#304 Chris Bayless - 30 Years Undercover Inside America's Most Violent Gangs

Whoa dude, I don't think so but okay.

“And she had Chris Bayless, it wasn't some other guy with a different name.”

I'm pretty sure.

But the first ATF agents agent I've ever had on the show.

I hope you don't screw it up for the rest of your fucking agency. Oh man, but I'm sure you'll get some bad reviews on talking to an ATF guy. I'm sure I will too, but I get bad reviews all the time. There you go, right? But I want to start off with an introduction, so to prove my point here.

Chris Bayless, 30 year ATF special agent spent the majority of your career under cover. Infiltrated the hell's henchmen motorcycle club and was inside when they patched over to become the Hell's Angels, planning the club's first plague in the Midwest. Your under cover intelligence held build the Federal Rico case that took down Mel Chansey in the Chicago Hell's Angels leadership.

Partners with Jay Dobbins, the agent who later infiltrated the Hell's Angels in Arizona, personally involved in more than 100 stash house sting operations across the country, had partners shot and killed continue to work for three decades. Suspects planned to kill you on roughly half of your operations. One crew planned to poke holes in your stomach and to sink your body in a river.

Got locked in a bar with a six foot nine 300 pound bike or outlaw on forcer while you're wearing a wire. You fall your way out. Your stash house operations cut shootings in half in Oakland made 70 arrests in Phoenix became a public face of ATF's defense against entrapment and racial bias allegations from federal judge judges. And today your retired outspoken and ready to tell the story you couldn't tell for 30 years.

Wow. And I had to dub that down. Yeah. That's where it is.

“Sounds like I don't know who that guy is, but you should have mine your show.”

But well, I got something I want to give you. Okay. So. I grabbed a hair real quick. Holy.

So. I've always. Well, I'll be brief.

Never in a million years.

What I think I would be willingly willingly. Giving an ATF agent a short bill rifle and a suppressor. I love it. So. I got some buddies over.

It's a one really good buddy. His name's Jason is the VP of marketing over there. Yeah. And that's a fantastic platform. Found out you were coming on and.

Surprise to me. It was to get an ATF agent a short bill rifle and a suppressor. So. Are you kidding me? Have you.

Have you. You familiar with that? Yes. This particular. No, but the platform.

Absolutely. I can see right now. The optics. This is like. This is it.

We're going to break it in today. You're going to love it. Awesome. I love that thing. I'd rather than this is absolutely.

I got a quick six story. I'll tell you that. And this is I'd love to think. First of all. So we transition from wheel guns.

And our first semi-autos was the cigar.

And I had a two to six. And. Use the two to six. I love it. It was.

Oh, I used the two to six. So I was in it right after we did the transition. You know, it's a semi from the wheel gun. We're unfortunately in a shooting in Julia Delanoi. And so everything was fine on the shooting.

Get back shooting. Review team comes out. They didn't care about anything other than.

“Did you die cock before you put it back in the house?”

Now it's like, well, what about the guys that were shooting us or like, yeah, whatever. Did you die cock before you put it closer? And I was like, you know what? I did. They just wanted to make sure that during that transitional period.

We got that muscle memory for the die cock. And it was hilarious. And that was the. That's. That was.

I did sit everything else. I go, well, this happened this happened. They're like, yeah, fine. However, Did you die cock before you also did gun up?

And I was like, yeah, I did. That sounds like a conversation that would have been had in the SIL teams as well. Yes. Yeah, it was kind of funny.

But no. I shot six my whole life. And I. It's a great. It's a great pistol.

Right on. I love it too. I'd love that one more though. No, brother, this is like if Christmas. This is Christmas right now for me.

Maybe maybe not. But this is what. This is definitely what.

“You know, if I had the like Christmas list of every checkoff.”

So please thank your, your friends. Oh, man. I greatly appreciate it. That's it. That's it's exciting.

Right on. Right on you. I got another person for until. You guys are. Exciting.

This is where it's at the other. And I thank you for that. I thank you for that. Oh, come on. If you don't want.

I don't have a long gun to give you. All right. However, do you have a couple of things. This is my wife's. All right.

No guy gives another guy anything that's in a freaking envelope. All right. So I told her I go, I can't do that. And she's like, no. No, you can't.

All right. This is.

“We have an advantage on the cover program.”

This is our. Our coin. If you put coins, you're not. Yeah. It's a small group of individuals.

Very small group of guys. They do stuff all over the country. And other places. It's just a. It's.

It's a small group at their highly motivated individuals.

And to this day still do some incredible stuff on the cover.

So. But it's. Welcome. And then this is. This is a compass.

And then I guy. Yeah, because. Especially with your stuff when it comes to exploitation of children that you've been doing and stuff like that. It's hard not to. You know, mentally when you see that and you do that kind of work.

And I know people that are in that investigative arm. It takes a toll. And when you see that, you get so freaking mad that you just want to tear people. Throw it out. They're.

And that type of activity. So. So this is a compass. And.

The description first seek the council of the Lord.

And so that's a Bible verse that. So. Can you guess if I was asked to participate in a war with the. The king of Israel and he said, OK, but first seek the council of the Lord. The king of Israel didn't make out their ass handed to him.

So going back to it, everybody. We look at when you're fighting those demons and you're going out and fighting those people man. You got to stay in that stay in that zone. And the seek the for it seek the council of the Lord man. I can tell you from my own experiences.

I really something else man. It really gives you a sense of peace. And you know what direction you're going to. So good luck with all that man. Thank you.

I'm glad you're in the fight. Seriously. That's hard, Phil. Thank you. That means a whole lot.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate them. Thank you. One more thing. Sure.

Before we could go and I got a picture on account. Okay. Subscription account. The other reason that we get to sit down here today. So they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question.

James Cudburth.

“What key lessons from your career would you impart to current law enforcement professionals?”

And how was your perspective on redemption and second chances of all one reflecting on individuals who like Mel Chansey have left that lifestyle behind? Well, I would say for law enforcement today. I think just and I started in 1987. I think the the level of professionalism that's out there today. It's out there today around the country of the guys that are first responders in law enforcement is.

It's awesome. These guys. I've been involved in helping with training at different points in time and these guys are all dedicated to duty. I think finding that balance of home life and your family and still going out and doing this stuff every day. I read that that's paramount.

I think that the redemption of Mel Chansey is that's the reason I'm here. It's not about doing all this undercover or infiltrating whatever.

You know, it's been that story has been told like a million times.

But a guy that would actually go from living that life of violence and then making a change, find a Lord and change in his life and doing it for other right reasons and what this guy has become now. It's amazing. And I'm proud to be his friend. So hello, the guy learned that yesterday. It's a piece of work. Wow. Wow.

Yeah. But we'll thank you. So I got it. This is a little off top, but before we get into your story, but I was reading something or talking to somebody. I can't remember a couple of weeks ago.

And it was about undercover agents federal agents. Whatever local police, ATF, CIA, DA, and it was talking about AI and facial recognition. And it actually was a conversation with somebody that an old friend from my previous life and they were talking about. I think what they were saying was that agency will not be traveling with pseudo names anymore.

And then it went into facial recognition and AI and how easy it is to dig shit up on people.

And basically said that nobody will be traveling under, everybody will be traveling under true name.

And there may not be undercover agents much longer. Yeah. Do you heard of this? Yes and no. I think the people, the AI stuff is just exponentially exploded across the board. And from a security standpoint, we're always...

Law force is always like I'd step behind because they're trying to generally catch up to whatever the current things are that are going to be a threat to us as what we do. And I know that I know there's guys now in our program, doing a cover program, advanced undercover program. They're working on how we're going to deal with that and the steps were taken so far to kind of what can we put out. But it, like we just saying, exponentially so fast has grown so quickly. It's very, very, very difficult and it will be harder to do.

If you're in the short, like you're just in like a town and you're just buying a couple guns off a gangbanger or, you know, you're buying dope on a smaller scale, you're probably not going to run into it. But you will run into it when you start to do. True, bad, organized groups because, you know, at the end of the day, they're doing our homework on us every day. They learn how we do, you know, if you talk to me all yesterday, he's like, "I know about Rico, now's trying to avoid Rico." Well, we still got you anyway because, you know, you didn't think it quite all the way through and so we were able to get you.

However, you know, there's always a learning curve on both ends and you know, we've got some incredible adversaries in the criminal community that are looking to really put it on us.

Yeah, we've got adversaries around the world that are looking to destroy us.

“You know, and it can't get us, can't invade us, you know, we've got two oceans and some land above and below, but the only way they can do us is to get us from inside.”

So, you're seeing a rise of these other, these violent groups, not only just street gangs, and how long motorcycle gang stuff, but everything else that's out there that's trying to put us down. Man, it's pretty crazy how fast the technology is developing and what it's affecting, and it's just something I never thought I'd hear. Exactly. I mean, our backs up and you used to be, you got a criminal history and an undercover driver's license and you were good to go. If somebody had the ability to run like a credit history, you know, we were backed up all through that.

We were doing a pretty decent deep dive into somebody from where it was before when I first started working and up until probably up till the point where I retired. It's really, I think it's kicked off in the last four or five years. Wow. Just immensely, but our, the people we had worked a lot with some people and bragged stuff and helped craft those backstoppy measures for different groups and including ours. Gotcha.

Man, I mean, with the facial recognition, I mean, if you had any social profile as a kid by the time you, you know, you graduate the academy for ATF, I mean, you're correct or fucked. You're already totally screwed. Yeah, you really are, and it's like, I have nothing, so if you want to, like, somebody wants to, I have no social media. I mean, I creep on my wife's every now and then to see what, like, everybody in high school is doing, but beyond that, I don't, I don't do any of that stuff, man. Yeah.

I just, I hunkered down, got for you, got my own little sister.

“You however, I think, you know, really, you can't even have an opinion anymore without somebody wanting to tear your throat out of a kill you.”

Oh, yeah. Tell me about it. Yeah. I'm sure. Good.

I know. Yeah. If you don't think like me, it's fuck you. Yeah. I'm going to kill you.

I'm going to go, okay. We'll bring friends. No. Well, and that's it.

“I mean, and that's what, you know, in my opinion, it's just like,”

the way, again, you can't invade us. Our adversaries around the world who want to see us fail. They can't invade us. They cannot take us away. They cannot beat our freaking military.

Yeah. They cannot, but they can, they can put fentanyl in our country. Yeah. And they can let the drill can let every criminal out of the fentanyl's oil of prison and move them into the United States. That's that slow erosion of our country.

That is happening, you know, and people are just oblivious to it. And the propaganda to the God or me's the kind of real narratives.

It's, uh, it's war first, definitely changed.

That's for them. Oh, no doubt. But you look at, like, I have a nephew that's over there now doing stuff and, you know, I'm proud of some of them. And he's proud of hell to be there.

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That's Caldera Lab.com/SRS. Well, let's get into your story. All right, where'd you grow up? I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago not too far from where Mel grew up. So in the same neighborhood, some of Mel's friends are actually their parents live right behind my mom and dad,

where my mom and dad lived, payless heights. So I grew up regular blue collar, everybody knows your neighbors. Nobody had any money where we were at. So we had just a nice little sense of community in the neighborhood that I grew up in. It was very good.

We had the neighbors, the baos.

“I remember my dad, those guys had no money.”

And they would get together, smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and figure out how. All right, you're working three jobs here.

I'm working two jobs here.

We only have two cars. Your wife wants to go to nursing school. Let's buy a car together. And then we'll rotate. That'll be the car that your wife takes to nursing school.

And these guys would come up with this. Just try and how to to get ahead and live their life. And they were just, I remember I was probably six or seven. Listen to their conversation, Mr. Bao. And my dad just sitting down drinking a cup of coffee trying to figure out how they're going to navigate life.

Yeah, right on. And even the other back now. Like, you know, however, everybody gets it with their dad at some point. My dad was the biggest asset I'd ever met in my life. From the time I was 17 to like 22.

“And then all of a sudden after I was 22, I was like, you know what?”

This guy just maybe he knows a couple things. Maybe he's lived a little bit of life. So yeah, but that's kind of how I grew up. Those were, that's where I was at. What were you into?

Play baseball? Uh, athletic? Yeah. Yeah. Play baseball.

I was a couple traveling baseball teams, you know, all through high school. But I had jobs that worked at a lumber yard. So I started working there and I would do side jobs out of the lumber yard. My dad was a, was a science teacher. But he made his money doing side jobs and construction.

He was that guy. He could fix anything, do anything. So great skill set as far as that goes now. You know, I can pretty much put additions on my house. If I wanted to, you know, I don't do that anymore.

But when I had to, I could. So that's kind of how I just kind of started.

I always, I was a night watchman at the local Payless Pool, which met when the manager left at 10 o'clock at night.

All my friends came over with beer and dunes and we swam and drank all night while I was watching to make sure nothing happened to it. Well, um, so yeah, that was, that was kind of where I grew up at. It was, um, we, like Mel talks about, too, when we grew up that whole area. That kids were always fighting. Everybody was quick to go to hands. You know, I mean, but it was, you know, it's just the South Side of Chicago.

Man, it's just how it was. South suburbs. Did you guys know each other at all? I knew of him. You did by being virtual of the Hell's Angel President. Um, but I, I had never met him, but I knew it was funny.

Um, the local attorney, uh, local prosecutor for Payless Heights used to train at the same gym that Mel did. Mel was friends, you know, they talked together. They weren't like going out for coffee friends. But they knew each other and Mel led him right. He wrote a Harley. So Mel led him right next to a one time going from point A to point B or something like that. Well, that guy was best friends with my mom and dad.

So when we were doing the Hell's Angel case, why he was talking to my mom about something. And now my mom goes, why think he's doing some motorcycle. And so he, he kind of, and I like so right away, my mom's upset because freaking completely cut off at that point. You know, we had to put around probation for a while on which he said, but, uh, but that was in that community. Everybody kind of knew each other, you know, and you knew who the asshole kids were and you knew who the good kids were.

And, you know, he tried to stay away from the asshole kids, but, you know, he'd tend to run around with them a little bit from time to time. Yeah, so that was kind of where both of us grew up at and it was kind of the, the south suburbs of the 70s and 80s, 60s and 70s. Yeah, where do we go from here? I don't know. What would you like to get into? I went to college and didn't like it, but I got through it.

I wanted anything to do with that.

“So I quickly got a double double double gotten associate's degree in criminal justice. And I think the first thought about doing law enforcement came from, um,”

we had taken, I went to school, Manchester College in Indiana. And Indianapolis in Indiana has a boy school down there for, you know, juvenile delinquents as they used to call him. Kids had done some serious crime and they were down there, locked up. We'd done it like an outside tour and we were able to interview one kid. And on the way back, I was telling the professor, I go, you know what? Um, why don't, I'm, I'm young enough. I go, how about you just put me in there as an inmate for three weeks?

And I'll tell you what's really going on, you know, because it just seemed like the kid was too polished that was talking about the institution and how things grew. And of course, you talk to the, you know, the supervisors and the social workers and things like that. Um, but I was like, man, you really want to know what's going on. I go, put me in there and he's like, would you go and I go in a minute? No problem. So we get back to college and he goes, I'm going to run it up to change and see what happened. I'm like, all right.

So I'm getting kind of excited. I'm like, man, I'm going to go down there and be locked up and see what happens and see what I can learn. And I meet him like the next day, he goes, there's no fucking way. They're going to let you go down there and be locked up in this place. I go, come on, man, I'll sign our thing and get out. And so that was my first, like, if you really want to know what's going on, you know,

“you got to meet these guys face to face and figure it out. How old were you then?”

Oh, 19, 20, shit. So you wanted to do undercover work. Yeah, I didn't really know that, but what that was, but I thought, what better way, you know, I can listen to a million guys telling me what time of day it is about something over here.

Well, you've never been there. So, you know, what if we go there and let's take a look and figure it out.

So it seems like a better option. Did you have any ambition to be a law enforcement officer as a kid? I took a Vice in Drug Abuse class and the guy that did it was a cook kind of sheriff's deputy that was doing undercover. And he was telling a couple stories and I was like, oh, yeah, that's. And then my baseball coach was a Chicago Police Department violent crime detective. And he was like, just, he was just this good looking ages, Rico Swave kind of guy.

He just was such a, and a good man, a great coach. And I told him after listening to a couple stories, you know, I was like, you know, Pete, I think I want to be a cop because you want to go to the feds. He goes, don't, he goes, Chicago's done. And this was like, 1976. He goes, he goes, he goes, don't, don't go with this city. He goes, try for the federal government. And I was like, all right. So I had no idea.

I would end up doing that. But just how that guy's persona was who he was as a person and how he carried himself. I was like, you know, that I would want to be that guy. You know, he was no nonsense, but very fair. And then our youth group at church, we had a female police officer, Sugat, who was, she ended up retiring as a lieutenant on a suburban department. And another, just, I just liked the way they had that calm around them.

You know, things didn't, they weren't flying off the handle and getting all spun up on stuff. They just had an easy-going problem solving type mentality.

“And I thought, yeah, that's, I think I want to be like that.”

And so that was kind of like, for me, that's kind of got me into it, right on, right on. Why did you pick the ATF? I had, uh, my ex-brother and law was with DEA and Miami back in the cooking cowboy days. Holy shit. And, uh, all about he's got some fucking stories. Yeah, he's got a couple. Um, he transferred DEA up to Detroit.

And then he wanted to get back to Chicago, and Chicago was ATF was hiring at the time. And so they took him into a lateral. So he got to ATF, he really didn't know about a lot about AT. He worked with them in Florida in Miami back in the day. But, um, he said, didn't know a lot of the guys were stuff.

And he got in, he goes, man, this is awesome. He goes, this is like freaking, we're small. He called it the Marine Corps of federal law enforcement. It was, you got no money, no support. But hey, can you go out here and kick ass and get with these,

freaking most violent guys and put him in jail. And, uh, and he, he dug it and I thought, all right. And then I had another friend that was a Cook County State's attorney. His brother was an ATF agent up in Rockford, Illinois. So I talked to him about it and he says, man, best job ever.

And I'm like, wow. So I just right place at the right time, got an application in, took the test.

And, um, took me about two years to get finally get on, get hired.

Really, what took so long? Just the background check stuff. Yeah, that was your background check stuff. And then there was, uh, there was a hiring freeze. I think in 85 or 86, um, they weren't putting people on.

And then, ATF hired mass hype between 86 and probably 90. They put out a lot of people. They finally got the OK to do it. And they put a lot of people on and we were doing, we're doing pretty good. Agent wise at that point.

“I think we had maybe 2300 agents around the country at that point at the most.”

And we still don't have pretty much any more than 2300 units around the country.

We've never, we've always been that political football.

You know, the three largest lobbying groups I'll call it to back on firearms in DC. So it was always in their best interest to keep us functioning. But let's not give them a lot of money. I think Reagan actually was going to just ban us at one point. And we had, um, two agents, we're working the self-floor to, uh,

file a crime status for us during the Columbia and, uh, Maryly Tokubin War, the cocaine cowboys days. And we had two agents get, uh, killed down there under cover. While they were doing the job and they had gotten rift notices that basically they're going to disband ATF.

You know, so I'm pointing here and you guys, and these guys went out into the job anyway. And I was like, you know, this, uh, I like, I like how these guys are taken. And I was like, I'd be an honor to be a part of that. People that like, you're, may not have a job in the next six months, year, year and a half, but go down there doing anyway.

And it was part of the vice presidential task force that Reagan had. I think Bush was the one at ran it. Um, yeah, we had, uh, uh, anybody has an area of reels. We're shot in two separate under cover deals and killed.

“Uh, so, um, that kind of started people are like, well, what are these guys doing?”

You know, they take in some farmers shotgun from up in Northern Michigan. And they're like, no, these guys are down there. Going face to face and told it to over some bad people. Yeah, so it kind of changed the mentality a little bit. Um, at that point, they didn't disband us.

And then we were kind of off to the races after that.

Wow. So, uh, ATF's always been hated.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We kind of, yeah, we were okay. So what is, what is, could you just describe what, what is the job of the ATF? Because all we, all we hear is they're taking, they're taking our short burn rifles. They're taking, yeah, they're taking suppressors. Car bean pistols are illegal today tomorrow they're legal.

Next week they're illegal again. What, so what is the, all right, so ATF has two functions. There's a regulatory function. It's a regulatory side of the house. So the, um, explosives, firearms licensees, FFL, explosive storage and sales of explosive.

It's all kind of run through ATF. So they keep a lid on, not lid on, but they can track explosives, you know, that kind of, the FFLs that have a license, you know, they do inspections to make sure they're current, you know, following the protocol and stuff like that. Um, and then you've got the enforcement side and that's the side I worked at.

And so that was, for the minute I started, it was always about violent crime.

And so what you would have is the legislature won't do its job completely. And say, this is legal or this is illegal. So they'll say, okay, sure bailed rifle. Well, what constitutes a sure bail rifle? So ATF then has to make a decision using regional counsel and firearms technology branch guys.

They get together and they're like, okay, does this fit? What the intent of the legislature was? And sometimes they're like, yes, so you can't have this. Sometimes it's no, so you can't have this. So it's that constant rather than be specific about what's legal and is illegal.

These guys have led it up to, and we're not the only agency that they've told that out to DEA to that for some of the drug stuff, environmental protection agency. You know, they come up with their own policies and procedures. What people can do and can't do based on, you know, they're what they've been. Powers that be given from Congress.

“So my opinion, ATF, you should be cutting dry.”

This is it. This isn't it. Everybody knows. Let's go here. But I think you could, the scientists are stuff and, and the machine guns and stuff like that.

I think if I'm not mistaken, it was 1936 where they enacted the first statute against that. And it wasn't that they made silencers and machine guns illegal. What they said was, okay, you know, the government at that point still believed in the Sanctuary of the States. So states right to regulate itself.

So what they did was say, we're going to put a tax on it. You can have a machine gun, but you got to call us up pay $250 wherever the tax was a transfer tax and let us know you had it. It's just like a bomb. Like, you can build all your own bomb if you like.

You got to put a serial number on it and you got to pay the tax. Well, no bad guy is going to do that. Pay the tax or put a serial number on a destructive device. And so that's where you come in. Now you have an unregistered and NFA or unregistered machine gun or shotgun.

So now ATF can take action against you. Gotcha. Gotcha. So how was it? How was the academy?

school and it was eight weeks of just stuff specific to ATF.

So it was 16 weeks all together.

“Now I still I still teach down our teach field apps and now it's 26 weeks.”

Holy. So it's a pretty. They've really I was telling you a great friend of mine. Sergeant Lesnar from the range of Italians. Now he runs our training done iron has for last few years.

And just completely square away kid and well, not kidding. More he's close to retirement but I'm old. So everybody's still quite as I end the job as a kid, but just a square away guy. And we have over the years we find we have a couple seals that are ATF agents. We have a lot of range of Italian guys, a lot of Marines.

And it's a it's a good group of and then we have, you know, right out of college kids. Two. That kind of thing. So it's a good mix. The last class I taught at most recently.

They were, they were really good really square away. It was fun to watch them. Like kind of progress and then I teach field apps which is the last two weeks. Where we have like a whole city set up role players. And so they work a case from beginning to end or that two year period of time.

We do undercover. We deal with informants. We do search warrants.

“We have a robbery situation where you've got to go in.”

We've got to go in and extract the undercover or the CI. We've got a hostage barricaded situation. So they run through all this stuff and hopefully they've learned everything. They've learned in all the Blacks ability and up to that point. Then now's their time to execute it.

So it's fun. It's it's fun. It's it's the most enjoyable part of the academy. No, the final FTX. Yeah.

It's awesome. What did you want to do? Did you want to go undercover right off the bat? Yeah. It's lucky I got.

That's some great mentors when I started. I started in 87 got through the academy. I was doing stuff working undercover by mid 88. You were undercover within a year. Oh, yeah.

That was back in the day where you had your gun in badge. Go catch somebody. Like, okay. You know, it was like I said, it was kind of a whole different program.

And my boss, the first day on the job,

because I don't know what you know about undercover work or ATF work or federal law force. My group works undercover. That's what we do. Because there's a poor vet over there. There's money in this box.

You know, you want to use a different gun. Get a different gun. But go out there and start buying dope and guns and make some arrests. And I was like, right fucking on. Holy shit.

I'm like I'm good to go. That's awesome. And then there was a guy John Ratino, which was probably. We have some great undercover agents in ATF. I don't know what he hears about him or anything.

But I look at those guys and they're just unbelievable. What they've done. He had a Sky John Ratino. The vice-lord street gang was a re-manufacturing hangar nates.

And so what they're doing, they're going to army surplus shop. And they get the Mark Duce, you know, the frag from World War II. They buy a bunch of those. And then they would also buy the old.

Smoke grenade fuses, which are completely different than an actual. Hangered eight fuse. This has a timer. This one doesn't. So when they repacked all the black powder that they did in the.

Hanger nates. And they screwed in this fuse. Three guys showed up to the hospital with half their face blown off. Their arm gone because they pulled the thing and thought, watch this. You know, this will be funny.

Homey beer. And then the thing goes off immediately because there's no delay. So they were like, so they had a couple of guys. So John Ratino interviews one of these guys. Because obviously it's a destructive device.

And that would fall into it's basically a bomb.

So John interviews his kid. And he was so pissed off because the gang hadn't come. But any money, you know, helped his family out or anything. He's got no arm. So he goes, I'll tell you what's going on.

And so John gets his kid to introduce him to the. Uh, was he under takers. It was a faction of the vice lord street gang. And we were getting showing up. Scott P.D. was picking up these devices that had exploded.

Obviously they found some way to get it away from him before it blew them up. So what they started doing was they put everything in them. Ball mason jar and screw the top on. They pulled a pen. And then they would throw the mason jar.

It would break. And then the Poon would expel. And it would set off the bomb.

“So that's how they were reconfiguring their their hand grenades.”

So John gets introduced to these. The under taker vice lords and he starts buying these. Re-manufactured. They'd had like, I don't know, 60 of them. So John bought, I mean, you got to get that.

We got to get that off to street, you know. So John buys like all of them. Well, he kind of immigration's ate himself into the club. So he ends up or to the gang. He ends up doing in a two year period of time under cover.

He did 120 defendants all gun and dope buys.

I don't, at least it doesn't murders the ended up.

“I think charging that he got conversation about their criminal activity and what they were doing.”

And they ended up arresting a mile. It's called a CCE continuing criminal enterprise where you have a leader. And then you're five or more people underneath you that that pay up to or take orders from the leadership. So it's a it's a way to get everybody wrapped up. And so the charging with the CCE, so you did 120 defendants.

And I would watch him every day go to the west side of Chicago, the worst neighborhood in the city. He's just this yoked up Italian dude. And he was just whipping a game on these guys. Wow, I was like, I was like, I want to, I want to be that guy. And so that I'd start like, okay, let's figure this out.

What can I do? And I know those are guys. I worked in an organized crime group and we had two guys. John Mazzol and Jimmy DeLordo and they were like old school Italian pizons from the from the south side. They, but they had a great ability to read people and they're just great true investigators.

But so they had, they were, they solved murders. And it's usually a firearm was involved.

“The one case they did on a guy, Warner Hartman was a real rich man that had those stereo company, a stereo car installation.”

So you put your stereo in your car and got huge speakers and stuff like that. And he was a multimillionaire falls in love with the stripper, of course, and then tells old his time. And so he's got two kids that he's with. The stripper's actually got a boyfriend surprised. And so he takes a Mac 10 that someone had converted to full automatic and kills him one night.

So because it was clearly was a machine gun by all the pattern was John Mazzol and one of the agents was working another case. And was able to show that the guy that made and sold the machine gun to this guy was also a guy that John had bought a machine gun off of also. And they started to get conversation. So they were kind of putting two to two together. They go up and they figured obviously she was involved.

They kind of ID to the the shooter was it was the boyfriend of the stripper. And I remember Jimmy Delordo. They had changed the will. So his little girl's got nothing. It's two million dollar life insurance policy.

But the stripper girlfriend got everything. So someone had to change not only the will but also the life insurance policy.

“And only personally could do that would be the guy that sold him the policy.”

So they get all the bank records from this from this company and Jimmy tells me. And I'm brand new.

And he would always stick his.

Or a trunk. And when you think about something, he goes that lazy bitch wrote that guy a check. He goes lazy bitch wrote a check. I'm sure of it. So he gets the bank records.

So I'm siphoned through all these checks. He goes look for one about 10 to 20 grand that went to this guy. I'm digging through like four or five days bank records going through going through. Sure enough, there's a check, $15,000 that she had written to the insurance guy to change the the beneficiaries of the insurance. And so he ended up going to jail with her and the shooter and stuff.

But that was like those were the cases I was exposed to when I first started. And I was like, man, this is wow, this is what I want to do. So it's kind of different than what the general perspective of ATF is and how we do what we do. But I worked, that's all I ever did was cases like that. I mean, what do you do when they say, you had an eight week academy.

You show up and they say, there's cash. There's guns. There's fucking cars. Go get bad guys. Where do you start?

Well, I have to know that work. Well, it's the first thing you do is that network. And I, a couple of guys in the group said, here's a couple. Illinois state troopers that we work for. I ended up going down to Illinois state police district five post in Juliet.

And I met some guys in the cooperative police assistant team. They called it CPAT and I just introduced myself. And I said, hey, man, this is kind of my area. I go, if you guys can plug me in on anything. You know, I'll do whatever takes.

They're working some stolen cars from some organized crime guys. So the first couple things I did was just buy stolen models for these guys. Other task force. And so that's kind of how I got started.

And then I would always ask guys, gang pistols guy guns.

And it was always gang bangers or, you know, some organized group that was into an ethrarious activity. And so, you know, I just embed myself with those guys. And we do the best we can to put a case on them. And that's how would you embed?

I mean, especially. I would give it a new guy. But there's, you could do a whole call, which is one way you to show up. I mean, do you guys train for this shit? Oh, yeah.

Academy back then. Yeah. At the end, the last two weeks that field operations was the same. We've been teaching that since, you know, Jesus loves his sandals.

I mean, I don't talk. No, actually no. It's not enough.

“We have advanced schools that we put on too.”

But back in the day at the time,

it was like throwing a water to learn how to swim. And so that's how you cut your teeth. We just put your head in the game and start rolling. And that's what we did. So what did you do specifically?

I'll do that work. Who do you start with? I started with the Illinois State Police. And we, uh, I was doing, I did some gang groups down there. And I kind of rolled into by 1990.

He had done, um, the Ellis motorcycle gang had a club house in Juliette. And had developed an informant that, um, I knew about motorcycle gangs. And we, you talk about them. And we're, you know, we're instructing on them along with traditional organized crime

and street gangs, you know, in any academy. And we had developed an informant that was associated with them. And I, I knew about them, but I didn't, I didn't know what the lifestyle was. I didn't know, you know, I could ride a Harley with no problem.

But I didn't know about gangs.

So the informant kind of brought me up to speed. Um, help things work and, um, introduce me to a couple of the people in the Juliette, um, Juliette group of the Ellis. And so I bought, uh, we bought dope by the clubhouse. What dope off a few of the guys, they all had guns.

So after we did some dope buys, I found that I got introduced to the Colombian that was actually providing the cocaine to not only the Ellis, but everybody else, you know, in that area. So I kind of moved over into his group. And I bought dope and some pistols off of his underlinks. And then we rolled up to a guy that was his number two.

But some dope off that guy in a pistol. We do a search warrant. He cooperates. We had the Colombian deliver five keys to us. And then we took them off.

So it's one of the things where you start building. I started getting what you get in the criminal community. And you start, you know, you show yourself as a criminal or a guy that's hungry. You're looking to come up, you know, I'm just trying to come up. You know, trying to make money.

Just want to you. And you got a little bit of gift of gab. You know, at that time, I just, for whatever reason, has the ability to do that. And so we rolled through the outlaws. We ended up season their clubhouse in Juliet on Oak Street.

I think 90 or 90. And it might have been later, 92 maybe.

“So we did, I think, four or five of those guys.”

We did the Colombian. And then we did the Colombian's group.

So it was like my first, like getting into an actual group or organization and kind of seeing how it,

how the criminal community really runs. But there's a lot more to it than that. I mean, I've, I've not done undercover work. Uh, near as extensive as you have. But I've, I've done a multiple occasions for multiple outfits.

Uh, I mean, I mean, there's just, there's a lot to deal with. How do you do when you're conducting surveillance as an undercover guy? I mean, everybody that fucking passes by you slip. There's, the paranoia that you deal with is everybody's watching me. I'm fucking compromised at every corner I go to.

Oh, why do that guy fucking drive by so slow? Yeah, that hyper vigilance goes just farther with the dog that just took a shit next. You know what I mean? Like, what? How are you?

That's why after 30 years of doing it? I was in my basement in the millenight pacing back and forth. Because I was like, I'd lost my mind. And the, I mean, you see, go with a bike, they outlaws. Then you're in the Columbia and Cartel.

I mean, dude, it's just, you're just, you're just, you continue to. We have through these things and you're just building more and more and more. Correct. Uh, undercover's like sales. At the end of the day, it's your salesman.

So I go in. I meet a guy sometimes. It's a cold call sales. Like, hey, how you doing? I think you do windows.

All right. Let me, I'm going to say you some windows. Or you might get an introduction from somebody. So say this is my friend. Or this is my cousin.

Or this is a guy that, you know, he's trying to eat. It's a good guy. I watch form. You might have that type of introduction. And then you just start to play out that.

And it's about selling yourself. But you're right. It's, uh, this one guy at the academy. Um, he said it so succinctly. He goes, here we see a swine.

Going across a, uh, a smooth pond. And it looks beautiful. So swines just float. But underneath is fricking me. He's just patting like a motherfucker to get across.

But it looks fucking smooth on the top. That's what undercover is. In your head.

“You're thinking, how am I going to move this from point A to point B?”

Does this guy like me? Is he going to kill me? Is he going to rob me? We get robbed occasionally on a few times. So he's going to jerk his pistol and go to work.

Um, it's he set me up to get somebody else to do me. You know, it's all that you're constantly thinking that. And working in that in your head, what am I going to do if, you know, you're constantly reassessing the situation.

Um, after B with the club, like,

Mills guys when they were henchmen up and rockford. Yeah, going to clubhouse. Not everybody likes you. You know, I think I'm a pretty personal guy. And everybody should love me.

But you get in that mix with these people. And some people are like, there's something about you. I don't fucking like. And you're like, okay. So now I'm going to win over this guy.

Am I going to, I'm not going to fucking be pet him on the head. No, come on, man. Like me. So you got to figure a way to get this guy to like you. And a lot of sometimes we'll do street theater where we'll do some other criminal act with another agent.

And this guy will watch.

And like, okay, well, maybe this guy's about it.

And so we do that. And it, uh, under cover is like, how do you stage that? We just figure out we do, um, I want to give away too much stuff because guys are out there still doing it. But we'll do a crime. We might hire these guys to act as a look up.

“Because all you need to do, like I, one time, mirror me now, going up to a guy and say, hey, look man.”

$500. I need to do is have a walkie talkie and be at the end of this road. If you see anything, a car did, even a car, even if it's not a cop. You get on right away and you say, it does look good. I go and then you drive away.

It's all I need to do. But while I'm doing that, I got a bag of guns. And he's like, what do you up to? Just watch for the car. Okay.

Now, I haven't told him anything. But he's starting to think it is said, what the fuck can do it up to? You know, what's he got going on? Then he want to know, all criminal groups, everybody's looking to move up. Make more money.

Be more violent. So like, if you're a guy that looks like you're a plug to get somebody into that. It's like, man, we'll see what those guys are about. We'll see if we can move the ball forward with those cats. And that's, that's kind of how it works.

So street tears. A good way to time builds credibility. And for undercover stuff, and that you don't generally have a lot of time to build it. Kind of build a lot of these guys in the criminal community. They've known each other for years.

They've been criminal for years. And so now I'm the new guy. And so now you've got to kind of build that credibility in a short period of time. And sometimes it's, it's hard to do. Sometimes it works.

And sometimes they're like, what you just go away. Go away. Go again. Yeah. When it comes to, I mean,

“So do you remember your first, your very first approach is an undercover guy?”

Mm-hmm. What was it? Was a sought-off shotgun from a guy named Pig? Mm-hmm. Why were you after him? I, it was a favor to a local law enforcement.

A lot of times, like your local police department has resources, but they don't have undercover resources. Gotcha. So you might have the alcoholpone in that, that community. This guy's name was Pig. He was alcoholpone. He wasn't a cartel guy, but he was a guy that made the quality of everybody's life in that community.

Shit. Because he was a bully. He was an asshole. He just, nobody liked him. His name was Pig. So the sheriff called the CPEC guys and said, you guys got a guy. We might be able to get a guy to introduce a guy to, he's just, you know.

It's got a sought-off shotgun he wants to sell. You know, that's, like, not a case we would normally do, but they needed alcoholpone, who was Pig. Just removed from their community because it just made the quality of life of everybody else in that community. He's just that guy that was just a problem.

And so I met Pig.

As my first, as a first undercover dealer,

then the cars for a gun. And I was like, I was nervous. Like, it's Pig, you know, this guy's fucking probably a cartel, fucking level. Like, I'm thinking, if he's the alcoholpone of, you know, we'll, or forget the small town, it was Wilmington.

Wilmington, Illinois, you know, population, you know, 120 people. Said, I'll go get Pig. So I get down there and the guy was just a, he was just an asshole. You know, so I've got the gun off of him and then they took him off the next day in charge of him in the state.

“So, but that's what my boss's attitude at that point in time was the federal government.”

He took, you know, a lot of local law enforcement's going to have so much that they can do. And sometimes they can't, maybe take it to the next stop. Maybe do a Rico, which is, we're hard to do. But jurisdiction, they might have a baguette that's coming out of another jurisdiction into their jurisdiction doing crime and leaving. You know, on this day, don't catch them here.

It might be problematic for them to go to another jurisdiction to get them like another state. So because of that, because we have stuff like Rico and things, we can, that jurisdiction, we don't have those problems anymore. So we can charge that crime. Excuse me, whether the guy was over here or over here, the crime was here and he's over here doing crime.

We can charge them all together, federally. And how, I mean, you're living in these communities.

Yeah. So, in you were married during a lot of it.

I was married the first time for about, I have two wonderful kids.

“I think I got married young and my first wife did not enjoy the job.”

Don't bet that she did. I enjoyed it any level. And I think that, and I was not, I was not a good person either. More like, I was not good. I like to think of myself though.

But I was like, I dove so much into doing the job that whatever she had going on. I was like, and it wasn't, I'm not saying it was just me. You know, she had her issues too. And we got to the point where I go, this is, this is not good. And she hated the job every day. It was a problem every day.

It was way to do this. Why do you look like that? It's one of that. Like I go to kids' invention. And I have to look like, you know, some church.

You know, they'd be like, why is Zack's dad? Look like that. You know, and I would tell the kids were really good at not saying anything. I say, look, guys, we can't talk about what dad does. That's just the way it is.

We had codes, like we had one problem when we were in New Guy. Even though, like, okay, we got to go. No questions ask in the car we leave.

“Unfortunately, they knew way too much about violent crime and bad people at a very early age that I look back now.”

I was a good thing, but so I was divorced. Well, I separated and then eventually divorced around 92 or so. And it just, I got to delve into the job after that. And then the problem with my ex, not problem with my ex wife. It's that every other weekend, the kids and Wednesdays.

So I was broke. I had no money. So I was on the SRT team also at the same time.

And so I had my kid was always in the apartment I lived in.

So the kids would dig through it and, you know, put on the helmet, put the vest on and carry her. And so I say, hey, let's do quick peeks. Or like, what's that? I go, all right, let's say all the bad guys are in this room and I'd put the stuff animals on the bed. All right, you get one chance, you get a split second.

When I quick peek, you come back and tell me how many. So we made it into a game. So we started out doing just quick peeks. Like, and then my daughter, who was always whisperer than my son. I love him both, but she's an engineer and he's a law enforcement.

He couldn't do math. So that's what he's offered. She was always, she picked up on everything. She was actually, by six or seven, the most tactical girl. I mean, the stuff that would come out of her mouth when we were doing stuff.

We had, uh, I did one set up in where it was in the apartment. There were two doors on either side, down the hallway, two doors. So you got two problems and then a third door. So you got three problems. You got to solve as we move through to sweep this area.

So I mean, they're little. And I got them got a vest on and stuff. And so took terms of being team leader. So my daughter would get in front right away. You know, she loved to, you know, so she would get up and she'd give this.

And we'd wait as she'd go. She'd give it a night. So I tapped Zach, Zach taps her. She's like, "Go, go, go." So she would do a button hook and she would want Zach to do a cross-room.

And we'd have one of the, one of the stuff animals that have a pistol. You know, that a shooter don't shoot. You know, they kind of thing. And then it got even more involved to the point where I was like, "Okay. They'd like, "Okay, what are we doing today?"

And I'm like, "All right." I got a warrant for Moose. This is a bad guy. Might be two people in the place. I go, "What kind of entry we're going to do?"

We're going to do surrounded call out. What are we going to do? So Zach, my son, is like dynamic entry. We're going in there. I'm like, and he's like, "Well, there's two people in there also.

Are they separate?" She starts. She's like seven at the time. Wow. So we would get up to clear the door.

And she'd say, "Shit, like, Zach when it was his team leader time." He'd go up. He's calling the shots. What's going to happen? And he gets up there and he's kind of hesitating because there's three problems he's got to solve.

He doesn't know what your own moose is in.

So what do we clear first?

What's the most dangerous? So he gets up there and she goes, "I hear from my daughter seven year a little girl." She goes, "Come on, Zach. Work the problem."

Oh, man. I was like, "I'd love you, man." Wow.

“So that's how we kind of, that's what we did.”

We did that a bunch of times. And the unfortunate aspect of that was, when I would go back to the, I had my Wednesdays. I would go, I'd run to the office sometimes. They'd do their homework in the conference room.

And then we'd go out and do buys and then come back. So he had everybody in my group there and there'd be, you know, going on the table and we're putting everything in evidence and stuff. And my kids are doing their homework. I remember one time, it was the DC sniper.

Remember when the guy was going around killing people? Oh, yeah. All right. So we were taking turns. People would be detailed out to DC.

So Joey Roosevelt was in my group and I got test.

But also the time I would have been out there was the first

daddy-daughter dance that I would have been able to go to. So Joey's in the room with me. My daughter's in there. He goes, you know what? I'll switch it up.

I'll go. You know, and you can go to the dance. So I'm like, "Dex, you all appreciate that." So Joey catches this night. Well, he doesn't catch this sniper, but on the per block when they come out,

my kids are watching TV. And there's Joey. He's caught this sniper. So my daughter's like, "Call me on the phone. Dad.

Now if you're going to believe it. Watching TV. Joey caught this sniper." So here's my kids that they know what a sniper is. They know that he's killing people and taking their lives.

So where their little heads were going at the time. I have no idea.

But I'm sure they are two exceptional adults.

And they worked out okay. But I can't imagine what. They must have been taken at that time. You know, it just was weird. I talked to my daughter later.

At one point, she actually talked to another agent's daughter that was having some issues.

“And I remember she said, "She goes being little in being with your group of guys.”

And I saw how they acted with you." And when Joey said, "You know, if you're dead, I was a problem. I'm going to go in and get them." She goes, "I was like, "Shit." You know, it's all cool in the zoo.

Joey's going to be there if there's a problem. It'll be okay." And it was like, "Okay. I'm glad that you had that for yourself." Because there's a lot of people who kids in law enforcement.

They do not end up very, very well. And it's not just specific law enforcement. It's any time you have a father that's a little bit. Not there all the time. That's a tough thing, man.

It's very, very important. So, yeah, Tom realising that. I got a four year old boy. And it's, uh, he needs dad. They all do, man.

And, you know, the breakdown of the families. One of the major problems in the country. You know, it's just that it. The nuclear family has, you know, just been shot. So, yeah.

So, having that and having the kids be able to, um, have those experiences. It was hard.

“I think a little bit, I was hard on them at different times.”

Um, but, um. They did, they turned out, okay. They're good. But daughter's an engineer. She's a biosystems, a mechanical engineer. She makes like biodesyl.

And now, she's working. She's in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Trying to be, uh, my dad was, uh, kind of a horseman. He raised horses on a farm when he was a kid. He always wanted to be a barrel racer.

He goes, he called her bug. He goes bug. He got the perfect legs. You're strong. You're an athlete. It's a crypt that horses your super light and that pel me.

Wipping you around that arena and those barrels. She never ended up doing it. But that was, that was like my dad's goal for. Right on. I'm going to funny.

Where I was going is, I mean, you're undercovering in the same town or in the same area that you're living. And that's just something I've never ever had to do. Yeah. In order to have a family when I was anyways, but.

So, how, how are you mitigating your own paranoia?

“How are you keeping your family from being compromised?”

Killed. Being trailed. Tipping off where your kids live, who your wife is. There's a lot of shit to think about that.

I've never had to think about when we first started doing it.

The ability to find out who you were where you were at was harder than it is now. Now there's, it's so easy to do. So there is difference. I, we always got trained up when we were getting trained. But we still train it now.

You always wipe yourself off when you leave. If you got to go back and do another run, go someplace else. We always have, we don't always have. But a lot of times we have an undercover apartment. Get done doing a deal.

Go back to you in the cover apartment. You got eyes on you in the cover apartment. You'll be in there. You just sit down. Let's relax for a while.

Maybe go out. Go to a bar. Get a sandwich. Come back to you in the cover apartment. Have everybody that's your crew that's watching you.

Observe. To see you make sure everything is okay. And then go home from there. I used to do that for the girl or the, Elzango or an,

Henschman case. Had an undercover apartment about 30 miles outside of Rockford in a small town. Partement. I would go there after I would meet. I'd sit there.

I'd wait for a little while. Like three or four hours. Make sure everything was everything. And I do a couple runs on my way out. Clean myself off and then go on.

The nasty R. Yeah. Did you just say that you had, there was an element that was overwatching it for a, At times they were in times it weren't.

It's a lot of manpower to have that go on. When you do a long term infiltration type thing, you're tying up and overwatch crew or just guys in your group for, you know, now no one's doing anything except for this specific thing.

We were such a small agency.

which ended up saving our life at one point. Talked about it later,

“but we didn't have a whole fucking group.”

So you were kind of on your own to make sure that you were safe when you got out of there.

And I would always do my due diligence to make sure I was,

I was wiped off and cleaned up before I went home. I was looking at what's actually in most dog food the other day. And it's kind of crazy when you think about it. It's all heavily processed, cooked at high heat. And then they have to add back synthetic vitamins and minerals just to make it complete.

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“Have you ever had an incident where you were with your family?”

And about actor that you were after us. Actually, one of the guys on Mel's friends. I would take my kids to Odyssey Fun World. Early in the morning at 9 o'clock before the assholes came. Like, three o'clock, four o'clock in the afternoon.

Then it was crowded. You know, as you try to keep an eye on everybody. You're looking at everyone. So I would go in the morning when no one was there. And I remember when the Mel's guys went upstairs.

I don't know if he had kids or his with like a girlfriend's kids or something, but they were doing something. And he had his cut on. And unfortunately, my kids knew what Benjamin Angels all those.

They knew all that stuff. So my son's bounding upstairs to go to this one game.

He always liked video gaming.

He'd like to play. And he's running up the stairs. I look up on I see this guy on the left side on my gosh. Shit. And I would never let my daughter.

“We held hands and we played all the games together.”

She was never by herself. So she sees it at the same time. I see it. And she'll say, "Dad, I go. And I gave her the.

The no sign. And I'm like, Zach. And he's like, you know, boys. Zach. He's running up.

He's not listening. He probably gets to the top of the stairs. And then he kind of sees it. And he like turns around his eyes are super big. So he leans up against like a pillar in her.

And he looks down as. And I give him the like, let's go. And he can't let it go. So he like leans back against the wall. And he goes.

And I'm like. Yeah. And then he's like, he comes out of guess the wall. Like he's Joe. Like it's all good.

Yeah. He walks out of the steps, get his hand. I go. We got to go. He goes.

Yeah. So we go out. I go ahead. When I give you this, you just go. I don't need your sit rep.

Whatever the situation is at that. But I go, we're just. We're going to frick it. Excellent. Right now.

You have to frick it. Come around. And he's like, he's like, yeah. I know he was. Are we afraid of that guy?

I go, no, but you know what? He was up there with his kids.

We wouldn't want an argument or have a problem with his kids up there.

And they were like, okay, okay, right. Okay. So that was the only time that that's that. That was a holy shit. That's very.

Wow. But I'd say what I look back at stuff. And I am. It's like even coming into the Lord and fighting getting back into faith. I am extremely thankful for where I'm at now.

Compared to where I was by the time I retired. It's. I'm very fortunate. Very fortunate. I worked with some great guys that I know would save me in a minute.

And yeah, I was very, very fortunate. Did you have a plan for if that happened?

“I mean, how different was your cover story than your actual story?”

I mean, obviously. Pretty close. I mean, I can wrench on cars and stuff. I knew construction inside and out. I poured concrete to frame piles.

It's worked with my dad all the time. My dad was just jack of all trades. So it actually came in handy because it looked like you really were who you're reporting to.

I always had a set of tools in the trails.

Yeah. So like when the brothers hot water tank went out. You know, so having the ability to do that non-criminal stuff, just it helps your backstop story because now you become more real to these guys. Shit.

It swapped out on my hot water heater. You know, cops going to do that. And then any preconceived myth about undercovers, you know, that would always come in. And like what? Like, well, if you're undercover and I'm a bag of you and I ask you, are you now or are you ever been a police officer?

You got to tell me otherwise it's in traffic. So that was like the big one. So a lot of those guys would say, are you now or have you ever been affiliated with a law enforcement? You know, you'd be like, no. All right.

Because if you were, you'd have to tell me otherwise it's in traffic.

“So we hope perpetuate that mistake, but I think everybody figured it out by now.”

But back in the day, that was one of the things. So slowly we'd ask you to, you know, questions and stuff like that. It's just like, yeah, I'm lying, but it's okay. [laughs] I'm lying, but it's okay.

Wow.

So how did the, who did you go after first was that the,

I started with childless laws. Yeah, I started the, I was case in a wasn't an infiltration. I didn't, those guys didn't know me more in a handshake. You know, and I wrote on the credibility of the, the informant. And so it was just a jolly at guys.

And it was like, just enough to get a proper cause for a search warrant and get the guns and, and the dope that we had purchased we used. And then we bought enough dope out of the clubhouse that we were able to seize it, federally seize it, orphaned it. So we took the clubhouse.

But it, it was that time that I met some of the guys. They didn't get wrapped up in that first case, but I met some of those guys. They ended up getting it on with Mel and his crew from, at the time, they were in Annie Aquilano and then they moved up to a small town right at the board of Illinois, what's constant.

And then state line chapter, they were called to the outlaws. And they had moved up there. And so I had met some of those guys. I knew the, I met the president. And again, just writing on the credibility.

I didn't buy anything. I didn't talk to him about criminal activity. It was just kind of a meet and greet. You know, it's been a little time at the clubhouse in Annie Aquilano, but not very much.

You know, that was about it just getting seen. You know, you know, it's can't run up on somebody to go, "Hey, got a machine gun?" Yeah. You know, it doesn't work.

So you got to build that. Get that foundation set before you move forward. What is it that, what's go criteria for the ask? I mean, how much time are you spending building their trust, hanging out with them?

You know, what is in your head? What is go criteria for art? I'm good enough. I can make the ask. Sometimes though, if they ask you a question,

like, do, what are you trying to come up? Are you trying to eat? Like, what are you looking to do? Yeah, it'd be like, oh, fuck no. You know, I got to plug over here for dope.

I got this guy, but this guy is short. I don't know. If you got a guy, you know, yes, not you. I don't want to come to you for dope or guns. But if you got a guy that could hook me up, that'd be great.

“So a lot of times they're like, "Well, fuck, why give your money to that guy?”

You can deal with me directly." Oh, okay, great. Okay, I'll deal with you. So that's kind of the, you know, kind of ammo, but it's a vibe.

You know, you got to kind of feel it. You can tell how people act toward it. You know when people don't like you. I'm sure you know that feeling. And so you get a, you get a good vibe for that.

Have an understanding of how much to push and how much not to push. You know, how much still like kiss their ass for like, you guys are the best. And not be some suck ass that's, you know, you know, got these guys up on something pedestal you're trying to be like.

studying, bike or gang culture? Hey, got to do your homework.

I did, when I first started,

we went through the academy and I, he saw the sizzle realize like, no one will ever, I'm like, fuck, come on man, just gotta be away.

You know, we got to be away to get in on these guys. And I knew that my predecessors, the guys that I admired in my organized crime group, they did some mob guys. So I'm like, I think every,

if you find the right angle to come at them, everybody can get done and every criminal can get be had at some point. If you work at the right way. Why did they say that for God?

“So can you just elaborate on that for the audience?”

It's just hard. Like, more shagging in the guy that said, there was a mistake for the motorcycle gang stuff. It was when I did it in, when I did the most case,

I think started in probably late. No. Yeah, late 92. Just doing the homework on the guys, like trying to figure out who's going to zoom and what was going on.

And then it wasn't until probably mid 93 that I really started at full time and then it extended to almost 95 until I just got to violent. And 80s had no more. But the work up on it was,

you know, doing your homework or these guys about, but we didn't know what it was going to take to become a member of any of that. You know, they have, you know,

there was always these rituals.

You know, I remember one girl told me she goes, agent, if you know, she goes, you know, it's kind of gross. But she goes, you know, you're going to have to blow a dog. I go like that.

She goes, yeah, to get in on these guys, you're going to have to blow a dog. I go, are you fucking kidding me? She goes, that's what I heard. Like, what you heard or what you know.

And she's like, well, that's what, that's the rumor of how to get in this club. You're going to have to do that. So I remember asking one of that, and I was like, "I got to blow a dog or some shit

to get in here."

“He goes, "Dude, that's what you hear of that."”

And I'm like, "I didn't want to say it's a law enforcement profession. I'm telling you that's it to get in." That was just like, no, I just kind of, somebody told me that one time he goes,

"Dude, if I told you to blow a dog and you did it, I would send you on down the highway." He goes, "No, we want men. Not dog blurs." I'm like, okay, good.

All right, I think I can, I can handle that. I'll be okay." So yeah, so that was kind of, but yeah, that's, we didn't know. A friend of mine that's West Point grad,

there was also an agent. He was helicopter pilot, flew a cobras, great guy. He had actually done a bike club called The Warlocks down in Florida.

And he had met the president at the gym. This guy's West Point guy. Just played football for a point. I mean, he just saw it jacked up cat. The president liked him right away,

because he was a big dude. And he basically said, "Come on in. I'm going to give you your own chapter." So he got himself in like four or five other ETF agents. They developed their own chapter.

The Warlocks down there got patches. And he did have to prospect or start out or in their way. They kind of just got, by virtue of the fact that this guy really liked the West Point guy.

Steve Martin was a great undercover. He said, "No, we, you're okay. You're with us." And we're like, "We're going to get you guys going." So they started their own chapter.

They did a bunch of those guys down there. But that was, that was the only guy I had to talk to. Great friend of mine. And I would compare notes like, "Well, how did, like, what are they asking you to do?

Do you got to commit a murder? Do you got to do all this violence shit?" He's like, "I don't, for these guys down here, we got patched. I don't know what it's like to start from scratch and move up."

Oh my God.

“So, do you always, do you always start from scratch?”

Because I mean, I guess starting from scratch. I don't want to come across like I'm trying to diminish anything. Oh. So please don't take it away. Oh my God.

But, you know, I mean, so I did some undercover work. A lot most of it on the Middle East. And, you know, we would get these briefings on culture and all this shit.

And, of course, the briefings were always fucking off.

So we did something to immediately. Yeah, really. I remember one time I walked this guy through an entire city and to clean him up. And he was, I had him walking through metal detectors in all this shit.

Yep. And we finally do the pickup after a couple hours. And he gets in the car. And he's like, "That woman at the hotel. That was, that was you guys, wasn't it?"

And that guy at the fucking mall. That was also you guys. And I'm like, "How do you know all this shit?" And he's like, "Well, guy had the knife on the wrong side. The woman had, "That's where I'm in a fucking burka."

The wrong way that sash was on the, you know? And I was just like, "Man, we are fucking clown show." We got to go back. So why did I call the sea? The clown's in action.

Oh, that's funny. But so, so, but, so where I'm going with this is if you're starting from the beginning, if you're starting as a guy coming up who's just interested in the Biker gangs,

And so what you kind of want to do is, like, I see how you, like, I, like, what I told like this guy Paul Jensen that was one of the henchmen up in Rockford, I saw man, I see how you guys roll and how you guys act. Man, I'd love to be a part of this bro.

I said, "I, but, you know, I always, Jon Muzzle, it's said,

"Never play a bad ass, never play a tough guy." He goes, "Just play the chute." Because if you're a guy looking for answers, trying to figure it out. So I was like, "Okay." So I would tell Paul Jensen.

I said, "Man, I love riding Harley's, I love club life. I think that's for me." Yeah, he's like, "Oh man, he goes, if you're interested." He goes, "You know, just start coming around." I'm like, "Okay."

And so he would give me to, like, the protocol of meeting somebody. Like you shake your hand, you know, I'm Chris. Rockford hanging around, hanging around, rockford. You know, there's a way to meet these guys. Never touch the patch.

Don't fight with the brothers. You're going to get a beat down. You know, that kind of thing. So there was like that protocol, the nuances of being in a club. And so he was very good about just, you know, kind of teaching me the ropes.

The other ones, like, for the Allies before, I was just a friend of a guy that knew. So again, they didn't know me further than a handshake. So it was not that hard, but it wasn't an infiltration.

And, you know, it's kind of funny we always talk about,

like, is it worth taking the time to infiltrate

“or can you figure out a different way to get these guys?”

And a lot of times, figuring out the other way is a lot safer and a lot of expedient. You might not get the same bag for the buck, but you're taking off the head of the snake. So let's just do it this way.

It's a little bit easier. So infiltration always isn't they are getting a patch. That's not the goal. The goal is to make the case. You know, at the end of the day, you don't see you got a patch,

but nobody went to jail. You're wasting your time. So if you're working toward, you know, collecting evidence and buying dope and buying guns and showing their criminal activity, that's one thing.

But if you're just doing it for the sake of doing it, it's not worth it. A lot of guys have done cases on bike gangs

where they never became a member.

They just were able to be friend these guys. And some guys say, "Why don't you, you know, why don't you put your toe in a water, man? Why don't you say, "Ah, I got my own thing going on. I'm okay."

And they were able to go through and do quite a few people. So, you know, it's not always the infiltration that really gets it and wins the game at the end. Sometimes it's just being smart about the number people you have, you know, money, ETF's going to have the time

that's going to be expended to do this, is it worth it? And so, a lot of times, I did a better case

“that, if you want to tell you what we can talk about,”

too, is a different bike gang. But they did a historical case for, as the grim reapers. They were Midwest clubbed. I did right after the henchmen.

Midwest club about maybe 500 members, 400 members. They were in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee. Kind of wasted premise, kind of orientation they had. Those ties with, you know, the clan guys, a kind of thing. But they did a historical case on them.

Where they went back and identified all the violent axes guys had done, barbedoedings, a rape, home invasions, stealing motorcycles. They had really put together this historical case that was awesome. So, when I got to the point where I was doing the other cover part

and got introduced, all I had to do was get conversation about a lot of these acts that they had already proven up. And now I have bought a small amount of dope from a guy. Well, that makes all the historical dope they could put on. I'm good.

So, it made it a lot easier. And it's a way better way to do those kinds of organizations. So, it got the historical case with all the components. And then I would go back now as a fresh face. I see, man, I heard you guys,

that guy you dropped in the bar that night went out, flipped them off and stole his hearty. I go bad. I was equal, yeah, we beat his ass, fuck he was unconscious. We went out and then we stripped it down, you know,

the triple tree and the rest of the parts went in the river. And then we sold everything in the allows and jewelry at. They were aligned with the allows and jewelry. So, you get that conversation now and it makes all that historical case that they've done that you may have shitty witnesses about.

It makes it really good because now you got that actual confession and evidence about that crime. You've stroked a lot of egos. I've told a lot of guys, man, you're the shit. Yeah.

So, that's what it's about. But you don't want to be a punk either. Because then they don't want you around. So, there's that balance of, like, man, I respect how you take care of business.

“You have to do it in a, like, a much, you know,”

not much of, but kind of a manly kind of, I mean, I respect what you guys do, man. You know, I respect how you guys handled that. Man. Embedding is a hell of a lot more complicated than just being

undercover for a couple of fucking days. It's weird. You know, it's weird, but it's also, it's like, it's like being on a wrestling or the boxing team, you know, you're on a team, but it's up to you individually to go out

and freak a whip a game. I don't know. And put these guys in jail. And so, it's like, you got to hold team around you, but it's up to you.

It wasn't until, like, probably 2000,

“where we started working together in groups.”

We'd have three UC's going to do a deal. And man, that was like, I was like, this is awesome now. You like that better. Oh, I'm seeing it on your own.

I'd like to be on my own because then I had only myself to be responsible for. But when you got guys that are of such a high caliber, and I watched them how they work and the stuff that would come out of their mouth and how they knew

where I was thinking and we would play off each other. It's just, it's like an orchestra man. I mean, I'd be saying one thing and this guy would help bolster it by saying some stew. You know, it just was that Evan flow of these guys

and their ability to really, really talk to people and get information out of them. And it was fun. And now that your security's a lot better too. Now you got a guy, you don't have to turn around.

You know, you can, you know, I know there's a guy just got my back right on. How often would you be having to report back or check in or be affiliated with ATF when you're embedded?

“I think, every day, every day, every day.”

What I would do for the henchmen case, I'd get up. Man, I was out of the house by, like, 4 a.m. I would go to the office, get the report stuff handled. I would sit down with the secretary. I'd give her, this is what happened last night.

These are recordings I had. She would take care of putting that stuff. Her, I would put it in evidence, but she would document the evidence she put it in. We'd write a quick brief, we'd do a report.

And then by 9 o'clock, I was back in the mix. I would, I would be back with those guys doing stuff.

I always played it where I lived a distance away that gave me time

if there was something that I needed to either get more people. Something bad it happened. Or just, guy, back as a lazy by nature. And I kind of want to make a trip all the way 40 minutes to, you know, come check me or stop by for beer or something like that.

So, the times even being embedded, I was able to ruin myself to the point where you could build a little bit of life. Yeah, wow. Yeah.

“But the henchmen, I didn't know enough by the time I had joined the”

groomed reapers, which was kind of an interesting, we fake to get in and back up a little bit. To get in an informant to get into the groomed reapers. They arrested a guy. A three-time convicted felon, a guy named Crazy.

So, they arrest Crazy for having a pistol on his pants. Well, the club brothers did not put any money on his books, and he sat in the federal lockup for three months with nothing. So, at that three month point, he called up, he said, "I want to cooperate.

I'm looking at a lot of years." He goes, "I want to do the right thing." So, they went out and interviewed him. So, the bikers know that if you're in jail, and you're looking at 15 years, and there's no bond,

there's no way. If you all said, "Oh, this miraculous thing happened." And now I'm out, and I'm back. Bring me back to the club. They're not going to buy it.

And they're going to kind of kick you to the curb. So, we had to do something that they thought this goes to the street theater part. They thought something that they were watching was really happening in reality.

It wasn't. So, they made a deal with Crazy and Crazy's attorney. We got approval from DOJ to do it. And he said, "Look, we'll dismiss the charges on you for now with prejudice."

But you're going to have to do an introduced guy. You're going to have to give us all the historical stuff on the grim reprisate, you know, all the drug dealing. All the stuff you've done, you know, you got to be completely asked about it. And if it works out, and we're able to secure convictions

at the end of this, and you do your part of it, then we will re-indite you, maybe for a lesser charge. You know, and that's kind of the epic flow of the criminal justice system. If you cooperate, then you get some kind of benefit for it. So, we didn't want to go into court.

We're going to have to go into court and dismiss the charges. So, he had a court date. And all the brothers came in to see what was going on. So, the judge in the attorney knew, and it was already,

yeah, we were just basically going to drop the case.

So, the case agent and the US attorney started getting an argument fake argument, and the US attorney looks at the case agent and he goes, "Well, I'm going to have to dismiss all the fucking charges because you motherfuckers." So, he goes up judge.

Because government, right now, we're going to withdraw with charges against Mr. Africa, whatever his name was. And then judges like defense counsel got anything. And they're like, "Well, we're all good." And he's there.

Bangs a gavel, and he goes, "Okay, it's dismissed." So, the US attorney went around, and now he's tearing into the agent. Fake, of course. So, all the guys in the gallery see this go on. So, when crazy comes out, they're like, "Fuck, great."

This is awesome. So, about a month later, he reduces me as his nephew.

So, wow, that should, so the fucking attorneys

that everybody could be in on it. Yeah, it was like a legal, there was nothing wrong with it. They got in this fake argument in the middle of courtroom. You know, the judge was like, "The judge was like, "Okay, with it, he was like fine."

And again, this is a shit like this with the government. It does not happen in a vacuum. You've got to run that shit up the chain. You know, everybody's like, "Yeah, there's no problem. You're just dismissing the case with prejudice, no big deal."

You were going to do that anyway for its cooperation. So, you're good. So, that's what, that's what we did. And then, I got introduced. And then, for the next 15 months after,

I got done with the mill stuff. And they said, "No more of that. I rolled into that." And then, became a hang around and a prospect. And then, you know, we didn't plan on that to begin with.

They were like, "Do you think you could get out of these guys?" I go, "I think I'm okay." I went out and I bought like a stolen Harley off the president of the Iowa chapter,

like first night out loaded at the back of my pickup truck.

And I go, "I think I'm okay." And they were like, "All right, let's go." So, that was like, back in it again.

“So, I mean, the reason I was asking how often you have to check in”

is, is how many guys have you seen, or maybe none. But how many of you guys lose themselves when they're embedded in a Italian mob and the bike or gangs in the inner city gangs? Yeah. It's a little bit, I think.

It's an attractive lifestyle. It's fucking exciting. There's women, there's drugs, there's booze, there's fights, like, anybody that's, I don't know. Got a little test as real fucking man.

That shit's attractive. There's a lot of power, a lot of ego, a lot of women, a lot of, like, it's just a, it's true that you're doing gangsters shit. Yeah. And some of the guys, you actually, you're like, "I like that guy."

Like, if that guy wasn't a criminal right now, we'd probably be friends because he's actually a person of all guy. His choices in life, though, he's gone to the left there and he's doing what he's doing. So, yeah.

So, you had that. And I think that's just the nature of. You try to look for the best in people. I mean, sometimes, I mean, the way I was brought up, you know, everybody gets, you know, he's kind of looking for the best in people.

You know, he tries some way to communicate with them or get on their level. And it's just that interpersonal communication stuff that lends itself to having feelings for or losing yourself. We've had guys, we had one guy that, it's his story to tell him. I won't tell him, but yeah, he had a problem.

But as he's doing, he goes, "I like these guys more than I like my agents in my office." And well, that's a problem. I remember talking to him. And I'm like, "Bro, what do you, you wear a white hat?"

That's a black hat. There's a lot of gray area in between. But at the end of the day, you're the police. And he was struggling. He goes, "Yeah, but these guys are about brotherhood and this stuff."

I go, "If these guys know who you are, they will kill you." I said, "If they have their opportunity to slit your fucking throat right now, they would fucking kill you." "Where's their brotherhood and that?" He's like, "Wow."

So a lot of guys do, they have an issue, or they run into problems with it. If you ever had that issue, I was pretty much new. Where I was at, there were guys I liked. I felt bad.

My body was tired, it's got murdered by the allows up there, and we were as funeral. I was actually at a guard clubhouse at the time, but I felt bad. I was angry.

I was mad. I'll put my knee in jail for the stuff he was doing. But yeah, he believed my story.

He was always looking out.

He always looked out. He goes, "Man, you guys aren't paying enough attention. They're trying to get us." He would tell me, "In foreign to myself now, are you checking your ship or bombs?

Are you strapped every fucking day you come out of the house?

“You need to move closer because we're, like I said,”

we were waiting, you know, 35, 40 minutes away. You should probably move closer in town. We have a problem. We need everybody together." I will think about it.

But yeah, so it's like a guy like that. He's looking out for me. But he's looking out for me because he believes I'm a freaking criminal. He's not looking out for me because he loves Chris Bayless. You know what I mean?

You got to kind of figure that component of it out. It's hard. A lot of people struggle with that. I would imagine. I would imagine.

I mean, I would imagine that depending on how much time you're spending with these guys and you get attached to them. And I mean, I've seen lots of, say, case officers get attached to fucking assets. It's ill as old as time.

It's time. When they get killed. But anyways, but you're in a, you are at a brotherhood. You're in a full blown criminal operation. And I would imagine you like a lot of these permits.

Like some of these people. I would imagine the lifestyles, the least interesting to you. There's no doubt. It's crazy. I mean, it's, yeah.

And so with that comes maybe a shift in values. I mean, anywhere you, I joined the SEAL teams. I've got all kinds of fucking bad habits from the SEAL teams.

“Bar fighting, I think I'm an icing, boozing.”

All that shit.

And it became a part of who I became a part of who I am for a long time.

Sure. Until I was able to kick that shit. You know what? I think it's a guy told me one time. I was looking at whenever tired.

“I thought maybe I had talked to a guy that was in defense”

intelligence. And he was like, we were just just talking about undercover work. Being in different places, doing stuff. And I was like, man, you guys, that'd be a fun gig. You know, where you guys are at and the stuff you guys are doing.

And he's like, yeah, he goes, if you have a sliding scale of morality sometimes. And I was like, that's, I get it. I was like, you're right. You know, we had those morals, those things we were brought up with. But now I got to be with guys and act like this is something.

I love the fact that you're beating the snout out of your girlfriend. I love the fact, fucker. You know, what does she know? She just respected you. Fuck you.

You got to give her a knot in that.

You know, it's that kind of like,

I don't believe that. Yeah. I'm telling my brother right on. A bit of guy, Paul Jensen had. He had like a little pal, he's still like a whip as girlfriends.

And so he had this little whip. So my now wife at the time was an agent also. And she was my, under she was my girlfriend, played my girlfriend. And like we're talking outside, she's a terrible under cover agent. She's like the worst.

“I was like, you are like, she's like, I know.”

I know, just shut up. And I'm like, okay. So we had gotten this script. And I told her, this is a, I go, they are going to get you. Into the old age.

You're going to get you in room. They're going to ask you some questions. It's not like, oh, hey, welcome. You know, the butt cakes over here. You get a cup of coffee and everything.

I go, they're going to go in. They're going to ask you some shit. She's like, all right. So come up with this script. We practiced it for like six weeks or a month.

Yeah, just every day. I'm asking her questions. Good. So I get to the clubhouse and they're like, because they're kind of like, why are you not with some Check.

There's a million hookers and a million strippers that everybody here is banging. Why are you not participating? I was like, well, I got this check. She's a good earner. You know, takes care of my shit.

You know, they're like, well, you know, we never see her.

All right. So I talked to her and they're like, okay. Just, I just need cameo appearances on some runs and some shit. She's like, all right, I don't do it. So we get to script down.

First time we're at the clubhouse. There's like three, maybe four of the guys, a ladies, girlfriends that are there. So I walk in, make the introductions and everything. And the girls are like, Tina, good.

Come with us. They go upstairs and a clubhouse. She's up there, like, hour and a half. You know, close to two hours. And I'm like, outside, and I'm like, you know, sitting in the,

we got a fenced in area where all the bikes are parked. We're out there just having a beer. And I see her come back out around a corner. And I can see she's got a little bit of a tear in her eye. And so the brothers were kind of walking around

in a different way. So I had one on one side with her. Like, I looked at her like a week old. It goes up. I don't think they believe me.

And I'm like, okay, I said, all right. Oh, I got to go stand over by the bike. So I'm kind of trying to catch the vibe. Because these guys can be telling you, hey, everything's great. And then, you know, and I was like,

check the vibe. So she was kind of stand outside. I used to get to some of the shit out of saddle bag or make like your fucking around over there. So she's at the bike doing something.

So I go back inside and two of the old leaders there and I was like, I go, I go, hey, we're getting ready to run. You know, see you guys later on or something. And they were like, we really like her. Oh, like, are you sure?

'Cause I'm thinking about dumpeter. And they're like, oh, I go, guys, seriously. I go, this is like a freaking, today thing. I go, I don't know. They're like, nah, she's, we like her.

I go, are you sure? Because if you don't, just tell me. 'Cause I'm thinking about dumping her anyway. And they're like, no, we kind of like, okay. So I go back and say, we get on the bike.

Go back to the car park. I go, I guess you did okay. And she's like, they were asking me about this. They were asking me about that. They were asking me about that.

They're shit that you gave me. They were asking about you didn't give me that shit to tell them. She goes, I had to make it up. I said, well, hopefully you did a good job. (laughter)

The little eyes did you tell them so that we can mark down. So you and I are together around our lives. And she's like, all right, fine. So we're at the, under cover park. We had to go back and redo.

“Like, not redo, but just, okay, exactly what did you say?”

Exactly. You know, it was about her background, where you from. You know, where do you work now? What's your phone number? How long have you known Chris?

How long have you guys been dating? You know, your boots look really fucking new. You know, like, all of a sudden, she's a microchick. You know, where you've got these worn girls that have got some stuff that's got some road miles on it.

Tina shows up and all new shit with the price tags to land it. You know, I was like, that's not going to fly. So what she did find on that park was great. The other problem was a couple months later.

He had to sort of paddle and Tina was standing in front of me.

“And Paul goes, "Get Tina a little whack on the ass."”

And I'm like, "Oh, yeah." So she's talking to another lady. So I kind of go forward. I gave her, like, a shot on the butt, with this little leather whip thing with a paddle on it.

Well, she spins around, man. Bam. And she blasts me right in the chest. And then she realizes I shouldn't have done that. And I look at her.

And I hear Paul Jensen go. "You should get your cotton line." And I'm like, "Right on, bro." So I grab her by there and I walk over the side of the clubhouse. I go, "Sweetie, you can't punch me in front of these guys."

I go, "It's not going to make me feel like that." So I am so, so sorry. I go, "Okay." I go, "I got to put John time out, man."

I go back and sit on the bike with your arms folded.

Pouting. It just sit there. She's like, "Okay." So she goes back, sits on the bike. So we go in with the rest of the guys.

I'm having a beard, the thing.

“So I'm looking around and they don't know what he says anything.”

You know, they're just like, "You had to take care of you shit the way you had to take care of you shit." So, after a while, I look at what I go. I go, "You know what, fellas?" I go, "I think time outs over, man." I'm going to go home.

I go and catch you guys later tonight. I go like, "Right on, bro." So I left. I went outside. I was like, "Baby, you cannot."

If we could do that shit, she goes, "I know. I know." But she cannot play that subservient female biker role. You know?

I wanted to tell her I go start washing a bike or start wiping the gas tank off, but I didn't want to.

I said, "Figure time out. Just sitting in time out on the back of the scoot would be enough to... That was her penance for the day to have a... But yeah, but she did... We were practicing getting...

Because we knew the outlaws were trying to get us. So I had a 45 that I carried in my back, back on my pants and we're on the bike. She would practice coming out of my pants if we had to engage while we were riding. We almost had to at one point. So I thought we were all prepared.

I thought I was like, "I got this shit. I'm in the middle of a biker war. I know what some of these guys look like. I fucking gunned up. I got guns over here.

I got guns over my pants. I go, "I'm at it, man." Somebody steps to me. I'm going to fucking crush him. I had no idea how much Dallas knew about where we were at.

What we were doing. Times they had surveillance. Times they tried to kill us. I was oblivious to it until later when I talked to the case agent standing in Vulcanir, who did the recoil on him out of Wisconsin.

“I was up interviewing these guys and they were like, "Yeah, remember you?"”

And I was like, "I thought I was... I thought I was... I thought I was really fucking shit, man." Look at me. Fuck off.

Wow. The realization of that fricking... It's one of those two your needs experience with. You're like, "You know what? I need to fucking reassess who else knows.

Thought the fuck I'm doing." Like how I think of myself. And I got to be better. And so yeah, you try to be better. Damn.

Why did you almost kill somebody under bike? Actually, the Allies almost killed us. We had a one-cover team guy and we were doing a run. You know, you go out and go to Bartobar. You know, so the henchmen and we had some out of town angels over there.

So we're all lined up getting ready to go. Any outlaws. And we found this out later because he outlawed that killed my name at Tias. I interviewed him. He cooperated and gave everything up.

When I interviewed him, he talked about... I asked him about, "Are you guys in a van when night driving by our pack?" He goes, "Yeah." He goes, "We had a couple of ARs, shotguns, and pistols." And we were going to slide the slider over the van.

And as your bikes were going this way, we were coming south. Yes, headed out of the clubhouse, I go, "All right." He goes, "Yeah." He goes, "We were just going to took..." It just opened up on everybody, down the line.

And I was like, "Okay, okay." And the reason I knew that was our cover team guy spotted and knew who the president was on that guy's bike that was driving the van. And so we knew they were... We thought they were just following us.

I had no idea they were gunned up ready to fricking unloaded kill all of us. And so I'm thinking of myself at that point. It wouldn't have mattered if Tina got that 45/5 of the back of my pants. We were going to eat it. There was no way we were going to be able to survive that.

And it's one of those where they saw our surveillance guy. Our surveillance guy saw them. They didn't know if the surveillance guy was one of our guys following a pack that was gunned up ready to go. Or if it was law enforcement that was following a pack, so they called it off and they left.

So as one of those many times where I look back now, and I'm like it's so fortunate to not be injured or hurt. Damn, how long were you guys under cover together? 15 months I think. Well, you're in it.

And these guys are all sharing, women. They would, but you had the right to... You had the choice.

No problem. These will be more a little bit different in that regard.

The grim reapers, I would never bring a girl to grim reapers.

They told me flat out, first chick you bring here, we're fucking her. Like, all right, good to know. So I had no girlfriend during the year and a half on the grim reapers. But at that point, I knew how to play it. Like I said, they had done a historical case.

So I didn't have to push to get a lot of guns or everything. I just had to get a lot of conversation for the Rico. And that's what made that case. And we ended up with 50 defendants in five states.

“I think we, we seized, we seized three clubhouses under that.”

We were able to show historically they had purchased 250 keys from the coke, of cocaine from the Jolietta laws that went to them. So we had that drug conspiracy docked out.

We could show that they had stolen over a million dollars

and hardly gave some motorcycles over the course of just 12 months. So these guys were, I mean, they were out there doing bad things. And so we were able to do that through the Rico. I think we charged 17 guys on the Rico. And the other 38 defendants went on single like I bought dope or single gunbies

or something along those that. And whatever they got caught with during the, uh, during the search warrant that we had did on their houses. And so did you ever have anybody that tried to fuck your partner? My partner that I'm married to.

Yeah, you're well. Well, there were guys that were like very, very interested.

“And like, hey, man, if you guys, how do you guys get down?”

We don't get down like that. I go, I'm a sole proprietor bro. I like, well, like my stuff. And they're good with that. Yeah, they were fine.

Yeah. Right on. Yeah. Well, Chris, let's take a break. Let's do it.

Well, we'll come back, we'll talk about infiltrating those angels, certainly. This episode is brought to you by Row Nutrition. I've been running Row's longevity stack. And it's changed how I think about staying in the game long term. Not just performing now, but staying capable for the next decade.

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“So I think we're getting ready to talk about what we're going to do.”

So I think we're getting ready to talk about what we're going to do. So I think we're getting ready to talk about what we're going to do. So I think we're getting ready to talk about what we're going to do. So I think we're getting ready to talk about what we're going to do. So I think we're getting ready to talk about what we're going to do.

So I think we're getting ready to talk about what we're going to do. So I think we're getting ready to talk about what we're going to do. So I think we're getting ready to talk about what we're going to do. So I think we're going to talk about infiltrating the Hell's Angels. Okay.

Where do we start? Actually, how did you, so was this a tasking or did you decide to do this? Because at the beginning you kind of said it was just a garden. There's the money goes. Right, right.

It was kind of an independent upper.

What we always knew there was a case where two Hell's hands went at the time.

It was sunset when we started, they didn't get their rolling or patched elbows into it was later on. Two Hell's Angels had actually, they were, we knew they were into a lot of different things. Millard got locked up by the FBI for a minute. Car give up, mail fraud. We had information, they were dealing drugs and all about guns.

We also had information in a separate case where two of Mel's guys had done a murder or attempted to kill one of their attorneys that represented him. He hated his wife and didn't want to get divorced, so he thought it'd be better idea to put a bomb on her car and blow her up. So two of Mel's guys went out and actually put a bomb on her vehicle.

But these guys was interesting, criminal masterminds that they were.

“You got two biker guys, they're in a northwest suburb.”

She was taking the train into the city, so she was in a parking area where you get the train, there's coffee shops there. Well, these guys sat around looking suspicious when they put the bomb on and every suburbanites looking at these two biker guys like they were very recognizable. Obviously they didn't read that book left of bang where you look for anomalies, they missed that part. So they put the bomb on, she put some reverse backs up, it detonates, she's not killed. And so we knew that from a contextual or from a standpoint of why would be, look at these guys.

There were no a lot of different stuff. And so that was the pretext for starting investigation. I knew from an undercover standpoint, there's no way I could do these guys in Chicago because again, I knew who Mel was and I knew, we knew, we just grew up in the same area. It was not going to take very long to get found out.

So fortunately, a local police officer in a decal county sergeant had developed a CI. And he said, this guy wants to cooperate, thinks he could, you know, do a case on the rock for angels or head to Hell's Hegeman. I'm like, all right, so I met him and he's like, we got our story kind of down straight. And we knew right away that, you know, I didn't know exactly what we'd have to do to get in. And the intent really wasn't to get in and become a member, it was more just to see if we could perfect a case on the information we could gather just by.

Being around those guys. But it looked like it was moving toward like an infiltration kind of thing as we started to go. So it became like, okay, well, we can keep going on this. Let's see how far we could go and get into the internal workings of the club that we wouldn't get if we were just, you know, on the outside, superficially. So as we started hanging around, we backed up ourselves with the CI was actually a counselor for drug addiction.

And so they knew he didn't use her drink.

“And so it helped me with the drug component because I said, I was with this guy, part of his, I was in his program and that's how we became friends.”

You knew my dad blah blah blah. So we had a pretty solid story. He was a contractor and was a builder. So I would go to construction jobs with him during the day in and around where we knew some of these guys would be. They'd drive by, they would see us. Or as we started to hang around or go to clubhouse or meet him in bars.

But they're like, what are you guys doing? Well, we're building a house over here. So, you know, they would drive by and they'd see us. And so I'd added to the credibility of who we were. So that's kind of how we from a foundational standpoint, we started it off. And it's starting going forward from there.

So your whole plan was just be seen first without you.

Let's be seen and see where we can go. You know, it's one of those things you're not going to know unless you try it. What we were able to do very early on was the henchmen had a, one of the members from Chicago had a storage unit. And we had gotten, we had heard peripherally stuff just talking about guns and vows again.

We got, you know, we got guns, we're ready to go. If we have a problem anywhere, we got them stash, we got them stored. And some of the guys I worked with in the auto theft task force said, Hey man, we got, we think we got enough probable cause to get into the storage unit. So that's owned by a health management.

They said he's got like an arsenal in there. And I go, well, do you guys got enough PC to get in without anything we're doing. And they're like, all right, let's talk to the state attorney and say, So they talked to the state attorney. They didn't need any of our stuff in the information we had.

So they were able to give us called a John Doe warrant, which is basically.

You're not going to know who was the affiliate and gave the probable cause for the warrant until you actually go to court then it's revealed. So it kind of kept their their informant say for a little while while they did this, did a search warrant. So when they got in, I went up and it was clouded all up and it was sitting in the back of squad

just to see what they would get out of it.

“And I think we got 150 firearms, 15 machine guns, 10 silencers,”

hand grenades, 32,000 rounds of ammunition, all assortment, 556, 945, a lot of black powder. When I said we get, I mean, it was just it was like their arsenal, nice little arsenal. So we were able to take that.

So we were able to get that like very early, like maybe the first six weeks,

seven weeks that we were doing it, it came really quick. So for ETF that was it, all right, that's kind of a win. That's a good stash. They were all Mac 10 machine pistols that they had, they were converted,

The guns were oiled up and they were wrapped in cellophane.

They had 200 rounds and they were all in like a little pellet kid in case. So you had the silencer, the Mac 10, 200 rounds of ammo. So you could just grab it, go if you were going to go do something, take care of it, and then either get rid of it or bring it back whatever you wanted to do. But it was all, it was pretty much, it was ready to go.

You know, you come by, you grab it, you go take care of business. So for us that was like, wow, we kind of hit it pretty good right off the bat. And then it was like, well, I'll see what more we can get more information. We can get more stuff that they're doing. And then as we started getting into it, you know, the guys that we're doing dope out of there,

we pretty much identified those guys pretty quick. And then we got word that they were going to roll their patch to help you become prospects for the health angels. And the dynamic completely changed.

“You had guys that, you had 26 members, I think, maybe up in Rockford.”

A lot of those guys knew this was not going to end well.

That when we make this step and get this health angel patch,

you know, we're going to have a problem with the alas, they knew it. Um, so a lot of the guys quit. Are you a part of the world these conversations? Are you in the club? Yeah, I'm not in the club, but I'm learning the ways of the force. If you will through, um, one of the members that kind of, Paul Jensen that, uh,

Paul Jensen eventually stabbed a guy to death and died in the pedotentiary, but Paul was my guy that, like, he would help me a long. So even though I wasn't supposed to be party to meetings and stuff, you know, I'd ask him. He's going, I mean, I got no, you know, I mean, I got a business. You know, it's still trying to eat, want to be with you guys.

Should I gun up all the time? Because you'd better gun up every freaking day, man. I'm like, okay, all right, I'm upset. And then he would just give me tips and clues. It's to, like, hey, they're coming in. A bunch of guys are going to quit.

They rolled their shit up.

They left it on the pool table, and they're not going to be a part of the club anymore.

“And so I think they were down, like, maybe eight guys.”

Actually, we're the remaining crew of Rockford from about 26. So a lot of those guys said, yeah, you know, we're about not going in, you know, being crazy bikers, but we're not down for what's going to happen. And they knew, they knew that it was going to be bad. And so that's when I think it helped us a bit.

I think I mentioned before, that because they were so focused on doing the right thing by the hills and angels and angels would come in and give them a call. And I have to, I'm to job training, you know, coming in. This is what we expect from you guys. This is what we want to see from you guys.

Here's how you handle it. It was more like platitudes of when you met somebody. You know, this is how we want to be respected. This is how we want to be seen in the community. The henchmen were like, into themselves.

Didn't talk to anybody outside the bike club. The angels are like, no way, man. Because you got it. It's a public relations thing. Because you want people in the community to say,

Yeah, guys, not a bad guy. They take care of their neighborhood, the club house. They help us out. They're good guys. Because you know, at the end of the day, we might be in court.

We might be, you know, you might have these guys sitting on a jury. And we went those jury pool from that area to say, You know what those guys aren't really that bad. So it was kind of a PR kind of thing. So we started having what was called Tuesday night runs.

And it was where they just invite people in that were just writers. Just regular citizens, they called them. They'd make a little money by selling drinks at the bar. And then we'd have a poker run. You know, you go out, go bar to bar.

It was a way to kind of get people interested. Maybe they got, you know, a couple of guys we want that look like they'd be hardcore guys that could come with us. Maybe kind of groom those guys and see if they'd be around. So it was kind of like, kind of an open house kind of thing for the bike room. So a lot of people would show up.

One of the people that showed up initially was a club called Arm Association of Recovery Motorcyclists. It was supposed to be a sober club. No drugs, no alcohol, just live in the bike or lifestyle. You know, live for your die kind of thought process. So those guys came in.

What we did know was those guys were aligned with the L.S. And so when they came in, all they were doing was taking notes and gathering intel. Then to give to the L.S. up in Jamesville, Wisconsin. They picked out the targets and that kind of thing.

“So I remember the president coming up to me, you know, I put his arm around me and he's like, "So you're throwing your head in here, huh?"”

I said, "Yeah, right on." You know, "Yeah, this is a good group, man. You're going to be just finding out what these guys." And now this mother fucker went, told the L.S. where everybody lived. You know, when they came back and he used his information against everybody in the club.

Shit. Yeah. What did you think of the lifestyle? You know, those guys, you're enjoying it. It was pretty, I'm not going to lie. There's an adrenaline rush you get doing a shit.

When you're in a pack, you know, 20 or 30 guys, you're rolling on a highway.

“You see that angel patch and the hatchman patch.”

Like nobody's going to fuck with us. And if they do, it's going to be odd. It's like that level that thought of invincibility, if you will, that I'm riding with some guys that are going to get after it. And so there's like, there's on a lure to that. Like he's talked about, man, if you got a little bit of testosterone,

and some gumption, it's like, "Man, this is kind of where bad ass." And it was kind of that mentality that those guys had. And some of them were very bad ass, extremely bad ass. Some of them weren't. Some of them. Some of them. They mean by that.

Well, there's guys that would get down get down. Like they call it under street. Like there's guys that get down. But you want to get down get down. Like a guy that will take it. A guy that's going to murder somebody. Like Paul Jensen stabbing a guy outside the bar. Paul was a guy that would get down get down.

Which yet other guys, maybe they sell dope, but they're still in a club. But they weren't, you know, they're down for the cause. Because at the end of the day, if we all decide we're against the alas, then everybody's in. There's no, like, buying you know what I'm going to take this day off. No.

We're at war with the alas. You're going to go out. You see an ala. You're going to kill him. It was the same way for the alas. And if you didn't do that, you're going to get your ass beat or worse. And you're going to get tossed out of the club. So that's your info penny info pound.

And that helps us with the Rico. Because there's a part of the Rico when we identify the enterprise. It's called the Pinkerton rule.

And it's picketed rule basically says actions and statements of one co-conspirator or the actions and the statements of all.

So if you and your crew and I, we decide, we're going to deal dope. And we're at war with this other drug faction. And one of our guys out of the crew, we had the agreement.

“That's what you do is agreement to do something.”

So an S.A. Conspiracy component. So as we agreed to do that, then if you went out and got popped off with 50 bricks. It could come back and we could all get charged with that same drug amount. If you decide, I need to kill a rival drug dealer. And we've all agreed at some point.

We're going to have to kill a rival drug dealer. And you do it. We all get hung with that. So it's kind of a, and that's a very simplistic way to do it. It's a little more nuanced when you get into court.

But ultimately, that's basically getting a nutshell. So, and that's why Rico is such a valuable tool. It's because you get a lot of guys at the top that order something. And the underlying will go do it. We all have the agreement that we need to go kill this guy.

We send a guy out to go kill him. Generally, that guy, if he gets caught, will just get charged independently of that murder. But what Rico allows us to do go is to go back then and take the entire enterprise down. Because those are the actions and furtherance of the enterprise these guys are doing. And so it's, it's like a, it's like a mosaic of criminal activity.

You know, you've got a lot of little incidents. But they, they paint a large picture of the totality of the criminal actions of a particular group. And so that's what Rico does. And that's what you're using. But it's not something that's in a bubble.

Rico's just don't. Like, hey, I want to put a recomb. We're going to charge it tomorrow. There's levels of review. They go through that because it's such a great tool.

They don't want it to ever be, you know, we don't want there any, any back case law. Or anything bad set about it. So to do a Rico, you've got a, it's called a press memo.

Prosecutional memo and it starts at the first level.

Prosecutor goes up to his boss, crimp chief, US attorney. And then for Rico, that goes off to OEO, off of some enforcement or office of him. Poor, operate, I forget bad enforcement operations. That's what it is. They have a Rico team up there of attorneys.

They review it to make sure you got everything right. And then it goes back and you got the OK to do it. So it's, it's kind of volume us. Take some time to put, it takes a lot of time to put together. But it's, it's well worth it because you get to just bring in a ton of criminal activity

That you wouldn't necessarily be able to do it in a normal case. Roger that. What are you partaking in? Are you selling, are you selling drugs? Are you selling guns?

Are you sleeping around? Are you using drugs? I, we did have a drinking. We did some street theater with Paul Jensen. And once I did it with Paul hired him to watch something and gave him some money.

And then left it alone. It didn't say anything about it.

“He goes, so you got a, because you got a bad self and a not so bad self, huh?”

And I go, well, you know, I just, you got to eat. And I wouldn't say anything about what it was about. But he knew that obviously it was something. So he would vouch for me then for the most part, you know, for the rest of the time. Like I said, there was other guys in there.

They were like, something about dude, you know, something right with him.

And you never going to win those guys over.

He just got to figure out a way around him. So I would do that. And then like I said, I did enough in front of Paul. And at that time, again, they were so focused on being getting that patch, that Hills Angel patch and rolling over and not fucking that up.

They were so focused on that.

They pretty much weren't paying attention to what we were doing and not doing. The fact that we were there in and of itself was enough to those guys. All right, you know, let you guys come along. Wow. Yeah.

So we were, are you, are you partying? Are you? Oh, yeah. We're at the clubhouse 10 in bar. I do security during the meetings.

You know, I got a two-way radio drugs. I didn't do any. I didn't have to do any. I told him in the beginning. There was one guy that one guy that would constantly push me out.

He said, bro, like, just can't trust you. The, unless he, I go pro, I go, I already told him, man, I've been down this road, bro. I go if you want me to be like Dennis, which was another guy that was just drunk all the time.

He always, he'd come in the clubhouse and say, I'm financially embarrassed.

Because he was just freaking broke. I said, if you want Dennis, I go then put that shit in my nose. And you know what, I'll be Dennis. But right now, I got $1,000 in my fucking pocket.

“So if you want to earn, you want a guy that's going to make money and make us look good as a club.”

Or do you want to drunk at the other bar? I've got a choice that's yours, bro. And he was like, oh, no, man, I'm just saying I go pro, I just can't. So that's where I'm at. I go, I got to do that to be with you guys.

I can't be with you guys. Never like, okay, they bought that. They did. That's surprising. That is.

I think they'd like the fact that we had a business. And I think some of the guys looked at it as if you have a legit business. Like Mel had, you know, no work for companies. You know, where he was, no show. You know, but he got a paycheck and he got insurance.

And it was just companies that I think in his ability to use those proceeds. You know, drug proceeds and then pay that company for his health care and stuff like that. So they looked at are having a business. What they thought was a legitimate business. And the CI did have the informant had a legitimate business.

They kind of looked at that as probably a plus. A sub level will be able to leverage that. You know, at the end of this when we get our full patch. So they, they kind of looked at us like that. Um, where he had, okay.

And then we, you know, there were times in bars where somebody had mouth off or something. You know, and then they're like, hey, man, step to that guy and tell him what time it is. You know, a bit right on bro.

So I go step to the guy and I would tell him basically brother.

That's the man. You don't want how this is going to go. I go. It's not me. I go.

It's them. And you know it. And he'd be like, most of the time those guys just say, okay. You know, they, they walk away.

“But I think they wanted me to go up and slug him into face.”

And I come back and they're like, why didn't you knock that guy out? And I was like, well, first of all, I'm a little fucking dude. And it was a pretty big cat. So I just told him what time it day it was. I told him I'd get him some time when he wasn't looking.

And they're like, all right. Right on hang around. I go, do you want me to just get locked up for doing something stupid? I thought we were smarter than that. So when he tried to do things to test, I'd be like, I'll do it.

I'll find a way to do it. But I'm not telling you when I do it. And I'll do it on my own because they had a model. Three can keep a secretive to our dead. And I'm like, that's the model man.

So I'll hang it. You won't see that guy anymore. But I'll take care of it. But I'm not going to tell you guys. And it'll just be what it is.

And they were like, so having an air mystery a little bit. And how you handle your business, it went a long way. And like I said, they were so concerned with B&L's angels at that point in time. They kind of, that's the normal stuff they probably would have did to really check our shit. They weren't, they weren't really done.

So it's unfortunate. So I mean, you're just talking about, you know, do you want to earn a earner or do you want to drown? And you know, interview in Malias today. I don't know if you George Christie. I haven't released a couple months ago.

You know, I'm asking these guys, how was the club making any fucking money? But I don't understand. I don't know if they're just not telling me because it's, you know what I mean? They still feel some allegiance to it. But I don't understand what the point of the club is.

If everybody's doing, you know, yesterday Mel kind of described it. Everybody does their own shit. They deal their own drugs. They do their own women. Whatever it is, but it's not affiliated with the club.

“And so if the only way the club is making money is pan fucking do's.”

And it's the underground aspect of what they're doing with the drug dealing. So you've had interconnected drug dealers like SoCal or Southern California guys. We'll be dealing with and selling meth to mid west guys. And they the fact that you're both Los Angeles. There's a certain level of one safety that you're not going to get robbed on the deal.

Although, I think it did happen at one point. I think somebody didn't pay for Dope or something. And it was quite a riff within the Los Angeles about it. But everything they do is like it's. It's involved, but it's not involved.

So they know how Rico works. Like there's other clubs. And it won't club that was like, if you sell a ounce of cocaine, you pay $100 to the club.

You know, the money laundering component of it and said, okay. You know, the organization itself is putting a price on the amount of drugs that you're selling. And so it, that is easier to prove the way they get around doing is that we're all independent operators. We're all doing shit on our own, but they pay dues to the club. They go on runs, they buy their Harley's.

You know, all that stuff is the proceeds of their illegal activity to be in the club. And it clubs as much about persona and badass. And we're the number one guys. Then it is about anything else. No shit. Yeah.

There's guys making tons of money.

We stopped one of the Chicago Hills Angels with a million dollars cash in Las Vegas.

Then it was getting ready to go.

“I think he was going to try to laund her it through, you know, gambling.”

Swamos and gambling. And then get the receipts. But we got one of those guys. And it was later. It wasn't when I was involved.

And in fact, it was when Mel was out of the club. But that was one of their guys got, and another guy got stopped with a trap car with a bunch of money. And a truck going to Mexico to pick up. So those guys were, they're in the game. And they're in the game, you know, in a large way.

Not all of them are at that level. But there's a lot of them that are. And they use that Hell's Angel that mystique about who they are. Because if it's like Charles Schwab. All right.

So if you're going to invest with Charles Schwab or Joe Blow the Ragman, you know, at the end of the day.

“So I'm going to go to Charles Schwab because he's got the name and their reputation.”

And he's bad acid, he's going to get it done. And that's kind of how the Hell's Angels looked at it. You know, it's a certain way. We're kind of the Charles. We're the number one guys.

And they use that. They use that.

That persona that sticker to basically say, you know, when we do business, the Hell's Angels logo comes with it.

So what do we do? There's some Hell's Angel affiliation with it. It's like when Mel beat the guy up and for disrespecting his girlfriend. You know, he invokes the Hell's Angels, you know, he tells them inside. Do you know who the fuck I am?

And the guy's like, yeah, he goes, I'm the fucking Hell's Angel president. He goes, my crew will crush your crew. So now he's using, again, the Hell's Angel logo, the Hell's Angel gotcha. They're mystique, you know, in this particular situation. So it is an enterprise that they use to influence their personal operations.

Correct. Then they all get to use that enterprise. Correct.

When you come in, it says, this guy is a weapon specialist in the Navy.

That's his M.O.S. He's a, or I forget what was called. Weapon specialist, and this guy's a Navy seal. There's going to be a certain amount of, what do you think about this guy based on the fact that he's a, you know, weapons officer. There's a certain thing you're going to think about this guy because he's a Navy seal. And that Navy seal stuff may write on the co-tails of, you know, you, or Jason Redmond, or one of these other guys that they know about.

So they know what they get. So they expect the same thing out of you guys or out of this other guy that you just met that's a Navy seal. So right away, there's a certain persona that you are a certain of. This is who this guy is and what he's about. So the same way with the Hell's Angel patch.

You know, there's certain things I expect when he's probably a killer. Like, maybe he's a killer. He's not, but they have a reputation to be in a killer. So right away with that reputation comes the ability for me to facilitate my criminal activity and make it better by writing on the fact that I am actually a Hell's Angel. Got you.

“That makes, I mean, is that explaining it right? Yeah, that makes sense. Is this how all gangs work or is this just motor side?”

I think so. I think I think gang's Italian mob, this is it. Yeah, it's a, you know, in there's. Crups people that are drawn to that dark side that, you know, man, there's an edge to that. There's girls that are attacked, you know, that, that like that guys that are in that mix or, you know, they're dangerous. You're living day, I'm on the edge, I'm a criminal, I'm out there, I'm freaking, you know, doing shit.

You don't know about because I'm a mystery. You know, so there's a lot of that that goes on in the criminal. I think for street gangs, a lot of times, street gangs that are a result of, I need to live in this community. And if I don't join this gang, how many they're with them or I'm against them? So it might be easier to meet with them.

So not that there's not, you know, guys that actively, I mean, we've done some great street gang cases, but those guys are just homicidal. I mean, just absolutely have no thought of killing somebody. And those are the guys we want to put in jail. So when you have that, I think it goes to that.

Any collection of bad people, I think it's kind of the same amount. Like the Latin kings think they're it, you know.

You know, he got territorial disputes, not only for whether or not it's a drug dealing area,

“drugtimp, like the Kings are they're going to be over third and third and true.”

And these guys are want to be over there selling their dope. There's enough dope tips around city Chicago. Now to do that, but this guy might disrespect this guy on Facebook now or Instagram. He might wrap about this guy is being a jack off. Now this guy lives a car, you know, full of thugs.

And they go over and he shoot the guy off his doorstep. So you have a lot of that level of violence. It's no, it's not done for any particular reason. He just respected me and now we're going to get him. Makes sense.

How was the patch over? You got patched that, correct? No, I got to, I became a hang around and official hang around. And then they had done, they killed my Matthias at that point. Murdered a minute shop.

They detonated the car bomb on Grand Avenue.

They blown up the president of the club that I was with.

What else did it kill? They killed another guy. Were you there for him? Were you there? I was there when money got killed.

I was there when the bombs went off. You described that.

“I think the realization of, well, there was two things.”

One, when I interviewed those guys later, but I had the realization of, man, I better make sure I'm checking my sex and that my shit is together. My shit's tight, I remember that. I remember, money was killed so violently.

Did you see it? I didn't see him actually killing, but I saw the scene later and I saw the pictures. And I interviewed the guy that killed him.

So, how he, and I don't say this because,

try to think of how to put this. I appreciated his fight for survival on what he did. The guy that came in shot him three times with a 45. Didn't go down, came around a counter and engaged him. Got the gun turned around, squeezed rounds off.

The guy that killed him said, he took me to the ground. Were wrestling on the ground, the gun's empty. Hit him with the gun, money got to the back. Money hit a nine millimeter hit in the back. And I think he was trying to get to that.

The guy, the other fouls in the back, grabs a chunk of metal that was on a bar or on a work bench and starts crushing his skull with it. I think at that point, it's our call. He said he went to the back and money had some locks on the top.

He couldn't get out. So he split around and had to go pass money. Money ties him up again. It's like to say, "Oh, fuck you motherfucker, fuck you." And that's when he took the screwdriver

and finished them through the neck with the screwdriver. And it was kind of interesting. The whole thing was surreal. A little when I was talking to the investigators, and they pretty much knew how the crime scene

they could figure out what happened. I was pissed off, man. I was like, fuck. You know, it was weird because here I am. I'm going to try to arrest money at some point

or if he's involved in things.

“But on the other hand, I think the level of brutality”

at his murder, I was like, I was pissed. I was fucking pissed. And it was, it was a strange time. And I was like, I talked to HF management came down and they're like, "Where are we at on this?

What do we have right now that we can do?" And so when we got to gun storage stuff, we've got other information, but we weren't able to get a lot more going because of, in that transitional period with the angels.

I think we got some small buys off. People in the area, like I'd bought, like dope off some other guys, but sawing off shotguns off some guys, bought guns. So I'm like, so this is where we have right now.

We've got a lot of great conversation about the club in general, what we could use in a reco, as far as outlaying into the enterprise. So we got good stuff on that.

And they're like, "Look, Chris, we'll all do your spec, man." We can't cover this. We can't cover you enough that we could pro-clear you from getting smoke. There's a certain amount of risky take,

but now you're in the middle of fucking war between the outlaws and the hell's angels. In addition to that, you did a bunch of the outlaws already. So they kind of know maybe who you are.

They might recognize, hey, this isn't the same guy that ended up season in a clubhouse in Juliet. You'll see you got that problem, I worry about. And then you got the problem of, what if these guys find out

or do they think you're actually, all these murders going on? Somebody inside is telling them, little did they know it was arm that other bike club.

They might think it's you. You're the new guy.

I'm certain we're all going to jail after somebody sold him dope. That's interesting. So there was a lot of stuff that I didn't want to see at the time.

I'm like, no, fuck that. I go, I could stay in there.

“I still, you know, I had a 45 in the back of my pants.”

I'm super fucking cool. And I wasn't that by any stretch. So it was good for them to say no, say we're all done. And so shortly after Monica killed,

I think it was by the fall.

We basically told guys the informant

I hate we're out. We're done with with right now. You know, just our business is ruined. Everybody's trying to kill us blah, blah, blah. You know, so we laid it down.

So like you know, you've made prospects. You would've been the first tells Angel prospects in Rockford or like, you know what? Well, it's not about fucking getting a patch. It's about, you know, we left it with.

It's about the fucking brotherhood. You know, that kind of thing. You know, they're like, alright. You can't come back. Fair enough.

So fast forward. I, um, that's when I did the grim reaper case for the next 15 months. I don't know quite cities rolled right from that into that next case. Um,

and then the informant started to get back in with these guys. We chronicle the violence that they were doing.

You form it got kind of back in.

And in that time, we were able to stop those violent acts of retaliatory acts. You know, when they went out, we're going hunting the night for our laws. I call up. Stay police.

I go and we're coming out tonight looking for guys. So they would have two unmarked in a marked. And they would dull around. And then as soon as it looked like we might be on something, they would knock us all down at traffic stop.

We guys doing a night, nothing, okay? Have a good evening. And then let us go. So we did that.

“I think in the Rico, we actually charged six of those events,”

where they'd gone out to do something, and we were able to stop it by just introduction. Just having a cops there. Like, hey, we're watching you guys. And they knew they were on them.

So they were like, you know, they go back.

They swept the clubhouse for bugs.

They thought we're getting bugged. Somebody's, you know, somebody's in on us. You know, I mean, they were, they were scrambling to figure out how this information was getting out. And then they also thought too,

and we're in the middle of war with the L.S. So of course cops are going to be watching us. And we do have to lay low and be smart about what we do. And so that's when it just seemed like it was a good opportunity to get out.

And so we stopped. You know, a cover part for me stopped right there. I went and did the cream repers after that for 15 months. But at that same time, I was helping Sandy to Vulcanir put the Rico case together

against the L.S. They were coming down and it had done all the murders and the bombings and things like that. So in talking to Sandy who did, I can't say enough about what an outstanding case

you put together. I mean, it was two separate Rico's. They charged every violent act that these guys had done. But at that time, when they were doing surveillance on the health

henchmen, I was there being surveilled. So it helped Sandy in her case to have that be their interview and these guys. Because it was like, OK, Chris, were you a club 251 on Thursday, October 2nd?

Yes, we were. So that corroborated, you know, the Allies had come forward and flipped to coiberated their statements. It made it more.

You know, it made more. Yeah, definitely that occurred. So we were able to kind of put that together. But that's where I learned. You know, I was not fucking bread and super cool.

Batman. I was fucking very foolish. And lucky. No, we didn't get killed. So, very, very thankful.

So anyway, so we did the, I did the Grim Reaper's next. Did you have any? One is the, did you meet Melia? Yeah, I had flown with Mel out to a,

was a, President's meeting in San Francisco. And I went out and I played with them there. When I was just official hang around. We flew out for that.

“Why would they bring you to that high level meeting?”

I didn't, I didn't get to go to the meeting part. I was just, I kind of inserted myself a little bit. I go, hey, you know, I got a brother. If you guys are gone, you know, got in line. And they were like, I don't give it shit.

It was Ricky and the informant were going to go out. So I just take along with those guys. They're like, yeah, come on. So it's just, just a way to kind of be seen, but not seen. So if you were after with Melia,

No. I saw him at the airport, shook his hand. That was it. Yeah, that was it. It just, knowing, Melia's like,

he's going to want to talk to you a little bit. Get to know you. And I just, what you couldn't take a chance on that. Because that would have burned out to see I completely. So we did was I quit after that.

I quit for a minute. Um, did the grim Reaper case. Now, let's say it about 15 months. Got that and died. It helped Sandy with the Rico.

And that kind of slowed all the, all the violent acts stopped.

Right. That and there. Nothing was going on. Because these guys just got wet. Angels weren't doing anything then.

Because they thought, well, these guys just got a Rico. We're going to catch a Rico too. Let me tell you about my morning routine. I wake up. I have decisions I need to make.

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then you need to go to bobsnattrolls.com/SRS and use code shon for 20% off your order. So everybody was kind of waiting. Nobody was doing anything.

So Sandy does the first round of recos in 97.

Once you guys played and then cooperated and gave in for more information about what they were doing. Got to interviews a bunch of those guys. And then she did a subsequent reco like a year later that went back to the show. And then she did a subsequent reco like a year later. That went back and then guided even more people under the reco that they hadn't got wrapped up in the first reco.

We ended up doing a title three. But she, I should say, we at Sandy did a title three on the outlaw club or the outlaw president. And the guy that killed my name is Tias, she was up on his phone. So we were getting a lot of, you know, bad talk on the phone calls. And again, every time those guys would go out and try to do something because we heard stuff on the phone.

Team would go out and knock them down. What kind of close calls did you have? Oh, look like you did I knew about it? Yeah, that you knew about it. I thought I had maybe three.

Did I didn't know about it? Is this with the, with the angels with the angels? What were the, well, the, the reprints was a different one. With the, um, with the, um, I forgot that we talked about this on the other. Um, with the angels, it was probably three that I knew of, but about 20 altogether that I had won.

I had no idea.

“And that's why I said, man, you got a, hopefully walk through the life.”

Because I, I thought I was that, fuck, no way did I know. Sandy would say, did you know they were out at your apartment? I'm like, whole inch. Yeah, she's like, yeah, and then I talked to the guy that cooperated because she had. We were, did you have a apartment?

It was a two story, second floor in the corner.

And I go, yeah, Sandy's looking at me. Did you know that I go? No. I'd like to say, oh, yeah, I knew about it. So you guys, it's all cool.

I had no idea. Why were they at your apartment? To kill us. Because we were part of the part of the angels. Oh, gosh.

Yeah. So there was probably, I think 20 altogether. Um, three that I knew, so 17 I didn't know. I kept checking them off. There were times when I was riding with the president that got blown up.

You know, and you guys, because I'm a no guy, I'm in the back. You know, he's riding a front or right and together, but I still because he's a president. And I got to give him his leave. Well, they're on an overpass, waiting for us to come over the overpass. If for whatever reason, they didn't shoot and Sandy's like,

did you know about that one? I go, I remember the time. She was, you remember car on the side of the road. I go, I don't. That's how I was not paying attention.

I go, I did not. She was there. We're going to get you that. Yeah, I'm like, fuck. Again, you just think you're, I go to God, man.

There's no doubt about it.

You know, truly believe that. Truly believe that. Chris wasn't watching Chris. God was watching Chris. That's where we were at, at that point.

There's no doubt in my mind.

“Did you have, did you ever think you've been compromised by the angels?”

By them, no. By the green repers, I thought, well, actually, the case agent that was Illinois State Trooper, one of the case agents. Dying New York was the ATF case agent.

And my guy we called mine go paddock Jeff Patterson. Was with the Illinois State Police. He was there. There guy. And Danny Roach was another guy.

But he came in one day. He goes, hey, man. He goes, they ran your shit. I go, yeah. We're getting ready.

We're going to clubhouse.

I'd been in for about six months. He goes, they ran your shit. He goes, doesn't come back. And I'm like, really? He goes, yeah.

He goes, dude, they got some questions for you today. He goes, what are you going to do? I'm going to go to the fucking clubhouse. I'm going to whip a game. And he starts laughing.

He goes, ah, I'm just fucking with you, bro. He goes, they ran your shit. It all came back. It's all good. And I'm like, you motherfucker, man.

It's hard enough to do in this shit. And then you got to fucking do that. So I'm good friends with the guy. But I was like, I wanted to dot his eye. Oh, my god, dang, bro.

I said, I'm under enough shit. I haven't had a break since this hell's angel shit. I go, I'm like, I don't need this map. So yeah, so he was just being a dick. But there was a time after we did, um, we did in Disha Warrens they call it.

I don't know if you're familiar with that. Yeah.

So it's basically club in Disha.

So because, um, we're looking at the enterprise of the Green Reapers. We got search warrants based on in Disha Warrens. And we're looking for membership in this organization. And so in Disha's like, you know, I could be anything from your, um, the drug pair, you know,

Green Reapers patches. Green Reapers paraphernalia. Anything with Green Reaper out there was in your house. We were able to take. But if we accidentally ran into pistols guns and dope,

then we'd get a second search warrant for the pistols guns and the dope. And then we'd do that. So what they wanted to do was do these in Disha Warrens first.

“And I think we did 25 altogether, 25 warrants in five states.”

We hit them all simultaneously at the same time. Um, bunch of SWAT teams, state local federal, uh, US Marshal service helped us out. Great guys. Um, so we do these 25 search warrants.

And I was telling, you know, or telling the case agent in the sack and she got special agent in charge. And she got to go, if you let me stay in after the search warrants, just let me stay in. I'll be okay.

I said, you know, yeah, they got hit with warrants. But we sealed the indictment. So they're not going to get with the problem cause of the warrants. Yes, some of it was me. But allow this stuff in other states.

I hadn't been there yet. So there's no way they could put that on me. So I'm like, well, let's just, I go. I think I, I could stay in there. So like not too dangerous.

We're, you're done. The undercover parts out. I'm like bad mistake. So the US attorney, T. Chambers, who's probably with the best attorneys. I've ever worked with.

Um, he goes, he's like a Southern kind of Southern Illinois. Because not Chris. You think he could stay in there with these boys for just a little bit longer. Maybe get some conversation about what they're all doing. I said, fuck yeah, T.

I said, put me in coach. He's like, all right, let me make a call. So he calls the sack. He goes, your agent seems to think that he could stay in there and it'd be okay. And they're like, all right.

But there was a two week gap between that. So once they got hit, you know, went over the cell phones. We're, er, er, pages. Everybody out. Don't come back to the clubhouse.

It's fucking hot. Stay away. And so the inform we had that we did the fake thing in front of him to, in front of the judge. We had the informant say, I told Chris just to stay away. You know, stay back.

Don't come around. So now two weeks have gone by and things have kind of slowed down. Nobody went to jail. So I was like, you know, the fuckers are making a harder now. Because now I'm going to have to explain where it was for two weeks.

And why the fuck I wasn't a good enough brother to be down here. When I went to shit, start figuring this stuff out. And they're like, well, you said you could get back. And I'm like, yeah, if you let me go back the next day. I go, but two weeks is too much, too much time.

That's going to be hard. And they're like, well, we thought you were like just going to cover good. I'm like, so now it's the fucking questing in your fucking homes. My guy did, I'll go. So I went back and it was a lot of sight I looked for a while.

“I remember we ended up in, um, we're doing a national run.”

We're down in Louisville, Kentucky. And, uh, one of the, uh, they got together in the meeting was to talk about all these search warns, the guns they had lost, the dope dead lost, all this stuff. And, uh, one of the guys smoking a joint, he's sitting there. And they're like, why didn't anybody get arrested?

And he takes a big hit off to join you. Because we've been infiltrated motherfuckers.

And I'm behind the bar.

“And I'm like, all right, what's he going to say next?”

He goes, somebody's doing us. And the reason we didn't arrested is that dude still doing us now. And I'm like, it's not me, man. Maybe it's just dude over here. It's not me.

And they were like, yeah, you're right. How are they doing us? They're like, I can't be in undercover. And I was like, I think I said that. I was like, felt a lot better about those.

He goes, it's got to be surveillance. You know, those feds could beam down and turn our pages into wires. And I was like, man. Thank God that guy said that. Because then they're going to start looking around.

Okay, who's the new guy? What's the common connection between all these warrants in the guy that could put all that together? So it was a rough couple of days. Man, how the fuck are you carrying all that? I mean, you're your geofanced into a small area.

You've been, what, three organizations now within. So you're, you're paranoid about the colonel and all the fucking previous ones probably too.

And then the other problem was these guys were aligned with the alas from Joliet that I had done in the very first place.

And this is only seven years later. This is 97.

“Some of those guys were that I didn't do knew about me and knew about the seizure of the club and the guys who got arrested.”

So there's one guy in particular, Ronnie Tomage that was the president and I knew who he was. And he knew about me because they'd gotten all the records of how they got done and how the search warrant was done on the clubhouse. Why it got seized? Because they don't want to make that same mistake twice. So there's no more drug dealing in the in the clubhouse.

No more dope in the clubhouse kind of a thing. So he had all that information and knew basically who I was. So Ronnie Tomage sometimes would call up. They were aligned politically aligned with the grim reapers against the angels. He would call up, I'd answer the phone with the clubhouse in Rock Island.

And he goes, "Yeah, it's Rod Rodium on my way out." "Okay." And then I'd have to make excuse to leave in about two hours because that's when Ronnie would be there. So I was ducking those guys at the same time with the grim reapers. And so now I think about it.

Yeah, that was pretty fucked up. Holy shit. Yeah. But again, Chris and God broke. Why did you bring your wife in?

First time? First time. Because they were starting to question why.

“There was like, I'm not in exceptionally handsome head.”

But kind of in the bigger world. I could be a solid eight. Yeah. Pretty hard eight. And so there was a lot of strippers that were like,

Brother, what up, man? Yeah. Oh, this doesn't look good to you. You're not, I'm like, babe, you know what?

Like, my mom never, my mom always told me never did stripper.

No offense. My mom told me that. And I go, like, I got this girl, man. I go, she's good. And they're like, whatever did.

So they were questioned. And like, you know, like the grim reapers had a girl. They go take this picture of her ride on her scoot. I'm like, all right. So I get out.

And our recording devices were like from the Stone Age. So we had these Niagara recorders that were like a 1970s reel to reel. He's reel to reel tape deck. You know, like a porno, like, bounce to count. Oh, look at this.

So you would wear that down here on your in your crotch. And then two microphones that came up to the side. And the quality of it was great. But it's like carrying a brick in the front of your pants. And if you lift up your shirt or have an issue like that.

And a lot of times you get a little scuffle with the brothers. You know, they call it a mud check. Especially the reapers, you know, they punch in the chest. Like, what do you do prospect? I'm going to wait till I get a full patch.

And we'll put my $100 on the bar.

I'm not always going to be a prospect.

And then it's we're going to go. And then you're like, ah. So that time's just much, see what you're about. Or you're going to step up. You're going to, you know, you're going to protect yourself kind of a thing.

They want to see what you're about. So there's a lot of little scurries in the ship. So I'd always have to keep, like, I cover that. And so you're trying to kind of wrestle with people. Part somebody in.

You're trying not to keep this shit out. The stuff we have now is, like, it's unbelievable. And guys bitch about wearing it. It is big. Like somebody can find that.

Because dude, I was wearing a real real tape deck back in the day. Like in my face. So I'm like, yeah, you know. I don't want to hear like, oh, this little tiny thing is too hard to fuck. It's a creep.

Like, no, it isn't. So the repers had the head is two strippers. Of course, I get in the clubhouse. One of the presidents is prospect. And I've been got made prospect out of my prospect patch.

He goes a prospect, take that bitch for a ride. She needs some air. I got it. So I go out and get on the scoot. She gets on the back.

And she starts with the robes of shoulders. Goes in the back of my hair down to sleep. Basically, just searching me for a fucking wire.

At this point, I've got a, um, didn't have the recorder thing got at the time.

“But I had a one watt transmitter, which was a lot smaller.”

And it was over on the right side. And I also had to be holding my pants on this side. So she goes down through my legs, my back, my waist, you know, nothing. Well, then she starts fishing around and playing with my junk through the whole of my pants. You know, so I'm driving.

And my cover team was, you know, the guys are watching. And they're seeing this go on. You know, like, fuck, so she's digging around on my pants. I go, babe, I go nothing from nothing.

But I'm going to hit the note here in a second.

I'm going to make a mess. And then we're going to crash. She starts laughing. She goes, oh, it's okay. It's all good.

So we drive back to the, back to the clubhouse. I get off the bike. She gets off. She goes in. I can see the president look at her.

And she goes. It's like, sorry. All right. There was times they went out. They would toss my truck.

You know, because the clubhouse had cameras outside. Both the groupers. They did it and the health management. I'd be inside watching the surveillance camera outside. I see one of the brothers look around.

Open the passenger drawer and my truck dig through the box. Look in the back of the truck. Pop the hood real quick. Look underneath shut everything and then come back in.

But they would, you know, they would check you like that.

So you got to be prepared. Did you see him doing that to anybody else? Or just you. Yeah, I had to do it to other. I did it when I was a prospect for the reapers.

They would be like, they just, you know, it was a look. It was like, they're like, like, dude. Yeah, I go outside. Look around. You know, pretend like I look around.

Check his car. Come back in. Do it seems clean. It's all right. They're like, okay.

All right. So they do it. They did it all the time. If you ever run into another undercover. Not knowing it.

I mean, agencies don't do the best. No, we don't do it. So that's a fact, too, man. That's a big fact. I'm trying to think it.

I know people have, but I never experienced that.

I never ran in another guy. Right on. It's almost like night vision, like if you look at it, you know, he's got night vision. You get that red.

So you could throw. So yeah. Now I never had that right on it. But what, um, you know, what, what was your. You know, Mel talked about some of the violence

shit that he's done yesterday, but he. I think he left a lot out. You get it.

“You know, I think what I, I'll say about melons about melons about.”

Mel was a violent guy. There's no doubt about it. He had those Charles Manson lamps. When I saw him the first time. The way he looked and stuff in his eyes,

I was like mad. But he's a very bad man. He's a very bad man. And that was my first thoughts when I saw him. I think some melons like, um, you know,

Simon Gamora, the boy. See, he just comes down. They're running away, right? Lot is a wife. And lots of wife turns around to look back

as God's decimating. And she turns to salt because she looked back. At the past. And I think Jesus actually says in another later on in Jesus' remember lots of wife.

Or remember lots of wife. Don't look back. So what's your forgiven? You don't look back. Once you come to God and you know in your heart.

Ask him for a goodness. God forgives you. It's done. It's forgiven. You do not look back.

So I think a lot of what melons is. Um, with what he had done. I feel like he's gone out of his way to make a men's to everybody pretty much ever beat up in his life. It's gone out.

He goes, I'm sorry that I did that. You know, and he goes, um, but he's asked the Lord for forgiveness too. And I think it's very hard for him. I know when we were doing this as a real for the movie stuff.

I actually told him at one point. I said, brother, um, let's go home. I go. I can see it in your eyes now.

I go, the guys, I don't want, I didn't want the crew guys that were doing the lighting and all this. I don't, I don't want them to know that guy. Because that's not the guy I know now. That's not the guy I'm friends with.

So it's like, I go, let's just go home, man. I go. We, we live a, we've got a good life, man. We've got a roof over our head. We've got a great family, you know.

That loves us. We don't need to, there's, we don't need to make a movie. I said, plus I know that. What you do now for people that you just talk to that are in a bad spot.

He doesn't turn anybody away. That comes to him and says, man, I did this. And there's no way I can be forgiven. You know, mell is like, right, no. That's not right.

“You know, so I think for him to look back on that violence,”

it's almost like lots of wife turning around. And I think he's afraid that he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to re-experience it. But I go, brother, your story of redemption, it has to start with that, that violence where you were.

You know, that's what makes it real. Exactly. You know, I go, I told him one time when he was doing a sizzle reel, he was minimizing the shit up. Well, you know, I was a, that was an altar boy.

You know, I go, brother, I go.

It also started breaking up in, you know, on a re-go.

“I go, you did a little bit more than he's like,”

he would hang and said, and he's like, ah, and I go, brother, I go, you're going to have to touch that dragon, man. You're going to have to go back and get in touch with that a little bit and tell that story because your story of redemption, the people that come to him, they knew him back in the day

when he was road. So they see that, and they know he's changed. And he know it's for real. I mean, we've been friends for 20 some years now. And he has not gotten off the God's God ever.

You know, he's been once he committed to it, and he saw what it did in his life. The amount of peace that he got. He's like, this is where I need to be. And he goes to the ability to help people and shit.

You know, he goes, I would pray, I'd stuff Chris. He goes, you know, I prayed God that he would bring those keys. And let me out of jail.

I would say they're prayer tonight.

He goes, God's got another plan. He goes, but the people he's rotated in through my life that I've been able to witness to or help come to the Lord or just get out of the lifestyle.

“Because that guy was, he was like the alcohol in Chicago.”

And that he dealt, he knew him as friends with traditional organized crime. My guys in Chicago, all of them knew him. He knew them. They used to break bread together at a place on

Rush Street in Chicago. They'd be in their eat and he'd be in their eat. and he was locked up with them. When he did his, his, his, and his, hurt, federal, stent, you know, they,

they were buds, they knew him. He was, and then he had all the street gangs, you know, the Mexican mafia guys, the Latin kings, the gangster disciples, the vice-lorts. He knew all the leaders and they all liked him.

So he, his, like, and they all knew him by reputation. They knew what he had done in the past. And he garnered great respect from those guys in the criminal community. So now that he's changed,

I don't, I mean, those guys knew you when you were met all those bad stories. So now, where you're at with the Lord and you're walking, the redemption component, I go, now these guys can see like somebody that was as bad as them

and as violent as them and you can change your life. You're not stuck in this rudder this whole man. You could actually make a difference in change. And I go and you're the beacon for that. And I go, but we don't need to put it on the TV screen, man.

Or you don't need to make a movie about it. You got enough people coming to you now that you've helped. I go, that's, that's a life while lived. And so this other stuff, if it comes and warp in it, it's benefit to the God's grace great.

And if it doesn't come, we're okay with that too, man. It's, we've, my humility gets this point. I'm like, man, I've got nothing. I don't want to prove anything to anybody. I don't need a movie, I don't need any of that.

I just want to live a happy life, you know, where I got some peace. So there's reputation spread far and wide. He was the poster trials for the Hell's Angels across the country. And across the world, wow.

Everybody knew who he was. Everybody knew his reputation. I mean, you've seen some of the earlier pictures. Um, yeah, that was road. You know, he was a monster.

No doubt about it. Damn. It's funny, I think it's, it might be a self-preservation thing

with Mouth to a little bit in that he goes, yeah, but I always had.

I always thought of myself, I'm a, I'm a good guy. And I go, I go, I go melt. In your heart of hearts, you are a good guy. I go, you're a good man. I said, but road decided to lead you down a different road, man.

And you weren't a very good man. At that point, doesn't change who you are in your heart, but your actions dictate something completely different, man. Like, but again, that's your tool.

“That's what you get these other guys to come up and go.”

I don't want to live the life anymore. And if this guy can make it, okay, he was doing prison. When we liked him up, we, we housed him in Henry County, jail, which is a jail. Maybe 400 inmates, you know, in a county jail in Western Illinois. And it was a guy, Rodney, and have to give you the, the clip of Rodney.

Rodney was a guy that, he did prison ministry. His wife died in 1970. So every day after his wife passed away, he was a farmer. He gets done working for cattle, corn and beans. Coming into the local county jail, he had Bible study.

And he was the one that bought his own pocket. TV's for the inmates. And he would have Bible study every, I think three days, four days a week, he would come in every day after work. So this guy's working his ass off every day, his wife died.

He's his devotion to her. And to, like, for his wife, he would come in. She had to file Christian because I'm going to, I'm going to witness to these guys. I'll worst change my life. So he would do it every day.

So when Mel got out there, this is 1970. Mel's now 20 years later, Mel's in locked up with this guy's. Mel and him clicked, so tight together right off the back. Because Mel was already telling these guys in there. You gotta, you gotta come down over Lord.

Let's take a look at what you got caught with. And he'd have the sentencing guidelines federal.

Which criminal history? And the guy would say, well, I've been down through town. Okay, criminal history's this.

Here's what the, what they're going to give you for your, what you did.

The federal system's like they assign a number and the greater the crime, the higher the number. And it's like a chart, you go like this. That's a much time again. So he goes, you're looking at 360 to life. And he goes, my suggestion to you, we're going to pray on it.

“But I think you should cooperate and, you know,”

come in on yourself and look for a reduction because you're going to get hammered. And that's the only way out of it. And like, well, what if I could beat the case, he goes, you could try. He goes, you can try to beat the case. He goes, if you want to, we'll pray on that too.

Let's pray. See what God has in store for you. So he would do that. So he hooks up with the, uh, prison minister guy. And at one point, the sheriff called and said, uh,

or the lieutenant that ran it called me up and he said, he goes, hey, can, can Mel do his entire time in here.

And I go, why he goes, because he basically came in and these guys would be playing

abdominals to be loud in the day room, slap it at everybody's y'all.

“And in this poor guy, um, it's trying to do Bible study.”

And so Mel came in one day and he said, hey, check it out, Fels. He goes, we're going to do Bible study in the day room for 40 minutes. He goes, so you got two choices. You can join us for Bible study, or you can go sick quietly in yourself and reflect on life. He goes, those are your two choices.

Your third choice is to slam abdominals and be loud because you're going to not kind of like what I'm going to do to you after that. So this entire pod got a bunch of guys coming to Bible study. Everybody else would just go into their pod and sit there because he had health angel forever tattooed on his freaking stomach.

And they were like, okay, and again, it goes back to that. When you wear that tag, you got that respect. And they knew we was not only by reputation, but that he, that he was else. And he knew he would get after it if he had to.

“He loved the Lord, but he'd also punch in a mouth if”

you didn't listen to the Bible study that this Rodney guy had come in and took his time out of his own life to get you guys on a better track. He was you got to respect that. And then actually he went back years later, Rodney had Alzheimer's and was in a home. And there's a great video tape. His friend, he didn't open his friend's video tape and he's talking a Rodney

thanking Rodney for thank you for, wow, it's a great video man, real good to do. Do you have that he'd milled us? I'd love to put that up. Yeah, it should, because it just he goes, Rodney, I can't thank you enough to tell you enough.

And you see Rodney finally realizes like who Mel is,

even through the dementia and he just breaks down, he's crying. He's like, thanks, because I'm glad you can't. I live in Florida. Yeah, I live in Florida. What are you doing? I live in Florida. I live in Florida. I flew in just the comments of you. I wanted to see you. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah, so there's that

dead, yinging yang, Evan flow, good and bad. It's a constant, it's a battle. What did you link up with Jay Dovins? Jay was, let's see. Jay got, I don't want. Jay's got a great story. I don't want to be a guy that tells Jay's story, but he had gotten, taking a house, he was shot in Tucson, Arizona through the back, basically died on the way to the hospital. They battled him back. So he comes to, he's an outstanding football player,

wide receiver for the wildcats. Very no well in the shooting ended up being, you know, it was all over the newspaper. Tucson is not a super large community. And so Jay came up to Chicago, then got transferred up to Chicago and he was my partner for quite a few years before he went back to Tucson. So when he came up, we were in that six shooting where I told you the guy I only wanted to know. So if I decoct, that was, that guy was with Jay.

He got, now he did tell that story again. Sure. You didn't tell it in here. He told it out there. Oh, okay. We did a gun reverse on two gang bangers from Juliet, gangster cycles. We went to do the take down. We did the undercover part and then we just got in our car and we just figured out shit. We had our stuff. We had done it off site. The bag guys weren't by our car so they didn't see anything. So we did off site. We, we get in a car and I had my,

our vest and stuff in there. So we put our vest on and shit and the take down teams, getting right behind them, not come down on a felony stuff. So they vectoring behind them. Jay and I pulled in front because a lot of these guys squirt, you know, and they're going to run, you know, if you don't have them all blocked in. So we ended up being a lead car. Well, we're getting ready to make the stop there in a radio. We're getting ready to affect the stop and there was a kid on a bicycle

There's a kid on a bike right here. By that point, they had already hit the lights and siren.

“Let these guys know they're getting stopped. So the guy in a car with the two bag guys slows down”

and I speed up to get away from the kid. Hopefully, draw these guys up farther up into the zone where we can knock them down safe and make the arrest. Well, I get kind of blocking the road. Jay gets out the passenger side. I get out the driver side and the guy just floors it. And at the same time, the passenger gets out and he's like boom, boom, boom, he starts putting rounds down range. They hit Jay with the car. But before he hits him, I'm shooting back. They hit Jay with the car

and it hits him so hard. He does that, you know, that football that you're like this left right up down. He was doing that before he got hit. But before he gets hit he ups, boom, puts one in the guys, shoulder. They get hit by the car, flips up over the top of the car. Actually, she's again

before he lands on the ground. I was like, hey, anybody else see that? That was kind of amazing.

Damn, oh yeah, get back. But um, so Jay's down, I run over, I go here, I'm ready to go fucking

“get him like right up. So I jump in the car and it's a chase. We had almost a police band”

readers and her, so it's called a pursuit, you know, now the calories, everybody's coming out of the woodwork. And a pit and guy into a, like, into a field, they get out, they run. They're, they're in like an open field area with a wooded new construction. So I didn't see exactly where they went when they left the car trying to see if the guy still had a gun. I get up on top of the hill and I'm just peeping just very slow, you know, just, just small as I could be, still had to

high ground, but I want to be able to see, you know, larger areas I could, looking for movement, looking for trying to see where these guys scored it to. And then I hear, like, huffing and puffing behind me and puffing motherfucker. And it's Jay walking up the hill. And he's got his gun and his badge and his hands. No, she's on because she's got knocked off his fucking feet, knees are completely blown out. He's just, he goes, hey, I quit. I go, what? He goes, yeah, he goes, this fucking twice.

“He goes, hasn't even been like, not even two years. He goes, I'm all done. And I'm like,”

our bro, I got check it out, I go, how about we find these guys, make sure everything's cool and again. And then you can quit after that. But until then, you're standing up. You know, there's a guy with a pistol. Hey, let's get there. And so he did. And so, um, so that was my,

that's it, I'm done. That was my first. We're in the middle of a gunfight.

Yeah. Oh, my. How about you, Quillier? But, uh, no, it's just a great undercarver agent and, and, um, good investigator. No doubt about it. Yeah, that's, that's the first time. That's first incident we had, but we worked together. I did a lot of UC stuff and we did some undercover together. But, um, if we plot some pipe bombs off a guy, one, oh, we go upstairs. Now that you brought up J-dames. Um, this guy was making pipe bombs. That's really got shit. Well,

so we're like, how many do you have left? We don't want to tell him, go make us one, because you don't want to do that. You're just like, do you have any left? I've got two. Don't sell anybody. We're going to come get him. So, this is right after this shooting. So, Jake, we're going up to steps to this guy's apartment and the doors slightly open a little bit. And as well as the apartments where you walk in, there's a little dinette and there's like a kitchen

wrap around thing and it's got like, uh, like a hole through it so you can see it in the other room. So we opened the door up and, um, we're standing there and the guy's got, uh, uh, to air 15 looking, but it's a 9 millimeter if we get SMG. It's the 9 millimeter. It looks like a AR platform. He's just sitting there and he's like this. And we're in the doorway. It was just like, it was like, fuck, I can't even jerk my shit at this point and get with

this guy. We were both in the doorway and we just started it. It goes, hey, just fucking with you motherfuckers. Check it out. It looks like an AR, but it's a 9 millimeter or like, it's fucking great. And I'm like, I looked at it and it jays like, I guess, I got stuff hanging around you because no good's coming for this. So we go in and the guy's got the pipe bombs and I go, man, try to get information about the pipe bomb, what's in it. So we're talking and I go, man,

you got a lot of balls building those things, man. I go, I'm afraid that shit will go off. And he goes, oh, they're perfectly safe. And he starts banging them together. Yeah, I had kind of the fuse. Just safe. And like, that's good, bro. I trust you. It's safe. So, you know, we take them downstairs and we rest, don't pick them up and take them out, put it, um, yeah, I just just came to mind. Yeah, it was another, but we done just a lot of small deals.

It's some amount of cover deals like that together, you know, buying guns and dope. Oh, we had another guy in our group, my equipment. We did, uh,

out of the South R.A. in Chicago. They had an organized crime case.

And the head of guy that was making this guy was creating a old school guy who was making silencers. He was, uh, dealing cocaine, stealing cars. And he was just like, uh, one stop shopping for criminal activity. So, Mike Lipman had gotten into him really good and he really likes Mike. So Mike said, um, this guy's got a stolen Jaguar there. Um, you know, you want to come with me and drive the Jaguar back. We'll figure out how we're going to do that because I'm going to buy

some dope and he's got some new silencers thinking he wants to show me. So I'm like, all right. So we get there and the guy is fucking nuts. But he's like a tool and die guy. So he's really good. So he was making prototype revolvers that he put a silen -- a can on that actually work. He's turning the barrel down. He affixed the silencer. But he had the headspace to gap. Like, so close that it -- you still heard a noise and there was gas escaping. But it wasn't,

it wasn't like, you know, there's a large amount of space in the silencers. I mean, you could silence it to a degree. But not really effectively. This guy actually had figured out a way to do that with a revolver because that headspace was so tight, talking to him. He's got to keep it looped. So we get there. This guy's half nuts. And he goes, um, he goes, hey, he goes, you can buy that Jaguar and he -- Mike introduces me to him. And he goes, yeah, my boy Chris is going to take

it apart when he gets it back to his shop. He's like, all right, great. He goes, great car. It was a shirt shop for another mob guy from East Coast. So I'm looking at the Jaguar and he goes, hey, you guys need a bomb. Hey, bombs. And I'm looking like, is this some type of ETF undercover scenario with the Academy where you go in and the guy's got a smorgous board to shit? And I go bombs. I go, yeah, I suppose we could go, he goes, dynamite. He goes, you guys can use dynamite. You're

“line of work. You need dynamite, right? I'm like, yeah, sure. He's like, you know, winning room, okay?”

So he gets it as garage and he's got this box and he pulls it out. And I didn't pay a lot of attention during the explosive, um, instruction at the Academy. But I knew enough that it was very sweaty. And I knew that if it was crystallized, it was a lot more shock sensitive, because I mean, it's pretty stable. I mean, you could throw it around, burn it. You know, it's not going to go off unless you got a -- you've got an actual cap that's going to do it. So he goes, uh, or a high explosive.

So he goes, I go, what am I going to do with this? I go, I go, I go, I go, throw it at somebody. He goes, oh yeah, he goes, you need some caps. He goes, you need a bomb. I go, I don't, I don't necessarily need one, but I could probably use one at some point. He goes, okay, he goes, here's the dynamite. So he's got it on a table. He goes, let me find a caps. So he takes it around his garage and pulls out of box. He's got three blasting caps in a box and he got that, you know, blasting caps. Oh yeah,

the shot, you know, to make sure there's no static electricity that's all of a sudden connect to circuit.

“So it's got that little shot thing. I think it's a shot. My wife's going to kill me for now,”

know what the correct terminology is. Um, but I had to shut him. So I knew enough to -- okay, that's okay. So I get the caps and I go, what am I -- how do I -- oh, what am I going to do the whole fucking thing for you? It goes, you need a timer. You want a time going? I go, sure. He's digging around his garage. He's got a mechanical egg timer that's already set up for double a battery pack. It's got like six plastic where he had clippement. It's already wired up,

soldered. No batteries in it or anything. And he goes, yeah, and he goes, the egg timer, he goes,

he sees things are fucking beautiful. They never fail. And he'd already wired two wires,

one to the actual timing thing that you turn. And the other one was the collect when the timer comes back up. And it hits now, connects the circuit and the bond goes off. So he's like, he goes, remember, you got to go past five minutes though and come back. He goes, because if he just do one or two, it might just go all the way front. He goes, kids, he got to go to five and then come back if he went anywhere from one to four minutes. He got to go to five and then bring the

dial back and I'm like, okay, good to know. So he gives us all that shit. And so now we got this

“fucking bomb. So Mike's over looking at the silencer on the -- he goes, does this thing actually work?”

And I go, watch. So he loads it in his garage and he fires a roundoff into a mattress and some other shit that he had up against the wall. We're like, oh fuck. So he does that. And it actually

worked pretty well. I don't know, like, this is kind of amazing. So Mike buys the silencer's gunoff

on him. He buys a quarter key at cocaine off him. And we get the Jaguar. And we think we're fucking Miami Vice at this point. We're like, who is cooler that we got a fucking stolen Jaguar? We got this dynamite. So the FBI guys super happy, obviously, they listen to the wire. Happy with what we got. So we get out. We're still on pages at this time. We do have cell phones in. So we didn't want them following us out. So we were kind of -- make sure we were clean. We've got

to a pay phone. I call our explosive guy. I go, hey, man, I got three sticks of, I don't know what. I see he goes, what's it look like? He's like, oh, it's this kind of dynamite, okay? He goes,

He goes, all right, Eddie Crystals, I go, no, no Crystals. So I'm actually touching it and

“fucking with it, which is dumb. So I'm moving it around, Gunner, Mike Lebanon. We call him”

Goon Goons, and let me see that dynamite. So he's like looking at, we're touching it. So he goes, well, don't touch it. And I'm like, okay, you know, I didn't know why. He goes, just don't touch it. He goes, make sure the caps and the explosive are separate. I go, yeah, it's with the cocaine and the drunk of the car. We're going to drive it back to the FBI office. He goes, I'll meet you at the FBI office. So I'm like, okay, cool. So we start driving along and I start getting this fucking headache. Like,

like, my eyes are popping out of my head and I'm just like, man, like, dizzy. I'm like, what the fuck. And Gunner is like shit. He goes, it's the neutral grister and it's leaking out of that. He goes,

it's absorbed into our fingers and our hands now because we were stupid enough to fucking touch it.

And so we got these massive pounding fucking headaches. So we get back to the FBI office. Get out of the car. And I'm a little fucked up. Our bomb guy shows up on the set. He takes the dynamite. He uses gloves. He didn't touch it because he didn't want to headache. So I go upstairs and tell the the rack. Hey, I go. Hey, with ATF, it's Ivan here. Ivan was the FBI agent we were working with. They're like, he's on his way back. I go, well, let him know. We got the bomb. It's downstairs

in the parking lot. And it guys, like, you have a bomb in the parking lot. I go, it's a little one.

“It's only three sticks of dynamite in the caps. And it guys, like, are you fucking kidding me?”

Why did you bring a bomb in the parking lot? Because this was our meat spot. It's your case. Gonna be your evidence. Thought I'd come back there. And they were like, the guy had a lot. So we're going to have to evacuate the building. I go, I don't think it's that necessary that we go that far. But, you know, so it was like their copa, sorry, good point. Our bad shouldn't bring a bomb in the FBI office. That's probably not a good thing to do. So that was like, Jay was with us.

I think out on that one is a cover team. And Mike Litman, like I said, another really good undercover agent. So yeah, that we thought we were so fucking cool. You know, little did we know just the stupidity of every aspect of where we were at, what we were doing. But, you know, when did you move on to the sons of silence? I didn't, I did them. It was a, I didn't do them. Blake Bolter and Darrell Edwards were two friends of my HF agents. Another great undercover

guy. I stand on the shoulders of some guys that had done some fucking amazing shit around the

country. These guys had gotten in and they were actually full patch with the sons of silence, motorcycle gang. And, um, we, they were looking for a club that was going to get threatened by these guys. They had pretty much locked down Colorado Springs. And, um, the, uh, the case agent said, you know what, Blake Bolter said, maybe we can get, um, if you guys write around as a bike club, the normal protocol would be, hey, get, uh, get a meeting together. You guys, we, we came up with

unforgiving with our motorcycle gang. So we had an unforgiving top rocker, Colorado bottom rocker, which is a no-no. We start driving around their bars in their area. So they were having meetings about who the fucking these unforgiving guys. And, um, Blake Bolter's in there recording the conversation they go, we see these guys got to have them come in, the actor shit normal protocol. Like, all right, see's about right. Um, so we're driving around. So Blake Bolter says, hey,

you guys been to bars, they saw you. We kind of got the threat. You could get a little bit more, maybe maybe be, be seeing one more time. Go to their bar, Jenny's bar. In Colorado Springs when I go, okay. So we, you know, we're fucking right, or Harley's in. We get off the scoots. We go in. Well, the time that Blake had left the bar and told us there were no sons of their sons there. They're the actual guy that dug luck at, who was, like,

people getting to fights and they're like, yeah, that guy was six eight fucking for her. He was six eight for her, perhaps. Um, Doug, look, it had gone there. So when we walk in, he's there in the entire bars there. And so it didn't end well for us at that time. He came out. He said, you guys are it. You think you're that, you're not. And they fucking got us. They got us. So the whole bar

“basically beat the fuck out of us in this bar. That's why I got kicked and got that ear ringing”

from. There was one funny point in the middle of the fight. This is a funny kind of a funny story. So I'm on a ground. I just keep kicked a bunch of people are pound at the top and he put in lumps on me. Um, I get pulled off by a guy named babyface John Carr was another great, great guy, big jacked up, he opened up, he pulls everybody off, gets me up. Well, they grab a babyface, they got him a full Nelson. And they are working him like a heavy bag. I mean, they're fucking

bad, bad, beating him pretty good. So the one guy that's beating him looks over at his old lady and he goes, go get a pull cue or, you know, pull a ball and come back and crush his skull. So she like runs over the full table. Now I'm trying to get, I'm like, this is trying to get to this check. So she runs back before I can get there and she's got this pull ball in her hand.

And it goes, boom, when it fell off his chest, it like everybody at the bar cut out, cut that,

it started kind of laughing. Like, like, okay, that was pretty funny. And then he went back to beating her fucking ass, but Jay was in there. Jay was part of that crew too, that day. But yeah, so that's the, these sons of silence case. And then we got out to the door, right outside, nurse their wounds and wrote off in his son said, so that's it. That's that was my only son's house. But those guys at the end of that case, I forget how much met that fed me, they bought,

they got explosives, they got bombs, they got machine guns, it, there was, they did a Blake and, they all did a outstanding job, really good case. Wow. Where were you when a red that you got threatened to, they're gonna kill you, locals in your chest. Yeah, that was a guy. So we started after probably 10 years of the, the bike case. I had the same U.S. attorney in the Central

District of Illinois. He did the outlaws case. He did the health, henchmen, Angel Park. And then we went back, and because we could show historically that the crew members had bought about 250 kilos

“from the joy of angels. We did a drag conspiracy on those guys in a rest at like, I think three”

or four members out of joy at outlaws and got them on the drug conspiracy. So this is like up to 2000. Right around in there, I think, yeah, 99, 2000. Right. We're still working on Jay's, or not Jay's, but Mel's indictment when we got him on 2004. Then after that, I started doing, we were doing these getting operations around the country. And so we would go to like the worst city in the country.

And we would deploy into there. We would spend about two months doing a work up, talking to the local police department, who are your worst guys, who's the shot callers, who are the hitters, who are the trigger pullers. And we would focus on just those guys specifically to try to wrap them up in anything we could get. You know, El Capone eventually

went to jail for income tax evasion. So never went to jail for how many people he killed or

shot or booze, but income tax. So we found like ways to go in and try to take that violence out of that community. One of the ways we did it was stashoffs for average. So I pretend like I'm a stashoffs robber. I'm a currier. And I know we're probably 20 kilos of coke is, and it's kind of a whole scenario. I want to bore you with it completely. It's not boring. And a lot of things, a lot of people are still out there kind of doing something similar. We changed it up a little bit,

but we still do these type of proactive cases. So I act like a drug currier. And I go to the worst guys you got in the neighborhood. I go, you got some killers, man. And I met one guy one time in Vegas. He sat there and he pretty much has simply put it in play. Because I don't need robbers to rob this place. Because I need killers that are going to rob. Because the way it's set up is, I know where the dope is and I can drive us there eventually. However, there's four armed guards

and they're about to, they're their cartel guys. They're not going to give that dope up be just because we asked for it. And they're like, no, we understand. And we run it just the exact way a stash house runs for the cartels. So everything looks exactly above board in the criminal

“community because that's how they operate. And that's how our scenario is set up. So there's always”

a plan. The only guy that will, that is a connection between the stash house robbers and the cartel is me. I'm the guy that is going to be introducing, well, actually not introducing, but bringing them to the stash house to kill everybody steal the coke. So they know at the end of the day, cartels, they don't like 20 bricks gone. They're going to want to know where their dope went and they're going to try to find who fucking robbed. So I'm the only large pit. So these guys

generally always have another conversation without me that involves killing me. And this guy in this

instance, they were talking about what we're going to do with his body, what we're going to do with Chris's body when we get down kill him. He's like, poke about 10 holes in that motherfucker man. So we've got to get deep in there, poke 10 holes. He goes, because what happens is when we throw him in a water and a river gas blows him up and he floats to the surface, poke about 10 holes,

“10 holes in that motherfucker and stay now with the fishies. So that's what that was the,”

we're going to kill Chris. But generally in those cases, they're always going to kill you at the end, but we've got things in place that they're not going to kill you until they get the location of the stash house if we take them off before that. Holy shit. Yeah. It works great. So the most some of the most violent guys I've ever met my life around those cases, because they're about we're killing everybody in the house. I'm like right on bro. Shit. And then so many crimes have been

case. Well, these guys already have a history, violent history, they've already got convictions,

that boats against them on the federal case. They got a gun, the amount of dopey charge that

“they were going to rob. So they look at a substantial more and the only way to get off from under that”

is to cooperate. So you end up with guys that say, well, I could tell you about three murders or four murders give those up. I mean, I've just, you know, going through some of the stuff and the staff house operates, staff house operates, staff, staff house operations. I mean, phoenix Arizona, 2009, 70 arrest during wave of home invasions at drug locations, Oakland, California, 2012, police chief requested ATA help after violent crimes rose 20%. Four months later,

four months later, shootings were cut in half. California, 2012,

remember, for right at information, a letter of B.I. to solve nearly $1 million in

normal car, high school, Chicago, 2021, 13 arrested gangster disciples and forester from England, one of later charged with murder on bail. Did you put a real fucking dent and their bad people? Well, it was going on over there. Yep. But it wasn't just me, man. I mean, the one you talk about I did, but we've done those around a country and guys have done

“some really heinous guys. I think I might have, we were talking earlier about the MS 13 guys that”

cut the fetus out of the girls' stomach. Richie Zayas, my partner from Tampa, Cuban guy. He did those guys. Of's are, what did you just say? The MS 13, it was the guys that FBI had a case and they had an informant, female informant that was given information. They'd relocated her and she came back to her red zone. Unfortunately, they found her, they lowered her to a bridge under a bridge. She was pregnant. So my virtual effect that she gave information about MS 13, they went ahead and

held her up and they cut the fetus out of her stomach and then slid her throat. Richie Zayas, my partner from Tampa, had done that, set a cruise guys, buck guns and dope off those guys. And then he testified at the sentencing about all the other criminal activity. They had done and we're doing it at that time in addition to the murder that they killed that witness and cut the fetus out of her stomach. Shit. What's the life look of these

fathers and the eyes? It's fun because you know they're going to go to jail in a minute on the take-down and stuff. But I tell you, that's where people say there's not evil out there. Everybody has so

“forth. That's not true. I believe people can change. I believe generally, that people are good,”

but there is evil. And there is evil in these people's eyes, Matt, they've got that look and you just know, you can just feel it. This guy will kill me in a minute. This guy has killed people before. But those are the guys we need. We want to remove them from the community. You know, it's like crabgrass in your lawn. You know, the bad guys, the Uber violent guys are the crabgrass. You want to remove that so the rest of the grass can grow, healthy grass can grow. And so you've got to have

proactive law enforcement and you've got to do that. But you know what the anti law enforcement stuff and everything's racially biased. It's harder to do those without having to fight that defense. A lot of times. You know, it's almost like on the stash of stuff. After I retired, you know, I did a thing for the Chicago sometimes because I was tired of getting this, you're getting a defense side of it, but you're not getting the proactive side and why it's

important to do those kinds of cases. And you know, they're like, well, you're just doing it in this one community. You're doing the black community, they're Hispanic community or this community. I was like, no, we're doing it in any community. We find violent guys that are willing to step up and kill somebody for fucking cocaine because they're not doing good in the community. I said, we need to remove them because they're not just doing this. They're doing another criminal activity.

And so when we meet them and we talk to them and they're like, hey, we're it. Like the guy, I did a couple for the FBI in Chicago and they were the, it's the one you read. You read the enforcers. You get that off the internet. Is that, is that, is that we got, yeah. Those guys were, okay, those guys were the enforcers for the gangster disciples on the

south side. And the guy told me the guy that led the crew, the guy, I stepped to first to say,

you got anybody that would do this or interested. He says, I'm interested and I've got a crew. And I said, well, I got to meet them because you want to get that conversation from everybody. And he, I mean, his crew and he comes over to me afterwards. He goes, what do you think of my little go-getters, man? I said, fuck dude, they're about it. And they'll jerk a pistol and go to work.

happened. The last five murders on the south side. My guys, my guys to care of that. I'm like right

on brother. So that's the people that you're taking out of the community those Uber violent guys. You're taking out the community. And that's important to do, man. But they're like, they were, you know, black anxious disciples. So they're a black gang. So the question is from the judge and so the wire you're picking on, you know, you're just doing black guys. So I'm like, look, look at the violence in these two communities on the west side in the south side of Chicago.

Look at the low of violence there. I go, it's almost like losing your keys in the garage, but you're looking for them in the kitchen. It's like, because the light's better in its warmer. I said, bro, I'm not going to catch, I'm not going to find a keys in my kitchen because I've

lost them in the garage. I'm not, if I'm tasked with preventing and and stopping violent crime,

especially using with a firearm, I go, I got into places where it's very violent and they're using firearms. And unfortunately, it's disproportionately in these communities. But there's good people in those communities that if the priors are taken out, gives them a chance to, and you know what happens if you don't fucking pay attention to those communities and you let all those criminals keep going. You're a racist then, too. Correct. Do there's no,

it's common sense of good judgment is left the arena. It's just a fucking losing battle. Absolutely. Try to do good. You're a racist. You're trying to do bad. You're a racist. Like, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's fucking ridiculous. Yeah. We had 30 shootings last week and it's got 30 shootings. And that's not even a, it's not even what we call a good weekend for shootings. Crime has violent crime murders. They've gone down to a degree and it's kind of

a slope. And it happened when the attitude toward law enforcement changed. Unfortunately, you know,

“it's got to be political. And I think finally, after the George Floyd shit was done and the”

defund the police attitude was done, proactive law enforcement's coming back and you're starting to see those, the benefits of that, which has taken these violent guys off the street now. I said that ramen did to correct myself. I said, good or bad, you, you pay attention and you give the community attention and you arrest the bad guys in a black community and you're a racist. If you neglected because you're labeled a racist and you let crime wrong rampant, you're a racist. Right. So what

the fuck are you supposed to do? You know, you keep your nose down. You do you job. I know what I do. I know, when I go to heaven and God says, what about these guys? I can't account for everybody. I put in jail. You know, I didn't, I can lie on anybody. I'm not going to, I do any of that shit. You know, these guys went to jail because they jerked a pistol and went to work or they went, or they were talking about doing it or they've already killed people. So these are the

guys that we want to do. It's like, like Mel and God bless him for change his life. And I'm glad I did, but at that time, Mel needed to be taken off the set. He was the head of the snake. And I

“think that's why once he changed and he went to jail, that's why the use of attorney that had all”

these cases, he goes, man, we've had a good run. We've done a lot of clubs, you've done a lot of violent guys. There's no more that Rico's that Sandy developed and he ended up in Wisconsin. That stopped the violence, man, because guys got, we're looking at life. And some guys got life. It's like, you know, and for what? You know, it's almost like the, uh, the frickin rotary club got after it with the, uh, some other philanthropic group in the community and said, your fish

fries not that good. So we're going to kill you guys. There's no actual reason to do that other than be just for the sake of violence being violence, man. Mm. So yeah. Well, Chris, let's take a break. Let's do him. We'll talk about what, what got you out of the ATF. He got you leave, right now. We've all seen it. The Department of War is operating in a world that's changing faster than ever.

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“the watch floor, where we highlight what matters. It became a permissive state. Explain to you”

why it matters. And then aim to leave you feeling better and form than you were before you hit play. Terrace, hostile intelligence agencies organized crime, not everything is urgent. But this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know. We're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into kind of the your last assignment if that's what you call it and why you left ATF. After 30 years, which may be enough of itself.

It's probably good enough reason. Yeah, the last. So I started working full time for SOD, special operations division under cover branch. So I didn't work out of anyone particular area or all over the country. So we were doing these getting operations. And again, like I was talking about, we would focus on the communities that were really Uber violent and we were running at those.

“So we were out in Cleveland, Ohio. Excuse me. And at that point, I was 55, maybe. I think I'm 55.”

I was 55 at the time. You're 54. 54. And we were running. We would do an Oskettians. We would run maybe 14 different operations a day under cover deals. We'd have a big board, white board at the off site. We'd like, okay, inform it. So and so has got this guy, this guy, this guy. Two undercover buys just to meet for conversation. So we kind of mapped out our entire day to kind of maximize because we're only there. We would run about four months straight.

Every day for four months. We take Sundays off for something, go to a ball game. But for the

most part, you never got away with it. Or away from it. It was just always, you know, because we were

trying to maximize the amount of time we had, or maximize the number, not the offense, but maximize enough encounters in that period of times we couldn't for a month. So we were working pretty fast.

“The ones out, and I think the most we were did was 14. And that was out where you talked about that”

one in Sarah, Oakland, California. We were ripping and running every day. Just into the evening, come back, cut reports, get ready for the next day. Inform it says this. I met this guy in the cover. He wants to meet the next day. So it was boom, boom, boom, boom. So we were doing one in Cleveland, Ohio. And we done a bunch of deals. It was near the end of the case. And we got information, a guy that violent dude, a couple of times convicted felon, gang banger. Two of his buddies had

like a bag full of stolen guns. And it was just a simple deal that you've done. I've done, a couple hundred times easy, no problem. We get to the, we get to his house. I back up, my undercover truck. And I get out of the truck. He's down. He's got this bag of guns. Sir, put the guns. Set it on the ground. And unzips it. I look in. I see this whole shield. I just pistols and a couple shotguns and some other things. I'm like,

all right, that looks good. So I turned to the undercover truck door for door, basically.

And I opened the back door. And I hear that click. I hear the hammer going back and locking back. That was like, hmm. I turn around and he's, he's got it up. And it's right, my face. And he goes, um, because I think I need to see some money. But he's got that look like I just want to see where it is. So I don't have to pull it off. He later kind of looked. And I was like, we trained and we teach, like, tying up with a guy with a pistol. Because I know my cover teams

about 20 seconds out, maybe 25 seconds, which is a long time when you're fighting for your life. But I know they're going to, they're going to come up with me there. But I was too far away from him

and to play out of their vehicles and move up, not that they wouldn't have had a trouble navigating

“that and doing the thing. But I felt, I thought maybe I could just close the distance with this guy,”

somehow, and then I could go hands on. So, um, he starts to go like this, like, get down on your knees. And, um, I couldn't give him that. That's my, couldn't give him that. So, um, that fuck. Sorry. Um, so I tried to close the distance and I got the money on my pocket that I had. And I, I was just going to throw it in here. And so as soon as I took the money out, the entire expression is eyes and eyes face-changed. And he starts smiling. And I was like, Motherfucker,

and he drops the gun or he leaves the gun down and hangs onto it and he pulls the trigger and he lets the hammer go forward and, uh, I ended up buying the gun and, uh, the gun he had, I mean, and then the bag of guns, I bought them all, got them in the truck, and then I left. And I was like,

for whatever reason, can't even tell you that it's not the first time somebody had put a gun in my

head, um, on the home invasion crew guys that we were doing, stash house, got grabbed me and Frank Farilla, grabbed me into a stall in the bathroom. We were having the meeting in a restaurant with his crew to do the stash house robbery and he goes, let me talk to you for a minute. I'm like, all right, getting a bathroom and he gets me in the handicapped stall and he gets a 45 out and puts it up under my chin, you know, we're for real bro. If this is a for real, I'm going to fucking

get you. And I'm like, I don't doubt that for a minute bro. It's for real. He's like, all right, did not have a that did not affect me in any way, and there were other times guys would, you know,

we're in the good business. So there's always going to be a pistol, but I cannot even,

“couldn't even tell you why that was just, I remember a thoughts in my head where like,”

Cleveland, Ohio, I'm going to die in Cleveland, fucking, Ohio, all this shit I've done, and it's Cleveland. And I was talking to, I ended up getting some help on it. I was talking to the psychiatrist lady that helped me with it. And I could tell you where the sun was in the sky, the birds were chirping. I, I, I, I didn't know why that, I had that memory of that at that particular moment in time. And then I felt like I let my kids down because I'd fucked up.

So, um, so I, it really took for whatever reason again, I don't know if it was, why do you feel

like you let your kids down? Because I always told them, I'm, I'm trying to be okay, you know,

and they're like, you, I could just see, like, my daughter saying, well, you always said you were going to be okay and you're not. And so I, for me, it's just felt like that, I just felt like that, had that feeling. Um, I was just, I felt stupid. I felt like again, I'm smarter than this,

“how did this guy get the fucking ups on me, how did this happen like this? And I think that,”

the other thing, it was so personal, man. I mean, we were right there. He smelled like shit. He smelled like bad bio, bad clone and weed, with bad breath, you know, and you're that close. And you just, it's all that things, you know, he become hypersensitive and acute to that. And I was just, I couldn't get on the ground and, um, like I said, I stood forward and then got the money out and it, and it all went. But it, uh, it just took us to, so that was when, I think

Tina was down, my wife was down, getting her, um, bomb tab. She was going through the bed, redstone arsenal, sort of, the training itself. So, I know, she was down doing that. And I remember when she got back, it was, uh, I was just incredibly weird. I'd be milling night to be 12 o'clock and I'd have this freaking something's wrong. I mean, they're going to have a heart attack, or there's something wrong around here. And I go down, I'd look outside, go down the basement,

and I would just pace for like three or four hours, uh, and walk, you know, trying to ramp myself down like, there's nothing wrong with you. You're not going to die. Not having a heart attack. You're okay. You know, I've been in peer support since 1988. You know, I've talked to guys that had been in way worse situations than that. And I felt like, um, I felt part of it was, I felt like such a, uh, uh, pussy. I felt like, how did I not, how I, I didn't get shot. I have friends

that got shot. First 14 days on the freaking job. I buried my friends, um, that have been killed. I've got friends that are, um, you know, they're in a wheelchair right now, um, because they mentioned, uh, I just, it was hard to equate that I was feeling as shitty about, um, that incident,

saw me that talking this, I went to a friend of mine that's, uh, from the Illinois State Police who

runs, um, um, a center for families, uh, for first responders that have, you know, been in shooting,

they run the whole family out there cornerstone. Um, it's a great program. So I called him up. I said, man, I got some, um, dealing with something. I can't figure out. So we get together and he goes, I got the perfect lady for you to talk to. And I knew his story and all this shit he had been through. And I, so I assumed he was, uh, talking to her to get through his stuff. He was, oh, no, I'm good.

“I don't have a problem. He goes, but you're fucked up because you need to go talk to her.”

I go, I know you're back around. I go, you gotta be fucked up. I go, I'm not the only fucked up one here. I go, you're fucked up, too. He's like, no, you're more fucked up right now. He goes,

here's the name. Here's the number of collar. All right. So I put an appointment. I go in.

She listens to the whole story and she doesn't want you read a book. I'm like, okay, what's that? Sorry. I can't. It's all good. She goes, uh, she goes called Touch in the Dragon. She goes written by a Navy seal. I'm like, okay. So I started reading this book. And I'm like, great book. I want a great career this guy's had. He gets shot and he struggles with getting shot. Now he's off the teams. He's not I'm wearing. He got shot one time in the, in the knee.

Alcoholic bloke, it's family with all nine yards shot one time. So I get to page 207 at the bottom. And the guy that came to talk to him to help him have been shot 25 times and lived. And so it goes, I'm sitting here and I'm talking to this guy. It did been shot 25 times. And he's helping me trying to get better. I've been shot one time and like he talks about shame.

“He was like, fuck. Now I get it. So the shame is I think it kind of, it's um,”

it's a gift you give yourself, but you don't want it, but you wear that. Like I said, man, I could not figure out why I was in the basement walking for four hours. I did not have been shot. Do you know now? Absolutely. Why? It's the, it's the straw. When you, when you operate at that hypervisual and slow, at some point, your mind goes, oh, we're all done now. Your body's like, your body's done, my mind's done. We're all done in it, and that's where I was at.

I was at the end of the week. In progress, you did 30 fucking years. You were undercover within a year. Right. That's a lot of shit, man. It is. I, I realize it. It is. Yeah. A lot of shit. But again, I know most of it as a one-man band. Yeah. It's true. It's true. But you don't want to be that weak link in that crew. And you know as well as anybody. You don't want to be that guy that's got a pro. You don't want to be that guy that can't take it. You want to be that guy that you want to be,

you know what we're fucking Superman. I don't know if you know that's that but we got capes on our trucks. You know, you want to be that guy. At least you have that for yourself. And maybe that helps you get through 30 years of shit. But at some point, man, the, the, the body keeps score. And I was just at that point where. So I did the EMDR and prolonged exposure. And it was, um, I got myself back to quasi normal along with that tag. You know, I was surprised at how quickly the anxiety point left,

um, the prolonged exposure. I don't know if you're familiar with it. But I go through it with the

therapist. She's got a little recorder. And I thought it was dumb at first. She doesn't want you

to tell the same story. I told you what you tell it in the recorder. And do it five times, record it. And now watch this. I'll listen to it for five times. It takes about 35 minutes, still time. She'll

“see what you need to do it every day. So I'm like, I'm my way home. And I'm like, you fucking kidding me.”

I'm going to speak into this record. I'm pacing in the basement for four hours at night. I'm thinking about just driving off a cliff. I go, this little recorder in this shit is not going to work. But I did it anyway. I was like, and I noticed the anxiety level at about day five started to lessen. And then I noticed that I would get, I could not tell it. I'm surprised it. I got to the point where I could tell it story in the recorder. And I wasn't, it didn't have that visceral

or going to affect anymore. It seemed like it was almost, um, it was there. But it wasn't there, you know, it was more abstract. It was kind of stepped away from where I was at mentally. And I was like,

And that by the time I did the EMDR, I was like, I felt that you don't have that right here. We're anxiety levels through the roof. I'm looking at everybody. It's just that kind of like, if finally it was this guy, I got some relief. And so that book and that lady definitely saved my life. Oh, no. Wow. Yeah. But again, I'm not the, what I look at what other people had done, like the genre tunos, you know, um, the Richie's Isis, these guys that have,

man, I, it was funny. I talked to Richie's Isis later by, um, he'll see you have nightmares. And I'm like, yeah, he's man, he goes, I wake up screaming and he had gotten a divorce and he's with his new girlfriend.

“And she's like, yeah, he screams like every night. And I go, hey, dude, remember all those times I was telling you,”

like, I'm struggling with this shit. And he said, hey, man, just suck it up. Drink a beard, do a shot. Off to the next adventure. I go, wouldn't have been really nice if you said, hey, I have nightmares. So I'm like, I tell everybody now. If you're having an issue or problem, do not fricking swallow it. And especially, no, I'm starting doing shots and drinking beer because you're just exasperating that situation. I said, come talk to me or so I go, I've got no, I've done what I've done.

And I'm good. I said, but walking, you've done 30 years or guys who've done 20 years or 10 years on the teams, I go, there's no sense being that miserable and having that constant vigilance and then anxiety in your gut in your head, it just takes, it takes the fun out of life and everything. So, you know, if anybody gets anything about me talking to you, they get some help.

“Then there's plenty of things out there. We've come so far in our ability to treat that and move”

that forward. You've got to do it, man. You can't not do it. You owe it to your family. You know, owe it to yourself. We talk about this all the time on there. You were going to kill yourself. I, it got to the point where I, I knew that in the basement, I, um, I couldn't go on. I can't, this, the amount of anxiety and heightened sense of just like skin crawling off. I just, I was like, I can't live like this. I can't do it. But then

did you know how you were going to do it? I never got that, I, I would probably just shoot myself,

but I never, I never said down and planned it out. I'm going to get the truck and I'm going to drive away because my, my thing, my was like, my kids had put up with so much shit of me being gone and things like that. That was the thing that I was like, there is no fucking way there.

“I was just like, dude, you got to quit being a fucking, I was saying to myself, you got to”

quit being a pussy. You got to stand up and fucking fix this shit and do it right. And I just, I could not do that to my kids, man. There's just no way. So yeah, so that lady that book, if I could meet that seal sometime, I'd freaking love to tell them thanks because that definitely, um, don't try to fill in something that's going to happen after this releases, um,

but always does. Yeah. What about drinking drugs? Anything like that? No, no, shit,

you never felt like that. I used to, I dropped, you know, in that culture, I was 14 beers and three shots guy, you know, and I'm not, I don't know how to, I'm not a big dude, but I could do that, still get on Harley and right away. But, um, I don't do that. Anymore, that's been, I do, if I do one or two beers, it's a big night and I'm in bed at at 30. I enjoy my grass in the backyard. Um, yeah, it's, it's a different, I, uh, I actually got a job.

I do, uh, frame my frustration on old, like wheelie's jeeps. My father kind of got me into it. And, um, so I do that kind of an honor of him. He's passed, um, and I work with a guy that actually mill knows him, but I, I arrested him a while back for Hobbes Act robbery and ran into him after he did about four and a half, five years, ran into him. He was in the halfway house and he had to get a job, to be in the halfway house and it's part of his parole. So we run into him. He was managing a restaurant

bar and we'd Tina and I just, my wife had gone into just get a sandwich with some friends and there he was standing there and I was like, Ricky, you're out. He goes, Chris, I am. I'm like, so I go, why are you doing brother? And he goes, I'm doing good. And I go, you look good. You look great. You're working out. He was a big kid. He was, yeah, I'm back to working out. I go to the halfway house. He goes, yeah, I go what

he's doing now. He goes, well, he goes, he was an idiot's about mechanic, like never formally trained,

but could wrench on any car any Harley was unbelievable mechanic. As well, he goes, friend of mine to do me a salad or guy, he's giving me a shop area. I'm good. I'm setting up a shop. I'm just going to work

good. I go, because we're in a restaurant now and you know, he goes, no, we're more than good dude. He goes,

I change my life, because I'm going to do things differently. And he goes, for all this shit I did before, I went to jail on your thing. He said, um, if I just do this five years and get out, I'm good. And, uh, I'm like very cool. So fast forward a couple of years, my dad blew up the motor out of his Jeep. So I called him Mel and I said, remember Ricky? He's like, yeah, I talked to Ricky every

“night with that. I'm like, he's a guy from the neighborhood, kind of guy. I said, I think if you say hard feelings,”

I go, I got this, uh, Jeep that had, looking at work and I, I don't have enough room. I graduated to pull the motor out and take the tub off. I'm going to redo the whole thing. He's like, call him. So I call him Ricky. He's like, fuck, calm, bring it. So I trailer it out there. We put it in his garage. He takes the engine out within like 15 minutes, figures out what's wrong with it. It's got to be rebuilt. He holds all the pistons and crank off. Um, and he goes, you're pretty good with a red.

She goes, I go, I'm retired. I'm looking for your shit to do. He goes, brother, he goes, I clean a part off my, over here in the corner because he just wanted to bring cars in a wrench on him. He goes, you come anytime. So I just started, you know, a couple of days and then pretty soon. I was like, I like coming here and wrenching on cars and, you know, just, there's a solace of just building

something, you know. And, uh, and we talk about he, it's funny. He can see talks about you never

“would have got me for this. I go, I knew you were doing that. He's like, no fucking way, because if I”

had done this, would you got it? And no, but he's, uh, he's one of those guys. He's a lot like, it's not like Mel. He's, uh, he's worked seven days a week, 365 days a year since he got out. And, uh, I'm impressed by not only his commitment to stand out at trouble, but also just how he's living his life. He's just, he's a good, he's a good man. He takes care of people. He's just, there's people that come in there. He's got a shop that, excuse me, um, no big marquee, but, uh, people that are maybe

struggling with the amount of money they have to get something fixed and they've got a newer car. And it's going to be $1500, you know, we're $2,000. Pickles, let me take it out, take care of it. He does it, does it on the tube. And he's just, he's a good guy. It's a good guy. So, I bid that's, I go that's where I go place the salice. I get my, my wrench out. Take a few motors apart. Yeah, it's awesome, Bob. It's good. Good for you, man. Yeah. So I was a, at 56 is when I, uh, I could go to 57,

but at 56, I was like after the Cleveland thing. It's just, I'm like, you know what, I'm good. I've, 30 years, I'm, I'm, I'm all done now. I'm good. It was all of a right. It was out to get

“a change of thing. Oh, maybe a couple things, but I like very much where I'm at now. I think, you know,”

it was funny. Um, I went, Mel had a, uh, he was on social media. At the time, when I retired, you know,

he's big social media, devotionals, you know, second chance, always stay in a fight, you know,

not physical fight, but stay in a fight to do better. And it was a, uh, a little kid, his father in Richard. It's kidad leukemia. And he was on his last, uh, chemo therapy coming up. And so his dad reaches out to Mel, he says, my son follows you. Um, um, Instagrammer, whatever. I'm not on anything. So I couldn't, couldn't even tell you what platform it was that he was on. But he goes, my son loves your devotionals and he loves like your second chance and don't give

up. He's been fighting leukemia because his last chemo was coming up, um, like this Friday or next Friday or something. He goes, anyway, you could, uh, column or he goes, well, typical Mel. He goes, I'll be in Chicago. That weekend, it goes, I'll come up with a day early. He goes, he might, my buddy, Chris will pick us up, pick out the rest of me because of the airport. We'll come, absolutely, we're at. He's like, well, he gets his last treatment at like two o'clock. And I'm like,

um, and Mel's like, great, calls me. And I'm like, he wants to meet this guy. Absolutely. So we go over and we sit there with this little guy. And when he came in, it was his, his last chemo treatment. So I don't know if you're, if it was anybody that's at cancer, but the last treatment, I mean, you ring the bell and it, you're pretty beat up after all that poison going through your system. So this little kid comes in, looked, said, and then he sees Mel and he's like smiling.

And he's like, he's like, oh, Mel, he started the Mel's like, hey, I've heard all about you. You, you played baseball and Mel had the whole kid's whole violin. He's talking to him and telling him stuff and Hulk Hogan had sent him some autograph pictures and he had a little thing from Hogan, like, stay in a fight. You know, so you don't know this stuff for this little kid. So we were only supposed to stay about 45 minutes, um, or an hour. We ended up either like four and a half

five hours by the end of it. I'm crying, Mel's crying, his parents are crying. You know, it's just just a great moment for this little guy. So at this time, as right when I was retiring,

with anything or that I had some issues, but he knew that he was what's going on with you. And so I told

“him after we met with this little guy, um, I'm striving to the airport and, uh, I said, well,”

I said, brother, I said, man, I don't even know if it's all worthwhile, bro. I said, I did so much battle damage by kids, my family, myself. I'm like, I don't, I don't, I don't think it was worth it. So typical, Mel, you know, madam, it's popping a stick of gum in his mouth. He's got his bag and we're pulling up to the, um, to the terminal. He doesn't let me tell you something to do. He goes, if God's only planned, was for you to be an ATF agent, do all your shit, arrest me, put me

in jail. I changed my life. I come out. I do all this other stuff. I meet this young man who's suffering from cancer. And we gave him five hours where he's happy because he got an autograph picture of Hulk Hogan. He feels, it's all fucking worthwhile. It's God's plan. He goes and, who the, are you to decide what God's plan is about? And I was like, and he gets out of the truck. He goes,

“I'll see you next week. Okay. And he left. And I was like, that was that kind of”

universe switch where it's like, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. You know, all this stuff is a gift. It's going to go out and look at it. Yeah. So it's when Miller used me to his pastor, it's all pastor. It's just salt to the earth guy, pastor Steve. This guy was turned 50, he wanted to bench 500 pounds. I was 50 at birthday. So we did. Oh, wait, why? So he's that guy. He's, he's, he's just a monstrous guy, but I love him. And he's, he's helped me come along way

of my walk with the Lord as with Mel. Um, he's one of those guys that guy never gave up on Mel

from 50. He would pray for him all the time. Mel, he said, he, the pastor told me, because I'd, I'd page that big log at like two o'clock in the morning. I knew he was out doing fucking shit. I'd page him. I love you. I'm praying for you. You know, it's like, wow, like right. Uh, so you never quit and he never gave up. So man, just being in that universe of people did are that, no, you know, they show the glory to God and the peace that you get from, from having

that in your life. I really, I'm just very happy that I have it. I'm happy for you. Thank you, brother. You're there, bro. I've, I've listened to you talk. I, I know you're, you seem to be maybe on the front end. Like you coming into it, coming into your faith. Um, it's easy to lose. Sometimes understood, but, um, you're getting there, bro. You are a good man, you know it.

One is the first time you, uh, met Mel, not, not at the airport after, after he got out of prison

or before. First of all, I met him was, um, right after, um, uh, his attorney told us in the courtroom, because he's been out of the club for four years. He'll just plea to his shit. He wants to be done. I'm, and he just treats like that's great, but he's got to come in for a profit. He's got to sit down and spell it all out. So that's when he first, we first talked. That's when I took him to the bathroom when he was all chained up. And, um, he's like, fuck dude. And I go, brother, I go,

just to speed bump in in the road of life, just to speed bump man. You don't get through it. He's going to tell you, he goes, I'm looking at 24 years dude. He said, well, I go, what you're doing the right thing, you're minimizing, you know, you're exposed, you're by cooperating and coming in on yourself and pleading guilty. So you're going to get credit for that. I got it for you. That's, it's the best you can do because you got me. I go, we got you. He's like,

“okay, how about I have for a person? Um, yeah, you know, it's so funny. Um, I think I got him at the”

airport when he got released. Um, he goes, hey, can you pick me up? The marshals are going to drop me at the airport and he goes, I got nothing. He goes, I want to kind of surprise my mom and I don't want to call anybody from Chicago that I know that I'm coming home. He goes, one, I don't want any of the degenerates coming. I don't want that. I go, yeah, I'll pick you up. So I scoop them in and drove him to his mom's house and sat down. So we had his mom of course, this is right after prison. Yeah,

we're, when he got out after his four years first call. Yeah, he called me. Yeah, yeah, it was kind

of funny. Yeah, so I picked him up and his mom, and of course, we had to eat right away. Her, my mom's like, this tall little Italian lady. Um, yeah, funny. So she cooked this up a great launch. We ate. Not even Awkward. Now, you know, I kind of knew Mel before I knew Mel, when he was locked up, I would listen to his prison calls because you get a lot of information. Like, guys, they'll be, they all know it's recorded, but you'll have, they make statements and say

on the state and the federal stuff, I would listen to all his jail calls and it was always interesting

that I would hear how he talked to the criminal community. Then I heard how he talked to his friends in his family. And you could, you could see that he wasn't road 24/7. He was road with this crew. And he was somebody else with this crew. And I was like, I didn't, I didn't really expect that. I mean, everybody's got a mom. Everybody's got a mom. Everybody's got a mom. You know, but it was different because he wouldn't allow his friends to get anywhere near the club.

Like he had some pipe hit in the friends that personal friends, but he would not let those guys, he goes, nope, nope, not for you. So he wouldn't let them anywhere near it. So it was like, okay, so there was a, I could tell it was a difference. And then like I said, he'd been out for four

“years and was living his life when we got him. So, what do you guys seem like you've changed a lot?”

Oh, yeah. Yeah, because if he was on bullshit, we would have smelled that out

than the first. He would have got right back into it if he, and there's no reason he did,

he couldn't have. He would have given him the patch right back. He could have gone right back into the mix or, you know, he knew, like I said, enough criminals in the community, he could have gone back to whatever life you wanted to go back to with any one of them, you know, being a major player. But he didn't. I'm like right on. But he, yeah, he's, he's a good friend. Right on. Well, we've got one last section there. Okay. So, we've got this new thing we're doing

called the hot question. Okay. So, Claude, same, same AI program. Oh, yeah. Where you got all

“that other from? Yeah. Okay. We asked Claude to give us an incredible question for Melia the day.”

And today, we had it scraped the entire internet for everything that's out there on you. And here's what it came up with. So, here's the question. What's something people don't understand about infiltrating biker gangs that could get you killed instantly if you mess it up. And what's the closest you've ever come to getting exposed and killed? The thing not to do is show disrespect to anybody membership wise. If you're new and you show up on the set and you just respect or you

act like you're all that in a bag of chips, you'll get your ass beat in very short order. So, knowing the protocol and knowing how to act. As far as coming to Claude's on a killing part from a biker standpoint, probably coming close to being killed happened, I found out about it after the fact more so than act the time. I knew there were times where the allows were looking to get us in it that it would be a problem. So, there were very, there were Claude's times then,

but it was well beyond anything I knew at the time. And the realization of that later was very hard. What is the, how do you write in the formation? Well, it's usually president of vice-president road captain, you know, enforcer, there's like a little depends on a club have different, so they lead the pack. You're going to have blockers that write next to the plaque. So, if you're running a whole line of bikes through a town, blockers write up on either side of the pack.

They blocked that intersection corner, so cars can't interrupt the club thing. They were coming out of the pack after Monty's funeral from the funeral home when I was the, uh, as doing security at the gate at the health center and clubhouse in Rockford. And some guy cut them into the pack and they ended up shooting the guy and dumping like five rounds. And then I've got the gate and I can hear these guys flying up and I see these guys like this, you know, I open a gate up and

they run a car in and jump out, go on to go fly in in different directions and everybody hunkers down and just sits there watching TV like they didn't do anything. Please cars fly in all over the place, I just shut the gate and nothing happened. So, cutting bikers off will definitely get you killed in a heartbeat, uh, so yeah. And then last thing, break down some gang terminology for us.

“What are some common terms and slang that we're being used on the streets?”

There, I think the street vernacular. We always call it, um, like straps, bangers, thumpers,

mercum, it's killing. So guns are straps, bangers, thumpers, hammers, you know, bang hammers, you're going to shoot somebody, you're going to work them, you're going to work them, you're going to put them down, you're going to put them down, uh, going to get them to bow down

the guy wanted me to do a Cleveland, you got to bow down. So that would be stuff like, you know,

“they've got bikers of different terms for old ladies, uh, property of, you know, you might have”

an old lady that's property of the club or property of a certain member, you know, they do a lot of that. So it's kind of the street vernacular, but it's almost, it transcends just, um, you know, bikers or street gangs, you know, same terminology, bricks, if you're going to hit a lick,

show them, get down on a lick, you're going to do a robbery. You know, I'm going to hit that

lick. I'm going to rip that shit off. I'm going to tear it off. I'm going to shoot like diabetes. I'm going to rip one. So that's, that's kind of the street vernacular, I guess, if you will,

“do you mess it? Sometimes, you know, it's funny, I get to, and it, it's just been very nice and to”

having me back to help teach at the academy and teach field operations and undercover. So, um, I get to dip my toe and, uh, and look at some maybe some hard charger, some guy. We got some guys now, man. It's like being a father and your son just fricking, hit the home run and, uh, ricking, you know, when the Super Bowl or something, she had her through the touchdown pass. When you see a lot, what these guys have accomplished and what they've done and how they've protected

themselves, how they've saved their fellow agents and shootings and stuff and robberies and managed to, she gets your proud that, you know, man, he's got these guys are still jerking their shit and go to work. You know, you get excited for him, you know, but then I get to go home and like I said, my grass is nice in the backyard and I get to rich on my Jeep. So I get that momentary,

“like, hmm, yeah, even though I'm not in it at all at any level. So, oh, man, you want to end in a prayer?”

Absolutely. You want to lead it? Okay. All right. Let's do it. Well, the father, um, Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to fellowship with Sean to talk about you, Lord. It, um, to talk about your grace, your forgiveness. How do you interact in our lives and make it better for those that come to you and know you and mean into you? Just, it just makes life so much better. Thank you for this time and our opportunity. Lord, we, all the glory goes to you,

Lord, it's just an important moment. Amen. Well, Chris, I remember, I know we're missing a lot, but that is a hell of a fucking story, man. Well, then it was an honor. Dude, it was an honor, man. I, I, I, I said in this chair, I feel like a poser. I mean, you've had,

Cody, you've had some, some amazing people that have said this chair, brother, I'm very humbled to

have the opportunity to talk to you. So, thank you. I appreciate it. Well, you're one of them. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. God bless, Matt, I bless you, man. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. In most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can, and if you're feeling extra generous, had to apple podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.

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