, even though my words may be saying one thing, what my face is saying in the clothesline is, tell me I'm okay. Tell me I'm going to be all right. His facial expressions back to me were, it's okay. But I was, in fact, undercover, and I was wired. And if he found it, I don't know what's going to happen. So I pull my pants back up. I think I'm putting my boots on. And he grabs a piece of clothing. And it had something in it. And he says, I'm not going to find anything in here I don't want to, like some pictures of my old lady.

3:19:37And he laughs, and he goes, and I go, I hope not. Now I'm standing there. I can't stand up straight. I'm on the wall, and I'm watching him need this piece of clothing with his hands. He's doing this. And I know circa that year what our equipment was and all that stuff. He would have felt it. Now, he misses it. He looks right at it. He misses it. And even while he's searching it, I don't know how to do it, but you can hear me because I'm just standing there, and you can hear me go.

3:20:11because I'm like, what am I going to do? Right? So here's the thing. He misses it. He hands me back my stuff. I immediately go into joking because that's not only me. It's also a defense mechanism when you're scared, right? I've been joking my whole life. I'm cracking jokes like I said. I'm glad I didn't wear white underwear. Yeah. You know? And we go back into business. You just keep saying that. I'm glad I didn't wear white. you just keep glitching like Glenn didn't wear a point in him and it's like what the fuck is he what's wrong with him he's a robot bring in Choco Stain or whatever that guy's name was Chocolate Scott so people always ask me what would you have said if Clothesline would have found it and I said well I remember it like it was yesterday it also helps that I teach it all over the place and I still relive it all the daggum time so there's really little air room for air there as far as exaggerating and stuff so I uh or remembering it wrong I I said man I remember it like it was yesterday maybe my first response would have been I don't know some pictures if he said what is this maybe I would have said I don't know some pictures of you old lady as a joke because he already threw that line to me you know am I gonna find anything in here uh the only other thing that I had in my head and again I remember like it's yesterday I would have looked at him and said the gig is up I'm an undercover FBI agent and I can walk out of here and we can see each other in court or all hell's gonna break loose.

3:21:40The problem is is that would have been a bluff on my part because as far as I knew every time I'd been in that clubhouse my cover team couldn't hear me. Whether it's equipment, walls, whatever. I mean it's 2026 and I've got first net and I can walk into a building and I can't get out. You know and I'm like I don't. So it's above my pay grade but as far as I knew. I can't believe they kept sending you in there. Well I mean they had surveillance. Right, right, right. But as far as I knew, they can never hear me. That night, at the end of the shift, you know, you go meet somewhere at a predetermined location, and I'm turning over my recording equipment to the case team and whatever.

3:22:15Maybe they're giving me more money for the next day or whatever, and they do a debrief. Well, when I got there that night, what I found out was is that the first two guys covering me were part of the main case team. It was Sergeant Higginbottom from Massachusetts State Troopers. Everybody called him Higgy. And then Detective Cummings from Brockton PD. And because they had known me for a year and a half or a little more, whatever happened at that first interaction with Joe Dawgs at the door, it made them think something was up. And they had pulled close enough or whatever, they were able to hear everything.

3:22:53when they heard me getting stripped. Of course, they can hear that I'm scared because they know my voice, right? They're radioing back to Boston saying, hey, anybody and they'll get down here. And the way I was told is everybody was coming blue lights and siren down there. And they didn't hit it. They went ahead and they had a plan because they've been in that clubhouse on other law enforcement activity. And they know how it's set up and they knew how that door was fortified. So their plan, they put their vest on everything. and their plan was if they felt like it was time to pull the trigger to save me or whatever, they were going to drive the van into the cinder block wall beside the door to kind of breach the wall.

3:23:30So you're standing there. That's what you're thinking. If he knows what's going on, those are your two plans of action. And they're out there waiting on it. And your case team is out there listening and there's help on the way. Yes. Okay. Because Clothesline didn't find it. And also because that case team, Higginbottom and Cummings, they knew me and they didn't pull the trigger. They were like, hang on, he's still okay. He's still okay. Got it. So we go out that night. What? And it's me, Joe Dawgs, and Scott Town, and I am livid. I'm raising hell. And even Joe Dawgs is like, Tex, you got to understand, this has happened to other brothers, other people, where everybody shows up and it's just, you know, we're the only people there and everybody else is an undercover.

3:24:15And I played it off. I'm like, who the hell would spend that kind of time and money and try to, you know. Yeah, for sure. Besides us, you know, besides me. But I go back. I probably sleep maybe 30 minutes at night. I go and meet everybody. I think it was outside of IHOP. I hand out the radios, and I tell them where we're going to go. And it's pretty comical on recording because I say, all right, we're going back up to the Westgate Mall in Brockton, and Chocolate Scott starts bitching. He goes, man, I live right next to there. I could have slept another 40 minutes. Oh, yeah. And Joe Dogg starts, he goes, you guys are the laziest.

3:24:50He goes, you guys. Let me get it right. Yeah. He goes, you guys are the laziest bunch of damn criminals I've ever met in my entire life. You know? And I'll even bust and I'll go, hey, I thought I left my wife at home. Can you stop complaining, you know? Talk to this guy. Yeah. Yeah. So we go. We do the deal. One truck pulls up. It's fake drugs? No, it's real. Yeah. It's real drugs. So, I mean, they're smelling the weed. You almost have a good budget up there then. Well, I don't know where the case team got it. It's probably evidence from another case. Got it. And it gets signed out. But can you imagine if we lost that?

3:25:26FBI loses 50 kilos of cocaine. Are you kidding me? So, yeah, snipers are up and everything. So the truck's back up. The undercovers, Joe Dogg's on the truck. Obie's on the truck. We're covering stuff. They're pulling surveillance, you know, and just like normal surveillance, I mean, they got people going, I've been burnt. I've been burnt. There's a guy staring at me. Calm down, dude. Yeah. You know? And if a cop shows up, let us know. We're going to pull the trucks away. And we pulled off the deal. And then I went and paid everybody. So y 'all did the deal? Yeah, it went. It went across. They got to meet Manny.

3:25:56Joe Dawgs wanted to meet Manny, who, of course, was an undercover. But he is a Hispanic guy that did all kinds of cartel stuff. Shout out Manny. Yeah, shout out Manny, man. Martin Suarez. He's actually got a book out, too. Oh, wow. It just, and it's really. Got to check it out, Martin Suarez. Martin Suarez. You do the deal. Yeah. And this is, we get up the next day, and like I said, we do the deal. And then that night, maybe I slept a little bit, you know. I'm going to need a massage after all this. I know, right? Just hearing all of this. And then I fly home, and I miss my flights. They're delayed, canceled, whatever.

3:26:33And then I go home to, when I landed in McAllen, I drove straight to the house. I brushed my teeth, changed my shirt, loaded up my daughters, my wife, and my mother-in-law, and we went to the Rio Grande Valley FBI Christmas party for Laredo, Brownsville, and McAllen offices, and I was Santa Claus for the kids after being stripped in a basement at gunpoint about two nights earlier. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't stop. So what happens, if you fast forward a little bit, now we're doing all this stuff. We're still getting more things. We got the big dope deal. I'm getting trust here. during that case a president of the hell's angels was murdered uh riding down the road we knew that it was a green truck with florida plates we knew that we had outlaws from florida up there and uh the case kept going and eventually i end up down in daytona at a world run and by this point i'm kind of a zombie um because my mo always was i'm a workaholic i get it honestly from my parents but my my mo always was like look if i can be above average or if i can on the squad that i'm on as a case agent or if i can have some good cases and good sources maybe that lets my management not be able to say no to me like you know hey you're a top producer scott so you can't say no you can't go on that swat call out or that swat school or that undercover or that undercover school um but what i was doing to myself is i was taking the warrior mentality which I think is imperative for the line of work.

3:28:08The warrior mentality? Yeah, the warrior mentality. And I think that's imperative, but I was applying it to every situation in my life. So I was not taking days off because I didn't want management to get mad. I was not sleeping hardly at all. I got to the point to where I was drinking. I wasn't a big energy drink guy. But you were huffing them, huh? Well, no. What it was is I was drinking like a pot of coffee and taking hydroxy cuts with ephedrine in them and I was still falling asleep. So I get down to Daytona. We've got murders that have happened. We get, we've had Sturgis where I arrived, and the day I arrived, the Hells Angels shoot five outlaws, point blank range.

3:28:45I think it was two patched, one probate. In Sturgis that happened? Yeah, in Sturgis. And then two, what they would refer to as old ladies. And it was some serious wounds, like people were paralyzed and stuff. It's just dangerous. Put them on a gold wing. Yeah. Yeah, you know, hopefully they turned out okay. But so they got all that going on, and now we're kind of winding down towards the end of the case. So I didn't know. You're still going, but I'm in Daytona. And, again, by this time, here's my cocktail. I woke up one morning. I could still feel the whiskey and eggs swishing in my belly. I felt like a piece of trash.

3:29:26I'm like, all right, this is it. I'm working out. So I did like an in-room workout, something like a P90X kind of deal. I'm doing push-ups, sit-ups, squats, burpees, mountain climbers. But before I did that, by this time, I wake up, I take antihistamines, decongestants, hitting an inhaler, which is also a vasodilator, makes you shake and stuff, opens up your lungs. Then I drank two cups of coffee, the strongest coffee I can possibly make. And then I hit three hydroxycuts with ephedrine in them. yeah so as i learned later on from the you're a damn jet ski well from the from what the doctors told me they go uh scott that is a cocktail for an anxiety attack and that's what happened i started working out and all that shit hit me and i was so beat down like i started hyperventilating um i mean it's humid it's daytona you know yeah but i'm in there but whatever i came up and i forgot all about combat breathing i forgot about you know some people call it was it like four box breathing In box breathing.

3:30:28Same thing. I forgot about a paper bag. I turn as white as your shirt, and an undercover knocks on the door. He was the guy that was playing the truck driver. And he sees me, and I'm just pouring sweat. And out of every pour, white as your shirt, my lips are all tight. And he's like, are you okay? And I'm like, I don't think so. So we start talking. What I should have done is said, I don't feel good. I think I'm heading home. But I didn't. I took a nap. I got up, self-medicated. went back out with the outlaws. Mongols were there, fights breaking out, all kinds of stuff. But when I flew home from that trip, I didn't know it, but my body was already done.

3:31:07They wanted to expand the case because the guy that was now went by the road named Hillbilly, who I knew through the case, and he liked me and I liked him, he was the Southeast regional president at that point. And they wanted me to come down, they wanted Boston not to take the case down. and for me to move to Florida and patch under Hillbilly. Dude, I don't care if you meet damn Sam Elliott from Mask, bro. Love that role. Dude, I love it. I've always loved him as a biker better than anything else. It was a good role. But damn, man, to keep pushing yourself out there like that. Yeah, well, I wasn't smart.

3:31:42And I mean, I lied. And I'm not judging you, man. No, I'm just saying, I lied to Safeguard. Like, I took the psychological test and I lied. I knew I was exhausted. I knew I didn't know how to relax anymore. Because it's almost like I'm reading this story and it's like, you know, It's like, oh, man, that's harrowing. It's harrowing. And it reminds me of times that I think a lot of us, probably a lot of listeners can relate to when they just, you know, just this thing I got to keep going and at what cost. It doesn't matter what you do. You could be a doctor. You could be whatever. Yes, for sure.

3:32:10That's what I'm saying. Yeah, you can wear yourself out. So what happens is I go home. I sleep. The first day I probably slept 20 hours. I wasn't depressed. I wasn't sick. I know what they both feel like. for the rest of the week I slept over 16 hours a day so come Friday I still love this guy I don't think he loves me anymore it is what it is but we were friends at that point and he calls me and again country he goes how you doing country and that was all he said and I said I'm not doing too good so for the next hour we talk on the phone I'm explaining to him everything that's going on and he basically let me convince myself I need to call a safeguard.

3:32:54So I called, and I knew one of the psychologists personally, and I called, and I said, hey, I don't know what's going on, man. I'm 30-something years old. I'm crashing. I don't know what's happening. So they came out and did a on-site. In other words, I didn't have to fly to them. They flew to me. They did the test. I answered it honestly. Amen. And I got put on timeout. But what they did is they said, and by timeout, I mean no more undercover for at least six months. but what they did is they said hey for the purpose for this case specifically we'll let you stay on the phone so i make a ruse i'd already told him that i'd gotten married so i'd make up a story that hey me and my wife are getting divorced her family's in el paso i gotta read i gotta get this house finished i gotta relocate her and the kids out there because i wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror again if i didn't got it and you got you got father scott towns 11 father or four daughter you got and they're like they all they're like oh yeah oh we got it man i said but as soon as i get them there i'm coming north i'm sick of this heat amen so we just kept talking and during that there was one other guy that we didn't get but he was calling me and he was like he just got out of prison recently and he was an outlaw and he's like hey man i heard about you know we'd met before scottown introduced us but he's like i got a hummer i got this 100 000 bmw i need to get rid of and he starts talking about cocaine and he's like hey um you know what kind of business I'm in.

3:34:18I said, I can maybe take a guess. And he goes, I'm into that magic powder. And I said, the white? And he said, yeah. Oh, cocaine. Yeah. And he said, yeah. And he says, how much can you get me basically a kilo for? And I said, if you can get me a kilo at 18 apiece, I got enough to buy 10 right now. He had 180 grand ready to go. And, of course, I call the case team. And I go, do you guys want me to pursue this? And this is your friend, though, right? Well, this guy I met. He wasn't like a close. Scott Town introduced me to him. His name was Tim Sylvia, not UFC Tim Sylvia, who is a friend, but Tim Sylvia the outlaw.

3:34:59And so what happens is I broker the deal for my truck driver and another undercover who always just – he didn't always, but by half of the case he would sit in the passenger seat. And they go – like I'm literally in my garage in McAllen and I'm on the phone with Tim Silvey and I'm on the phone with him. I'm going, he's over here and I'm guiding them in to meet each other. Well, when they meet each other, you can hear the other undercovers talking. Even if you see the recording from the back of the semi truck, you can even hear me on the phone. They're calling, the truck driver calls me. He's like, Tex, what's going on, man?

3:35:35We're calling him Tony. Hey, Tony, man. He's like, yeah, he goes, I'm here. And he goes, what's your name again? He goes, Tim Silvey. He goes, tell him it's Big Timmy. I go, okay. And he says, they're going back and forth. he goes, he wants to talk to you. So Tim gets on the phone and I say, hey, you got the same vehicles? Yeah, I'd agree to pay him 21 grand for the vehicles that I was buying from him, stolen. And he says, I said, when are you going to report the BMW stolen? Because I had a tracker on it. He said, Friday. I said, can you make it Saturday? I'm just trying to make it real, right?

3:36:05I said, can you make it Saturday? Give me one more day and it'll be in Mexico for sure. And he said, absolutely. So then I get back on the phone with the undercover and the undercover says, how much am I supposed to pay him? I said, 21 grand. So when they go to load the vehicles, the stolen vehicles onto the truck, Tim hits them and says, can you guys get 10 kilos at 18 apiece? And they said yes, and that's how we ended the case. I was drawing up diagrams of all the clubhouses and houses I'd been in for all the SWAT teams that were going to be hitting it and stuff, which was nerve-wracking to me because I'm a tactical guy, and I'm like, well, what if I get this wrong and somebody gets hurt?

3:36:40And then also, Scott and myself with another guy were creating our own motorcycle club called The Righteous Feud. It had already been approved by the president, the national president of the outlaws, to be the number one support club for the outlaws in the Northeast. All I had to do was go back up one more time, and I'd have gotten my cut. But, you know, it is what it is. Yeah, you were also— I was done. Yeah, I was done. You weren't even being real. It would have been cool. Yeah, you know, ego-wise. Oh, yeah, for sure. but damn bro this whole thing's insane so we're taking down the case i'm actually at an undercover school teaching um i wasn't there i'm pretty sure safeguard said i couldn't go and this when you're just doing stuff on the phone still okay yeah and how do we get to the end this is it okay because they said they were going to deliver the 10 kilos that's going to be a reversal and that's going to be the first arrest right so when they show up when tim sylvia shows up to deliver the hummer and to get whatever SWAT team's gonna take him down right he's got the money and all this stuff SWAT team's gonna take him down and that starts all the arrest happening um so I can't tell you what time it was in Nevada where I was at versus what time it was I don't know if that's three hours behind or whatever um from Massachusetts but I go back to my room and these are long nights at the UC school like I told you I go back to my room and my phone's chirping and I listen and it's a message from scott town and i chirp him up and i go hey what's up and he says he's all raspy voice he goes hey i just want you to know somebody just called me your truck drivers tony and that other dude and big scotty big t uh big timmy they got locked up and i'm like okay and he goes i just wanted to let you know and i said well you know they're not up there for something for me i said but sometimes they do things on the side for themselves he said listen i'm gonna go to something defective like this he said listen I'm gonna go to I'm gonna get up I'm gonna get showered up and I'm gonna find out what's going on I'm gonna call you back and I said okay and our last words to each other he said I love you brother and I said I love you too and about 40 minutes later a SWAT team hit his house and he went to prison they all pled guilty you ever talk to him again

3:38:58it's very possible I can either confirm or deny okay but since uh since the New York Times bestseller and being on a podcast or two, yeah.

3:39:15The bond was real. The bond was real? Was real. Like how happy is the ending? Like I'm just wanting to like... It's pretty good so far. Is it? Yeah, pretty good. Yeah, really good. So you guys still communicate often? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like in what type of manner do you feel like? call me, whatever. I will tell you that Chocolate Scott started troubling me. He'll probably get a kick out of this. He did? Yeah. You know how somebody finds you on Instagram and they start liking all your stuff and it's like from six months prior, but you start getting all these dings, ding, ding, ding, like they liked your reel, liked your, well, it was like, this guy sucks.

3:39:53Screw you. Oh, Chocolate Scott. F you, yeah. Chocolate Scott's like that, dude. So he said, so he put. Chocolate Scott's be Chocolate Scott, you know. so i almost wish i knew him actually so here's the thing i he's like he's like hitting me with like yeah you suck you f this you know this and the other and i saw it and it was like i could kind of see the picture but i saw that it was doom 666 and i'm like who the hell is it i don't respond to negative stuff but i'm like because most of the time you're arguing with an algorithm anyway it's some ai you're arguing against it's not even a real person yeah some pervert but i click on it and i open it up and it's chocolate scott and and for his instagram it says f you you, Scott Payne, you big bitch.

3:40:33Damn. So he really, but he's got a right to be pissed, right? I know, I know, man. But I could, I giggled because I could totally see him high laughing, typing that stuff. Oh, yeah. But the last thing he put out there that before I blocked him, is he put, he actually validated me because a lot of people are like, oh, you're making this up. I'm like, dude, pull the court records. Pull the reports. It's in there. The recordings that happened. I don't know what you want me to tell you. I'm not making it up. It's there. But he put, he found another one and he goes, I've seen this guy naked in the basement.

3:41:07Not much there. All right? So I so wanted to respond. Because the first thing I was going to say is you're still picturing me naked in the basement from 2006? Yeah. Must have been tough in prison. Second thing I would have said is I don't find you or clothesline attractive. The third thing I would have said is it was very, very cold in that basement. Yeah, and it's in Massachusetts. Yeah, and the fourth thing I would have said is I thought I was getting ready to die, and that's a whole new level of shrinkage. The last thing I was concerned about is what I look like naked. Oh, I can't even stay erect around damn broken glass.

3:41:43You know? I hear a window shatter. Dude, I won't get hard for a month. That's just who I am. My dad was the same way. Did Towns go to jail? Yeah. Yeah, we pretty much dismantled the whole Taunton chapter. I don't know if it's back up, but yeah, we pretty much got everybody. Have you seen him since he went in? Mm-mm. Nope. No. How long will he be in for? He's out. Oh, he's out now? Yeah, he's out. So you haven't seen him since he got out either? Mm-mm. Okay, got it. No. How long has he been out for? I don't know. I don't know if he did six or eight. And let's just say, I think we arrested, I think we took that case down in 2008.

3:42:19Got it. But let's see if it says. The outlaw's MC Taunton chapter is no longer active, having been effectively dismantled following a major federal sweep. Woo-hoo. There you go. Did you have to miss a lot of things? Yeah. Like a lot of family stuff? Yeah. You missed a lot of, like, birthdays, things like that? I did pretty good with that, but I missed, like, some recitals and stuff like that. Yeah. Or Father's Day, you know, because it might be putting on the undercover school. It might be being on the case, because, like I said, you kind of go where the case takes you. If you get an opening to go to Sturgis with the—I mean, yeah.

3:42:58Yeah, no, I mean, it's just so fascinating, you know, because life itself, you're kind of, we're all trying to be ourselves and then to go into life and then go into another life kind of, you know, like an other exist, you know, like. Yeah, my big, I guess my Clark Kent walking into a phone booth and coming out of Superman is I have a cross on my necklace. and before I would go undercover, I'd take the cross off and it would either be a Norse, you know, like Thor's hammer, but for most of it, it was just a skull. But that was kind of my thing. Like I'd go back in, I'd take the skull off, put the cross back on.

3:43:37It was kind of like me saying, trying, trying to leave it there and now I'm scout again, but truthfully, the job creeped in all the time. I mean, how's it not going to when I'm on an undercover call and my daughter's chasing me through the house and I'm trying not to let her hear me cuss because I'm on the phone with a bad guy. For sure. Are you ever, before you go, Scott, are you ever worried about somebody coming back from the past, something coming back to haunches? It could happen, yeah. Retaliation? Yeah, you know, I'm not trying to be a tough guy or nothing like that, but I do have a belief system.

3:44:11And for me, I mean, I wouldn't want any family members or anything like that to be in fear. usually for me your best defense is a good offense that's me like just being a uniform cop how many people in your town do you think you arrest in a year and do you i mean they're not all like felony charge they back out that's a good point so you how many times as a uniform cop do you go to the mall or to a movie theater or to the grocery store and you run into people that you've like it might have been somebody you had to fight amen you know so i never thought about that and i just i just walk right up to them that's me i'd see them and i'd go if they're if they're eyeballing I'm not even going to let them apply it.

3:44:48I'm just going to go right up and go. Good game. Hey, now I'm going to be like, brother, how are you doing? When did you get out? How's the family, man? Hey, are you clean right now? Are you good? How are you doing? Listen, as long as you're on that up and, you know, straight and narrow on the right path, I'll help you. And I have. I've actually people that I put in jail that I infiltrated, put in jail, but they've taken a turn for the better. I, at their sentencing, I wrote an acknowledgement letter or a letter for their character. Amen. And they got probation instead of going to jail. So that's not a, I mean.

3:45:20No. It's, you know, if you get, for me, for the most part, what I've found, because I do really make friendships. I mean, you're creating relationships. For sure. You're betraying them a little. I mean, you're going to be betraying them if you're undercover. Yeah. But it's almost like the old Bugs Bunny cartoon. You got the sheepdog and you got the coyote. And it's Ralph and Sam. And they clock in in the morning. And all day, the coyote's trying to steal a sheep. and all day the sheep dogs beating the crap out of them trying to get, and at the end of the day they clock out. See you in the morning, Sam.

3:45:52See you in the morning, Ralph. It's just, you know, I've been told this. If you were a biker and you were part of the club and you snitched, they'd never forgive me, but I was just doing my job. So you see that a lot. Professional snitch. No, I'm not a snitch. I'm not, you know, I'm a bonded law enforcement officer, and we had reports of you doing criminal stuff and I infiltrated you or somebody did and we found evidence of that criminal stuff. If you're not doing anything wrong, don't worry about it. Yeah. Do they ever, oh, this is kind of like a question almost like the movies. Do they ever bring retired agents in for like, you know, they ever try and get you back out there for one more show?

3:46:34Oh, yeah, yeah, but you would be, if you're a retired agent. Because you're retired now. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you could come back in as a source. that's a whole different ball game though. But they're never like, Scott, we got to wheel you out one more time here. Not now. I'm overt now, man. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, people know now. Yeah, I know. Anybody ever told you you look like Matt Damon? You know what? As a matter of fact, the other day somebody did. And as soon as they pulled up the picture, I went, dang, you know? Yeah. Who would have thunk it? No, I mean, no. I mean, it could happen, but once I was done, I mean, obviously, I mean, you do Rolling Stone magazine and then this and yeah.

3:47:11Would you do it again? Absolutely. Absolutely, man. But, you know, okay, they always say, man, you'll know when it's time to retire. I thought I was going to work to 57. I thought I'd be the undercover coordinator for the state of Tennessee, and maybe I could extend, you know, because that's a skill set that a lot of people don't have, you know, in the Bureau as opposed to being a tactical instructor. I mean, there's a lot of tactical instructors, but I thought I was going to stay to 57. But after the base case, I was like, man, I had to get the back lumbar. I got a lumbar fusion. A week and a half after the lumbar fusion, I got Tammy talking about PVC pipes and everything else in my truck.

3:47:51Oh, God. And you just start thinking. She loves to torture people. Yeah, I know. I like torture. You like torture? I like torture. I love it. Shit. You need somebody to torture you, you call me. I swear, I know that torture person. But the thing is, I was 48 going on to 50. How many more? how many more like I can't go I mean if okay now I'm gonna look like a pedophile oh there's an old dude buying beer for young boys and he's teaching them widespread no I'm not but how can I infiltrate 17 year olds right you know and you just start realizing just one day it hit me and it was right after the base case it was in February we took it down January of 2020 February of 2020 I'm in Phoenix Arizona we're putting on training we're training online covered employees for domestic terrorism and I don't know what we were discussing about.

3:48:38I don't know what it was. I know it was my birthday. But I just, this overwhelming feeling hit me in the face like a brick. I can't remember what we're talking about, but I remember like everything just kind of going, calming down and me saying this in my head, I'm satisfied with my career. Never said it before. Not saying I've done everything, but if I do something now, I'm just starting right back over. I'm like, I think, holy cow. I'm okay. I think I'm okay. Amen. Yeah. Well, Scott Payne, man Boom Big country It's medium country Thank you so much for coming in, man Scott Payne, bitch Codename Pale Horse That's his book How I Went Unrecovered to Expose America's Nazis I was going to say And the paperback's out now, sorry Oh, nice And the paperback is out now Is that true, Scott?

3:49:28Yes, true Thank you so much for being here today with us, man Thanks for sharing your stories Yeah, dude What a fascinating existence you've had so far, man. We appreciate your time, brother. Thank you so much. Give our best to your family, man. Will do. Yeah. Scott Payne, thank you, bro. Thank you, bud.

3:50:04my bones but it's gonna take