Ignacio Esteban

hey listen the stuff's inside but these guys don't want to bring it out so i go out here normally what you do is wrap it up you bring the car real quick we're done i get the hell out of here right and he said but he wants to come in you go inside i was like and i know there's more people coming in he doesn't know that i know that already so i'm i'm almost like uh no dude i don't want to meet anybody i said no it's fine i said no and i said okay what do you give me the money and i'll go get i'll get it for you i said uh no i'm not doing

Yeah, because they're customs inspectors, right? That's the term. I think it's changed now, but the term used to be customs inspectors, but you had arrest authority and you did everything else. And then there's the agents, the criminal investigators that go and you give them, hey, I just had this huge seizure right now with this fish, right? 850 pounds. All right.

We can sometimes set up surveillance within the airport, right? Close to the airport, the warehouse. But if it's going, let's say, to New York City, right? Well, they're taking it from there. Yeah. They're, we're not going to New York City. I got to stay and do my job and do the next shift and get some more dope that's coming in because you know what? It doesn't stop.

They knew if they, they factored those losses in because that's part of doing business. Right. With the Colombian cartels. They just keep on bringing it in. Okay, hey, they got this one. Guess what? We just got another 4,000 in. And doesn't that make sense? So I wish I picked up with ATM, but sometimes you don't know, right? You take a chance. Sometimes they may send you to Southwest border.

I like putting out these bad guys. And the cocaine cowboys were huge back in the 80s. Well. Years later, I go to college. I went actually up not far from where you're at, up to St. Louis University. It's a Catholic university. And I get my degree in political science and history. Then I come back to FIU in Miami. So now we're looking about the mid-90s.

Sometimes you might have to go to New York City or a big city where it's really expensive. I got fortunate enough, I stayed in Florida. I went to school, like I said, at St. Louis University up just north of Tampa where you are, Pasco County. And I started working from there.

And I was fortunate enough, the group I started, a lot of guys worked undercover because you can't just go into undercover work. cold like that, right? If you do that, you're going to get hurt. I mean, you can watch all the Miami Vice you want and watch all the TV shows and Donnie Brasco. And that was also very popular back in the 90s. Remember Donnie Brasco with Al Pacino and Johnny Depp? Yeah.

You watch all this stuff, but there's one thing on television, right? Like you said, one thing, the real world. And the real world, you've got to know how this can be. Like I said, I grew up in Catholic schools, right? And now I have to learn this world. I learned a little bit for the drug world, which is fascinating.

But now I got to work face to face undercover where I pretend to be like these guys and how to fool some of these guys who are hardened professional criminals. That's all they do and make them think I'm one of them. I'm nothing like it.

And it takes years. So I had good mentors, right? I watch a lot. And you develop your own technique, right? You watch these guys. I spoke Spanish, so that was an advantage. I made sure my English was broken. I didn't sound like that. I just came back, right? Right. So you have to come up. I let my hair really long. I think I sent you some pictures. I don't know if you saw them yet.

I haven't seen them yet. Yeah, I've seen them. I'll check them out. All right. I sent some pictures. My hair was long. I had a big beard. I didn't want to get all the tats some guys have because when I got out of it, I knew I'll be done with it. Right. I want to go back to who I was. I don't want to be like, oh, great. I got this now. People say, what the heck's wrong with this?

So that was never me. I never really cared for it. That wasn't my thing. So I wanted to think enough. The beard's okay. The hair was long enough. You do the accents. You get to know the culture, get to know these guys. It was easier to deal with people that they were not Spanish speakers. You tell your story, who you're working with.

You say, hey, these families are looking, the cartels are looking for guns, right? Because they are. And my job here is to be ATF, is to buy a lot of guns. And these guys, I don't want to fill any paperwork, right? Because I don't want to show up in no shop and put my information in there, right? Right. So these guys will sell me guns off the street, untraceables.

And you pay a premium for that because that's what you want. And a lot of these guys have horrific criminal histories. So I dealt a lot with repeat violent offenders. I dealt a lot with gang members, armed drug traffickers, international firearms traffickers, domestic firearms traffickers. I dealt with armed home invaders, cases for murder for hires. So that was ATF's niche. What does ATF do?

Alcohol, tobacco, firearms. Well, it's a small A for alcohol, a small T for tobacco, a huge F and immediate E for explosives. So we do a lot of gun cases. Needless to say, a lot of guns. And that's what ATF is. And so I found that fascinating. And I knew something about guns, but man, I became an expert on pretty much the Gun Control Act.

NFA, National Firearms Act, and all the different weapons from machine guns, silencers, pipe bombs. You know, ATF is sometimes called, with all the training, ATF stands for all the fun because we would do a lot of shooting. I mean, I trained in handguns from pistols, revolvers, my M4, which is a short barrel rifle, I had shotguns, something short barrel shotguns also we were shooting.

And I'm working my degree in international relations. And I was able to go to law school. I got accepted to a law school in Lansing, Michigan, Thomas Cooley. And, you know, the farthest thing in my head, but, and I'm seeing the prices, how expensive law school is. And this is mid nineties, a lot more now, obviously, but even in the mid nineties, and I didn't have a, I had a scholarship in college.

So we trained a lot of different weapons. And then we also were familiarized in case we come across different machine guns, we know what we're doing. Got to make sure and check all that stuff out. So that's what we did, ATF. And sometimes early enough, you have to cut your teeth. One of the guys I worked with, he was Puerto Rican.

And he was involved back in the eighties in a shootout where he had a 6.9 millimeter. The bad guy has 6.9 millimeter. He fired the round and his round went into his gun and plugged the barrel. So he's like this and the round goes like this. It's like one in a million. and Hialeah back in the 80s. So it can get ugly and wild. So we had a good time.

We had some good stories and I learned a lot from him and him being Puerto Rican and I saw how he tackled things and all that. So I developed my own style. We worked a lot together and then I grew up and then, you know what also helps? Having good informants. You have a good informants, which way I developed a lot of these guys. They can pretty much, you walk on water, it's that goal.

You say, hey, he vouches for you. Some more questions. Let's do business. He said, you're the guy. Okay, man, this is what you want. No questions asked. And boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. This is what these guys do. But if you have a bad informant who's playing both sides, it'll destroy your investigation. Yeah, you have to have them accountable.

So you really, and once you, that's why I like to, once I have the introduction, I cut them out. Yeah. And I don't want to deal with the drama with an informant. They can ruin your case. I put too much hard work because ATF is a very smaller outfit than the FBI or DEA, right? We have less than 3,000 agents, I think 2,800, right? FBI has four times that. enormous size. So we just can't delegate.

Hey, I need you to do surveillance. I need you to do undercover. I'm the case. I do everything. I'm the undercover. I'm the case agent, right? I deal with property. I deal with my own intelligence workup. I wear all the different hats because you have to because we're a smaller outfit. If you want to do the bigger cases. Now, if you want small, you don't do that.

I played tennis, a number one for my school, but it was going to cost me about like about 30,000 a year.

Yeah. That's the best way to do it. You have to because, and unfortunately, some of these guys have drug addictions, right? Yeah. And they keep on doing stuff. They get messed up and they're not right where they're high, right? And they do stupid things. So those are the factors you got to get into. That's why I was fortunate. Some people don't want to do undercover work. Not for everybody.

I liked it. I really decided I kind of like playing the role. And I deal with all kinds of people. I just told you about the variety, but also the variety of people from different Hispanic groups, different blacks, different other European groups, right? A variety, a variety of people.

right 30 000 a year three years at least you have housing you gotta get your loans for all that stuff and i'm thinking and i know how competitive is law school and some people are saying that that's a lot of money but i already have my degree very athletic i was just shooting my dad taught me how to shoot uh early in life we'll go to the range my dad was a gun

and uh because it worked and what i was doing it makes sense it's based on what's really going on the cartels have people they need guns right and by the way not only buying the guns but i also like selling some drugs on the side what else do you have for personal or for other use so i buy doping guns sometimes you come across some other stuff hey i have also some body armor looking for the body yeah i'll take some ballistic armor it's amazing what people start telling you and what they do what else it leads to i am also doing this too

Hey, this guy is also into explosives or into this. Oh, hey, this guy's selling a lot of cigarettes without tax stamps. We do those cases too, a lot less, but yeah, we do all that stuff. So it really opens up when people talk and they feel confident with you, you get a lot of different. And I had everything, like I said, for trial purposes, I wanted to make it like a movie, right?

I wanted the jury to feel comfortable. First of all, I had to make the prosecutor feel comfortable. And once he feels comfortable, then the jury. Do you hear that? Yes. Can you hold on a second?

It's not uncomfortable. A lot of people get into making these pipe bombs, right? And they tighten them up in there, but it's also very dangerous. If you don't know how you do it right, they can sometimes let the flint too early and explode, so they have damage. It's very volatile.

No, it isn't like playing with, like, firecrackers and stuff like that. You might lose your finger or something, you're not careful with it, but a pipe bomb, that's no joke. And then these guys get really nasty with it. Some of them put, like, shrapnel inside to really do some serious, serious damage. So, um... Yeah, so that's the kind of case I wanted to do.

So I'm copping with a firearm, right? I'm athletic. And I'm thinking, wow. And I noticed internet just started, right? This is 1995. Windows came out. And I didn't use it in college, but I said, man, this is the future, right? So I got myself a computer and I taught myself. Because people always say, what are you doing? What's emailing? What do you do? I got myself a Yahoo account.

I wanted to make sure for the jury and for the prosecutor that we had good video, right? I wanted to make sure it is clear. It's like watching a movie. I wanted the jury to see, okay, this is the evidence. Watch the movie. And that's a big difference you see between the federal side And state and local, right? Especially with the local sometimes, it gets a little bit different.

Federal, we have a little more time to take our time with the case, make it the strongest case we can against as many people as possible. That's why we have a little more time. And it's different. That's why I like the federal system. We have a chance to really make the cases bigger and stronger. and we have good prosecutors.

A lot of them are career prosecutors, and they really know how to make good cases. So that's what I did. I wanted to make sure, undercover-wise, I had, and sometimes with informants, there's always issues with the equipment sometimes. They could be messed up and everything else. They're not professionals. They didn't go to school for this. They don't understand case law.

They don't understand entrapment. You want to make sure people understand this is what they do. This is what they're involved in. You don't want to bring someone who is not involved in this kind of work. They're actively doing this. They're predisposed. This is what they do. And they have the history of doing this. So these are all the factors you got to come.

As a professional, you bring that to the table. And informants are, I'd say, a necessary evil, right? Because they are the eyes and ears in the street. I can't live in the street, right? The reality is I pretend to. Right. And then I go back to the office, I get a lot of paperwork. I got to go to the prosecutor. I got to deal with evidence. I got to talk and give a briefing.

So it's a whole different world. And you just show up. But the good thing about them, even though it would cut them out, remember their eyes and ears, they can still tell you, hey, I heard so-and-so has some doubts about you. I need to tighten this up a little bit.

When you come back with me and let's have another conversation with him, make sure you vouch for me and make sure, hey, this is the guy, man. There's nothing to worry about. So those are the things. You keep them at distance, but you still have to make sure that they're listening to what's going on. That's important because the last thing you want to do is get caught off guard.

And I was fortunate enough. I mean, there's always some very close moments, right? But, you know, you got to have and I'll give you an example. And I put it in my book, ATF Undercover, which I talk about. And this happens, and I did a lot of work in Pasco County. And I had an undercover apartment in Wesley Chapel. That's where I live. I know, I know.

I used to live there in Wesley Chapel and then moved down south when I first started working out there. A lot cheaper than Tampa in 2000. I know 54 is completely different than it was 20-some years ago.

People, prodigy, right? People had no idea what the stuff, dial-up, what are you doing? And it's like, well, this is the future. And people are like, no, I don't think this is going to last. I think, no, I think this is going to be... Listen, I was one of those guys. I was like, this is going to catch on. This is, people are not going to spend their time online. What? What are you talking about?

No, no. Very close. Very close. I got to know Pascal really well from making the cases. So I got to know Pasco, I don't know how much you know Pasco County, but I got to know all the way to Newport Ritchie, Port Ritchie, the Hudson area, even across New York, Tarpon Springs, and going to Zephyr Hills. So this takes place, I'll tell you this story here, this happens in Zephyr Hills.

Zephyr Hills, people who don't know Zephyr Hills or Dade City, at the time I was working, I'll say it was back in 2000s. to 2012, and this story takes place around 2009, 2010. So this is the city of Pasco I'm talking about, and the Mexicans were picking it up, right? They're moving a lot of meth. There's no more meth labs. There's still some, but now they're bringing a lot of the meth from Mexico.

They're just piping it in. And that whole era became a big pipeline. Right. Which I was saying, I think a lot of steel drugs and a lot of Mexicans are still out there. This is where everything's changed a lot. And this is a trailer. I meet with this guy. He's a career criminal, drug trafficker. I hand him forward, make an introduction. First time me and him are sitting in the car together.

I meet him off 301. And we're going to drive to these trailers, shady trailers, predominantly Hispanic, right? And he's talking to me. He's giving me his history. He said, man, yeah, I'll get you these guns and everything. But I used to move a lot of coke, a lot of product. I was moving two or three easy kilos a week. I was like, okay. So I said, you tell me. I mean, he just got out.

He wants to get back into the game. This is what he does. I said, okay. So he took me there. He's a non-Spanish speaker. And he takes me to the trailers and he says, hey, this is my guy here. He has the guns. Some guys give a heads up a little nervous about this. They say sometimes guys who buy guns a lot are feds. I said, no, I'm no fed. Of course, you got to deny that. You got me.

You got me in there. It's over. Let me take you back home. No, that's, that's going to happen. So you deny that. And he goes in there and I talked to his guy who's there, Hispanic, bald head, right? And we're talking a little bit in Spanish. He's testing me out, which is fine. And he goes, he goes to the trailer. So him and I are sitting outside in my truck and I see more people.

We get out of the car and he's on one side. I'm on the other side and I can see there are a lot more people going to the other side of the trailer. Right. A lot more people going inside. He can't see that. I can see that. Right. So I can see that. So you're going to have instincts that say, listen, I just met you guys.

The deal we're supposed to be doing is for an AK-47 with a 75-round drum, two Glock pistols, almost an ounce of meth for a little over $3,000, right? And I don't feel comfortable. He goes, hey, listen, the stuff's inside, but these guys don't want to bring it out. So I drove out here. Normally what you do is you wrap it up, you bring in the car real quick, and we're done.

I get the hell out of here, right? And he said, but he wants to come in. You go inside. And I was like, and I know there's more people coming in. He doesn't know that I know that already. So I'm almost like, no, dude, I don't want to meet anybody. I said, no, it's fine. I said, no. And I said, okay, what do you give me the money? And I'll get it for you. I said, no, I'm not doing it.

And I was like, oh no, I think it will. Especially when I saw everybody pumping, especially get government jobs. That's why I went. So when USA, that's one of the reasons I went on there because USA jobs was available to look at what's opening. And I was interested in going with customs. So I applied for customs, right? They were looking for Spanish speakers, which I grew up in Miami.

What's going to happen is you're going to walk away with $3,000 and I'm going to have a bigger headache to deal with to chase you and everybody else who just stole my money, which that was going to be a rip. So I said, I'll give you five minutes. I'm going to sit in the car. Either you bring it or I'm out of here. That's the beauty of being the case agent and the undercover.

is that I don't feel the pressure. Let's say I was just the undercover and I'm working for somebody else, working their case, right? Sometimes you feel the pressure. You want to make it happen. For me, I'm both. And if it happens, great. If not, I got a lot of work. I got other people I'm dealing with. I got you today. I got someone else tomorrow, right?

So I don't ever felt that kind of pressure where I had to make it happen because I want to go home at the end. That's the most important thing. No deals there. Five minutes later, a Honda Odyssey pulls up. Guy pops up with an AK-47. Same for a round drum. So him and I talk. He sells me the gun. I take a look at it. I give him the money for that. And then he has a backpack.

Another friend had bought him. And he sells me the Glocks with the crystal map. I said, hey, dude, next time, just keep it between us. And I don't want to deal with this circus next time. And he understood. And he understood that.

I think they want to rip me off. Oh, okay. So, okay. I think they want to rip me off. I think they want to take my $3,000, $3,400 and hit me and say, hey, this could be an easy hit right here and we don't have to sell anything because you don't know. Some of these gang members, these are gang members, by the way. These aren't average shows. This is a shitty trailer in Zephyr Hills.

There's a lot of gangs in that area. I want you to understand, a lot of Hispanic gangs, a lot of gang members, saying a lot of meth, a lot of heroin, armed to the teeth.

It seems like it's... Read my book, and I'll give example after example of that area. Go in there and stuff like that. It is hot. And that's when I was there. I think it's gotten worse, what I see, because the cartels have just gotten stronger. When I was there, they were coming up. You know, Chapo was good. Sinaloa was strong. But now you have the rise of CJNG. Yeah.

Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Yeah. Major rival for Sinaloa, right? Yeah. El Mencho, he's now the big player, Cervantes, right? And they're going to war. And all these guys, El Chapo, El Mencho, give your audience a little background. All these guys came out of absolute poverty.

I mean, they were selling avocados and oranges in the street and now have risen to be big drug lords where their assets are over $50 billion. That's according to the Mexican government and the US government. So you're telling me they're not making drug lords in Mexico? When these guys, and most of these guys are illiterate.

My parents are Spanish-Cuban. Grandparents from Spain went to Cuba. Then after the Castro Revolution, they came to the United States. And they lost everything. And they had my family that started over again. And I'm fortunate enough to be in this great country. And I've done quite well within one generation. The wealth they lost in Cuba, I've done quite well in this country.

They dropped out of school when they were in the fourth or fifth grade, right? But what are they good at? They're good at killing.

He was the master of the tunnels. Right. I remember that great tunnel he had the second time he was captured underneath that prison.

But at that time, I think at that time, they were still, 2015, yeah, they began to go a little bit sideways. Not as bad as now, but it would get a lot worse. But what a corruption. That's one of the things I talk about. We don't have an equal partner in the war on drugs. The corruption in Mexico is so unbelievable.

And that's the reason I bring that up because during the trial for El Chapo in New York, it was brought, these are government witnesses, testified that El Chapo offered, this is before Lopez Obrador, the president before that with Peña Nieto. He offered him a bribe. Nieto wanted, allegedly, according to court documents, he wanted a $250 million payout so we won't look for El Chapo.

He said, you don't worry about it. You can be a fugitive for another 15 years, right? He said, no, I'll pay you $100 million. And allegedly, witnesses testified he took it. He took it. So if the top of Mexican government is on the take, then we have no chance. This is what the battles we're fighting. You know, you see case after case after general, attorney general.

I mean, just keep on getting arrested for being involved in money laundering and involved in all this stuff here. And this guy, El Mencho, out of CJNG, he was former law enforcement. He was out Jalisco, right? He was involved. A lot of these guys know the game. They know it.

What's going to happen is you're going to walk away with $3,000 and I'm going to have a bigger headache to deal with to chase you and everybody else who just stole my money.

And he's the same way we just talked about at Mayo when I was reading Guadalajara because now it's the battle for Guadalajara, which is where a lot of stuff is going on. But he looks like he's won because they're trying to split. You know how everything is. Everybody wants to be king, right? Yeah. One day you're the king. They want to take you out, right?

Now, Mencho had guys he brought in that was former Millennium Cartel guys at Split, right? And they want to take over. And this guy's name is escaped him right now. But if you look at the videos, he has him tortured, right? wrapped up, killed him, and then left the park bench. This is what happens when people betray El Mencho, right? And stuff like that.

And it's a very fortunate, great nation that we live in. And I talk about that in my books also. So I work on that and I put in there. And so they need people because in Miami, in Miami International Airport, most of the flights, 85% of them come from Latin America, right?

So right now, it seems like he still has the lockdown in Guadalajara, which is very important for him. And he's the same guy that you're talking about, El Mayo. He likes to live modestly. Not like Escobar, right? That lived in that big palace, right? Everybody knew where he lived and where he was at, but he bribed everybody. These guys have to look key. El Chapo's bounty was $5 million, right?

At his peak when he escaped a second time. After Sean Penn and Cade Del Castillo interviewed him. If you haven't seen that interview and video, man, you guys need to check that out. Rolling Stone Magazine. That's great. Unbelievable stuff. I can't believe Sean Penn did that because

I would not have done that. That could have got really ugly. And they almost caught him after the interview because they were tracking the Mexican actress Castillo's phone. U.S. authorities were tracking and just missed him barely, just barely. It will take a few more years to finally catch him again, and they will not escape the third time.

And that's so sad because, you know what, now we have the costs, right? Now the U.S. tax dollar has to pay for keeping this guy for life, feeding him the expenses, legal, everything we pay because the Mexican government is so corrupt, they couldn't do it themselves. And it's case after case like this.

So they want the customs officials to be able to engage and speak Spanish because it's easier to catch people who are mules or smuggling drugs. You got to know what you're dealing with. And I grew up in Miami, so I grew up with all the different cultures from South America, from Latin America, from Mexico, a lot of my friends. So I knew all that and I spoke Spanish.

El Cholo was a guy who, his rival, they got wrapped up and executed. Look up his name, El Cholo. Look at the video. You see a guy from CJNG behind him in masks, and next thing you know, he ends up in a park van. You see the pictures, wrapped up, he was tortured, and said, this is what happened to El Cholo, the traitor. You don't play.

So I put in for the jobs, right? And I got it pretty quickly with customs. That was something where I was going to law school and I said, this is better because now I'm making quite a good money. I'm going to have a good pension, right? I'm in law enforcement and I really enjoy it. It is satisfying what kind of work I started doing.

At that level, you got to cooperate. You got to flip. You got to turn. One thing I've noticed, all these guys too, because if you don't, you get the hammer. You get slammed. You get the most time. Yeah, there's that. Yeah. Now, talk about Venezuela, man. Venezuela, with Nicolas Maduro now, it's a narco state. It has become a... He's not a communist anymore. Remember Hugo Chavez?

This guy's no communist. This guy, it's all about making money. But the people suffer. He keeps them suffering. This guy's a dictator. He's a narco dictator. He's been indicted by our government. But you know what upsets me is a little politics here, but we'll talk a little bit about everything. My book's all about this. But Joe Biden threw him a lifeline.

Administration, to see if Chevron go back there and get oil pumped up because we don't want to deal with the Russians, right? We're tired of the Saudis, the stuff he's done, and Mohammed bin Salman. So it's like we want to work with the Venezuelans with all the stuff this guy's done. He's had atrocities to his people. If you're not about him, you're done.

And that's why Miami, you know, has been transformed with the Venezuelans coming over. Like the Cubans did, you know, from the 60s on, the Venezuelans have brought a lot of money. Doral, only from the middle of South Florida, has changed immensely with the Venezuelans. A lot of the money has come over, transformed it. So... That's what you're seeing.

And people say, well, man, America has, yeah, the United States has issues. I live in Virginia now, and I was fortunate enough to, I like to travel, like history, my background, you know, I taught political science and history. I went to Mount Vernon, and I've gone to Monticello, Mount Vernon's Washington's home, and then Monticello, Jefferson's home. And I visited there, and even it's true, 1797,

You know, Washington had just finished his second term, will not run for a third term, does not want to be seen like King George or a dictator. He says, even then, it applies today. We had issues. You know, it's no perfect democracy. It's not a perfect system, but it's the best that's out there. And I think it applies today, the same thing. It's not perfect, people.

We don't have a perfect system, but it's the best that's out there. Trust me, I've seen, I've studied politics internationally, the corruption. Yeah, we're going to have corrupt officials. We're going to have problems, but it's the best that's out there. So that's where we're at with the corruption in Mexico. But the Mexican government, it's probably worse.

So you start there at the airport, you get your cut your teeth into like password processing. And then I make one of their lead teams with customs called the contraband enforcement team. And at the time, the 90s, in Miami, South Florida's making some of the biggest seizures in the country, right?

I think it's stronger than the Colombians were because their reach is all over Central America. It's all over South America. And they have a lot of people in the United States. And they're reaching not just in customs officials, not just with politicians, but you see it deeper and deeper in our country because the money is so big and so out there. And the corruption is big.

It's corrupt here, but they're corrupting here. So what are our solutions? We need to deal with the problem within. We need people to get off it. We need people to work on their addictions because it's just going to get worse. And they want to, like Maduro said, like I said, they're weaponizing cocaine to help destroy this country. They think it's going to fall like a rotten apple from within.

People are going to fall and break. And that's what they're trying to do.

You know, you still have the Cali Cartel, you still have the Medellin Cartel, and they're still pumping a lot of drugs. And I don't like what the Mexicans are gonna do when they take over. They're doing it the school way with cargo, they're doing it with ships, they're doing it through Florida and the Caribbean. And that's how they're getting it through to, especially in Florida.

And another way to attack it was when you're seeing here, you see in Virginia all over the country, and it started with marijuana, it's getting legalized all over the country, right? Right. You take the, because the Mexican cartels make a lot of money cultivating marijuana, right? So you take that away from them, that's going to hurt their profits a lot too. So I think marijuana, you're seeing it.

I mean, I know Florida is just medical, but I know Virginia got it approved for a recreational. So it is going all over in the Northeast, the Midwest, of course, the West Coast, up and down is approved for recreational. So that's where you're seeing it. It's going that way. I think marijuana... Thomas Jefferson even grew marijuana in Monticello, right? Founding fathers.

I mean, marijuana's been around for hundreds of thousands of years. People have been smoking it, right? It's not my thing. I don't like getting high. I don't like smoking my lungs. But if some people, that's what they want, like cigarettes smoking, I'd rather not be around it, right? I like to eat away from that. I don't like to be around any of that stuff here. But some people like it.

So it wasn't uncommon.

I think the edibles now, I think are legal in every state. Get you high, those edibles. Right. Have you seen that? That's everywhere now.

We're making the money. right the states in the federal system so you have to eliminate marijuana from being a schedule one banned substance right that's the first thing because you can do all things at the state level but if you're still a uh a you use marijuana you want to buy a firearm and an ffl federal firearms licensee

So prohibited, you can't do that because you're still a drug user, right? So if you're a drug user, you can't do that. Marijuana is still on the list there. So a lot of things I know that's passed in the House of Representatives that needs to be approved in the Senate to start making this nationwide because I've seen it firsthand.

I think we're wasting time in the judicial system, clogging the judicial system when you have these petty cases. ATF went after the worst of the worst, right? Right. the most violent. That's what we have to focus on. The most violent repeat offenders, armed traffickers, armed home invaders, guys who want to commit murder for hire, you know, international traffickers. That's gun traffickers.

No, no, back then, back then. The Medellin, Cali, all those guys have collapsed, and now the Mexicans. And I've written books about how strong they've gone. And they're almost more powerful than the Columbus ever were. You talk about El Chapo, the El Menchils, and I'll go into that also, how strong they've become. and how they changed the game completely and how we have to change.

That's what we have to focus on. Not guys who have some weed, they want smoke, and they're doing this on the side. I mean, all the places that want to have a ZT policy, zero tolerance, that's a waste of time. You're clogging the system. These people should be treated for health issues. You shouldn't criminalize these people, in my opinion.

This is coming from guys that have been 26 years in law enforcement who have seen it, right? I just think it is a waste of our tax dollars. It is a waste of time. And we're building more prisons. We need to focus on... And the court system gets overwhelmed with it also. And you don't want any of that. So we have to be smarter. It's marijuana. Yes. Hey, we've learned the lesson from prohibition.

I wrote a book about it, right? The rise of the outfit here, the Chicago crime bosses. And that's what made Al Capone. That's what made these guys a violence because it was illegal, right? And then once we legalize it, well, there goes that. And all of a sudden, the government's making the money, right? They're getting taxed and everybody can enjoy themselves.

You're not being criminalized for having a beer or drinking whiskey, which was ridiculous, right? The same thing, in my opinion, should apply to marijuana. The other drugs, a little bit tougher to deal with, but we have to come up with solutions. But marijuana is the first gateway, I think, with that.

Because, I mean, everybody in college, you see how many people in college have to go sometimes to really bad areas to get some weed, right? Right. End up getting hurt, robbed. You just go to the store, right? It's illegal. We have to be smart about it.

Obviously, I don't want to be around it, and I don't want to smell it, because I went to Kingston to do some work for training, and everywhere in Kingston, you can smell it. The ganja, as they say. Ganjaman, right? It's everywhere. I really don't, I didn't care for that smell. That's wrong. Kingston in Jamaica, right? Right. Kingston, Jamaica. They have a lot. They grow a lot of wheat.

Yeah. Yeah. They just had a huge arrest, I think about five, seven years ago. Guy's name was Coke, like from cocaine. Right. Yeah. And now, and the people in Kingston were rioting because he obviously, you know, they provide a lot of work and, you know, it's like an Escobar type, right? They also give a lot to the community, just like, just like Chapel did, Guzman. They give a lot.

They help a lot. They know that the little people, they want to take care of little people. So they kind of help the little people out because they work for the organization and do stuff like that. That's the same mentality you saw out there in Kingston. Yeah, a lot of people just want to go. If I tell them to go to Jamaica, I was going to maybe work there as an attache.

But once I saw first after two weeks there, how the conditions were, No way. I wouldn't bring my family. That's for sure. And I definitely wouldn't go with my family in Mexico because also because at the end of my career, I promoted and I went to ATF headquarters and I worked two years and I was helping briefing the director case with one in command for the central region.

And I've written about that too in my experiences. So I get in there and so I'm now in the middle of the drug war. I'm the front line with customs. So what do you do? I mean, what does that detail consist of? Yeah, so Miami has a ton of cargo that comes in through Latin America, right? And also passengers, a lot of it coming in.

who now is number two command for ATF right now. So that's a good contact that I have and working and talking and briefing some of the most sensitive cases that ATF was working. So, and then I was going to maybe transfer to Mexico, but then with the issue of Lopez Obrador was going on, who was the president of Mexico, they renounced our diplomatic immunity status as agents.

So you think I'm going to go to Mexico and they don't want to carry farms. So they don't want you armed. They don't want you to have to do my community and I'm going to be kidnapped and my family. I said, no way. I said, I'm eligible to retire. I did my time up here. I enjoy my career. Thank you so much. And then I got into writing. Right. I did a nice trip in writing.

Well, I've been writing like this by a year and a half now since I've been retired. But I used to write a lot of reports, right? You get good and really detailed in writing a lot, a lot, a lot. So I said, and I always had a thing for it. I like reading. I'm always fascinated.

with uh you know history and political science and current events i'm always reading information so that's what a lot of my books are you know i got fiction non-fiction but i do a lot of politics i do about organized crime and i realized you know i started writing what and i'm not here to promote anybody but you know you know i had a family member she was in the publishing industry for over 20 years right she had she got laid off and i was talking to her and she said you know it's hard at the time you know covet was still around right and it was such a huge backlog

And I said, you know, you might want to look at Kindle with Amazon because you can self-publish. Yeah. And you don't have to wait for anybody, right? And you get like 80-20, especially digital books, like 75-25, right? So, you know, screen on both ends. A screen for my pocketbook and a screen for the environment. We use the digital books, right? And then I'm now doing audio too.

And shout out to Sean Milo for that. We both know him. He's a great guy. And That should be coming out, my book. Nightmare's a big reader, and I've been told a lot of people would rather listen to it. And it's a great, great story. I encourage people to listen to these books and go Audible. It should be out hopefully in about a month or less. It'll be out there.

So I looked into it, and it worked for me because I go at my pace. I do whatever subject matter, because you know how it is. A publisher, you get rid of the middleman who only cares about making money. It's not about always making money. It's about putting something out there which I want to talk about, read about.

That's ridiculous. Now, you would have made a lot more money with Kindle, for sure. Yeah. I like doing all. I mean, just like I did my cases. I wore many hats. I played out with my books. I do my own book covers. I do my own editing. I write the material. I choose what I'm going to write about. I just did a book that just came out. I think I forwarded to you on Facebook.

And my job in the border, you know, border authority is everything that comes international is subject to search, right? I don't need probable cause like I would later when I became an agent, which is a complete different game.

a messenger on Jim Jones, right? In Jonestown on the massacre, because it's now 45 years, and I wanted to do a little bit deeper dive in that, and I found some pretty interesting things in there, and mistakes that were made, and I thought things, and I always give my opinion, right? Based on my expertise. There's the worst US cult mass murder in US history. Almost 950 dead, right?

If you haven't heard the Jim Jones tape, because he recorded the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. You should hear that. Horrible.

horrible my kids are crying everything else and the mother his wife uh marcelina her name was she's telling him because these are his kids too he's poisoning he said let the kids live and he goes just like this he goes mother mother mother mother please you know he's already crazy mother please like very sarcastic and nasty like says you know children hurry because he already killed the congressman right

He had his goons go out already, kill the conqueror, Leo Ryan and his entourage, NBC and everybody else, Washington Post. They gunned him down because they knew they had 20 defectors. He knew it was over. It was over in Guyana. And then he said, when they came back, said, hey, some escaped. He knew it was over. He knew they were going to come down, put him in jail, shut it all down.

And he was so selfish, he'd rather everybody kill themselves to make that statement. He called it the suicidal revolution, which is insanity. All these people's lives that came in for a better life lost their lives. Drinking the Kool-Aid. That's what it's called. Drinking the Kool-Aid.

So it was a lot easier to make seizures and make arrests because when you come in, you have your questions, people can be searched and you figure out what's going on right there.

And with cargo side, everything comes in, and especially from Latin America, a transnational country, it wasn't uncommon for me to see, we got these 850 pounds of cocaine that was coming in a group of fish that was coming from Guayaquil, Colombian drugs, going to Colombia, going to Ecuador, and then being shipped because within five, six hours, it's in Miami.

He's another guy that grew up – and I didn't know his background until I – this is the reason why I do stuff like this. I love researching nonfiction. I love it, and I've done a lot of these. So if you like what we're talking about, check out the book, please. It's on Amazon. It just came out. But with him, he came out of absolute poverty. Yeah. Object poverty. I mean, out of Indiana, right?

In Linn, Indiana. His father was a World War I veteran who suffered serious, serious chemical attacks. You know how the war was in the trenches, right? Yeah. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't work. He couldn't do anything. Guy was disabled, pretty much. And the pension was horrible.

back then and then they had the great depression they lost their home the government the the company the mortgage company seized it and the family had to buy them a shack And they lived in a shack with no plumbing and no electricity. An absolute horrible situation. So that's why I think he needs to find something. And I think that's where he found religion and ministry, his cult.

Because he would obviously perverse it completely. Right. And he would end up, you know, the people's temple ends up being a cult pretty much. Because to join, you have to turn all your finances to it. Right? All your money goes to him. He'll take care of you. He'll find your housing.

And he took advantage, and I hate to say it, he took advantage of a lot of minorities and a lot of disadvantaged people, right? And the politicians, because he came up with integration, right? He was one of the first guys integrating the churches with blacks and whites and everything else was unpopular in Indiana, right? He ended up going to San Francisco. Of course, very liberal out there, right?

Became very popular. He would help get votes for the mayor. In 76, Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter. Was there any help? California go blue, right? So he can beat Ford. So that's why they were embarrassed, humiliated, right? Angry. They didn't want a full investigation on Jonestown. But this guy, Ryan, he was a Democrat. but he knew there was something wrong.

But this is where I criticize him in the book a little bit. Well, you know this guy is so unstable, right? They had already information, affidavits to defectors, that they were already doing mock drills like this, drinking the Kool-Aid. They already trained them that if this happens, this is what we're going to do.

They have people, what they call white knight drills, where they have gunfire over their heads. So they would just stay down and they would drink the Kool-Aid. He had all the cyanide prepared for this. So you don't think... But don't you... Look, but I hear what you're saying, but...

And the corruption was really bad in South Florida, right? The airport, you had the ramp workers were dirty. You had the longshoremen were dirty. You had a ton of corruption. The money's overwhelming. And that stuff was never going to go where it's supposed to go. It gets ripped off, right? It has the bill lading, right, where it's supposed to go. But those stuff never go.

Not just a congressman, but the entourage that's with him. The staff, yeah. The staff, and there's one lady who was his staff member. She survived by playing dead for 24 hours. on the strip there until the army came in to rescue her. She played dead. She had five bullet wounds inside her. She just wrote a book and a great interview. I haven't seen her talk about it. She gets very emotional.

Now, she took over his old position like 10 years ago, so now she's a congressperson from that district. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Unbelievable story, but you know what? A lot of people didn't commit suicide. What the investigation shows, they wanted to leave. The guards, what he called the Red, he was a communist. Those who don't know, he is a hardcore, very much Marxist-Leninist communist.

He hated this country because, obviously, the racial issues, he called it pretty much a racist, fascist nation, right? And he wanted to set up this Marxist utopia. out there in Jonestown. He was a big fan of Fidel Castro. He was a big fan of the Soviet Union. He even had Soviet officials come in and say, this is the perfect Marxist utopia that I have set up here. And they congratulated him.

They went out there and said, man, you've done here. But at the same time, these people were oppressed. He hadn't worked 12-hour days. He fed them rice and beans while he ate like a king. And at the end, those who didn't want to commit suicide, the gun squad, what I call them, the Red Brigade, came out with injections and injected everybody in the shoulder with cyanide. And you see that.

And so a lot of people were murdered.

No, they didn't. You can't. No escape. You have to die. When he said it's time to die, it is time to die. There was no like, hey, this is a man. No, these people were murdered. I mean, a lot of people say, you know, especially children, and they have no say in it. They were forced to drink that, small children. They were killed, and there were a lot.

I think there were 200-something children that were murdered, including his own children. And his own wife even protested and said, this has to be a different way. And then it goes, mother, mother, mother, mother, mother, mother, please. He's already in that crazy psycho world. He tells children, we have to hurry, children. We have to hurry.

We have to send a message to the world, the suicidal revolution. I mean, he was just off his, I mean, who in their right mind will see, because he wants to send a message. And he didn't take the Kool-Aid himself. Cyanide, he shot himself in the head.

When you got that kind of fish, when you look inside this major grouper, you get a kilo of Coke next to a block of ice. That stuff was going to get taken out. And that was not uncommon to see 600, 800 pounds coming in and get ripped up. And that's what we got. So what does that tell you, the stuff that got in? A lot. Yeah, what's stock getting caught? A lot, a lot.

It was the worst mass murder until 9-11, right, with Americans, right? I see that. And with that, so going back to my point, I thought the congressman made a mistake. I know he had a history of being very proactive. He's a Democrat. And remember, this guy, Jones, helped the Democrats win the 76th election, the national election. He helped.

It went a lot because he was key getting the votes out with African-Americans because he had an integrated church. He was a socialist member. And there's a very socialist area. So. The State Department did not give them a lot of information while I was reading, according to the staff member who survived, what really was going on.

Because remember, they had people already saying about all these defectors saying, hey, dude, they're doing mock exercise. They're torturing people in there. If you stand up anything, they'll put you in this hot box. They'll put you underground. They put you in a well. They really torture people. You better get on the program. There's no escaping. There's no leaving.

This is what they're doing to you. So I think it was a big mistake. Him knowing what's going on there, knowing these guys are armed, he knew they were armed. I personally, just being common sense, is I need the Guyana government to help me, give me security, protection. He went unarmed. He thinking that the media guys, oh, you know, I have NBC with me, I have the Washington Post.

He's not going to shoot us with the media here.

I don't think he cared.

He cared, man. He cared. So you can never underestimate your opponent. Never underestimate. Be prepared. I think if he would have had the Army or at least some representatives and they saw the evidence, I think they could have arrested him, taken him there, and he would have saved those lives. I think he was just approached the wrong way.

And at the end, knowing that kind of person, how volatile he was, how could they not think that would not trigger that after he'd been practicing that, right? He pretty much said that's what he was going to do. Arrogance. So that's my criticism in the book. If you read it, I blame a lot of the Carter administration at the time. Obviously, he went out there as a congressman.

He could do his own investigation, right? Different bodies of government. You have the executive and the legislator. But they should have given him some support and protection because he was set up to fail. He was set up to fail, and they failed badly. And look what we have, the consequences. So something you got to really think about this guy.

And he really, there's a reason why he went, he created Jonestown, because he was this close, again, picked up in the US for obviously tax evasion. He really didn't have a church. He had all this protection as a church, but he was a cult and he was stealing and he was abusing. He would rape the members. He would even rape males. So he was involved in a lot of bad things.

So he knew his time was coming. That's why he set up Guyana. I think originally he wanted to go in Brazil. But it was easier for him because he's, Guyana was a British colony, former British colony, English speaking. And it just worked out easier for him to go to Guyana, which at the time had become a socialist nation also, very communist. So that's another issue they had to deal with. So.

Interesting read. If you like what we talked about, I think you'll like the story of Jim Jones. If you don't know much about it, a lot of the younger generation, I've noticed, doesn't know anything about what happened at Jonestown. So, read about it. You'll be shocked. And the video, his video, his tape, the death tape, you gotta listen to that.

Of the brink of a madman with a thousand people jumping off a cliff.

And they knew that was the quickest way to get it in because the demand back in the 80s and 90s, and still today, unfortunately, is enormous for cocaine. I always said the way to stop the cartels, if people stop using the stuff, right? If people got the treatment, the cartels are out of the drug game, right? It's over. That's it. Yeah. We won the war on drugs.

That's typical with this communist socialist system. Look at Nicolas Maduro. You looked at Fidel Castro. You look at Xi Jinping in China. You look at Kim Jong-un in North Korea. They abused the people. They think this is better for them. No, this is the best system out here, folks. Don't get conned into that. This is the best system out there. Nothing is perfect, but it is the best system.

You can work your way up. You want to get your own education. You want to do things. You can make something in your life here. And it happens. One thing you can never take away from you, and I tell people this all the time, is your education. They can never, no matter what happens, they can never take your education from you. They can't take your drive from you.

They can't take your determination from you. That's built within you. No matter what government happens in here. So educate and be free. And there's a lot of brainwashing. And be a person. Ask questions. Get different sources. Don't just accept one source. And unfortunately, these people did that. And you see the communists do that.

And he was very good at propaganda and brainwashing where you weren't allowed to get other information from other sources. It was his source information. Healthy diet every day. That way Castro did the same thing. CCP does the same thing in China and I've written about those books in China. They like their one-party system as our way or the highway. So end up one of three ways for you.

Either your death, imprisonment, or they're going to kick you out of the country. That's the reality, that's the reality we live in in the 21st century.

But we're it, though. We're the shining light here. So, hey, good thing is we're living the good country. Be happy you weren't born in communist China or Venezuela or North Korea. Have you ever seen the videos out there, man? That is depressing to see that. So those are the books, also all the kind of books I've written about.

So I have such a, such a huge, almost, no, just did 60th, Jim Jones is my 60th book. I just did my 60th book in a little over a year. So it's pretty cool. You can find it. Now I'm doing the Audible books will be coming out. That should be coming out within a month on ATF Undercover. And then I'm doing more with Sean. We're just doing one on mass shootings. We just started that one.

Some of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history. And based on my background, solutions to that. I mean, that could be a show within itself. What's going on in our country with mass shootings. That's depressing for me. and how we can stop them and what we can do. I don't know if you've seen the video or not, and I talked a lot about this. I've done shows about this.

The way we won the war on drugs, I want your audience to know, is from within. from within. But a lot of these bad countries are weaponizing cocaine, especially the Nicolas Maduros from Venezuela, right?

Ovalde, Texas, what happened at Robb Elementary? No, I haven't. Yeah, you have to look at the video. 77 minutes while the shooter's in the classroom killing the students and teachers while the police are outside. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've seen bits and pieces. You haven't seen the whole thing. It is really, all of it's out there now.

And what's really upsetting, and you've got to watch this in the audience to look at this, one of the officers, female officers, you know, they forget they have the body cams on, right?

And another guy was recording her because everybody has it on. And I guess she has her off, but he has his on. And they're outside. They are already, finally, it was the feds. It was the border patrol. The attack unit came in there. And it wasn't the locals.

They were the ones that went in there, and I think they were like 15, 20 miles away, and they responded, and they're the ones that came in the classroom, and they're the ones that killed them, who killed the Rommels inside there. It wasn't the locals who stayed outside. She said, hey, wasn't your daughter in there?

And one of the guys was saying, no, no, my daughter was a VPK, but if my daughter was in there, I would have definitely gone in. Whoa. Come on. My daughter was in there, but what, the other people's daughters, children weren't good enough to go in there? I mean, that's what you serve and protect. This is what the call is about.

When you got that kind of situation and kids are dying, one of the girls was calling 911, saw her teacher get her head blown off, right? And the other students are dying, bleeding in there. It says, please come and help using the teacher's phone, right? To call 911. You stay outside the classroom because, oh, he's got a rifle. We have handguns. Well, they have nothing.

You've got countries who are really enemies, they're communist enemies, and they're selling cocaine because they know that does damage to our country, their workforce, the people, their future, and everything else.

right go in there and get a shotgun you got shotguns you got everything else that's those are the kind of things i talk about where you need people who are teachers or willing to predict teachers willing to die for the students some of them were shooting the students at the end taking the bullets for the kids they want to fight and those just like after 9 11 when we had after the pilots right taking over the airplanes they had the option to be armed right and

We're at the point where we would probably have to do the same thing with administrators, teachers, the same thing, because some police officers happen in Miami and Parkland, they stay outside, right? And Cruz ends up, Nicholas Cruz, ends up killing a lot of the students and teachers inside because he has a rifle, right? I understand it's not a fair fight.

You have a handgun, he has better range, he's faster, and he's going through your body armor, but those kids have nothing, and the teachers have nothing. And staying outside, that's being a coward. After shoot trainings, you got two people in, you can do it and you address the guy because that's what you're supposed to do. So I address a lot of that.

Books are going to be coming out on Audible soon. It's already on that. And I talk a lot of scenarios, what we've learned, what we haven't learned. and the problems we have. And we may have to become more like Israel to protect ourselves because the response time is too long. And if a lot of these places don't want you armed, well, then you have to do something about it because this doesn't end.

We just had another one in Michigan State, right? It just seems like every week there's a new active shooter. As we speak right now, Matt, if somebody else got triggered, it's going to do the same thing because we have a mental health crisis in this country that's unimaginable. And on top of that, easy access to weapons.

That's the pressing thing about 21st century America right now, and I put that in my book here. It's no solution because the only other solution is a good guy taking on bad guys with guns, right? Letting everybody be armed. And because in Indiana a few months ago, in a food court, in a mall, a guy had armed himself in the bathroom.

He started shooting, but somebody was armed to see a weapons permit and addressed him and killed him.

No, no, no. They don't push other stuff. So those are things I want your audience to think about. Good conversations, serious topics we've taken on, but that's what I write about. Things are happening and solutions in my back, especially with ATF, my background with guns and stuff like this. It's really things that shouldn't be politicized by the right or the left. This is about us, right?

Our family, because nobody wants their kids killed. Everybody wants to have their peace of mind. I have two daughters, safe at school. That's the worst-case scenario. You get that call. School got shut down. A madman is in the loose there, and they do nothing. Pulse nightclub. I mean, it's just case after case that police don't go in sometimes.

Pulse nightclub, they spend like 12 hours while he's there, remember, in the gay nightclub? The guy is shooting everybody in the gay nightclub. I mean, they wait for the SWAT team while the people are in the bathroom, and he's lining up in the stalls and shooting everybody. Why aren't they going in? So it is just one after another. And I pick apart each one.

So it's an interesting read, what we have to learn, what we have to do. And it's about people being armed. These gun-free zones, Matt? Yes. The bad guys are going to victimize you because they... That doesn't change a fucking thing. No, they're going to be armed. They know that's easy, easy pickings because I've done a lot of shows with guys and, you know, just my own history group have a history.

And that's what they look for. You know, they look for the bank doesn't have the armed security guy. Right. They look for the place in the mall, which is nobody armed, no policing or the theater.

No, you can't get rid of all the guns. The United States is the biggest manufacturer of weapons in the world. Yeah. I mean, the Europeans have come here. I mean, you have Glock. It used to be made in Austria. It's made in Georgia. SIG Sauer, which is made in Germany, it's made in the Northeast. H&K, also in Germany. They've come here because we're buying it all. I mean, I have my collection, too.

Oh. He died from Venezuela. Cuba saw, but Castro did not want to be called a trafficker, right? Because he saw what happened to Noriega, right? Back in the late 80s, Manuel Noriega, when he got involved, the U.S. ended up invading and bringing him over. The former president of Honduras, Hernandez, He was a big time drug trafficker. He just got extradited to the United States.

But you have to protect your family because if you expect call 911 and the police will come save you from a home invader in your house, they'll hold your breath.

You better get concealed weapons from it. You better practice. And if you haven't shot your gun and that's the first time you're going to shoot it, that's not the time to learn. You better be competent with it because you're going to be pumped. You're going to be drawn in. You got some crazy coming at you.

You better be ready how to use it and defend yourself because the worst thing is you see somebody do something bad to your family and you wish you could have stopped it. Just listen for a guy who retired law enforcement, what I've seen, and hopefully people can learn and just pass some wisdom on what we can do. All right. That's awesome, man. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm good. We good?

It's a great one. So I let the audience know also, I do also have a Amazon author page too. You can Google it. I'll go, obviously go on Amazon, which is my name. I think it's there, Ignacio Esteban. And you can see all my books, 60 books, from fiction to nonfiction. I also do fiction books also, which is fun, reads. I also do pictorial books.

And I think you'll really like, if you like organized crime,

i have a lot to do this is a true crime channel i have a lot in organized crime my personal experience is dealing with biker group we haven't even talked about that yet so that could be another show down the road if you want doing the one percenters doing the outlaws the hell's angels the mongols um i've done books on yakuza i've done books on la gangs i was in la for eight months between the bloods and crypts of mexican mafia i've done books of ms-13 amana salatrucha so

There's a lot of stuff here. If you like this stuff, I've obviously done books on the Mafia, Castro, the Mafia, and the history of the Mafia in Havana. The rise and fall of the Mafia in Havana led to the rise in Las Vegas. And I talk about the political side because of my family. They were there. They experienced it. And you see it firsthand, what's going on there. So a lot of cool things.

Please look it up and have the audio stuff coming out on Audible, ATF Undercover, and hopefully they get the other books out there through Sean.

Yeah, he didn't want to get caught up with that, but he would tolerate some things, but not on the island side because he didn't want to give the United States a chance to bring him in because it happens to world leaders all over. They get involved in the drug game. It's a conspiracy against us in the United States. And we've had the case law and we extradite these guys and bring them over.

And El Chapo is a perfect example of what happened to him when he finally got extradited. And now he is in the Supermax in Florence, Colorado. And he was a very, very powerful guy and not so much so. I'm in kind of that fascinating view, front line, right? I'm meeting a lot of people because we make a lot of seizures. So I'm networking with the FBI.

I'm networking with ATF, especially DEA, Customs. At a time where Department of Treasury and after 9-11, everything changes, right? Yeah, everybody changes. ATF would end up going to Justice. Customs would go to Department of Homeland Security. It would leave Treasury. So a lot of things change. We're making a lot of good seizures.

Ones that were kind of strange were like people who would swallow, like the pellets. Yeah. The swallowers. We would get a ton of that. I mean, it is really, I mean, we got a lot, but a lot also got through. And it's really sad because some of these people were peasants, right? They would get used or they say, if you don't do it, and these are the cartels, they go in these villages, right?

And they pretty much forced these guys to do it or they're going to hurt your family, kill the family. Some got paid. I mean, I found that the guys who went, let's say, if you were from Miami or you were from Puerto Rico and you end up flying to Cali or somewhere like that, you stay there for three or four days. Like, why are you there? What was the purpose of your trip, right?

And the purpose of your trip was to swallow these pellets. And I got really good at it. I mean, you could easily have two or three pounds of cocaine in you or heroin. Heroin really started picking up in the 90s with the Colombians, right? And that's a lot of money, a lot of dope in there. But the problem with that is something, if it leaks, you're going to get a complaint. Right.

Yeah, yeah. I was born in Los Angeles, in California, but raised in South Florida, in Miami. Okay. And, you know, I've always had some interest in law enforcement, obviously. You know, you grew up in the same times. I was born in the 70s, and I grew up when I was younger in the 80s with Miami Vice, right? And I'm in South Florida, right?

It's so pure, you're not going to survive. So we get calls a lot. People are dead on arrival. They're on the planes. We've got to clear them up. It's not easy to pass either. So if you can't pass this stuff fast enough, even when we catch them, we would have to take them to the hospital, MIA, and give them these laxatives, and it still takes a while to pass it.

These cartel members, if you make it and you're in one of these hotels, which happens all the time, you can't pass the stuff fast enough. They'll put a bullet in your head, they'll gut you, and they'll take the stuff out. So a lot of times they were lucky that we caught them because it was not good stuff for them. And even then, sometimes they still need surgery. The stuff wouldn't come out.

I mean, it's risky, it's sad, it's horrible to see these people. And this is something I'm seeing firsthand. You know, a guy homeless, I say, man, this is the war on drugs. This is how it looks like. This is what's going on. It becomes normal and natural. You feel bad because people are being used, right?

A lot of work. That's true. It's not glamorous, but you're satisfied. At least you're stopping that from going to somebody else that's going to maybe hurt their life. That part there. So you see a lot of that. Miami, it's just a ton of that. They'll put it in the stems of flowers. I mean, talk about the detail of work, right? They'll hollow them out and fill them all up. That's impossible.

I mean, it's really hard unless we had intelligence or a great dog to really hit that because the x-rays are hard to reach. So they would do crazy ways you could imagine to smuggle stuff in. They would hollow out tiles, you know, for roofing and put a kilo in each one.

That's a level of corruption because that's not really going to where it's supposed to go. That's going to get ripped off. And it's going to other places. So that's how corrupt it was in the 80s and 90s and beyond. And things have changed now. And I'll talk a little bit about that, what happens. The collapse, you know, Escobar was killed. The collapse of the Midian Cali cartels.

And then the Mexican cartels stepping up and working with the FARC, which has now changed. Even they changed now. And now they have a different name. And they're working with them. They bring the coke to them and Mexico takes care of all distribution. They handle from there on. They take it all. They don't have to worry about that. You just make it, we take care of it. We go into Colombia.

So the Mexicans pretty much are running Colombia and Central America. They're not just in Mexico. They're all over the region. And then, of course, on top of that, you have the collapse with the communism and socialism that's taken over the region, which really paralyzes the whole country. That's why we really have to keep an eye on what's going on in there.

So I made a lot of contacts, and I said, you know what? This is cool. I don't mind doing this kind of work, but I wouldn't mind, since I dealt with a lot of agents, investigators, to take it to a next level, which is what you do as an agent. I mean, you're not stuck. I'm not stuck to the airport now. As an agent, I get to go all over the country, all over the world, right? Make my cases.

But I deal with probable cause and stuff like that. So I networked a lot with FBI, ATF, DEA, and Customs. You know, it makes sense since I was already with Customs, I would just go over as an agent, right? Since I've worked a lot with these guys, but they didn't want to give up a lot of their inspectors because they know it's hard to fill those positions. So they didn't want to hire.

How cool, you're seeing Don Johnson, you know, you're watching the cool cars, the Ferraris, right? You're thinking, man, that is pretty cool. So that always was, you know, always in the back of your head, and you're looking at that, but never thought... I would ever do that kind of work, really. I kind of, you know, that was cool. And I like the guns. I like the training.

So I had to go with other agencies and put in for them because it's not fair to me. I wanted to be an agent. I wanted to be an investigator. I wanted to do other things. So eventually ATF was the fastest one that picked me up. You know, within that time within Department of Treasury, I get picked up with them.

And then a year later at 2000, I get picked up as an ATF agent and more in Tampa, Florida.

people don't realize how many of these serial killers are among us they're everywhere you know you don't have to be a guy like bundy or dahmer who have these high or or john way gacy who has these crazy numbers right 30 40 50 whatever some people are serial killers and they kill every so often you know they may have four or five but you know the key is they kill few they lay low

When you got that kind of situation and kids are dying, one of the girls was calling 911, saw her teacher get her head blown off, right? And the other students are dying, bleeding in there. It says, please come and help using the teacher's phone, right? To call 911. You stay outside the classroom because, oh, he's got a rifle. We have handguns. Well, they have nothing.

right go in there and get a shotgun you got shotguns you got everything else that's those are the kind of things i talk about work you need people who are teachers or willing to predict teachers want to die for the students some of them were showing the students at the end taking the bullets for the kids they want to fight and those just like after 9 11 when we had after the pilots right taking over the airplanes they had the option to be armed right and

We're at the point where we would probably have to do the same thing with administrators, teachers, the same thing, because some police officers, happened in Miami and Parkland, they stayed outside, right? And Cruz ends up, Nicholas Cruz, ends up killing a lot of the students and teachers inside because he has a rifle, right? I understand it's not a fair fight.

He has a handgun, he has better range, he's faster, he can go through your body armor, but those kids have nothing and the teachers have nothing. And staying outside, that's being a coward. After shoot trainings, you got two people in, you can do it and you address the guy because that's what you're supposed to do. So I address a lot of that. Books are going to be coming on Audible soon.

It's already on that. And I talk a lot of scenarios, what we've learned, what we haven't learned. And the problems we have, and we may have to become more like Israel to protect ourselves because the response time is too long. And if a lot of these places don't want you armed, well, then you have to do something about it because this doesn't end. We just had another one in Michigan State, right?

It just seems like every week there's a new active shooter. As we speak right now, Matt, if somebody else got triggered, it's going to do the same thing because we have a mental health crisis in this country that's unimaginable. And on top of that, easy access to weapons. That's the pressing thing about 21st century America right now, and I put that in my book here.

It's no solution because the only other solution is a good guy taking on bad guys with guns, right? Letting everybody be armed. And because in Indiana a few months ago, in a food court, in a mall, a guy had armed himself in the bathroom. He started shooting, but somebody was armed to see a weapons permit and addressed them and killed them.

You never see that video, though. That's not the thing they push. No, no, no. They don't push other stuff. So those are things I want your audience to think about, good conversations, serious topics we've taken on, but that's what I write about. Things are happening and solutions in my back, especially with ATF, my background with guns and stuff like this.

It's really things that shouldn't be politicized by the right or the left. This is about us, right? Our family. Because nobody wants their kids killed. Everybody wants to have their peace of mind. I have two daughters. Safe at school. That's the worst case scenario. You get that call. School got shut down. A madman. It's in the loose there. And they do nothing. Pulse nightclub.

I mean, it's just case after case. The police don't go in sometimes. Pulse nightclub, they spend like 12 hours while he's there. Remember in the gay nightclub? The guy is shooting everybody in the gay nightclub. I mean, they wait for the SWAT team while the people are in the bathroom, and he's lining up in the stalls and shooting everybody. Why aren't they going in?

So it is just one after another, and I pick apart each one. So it's an interesting read of what we have to learn and what we have to do, and it's about people being armed. These gun-free zones, Matt, the bad guys are going to victimize you because they never do. That doesn't change a fucking thing. No, they're going to be armed.

They know that's easy pickings because I've done a lot of shows with guys and, you know, just my own history group have a history and that's what they look for. You know, they look for the bank doesn't have the armed security guy, right? They look for the place in the mall, which is nobody armed, no policing or the theater. These are things we have to prepare for.

No.

You'll never get rid of all the guns. No, you can't get rid of all the guns. The United States is the biggest manufacturer of weapons in the world. Yeah. I mean, the Europeans have come here. I mean, you have Glock. It used to be made in Austria. It's made in Georgia. SIG Sauer, which is made in Germany, it's made in the Northeast. H&K, also in Germany.

They've come here because we're buying it all. I mean, I have my collection too. But you have to protect your family because if you expect call 911 and the police will come save you from a home invader in your house, they'll hold your breath.

You better get your concealed weapons permit. You better practice. And if you haven't shot your gun and that's the first time you're going to shoot it, that's not the time to learn. You better be competent with it because you're going to be pumped. You're going to be drawn in. You got some crazy coming at you.

You better be ready how to use it and defend yourself because the worst thing is you see somebody do something bad to your family and you wish you could have stopped it. Just listen for a guy who retired law enforcement, what I've seen, and hopefully people can learn and just pass some wisdom on what we can do. All right. That's awesome, man. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm good. Are we good?

Yeah, I just, you want me to do a little promo or something?

I just have an Amazon author page with all my books. I'll just send you the Amazon author page that I have. It's a great one. So I let the audience know also, I do also have a Amazon author page too. You can Google it. I'll obviously go on Amazon, which is my name. I think it's there, Ignacio Esteban. And you can see all my books, 60 books from fiction to nonfiction.

I also do fiction books also, which is fun, reads. I also do pictorial books. And I think you'll really like, if you like organized crime, I have a lot to do. This is a true crime channel. I have a lot in organized crime. My personal experience is dealing with biker group. We haven't even talked about that yet.

So that could be another show down the road if you want, doing the one percenters, doing the outlaws, the hell's angels, the Mongols. I've done books on Yakuza. I've done books on LA gangs. I was in LA for eight months between the bloods and crypts of Mexican mafia. I've done books on MS-13, Manasal Atrucha. So There's a lot of stuff here.

If you like this stuff, obviously I've done books on the Mafia, Castro, the Mafia, and the history of the Mafia in Havana. The rise and fall of the Mafia in Havana led to the rise in Las Vegas. I talked about the political side because of my family. They were there. They experienced it. And you see it firsthand what's going on there. So a lot of cool things.

Please look it up and have the audio stuff coming out on Audible, ATF Undercover, and hopefully they get the other books out there through Sean.

All my books are exclusively on Amazon. I'm on now 72 books. I've got super long ones, medium ones, and short ones. And now I'm getting into the audibles. Right. And I was going to say, Sean, you're working with Sean to do the audibles.

You used them. Others have. I've been doing it for years. Nice voice. Easy, soothing. Nice to listen to. Can't complain about that. Enjoy that. And if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber... All my books are free. So if you're a KU subscriber, enjoy that. You got to read all this stuff too with me. So I'm getting a lot of stuff out there. I'm just, that was just finished.

I'm now working one on the mafia in Miami, the history of the mafia and South Florida. Fascinating stuff I didn't realize. And it's, I'm working on that book now. So I should be fun one.

House of Horrors in the sorority in Florida State, isn't it? He escapes from prison. They have him for a homicide charge. He walks out the front door dressed as the jailer, right? Dressed as the jailer. Yeah, I think so. He walks out the front door and he's gone for months. He takes trains, planes. He's all over the country until he settles in Tallahassee and he snaps.

Nice to be back on your show. The second one. Yeah.

He said he was trying to get, you know, because he confesses later. I read his reports. I read everything. That's what I do. I read a lot. And he says that he was trying to get construction work, but they did a background check on him. And he couldn't pass the background because obviously he was been arrested. Right. Yeah. But I mean, he's supposed to be in factitious IDs and all that.

He just can't get through it. So he gets triggered. He got triggered. And then when he gets triggered, he goes in the sorority house. I think it's Chi Omega. And he goes in there and commits house of horrors in there. And it's just horrible. And the details of what he does. If you want to see all the details, I put in my book how sadistic, how sick this guy is.

How did the first show do? It did all right, right? Yeah. I think about over what? 13,000 views so far in County. Yeah, that's good. Very good number. People liked it. Some liked it and some not so big fans of ATF.

And a lot of these guys get a sexual charge while they're doing this, by the way. They really enjoy this. And that's evidence also against them that comes out of there. So it's a lot of stuff these guys leave behind, not only physically, but also emotionally, baggage and stuff. They're really, really sick. And he was an intelligent guy who went to law school. I don't think he graduated.

He had issues there. He struggled with that, but still a smart enough guy to figure out how to work the system. And he was an attractive guy where he was able to trick a lot of the young females. Light brown hair, part of the hair in the back. He has a certain type that he likes, very similar to his girlfriend. And that's an interesting read there. I mean, she is living with a serial killer.

That's unbelievable.

All these guys do. All these guys end up getting... You know what John Wayne Gacy's last words were? I mean, Bundy, at least when he was fried there and all sparky, his last words were, hey, tell my family I love them and whatever, all that. At least that's something, right? Right. John Wayne Gacy, kiss my ass. That's his last words. Kiss my ass. Before they inject him. And he says, kiss my ass.

He had no remorse. He killed over 30, and he loved young boys. He loved young teenagers. He was the clown, Pogo the Clown, right? He was successful. That's creepy. Creepy because he was very popular in the community. He was very active. He helped people. Like you said, he had that dual Jekyll and Hyde. He said, I'm helpful.

I'm a nice guy, but then I'm also a creepy guy that's going to take your son and kill him, and you're never going to see him again.

I know you don't like reading much about Dahmer, but that one incident that he has was, I mean, again, he had a thing for black male prostitutes, right? Right. But he also went with Asians too. And he had that young boy from Laos, right? A famous story where he- That's the one where he drilled the holes in the head? Yes. He's so messed up that he's drinking. He's an alcoholic, right?

I know people who don't know Dahmer. Dahmer's a severe alcoholic. And sometimes he goes in these stupors, or he'll get more beer. And he left me. He thought he was, he wanted to make him an ultimate sex slave, right? That was his work. He wanted to inject this guy so he can really control, manipulate. He really was crazy out there.

But when he came back from the bar and to get more beer, whatever, he really liked drinking a lot of beer. And when he came back, this is Milwaukee. And when he came back, he saw the kid fully naked talking to his woman at a bus stop. And he was rambling and louse. And he almost freaked out. Right. When I was reading in the reports. So and they said, well, he's my gay lover. He's 19 years old.

We had a dispute. He gets like that when he drinks too much. I guess just take him back and it'll be OK. And she said, no, we already called the police on the way. So Milwaukee's finest police department comes in. They start checking the coal fire, you know, fire rescue. They come out because he's also bleeding in private areas and his anus and other spots too. You know, that's normal.

We have sex and all that. And he explained all that, all this stuff to the police officers. And because he's incoherent, he can't speak in English right now. He's speaking in Laos, and he's like, oh, he's drunk. And he said, okay, we just had a dispute. I said, okay, where do you guys live? We're right up here. Okay, let me take you back. And they escort them back to his apartment.

He even tells me, he tells me in the report, he thanks them. You guys are doing a great job out here. Crime is out of control. I appreciate everything you've done. Wow. He puts them in. He says, okay, and now for his last words, he says, I will. And he had, he killed them with, before they even got back to the car. Right. Immediately. He injected them again and dismembered him and devoured him.

This is true crime right here. This is as heinous as it gets. If you're fascinated by this stuff, look at Psycho Killers. We can talk about it. Don't hold back. Keep pushing the book. I think it's fascinating. I know people love it. Every time I see people talk about it, the views are always enormous.

Yeah, women and then gay males. Really? You see a lot of gay males, prostitutes. Prostitutes suffer.

Is that because they're scared and they want to protect themselves?

but that is fascinating. I think everybody should be interested because it could impact because the victims are not just women. There's that misconception. They just, the victims are women. No, no, no. A lot of men also get taken by, by these serial killers also. And couples, elderly couples. I remember Ramirez. You saw the, you saw the documentary. Yeah.

He picked up, he picked up elderly couples in their sixties and seventies.

Yeah, they're targeted. There's no doubt about it. We'll tone it down with the violence. I was going to go more details on stuff. I'll tone it down. But you're right, because I noticed that a lot of the purchasers were women in my book. Yeah. So that's interesting. Okay. How is the audio doing? I want to work on audio on that. Me and Sean, we work a bit.

I'm busy, like I said, with the worst crime syndicates of our time. I'm working on that one. So it's a lot of books out there. I've just finished ATF Undercover. Obviously, you see the poster back there, working on that one. That's the one I listen to, right? Yeah. What did you think of it?

And the books also, and I delve into that, the waste, fraud and abuse. Yeah. The good, the bad and the ugly of ATF, right? Yeah. It's not just me buying dope and guns, right? I tell you about that story, also my personal life, right? I went through my family, my dad's passing from pancreatic cancer, how difficult that was. I mean, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Charles Dickens, right? And I personally experienced that in 2006. Got married, came back from Europe, beautiful vacation from the Canary Islands.

and in spain and and then also my father gets sick and he deteriorates he was a very healthy man very healthy guy 66 years old didn't smoke much didn't smoke any they didn't drink any uh very fit was a big cyclist an avid cyclist loved to work out but uh he got diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer and it was within seven months that was it and deteriorated immensely quickly

So those are hard things to go through and live through. And while you're still having your caseload in Tampa, back and forth to Miami, have a newlywed, a new wife. There's a lot of things thrown at you. And I was in my early 30s.

People, some people just like putting bad reviews because they like putting bad reviews. They're not picking anything.

Yeah, I had some doozies. I had some doozies in Tampa and in Florida. I always said, and this is my motto, I don't know if I said it last time on your show, the bad guys were the easy part. I really were because I had to overcome so many hurdles as a case agent, as the undercover. I also was the vault custodian. I did my own workups. ATF is a smaller agency than FBI and DEA.

So I have to wear many, many hats and do many, many things. And we have a bad supervisor or even worse, a horrible prosecutor. Nothing's worse. The same thing applies in the Department of Justice all over. You get a bad prosecutor who doesn't do justice to your case, it can all unravel. And you spend a year, year and a half putting it together. That is so frustrating.

That's one thing I like about what I'm doing now. as a writer and getting involved more and more, maybe movie production, maybe TV series production, is you can work as hard as you want, be successful as you want, and produce as much as you want. While in the federal government, that's not always the case. And there's people that want to hold you back and don't want you to succeed.

And there's a lot of issues that people just don't understand the ins and outs of the government and politics that make it hard sometimes to overcome. And it's a lot of personal vendetta and personal grudges. People can be very, very nasty that way and make it very, very difficult. Like that one case, I mean, one of my supervisors had, he was very angry at another undercover.

He decided to take it out on him, a supervisor, right? And we had an H2, a Hummer. H2 is a very large, people who don't know, it's a very large vehicle, very expensive vehicle. It was supposed to be made only for selective use to undercover work. It's a flash car, right? You know, you want to do a by bus. It's a car you use very selectively. This guy decides I'm taking away from him.

I'm going to punish you. And now it's my G ride. And I'm going to use it all the time. He lived in Land O'Lakes, by the way, in Pasco. And he had to go down to Tampa. And he's gassing up twice a day once I get there. He's getting maybe nine miles a gallon. Right. He did that for over four to five years. Right.

He even had agents come in early because in downtown area, he couldn't fit that monster in the parking garage. So he would have an agent get in there, park early on the side. And when he said, hey, I'm on my way, I'm around, he would have to pull his car out so he can park early. You can't make this shit up. Unfortunately, this is all real stuff. And he will park aside.

I just ignore them. I ignore them completely, and they do go away because a lot of them are haters because they can't do it themselves. They have nothing, and they sit behind a computer. A lot of people can be really badasses behind a computer with a fictitious username and put ridiculous stuff out there, but face-to-face, they won't do that.

So, of course, he puts his placard there. So the city's not making any money from that. He keeps that out all day. So he was a control freak. And the amount of excessive money Tamfield Division spent, and ASAC knew about it, the SAC knew about it, but they did nothing. because they didn't want that conflict, that battle. So that's a waste. You know how much more?

He should have a regular car like everybody else did, and a supervisor should not have that kind of car. And that's one of many examples. And he would later, I was friends with him in the beginning, but later take it out on me because of issues we had. Because my partner, I think I mentioned on the last show, The Puerto Rican bullet catcher, right?

He was involved in that famous shooting in Miami, which Rippling, believe it or not, did a big episode on after he retired, where he takes the round from a bad guy who shoots into his gun, right? He had a SIG 9mm. He had a SIG 9mm. And when he tries to arrest a guy in Hialeah, he fires around him and he catches in his barrel. He catches it and plugs his barrel. He can't shoot the guy.

But goodness, the Hialeah SWAT team is on the other side of the vehicle and opens up on him and takes care of that guy. He's very lucky. The glass shatters on him and everything else. But he goes to war with that guy. But he was my mentor. And I worked with a guy. And he wants me to turn me against him now. This is the kind of guy he is. I'm not that kind of guy.

I'm not going to say I want you to shun him, don't talk to him, don't deal with him and everything else. Oh, you don't do what I say? He went to war with me. And I was a highly successful agent making some of the biggest cases at undercover departments and everything else. He doesn't give a crap. He doesn't give a shit.

And I think I know I end up have to get transferred to Miami because the sack says to me, she was a female and she's had it with whole situation. He says, it seems like the wall has been poisoned. And I have a weekend to figure out where I want to go. If not, I'm going to find your home. And that's after 12 years being successful in Tampa.

So I spoke to my wife and at the time my grandmother was very ill. I said, well, I guess I'll go to Miami. He says, oh, how wonderful. How wonderful. You've been making a lot of new friends. It's all true, though. It's unfortunate, folks. That's the reality of the federal government and at least the private sector. People fire each other because I work also in the private sector.

You're not competent. You're a buffoon. You're losing money for the company, right? Are they going to keep dead weight? No. They're going to get rid of you.

You can't get rid of alcoholics. We had guys in the government you can't get rid of because it's considered a disease.

I've written some about the corruption in some of these prison systems also in my books, Prison Gang Killers. And some of the corruption is enormous all the way to the top, all the way to the top.

Go down, and they keep on doing it again. Some of the guys, and they live in society like normal. They have a normal life, and they juggle and hide, and then at night, they do House of Horrors. It's scary, and I think people need to know how dangerous serial killers are. They're everywhere. I think people don't understand how prolific they are. They're everywhere.

Or how about a lot of the female inmates getting pregnant by the guards there and everything else, right? Yeah. That happens a lot. I think the chief of one out there in Maryland, I want to say it was in Baltimore, had like four or five females pregnant.

And she'll tell you... By whom?

Hey, can I bring in unacceptable, unprofessional behavior?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. That's unfortunate. You do see a lot of kids like that. And who knows? Maybe they are underage and they're just being goofy and they're going out there and just doing silly things because people create these fictitious accounts. We all know that. And then a young kid just and they know they like stir things up, too.

I think that's a huge problem throughout the country in the world. Yeah. And not just men and women. I think you see also men on men too.

So that's why a lot of times I've learned I saw some really nasty things, not in this, but other shows. And I'm like, I'm not going to even respond to anything like that.

Oh, my God.

And I think what I'm reading, what my experience is, what the state system is even worse. The state prisons are a complete zoo.

It's even lower.

Yes, it is. Everything. And that's where you saw the corruption. I want to say it was in Baltimore. And this is my book. And it's been a while. But it was like it was run like a criminal enterprise. The way they had everything structured with the females, with the drugs coming in, with everything, it's just unacceptable. And this is what you get when you can't get rid of people.

We'll go back to our point. You have to have accountability. And the government, that action, what he did, When I'm talking about a supervisor, it should be accountability. When you have people that are incompetent, unfit, making bad decisions, or trying to hurt you, you have to have accountability because I'm risking my life, right?

I'm meeting with these bad guys, making arrests, and then you come back and you have to deal with an asshole supervisor or a shitty prosecutor. And I think some of them are either bad or they got their own agendas. You know, you got activist judges, but you got activist prosecutors, right? And the same thing applies everywhere.

So a lot of people have no idea how difficult to be a successful, but I'm a motivated person. I'm a type of guy that sees a glass half full no matter what. Right. But there are people get broken easy. And they're just disgruntled. They're the kind of people that just are broken, disgruntled, and just, you know, I just want to get along, get it done. I said, no, I'm here to do the job.

I came here because I had a passion. I want to do these cases. I want to put the worst and the worst in prison. So I have to get motivated. And, of course, get my own personal life. So I'm dealing with personal stuff, right? I'm having the cases and you have that person that has to, you know, when it's time at work, I got to focus here when I'm here because if not, things just don't get done.

And that's one thing I give people a message. You're going to have issues in life. You're going to have problems. You got to adapt and overcome and do things. That's one of the messages in the book. And I also talk about

i think solutions to some of the violent crime we have right i know you didn't get to the the back side there but i i deal with you know solutions how to deal with mass shootings solutions how to deal with repeat violent offenders right firearms trafficking and some of the things some of our gun laws i mean i did a lot of farms trafficking cases you i talked about that right how much time a lot of these guys get for farms trafficking yeah three years one guy got 36 months

The badasses, you know, repeat violent offenders get a lot of time, right? But if you have no history and you're running a lot of guns, you don't get much time. which is a problem. We need guys to get at least 10 years for massive trafficking. I had that case, I don't know if you remember, about the dirty FFL, the federal firearms licensee, how I worked up, right?

And he ends up getting two years after putting tons of guns on the streets. He violates a public trust.

Puerto Rico?

Yeah, dirty FedEx employee.

Oh, out of Ecuador.

You're a smuggler. You lied about it.

You can't have those guns there, and you can't say they're a bunch of aficionados who are having fun on the weekends hunting because they weren't. There were a lot of handguns in there, and they were recovered in a house. This case started full of gang members in Guayaquil, in Ecuador. So that's how we got to leave.

We traced it back, and he was trafficking guns since his days in college in the 90s at LSU. And he got what? He got like three years. Three years. And that's significant. A lot of times you don't see that kind. You see guys because they had no criminal history. So those are the issues I talk about where firearms trafficking has to be taken more seriously.

And that's something where because these guns going bad people, not just international trafficking, which that was a major international case. You have domestic trafficking and you have local trafficking. And local trafficking is one of these guys getting the gun. These are bad gang members. This is how they get their guns in the black market. And it's very easy. We have people who are doing.

And I did a lot of cases where I'm dealing with felons who sell shop in these flea markets or these gun shows. Right. Private sales. Right. There's no cash in carry or you go online the Internet and you meet people, felons being felons at the parking lot of wherever and they're buying guns.

we've got some big problems to deal with with that because you can pass all the gun laws you want and put all the gun control in place, which doesn't work in my opinion, but there's so many loopholes people find a way around it. Bad guys always do bad things. Right. And we're the ones that get victimized to good people.

People who are like, let's say, straw purchasers. Let me give this example. People who don't know what a straw is, that's somebody who has no criminal history, that goes into an FFL, a federal firearms licensee, buys some guns, says this gun is for me, right? He's an actual purchaser, and they end up giving the guns to a felon or something, right?

Those people with no history, a lot of times just get a slap on the wrist.

Yeah, if you're, like I said, collectors collect, right? Traffickers sell, right? I'm a collector. I keep my guns because I need my firearms. I want my weapons, right? And if you want to sell firearms, get your license. Do it the right way. You have to get background checks and a lot of stuff. Like, listen, I've been retired from ATF close to two years now, right?

I've done the gamut with ATF investigations from undercover case agents. I've done all kinds of cases. And I went to headquarters. I promoted and spent two years in headquarters. And I saw behind the scenes how things worked. At the top of it, I became very good friends with the number one command in the central region because we worked together on the most sensitive projects, sensitive cases.

That's because what happened to Fast and Furious. Operation Fast and Furious, it had monitored more of these cases. So this wouldn't happen again. So guns wouldn't walk, the technique walking, to Mexico and the cartels. Things like that. So something's risky, sensitive.

Hey, we've got to put an end to this and see what's going on here because we don't want a public safety issue and stuff like that. So I saw a lot firsthand what's behind the scene, but I'm not happy with the Biden administration. This has changed. And in my opinion, this is my opinion, I'm going to say this, has kind of weaponized ATF with the bump stocks and with the pistol brace, right? Right.

They were legal for years. I know guys who bought them, right? They said there were no issues to attach it. Obviously, if people don't know what a pistol brace is, you put it in a handgun, and you're not supposed to shoot it from the shoulder. It's supposed to help you shoot better. It's supposed to help you brace better. You're not supposed to put it on your shoulder because then it becomes SBR.

But people violate it, and I guess the Biden administration thought, like the bump stop. You know, it's supposed to make you shoot faster. It's almost automatic, makes you pull faster, right? But Steve Paddock used it in the worst mass shooting U.S. history in Las Vegas, right? The sniper there on the strip during the concert.

And he set up like with two suites, a rich guy who went crazy, but he used it. And all of a sudden he said, oh, we got a ban. No, it's what's between the ears, right? It's just an object. Why are you punishing everybody else? So it becomes illegal. Now this is illegal, right? Now with a pistol brace, if you still have it, now you are in violation.

Are you going to start arresting people because now they have an NFA because it's supposed to be a short barrel rifle? Or a short barrel shotgun, if you put on your shotgun now, even though it was legal for years to do that. So now you spent $300. You're supposed to dispose of it. You're supposed to take it. You're supposed to throw away the $300. Throw away your $300. Or try to get it registered.

Good luck to you because a lot of these chiefs are not approving it because you've got to get approved by the local authority in your area. Well, good luck with that. And on top of that, now some say it's a waiver. Sometimes say they don't. They may pay another $200 to get registered, SOT, special occupational tax. Come on, man. I'm a retired ATF agent. I don't think that's right.

And I think that was Biden's administration using ATF to do that. And that's my opinion. Obviously, the director now, Steve Dillbach, doesn't believe that. But he's an attorney. He was never an agent. He was appointed. I mean, that's a politics. I give a little ATF politics there. I don't think it's right what happened there.

Either you trash it, you make it inoperable, or you have to go to the ATF office and turn it over. This is my point. Are we now going to make these people felons? Is that right now because they have an unregistered short barrel shotgun or rifle, an SPR, an SPS? I don't think so. This is my opinion as a retired agent. I can say this now.

Now, if I was still an agent, I probably wouldn't be able to say this. I have to be honest with you because I'll be considered like a whistleblower, right? Even though I have said things before and what happens to whistleblowers, they don't do so well. They get to end up being messed with.

Just like happened when I brought up the problems with the other idiot, remember, with the H2 and all the other stuff he was doing? I got transferred to Miami. I was very happy in Tampa. I was working big cases. Miami's a tougher city. I did fine there, but that's not where I wanted to be.

Might have been steady. Might have been steady. The more shows I do, the more the numbers are going up. higher and higher. And I do a lot. I'm not just true crime. As we talked before, I do politics. I do travel. I do my, I did a few books with my daughter, kids books too. So if you like kids books, I've done that with really good message, family, wholesome messages. I used to a variety of things.

Yeah, show the identification.

Matt, that's happened to me. Oh, let me hear. What happened? In Brooksville. And the same thing, but the FFL, they didn't like the interview. So I'm always playing close. We don't have a uniform. I'm always playing close. No, no, the FL what? FFL didn't like the interview. What does that mean, FFL? Federal Farms Licensee.

The gun shop owner. All right. Yeah. And we do a lot with them. And a lot of times we're playing. And some of them really are nasty. You know, just like the one guy we talked about, got two years, how dirty he was. Some of them are. There's a lot of good ones, and there's some bad ones in there. And I show him identification. He's a liar.

He says that some guy claimed to be an ATF agent, calls the sheriff's office, just interviewed me. He's outside the parking lot. So they come up and they say, hey, I need to see your identification, da, da, da, and the whole thing. I heard you came in here. I said, no, I did show it. It's in my back pocket. I said, let me keep your hands up. I said, okay, my hands are right here.

And he says, where is your identification? So one of the officers reached behind and pulls it out of my back pocket. Now, I don't want to be an ass and be stupid, so I'm going to comply. So they looked at it. They verified it, and they explained the whole situation. I saw his situation. He said, okay, keep your hands up. Let me see your identification. We'll see. So

Yeah, you feel like you're being disrespected. The ladies try and play a system, but at the same time, you're going to be outgunned here. You're going to be outplayed here because they're more than, and you're going to get tased and put down. He got handcuffed, thrown in the back of the mark unit. My head! He bumped his head the whole nine yards.

I really enjoy it. And I just did a crazy one on psycho killers. And, of course, you listen to my audio. And now I'm really getting with Sean, and you know Sean well because of you. Excellent, excellent voice actor. I've been working with him.

No, anytime they start disrespecting law enforcement and escalate, you're going to lose. Yeah. Have you ever seen all the videos on the airplanes when people start getting confrontational with the stewardess and they get out of control and then they start yelling at the pilot? That's not going to go good for you. No, this is not going to end well. No, no.

I mean, there's so many Karens and Kevins out there. Have you ever seen all those Karen videos? Yeah, I love those.

Or they go on these crazy rants for whatever reason, and they think they're entitled, and they can do and yell and do all these things. If you haven't seen those videos, folks, take a look at them. Typing, watching a Karen out of control. They're nuts. They're absolutely nuts. And you can see a lot of them on the airplanes, too. Because they would turn the plane around, which I've seen the videos.

They're going to land, and guess who's waiting for you? The locals are. Yeah.

Angry. They get out of control. I don't know how people don't know how to be measured. But a lot of it, I go back to mental health issues because a lot of people are off their meds and you see it over and over again. They get on these planes and they don't handle, they don't handle orders. They don't handle your rules.

I have this big one that's going to come out soon, about seven hours, almost seven hours, The Most Dangerous Crime Syndicates of Our Time, which is just from A to Z, soup to nuts, a lot of my shorts put together dealing with the one percenters, Italian mafia, Mexican cartels, Yakuza, street gangs, prison gangs, All in there. All in there.

you're gonna you're gonna play there's lots of rules and you think you can't tell me what to do and you touched me and i'm gonna let you have it yeah you can't touch me you can't touch me i'm a law enforcement officer i'm putting handcuffs on you i'm gonna touch you you're done they're done and the stewardess can't even take control of you if you're a danger to the plane they wrap people have you seen the picture they get wrapped up and everything they wrap them up i mean okay

Yeah, well, that's pretty much what's been out of control after Waco with Timothy McVeigh, right? Maybe he was the ultimate sovereign citizen. And I wrote a book about McVeigh and the face of domestic – U.S. domestic terror. And it says they're one step away being McVeigh, some of these sovereign citizens, right? Because they're anarchists.

That's like – and I wrote a book about McVeigh and what's been out of Waco. I mean you think about – we talked a little bit about Jim Jones last time, right? We talked about the cults. And the French Davidians are a smaller version of the people's temple, right? Instead of 900-something dying, it was 70-something dying in there and the firing ending there.

And the events there, I will talk about a little bit of McVeigh. People don't know who Timothy McVeigh is. McVeigh, he was a decorated U.S. war veteran in the Persian Gulf War. If he would have been killed in the Persian Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, he would have been a hero, a patriot, right? But five years later, from 1990, he becomes the worst domestic terrorist in U.S.

So if you really don't have a good handle, this book will put you to start getting in the right direction. So I think it's going to be really good. Seven hours. So I look forward to that one coming out.

history. And it's fascinating to see his transformation. I mean, he had issues. I do a lot of research, and I read all the stories and everything else. He was kind of growing up to become a loner. He was kind of an introvert, right? His grandfather taught him a lot about firearms, so he became a big firearms enthusiast. He became really into firearms. Great. That's why he joined the Army.

He became decorated and all that. But he also got involved with some anti-government white nationals. And his co-conspirators that he uses there, Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, were also from the army. All these guys who commit this act were army veterans who come in and get together and commit this act against other Americans in the name of a tyrannical regime.

He was also pumping that crap. He gets brainwashed with that garbage because he starts, before he does all this stuff, before Waco, he does a tour on the gun show. I met a lot of people on the gun show circuit. They're good people. There's some bad ones.

And he said the farther west he went, because reading when he was, he said the crazier or the more extremist they were, the more anti-government they were. And those who don't know what the Turner Diaries are, it's about this anti-government group, white nationalist group that bombs, use a truck bomb to hit FBI headquarters and take it out. Well, he copies it.

Instead of FBI headquarters, he goes after, he doesn't like ATF. He goes after ATF and other federal agencies in Oklahoma, but he parks it. And I'll get there. He parks in front of daycare. And he later calls it collateral damage in his revolution. He killed maybe the babies and all that.

Yeah, horrible stuff, man.

ATF, yeah. ATF agents come in later because we work later hours, right? We're not 9 to 5 guys.

we're guys that work late so but he killed a lot of agents so i think i remember it's in my book the numbers i put in there i think irs and dea and other ones but he was anti-government he originally won instead he thought he thought and what he said later was that he got his most bang for his buck with a truck bomb because he also wanted to assassinate agents he also wanted to assassinate judges he also wanted to kill politicians so he really went he snapped he went okay so

These guys plan things, but at the end, he had fault. It was Oklahoma State Prooper that pulled him over with no tag at the end.

um and then gets caught on such a stupid you know little little technicality or a little glitch or the trooper he gets arrested enough for that he gets arrested because he had a concealed weapon he had a 45 glock in his waistband he had it in case the second fuse wouldn't go he was going to activate himself he was going to shoot it and he said he was going to die in the truck with it but he was going to have an explosion no matter what he was going to initiate the charges himself or the second fuse he had that he parked that car there two days earlier

but he had a car there. Like you said, these guys were poor, right? They stole a lot to make this happen. I mean, it's unbelievable. The stuff he had to pull off to get this done. It took him like a year and a half to get it going.

Didn't have enough Ampho ammonium nitrate fertilizer. And he had over 5,000 pounds.

That's impressive. That's impressive. And he took him down. And and of course, he will become the first federal prisoner executed in 38 years. President Bush signed off in June 11th, 2001 and became before 9-11. And obviously, yeah, he was OK with it, though, too. He didn't fight it at the end. He didn't care. You want to live like that anymore? You want to Terry Nichols?

Okay, cool, cool. I was going to ask you, since I did a book also on MS-13, and you guys are in Pasco, and it's a true crime channel, what the heck happened holiday with that poor Uber driver with an MS-13 guy that goes in there and kills him and takes him apart? You see that? I heard it on the news. I mean, just the savagery and brutality of MS-13, Mara Salvatrucha. They're not just in L.A.

I thought the co-conspirator helped him get the explosives. Who knew about this? He should have been executed also. He went to a state trial in Oklahoma, convicted of 168 counts of murder, but the jury was deadlocked on the death penalty.

I guess with all the evidence they had and putting the case together.

Didn't he rent the van? I know he was part with the rental. He was part of the conspiracy with explosives. And he had other stuff also, different storages and locations. And so they put the case together with him. So he went down. Michael Fortier also helped. His wife also helped McVeigh put fake IDs, but she was given immunity. And he is now in Witness Protection Program.

He was out already, Michael Fortier. So he's out and about Witness Protection. So we have him. But he testified against both these guys. So those are interesting things about extremism, how it happens, what triggered him. I mean, what triggered McVeigh at the end? He was at Waco, and he was there during the siege, the 51-day siege. People don't know what Waco is.

Yeah, they interviewed him.

He was selling bumper stickers. You can't make this stuff up.

Isn't it bone chilling to watch him be interviewed there at Waco where you know what he's going to do two years later on the anniversary? We just had the anniversary, the 30-year anniversary of Waco and the 20-year anniversary of Oklahoma. That's the reason what inspired me to write all this stuff and get involved. We had four agents that were killed.

Like I said, with Jim Jones, with Koresh, they cooperated. We talked about the agent. Why didn't he cooperate? If you cooperate with the investigation, you get your time in court. Your time in court is not to open up on the agents when they come in the search warrant and say... People don't know this. They were tipped off

about agents coming in because a local reporter got information and he went to a letter carrier and said, hey, where is this Mount Carmel with the rims on? He got lost. I heard ATF is going to hit a search warrant. I'm covering it. Have they hit it already? Well, that was his brother-in-law. And he tells him what's going on. Hey, I just asked the reporter, ATF's coming.

So rather than being sleeping and not prepared for it, they're all prepared and armed. And it's an all-out war. And four agents are murdered because of it. So those events let it trigger.

And then if Koresh really wanted to let those kids out, he should have let the kids out because the listening device the FBI had over there, and when they're coming, after 51 days they had enough of this, they want to get the kids out, they hear him saying, hey, they're coming, let's set the fire on. It wasn't the FBI, the feds that set the fire. He did. He started the fire.

And that's out there also. So there's events that said the government did this. Why not cooperate? You're the ones that triggered all these problems. You know what I'm saying? We have a legal search warrant. You're illegally having firearms here. He also was having sex with minors. He was doing other things, right?

He had some weird rules there where if you came as a couple, he was the only one that could have sex with your wife.

I think we talked a little about Jim Jones before People's Temple, but if Jim Jones in the 50s, let's say 60s, before he got really out of control, because he was a civil rights leader in some sense, integrating the churches, integrating a lot of different things. He was the first, him and his wife were the first couple to adopt a black child in Indiana. I mean, they did a lot of things.

He would die in a car accident. He probably was a civil rights hero, right? Instead, he becomes a monster in 1978 for what happens in Jonestown. So people snap, people change. Dave Koresh was a good guy, I think, at the beginning, and then he changed. And I think he became this monster, like you see these guys. He should have let those children go. There's no need to set the fires.

anymore. They're nationwide, Canada, and they've gone enormous in Central America. That's where their roots came from. They went back, and they've pretty much taken over El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and southern Mexico.

There's no need to have done all that. But at the end, this is what goes on because his ego is. And a lot of these guys, they believe the followers are their property, right? And we're all going down with it. This is my world. It's all mine. Yeah. Mother, mother, please. Remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know if I told you what I felt. It's in my book about how I felt about Leo Ryan, the congressman, going out there. How do you go out there not being armed, not having a security force, not having the government with you? Did you think, guy's ultra paranoid. You know he has weapons because they're telling you what's going on, right?

What I was reading is that he saw the affidavits. He read the reports on a local paper out there in San Francisco. He knew these guys were doing these horrible things in these medical units, right?

People who wanted to leave and cause problems, they were taking special treatment in the medical camps, the medical unit, and they were injected with a coma-inducing medication and forced to become sex slaves, right? You're a problem. We're going to wait.

Yeah. Jonestown. Yeah.

I don't, I haven't heard this. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's in the reports. It's all in there. He knew that because he had the, a lot of people, some people were able to escape and they gave sworn affidavits. Right. And I read the affidavits. They gave sworn affidavits. What happened?

He knows all this because he's even trying to figure out, he even tries to get Dan Quayle was a representative to come with him from Indiana because Quayle's from Indiana. Listen to this. He tried to get Quayle to go with him. And others – Not that bullet. Yeah, he didn't – nobody wanted to go. No one wanted to go because they thought this guy was dangerous and crazy. So this is another issue.

A lot of people already told him this is dangerous. Be careful going down there. And he thought he was safe because he took NBC News with him, the Washington Post. Hey, I'm taking – these were some of the biggest names in NBC at the time. Remember that. These are big names in NBC who are going out. They're like the Brian Williams of their time, right? And he's going down there.

Dude, he cleans house on everybody. No one gets out of that thing alive. So the cameraman's last action, he saw the video, was filming them shooting his goon squad, shooting at them at the plane. That's his last thing he does out there. But he knew how dangerous. So in this medical tent, medical unit, He would put coma-inducing medication, enslave people, put them in hot boxes.

If you were a problem, make you so big. You're Guyana. You're in the jungle. You're in South Africa. He would find boa constrictors, tie you up, and wrap it around your neck, what I was reading, to squeeze the life out of you. I mean, he was doing some really bad things to these people. He was an ultra-communist. He had become a Marxist-Leninist hardcore.

He even went to visit Fidel Castro in Cuba, in Havana, and and talk about because he is a mire of castro he was a mire of stalin he was a mire of lenin he even had soviet officials come because he was creating a soviet marxist lenin's utopia is what he created there and he was right everybody gets a little bowl of rice like mouth sick tongue here's your bowl of rice but they ate well

They keep on spreading, right? Like ants. you hit the end pile and they just keep on coming around. It's cultural. It's just, and when people are in that culture, it's hard to, you incarcerate them, but they're so hardcore, they don't care. They come out, they'll come back at it again.

His command staff ate well. They had meats. They had everything else. But the people had to put 12-hour days in on the land. And he used them as slaves. And these were disenfranchised people, mostly African blacks, that he brought from Northern California. And they went from one hell to another, an inferno. It cost them everything and their children.

I didn't know that there was- There was someone that escaped and wrote affidavits that he was aware. He knew they had weapons. He knew that they were doing mock drills to prepare for this mass suicide because he had to prepare mock drills. He would have white knight drills where he said the government's coming and he would have the guy shoot above their heads

for the followers and the crowd on the floor to keep fear instilled in them. He knew what he was getting himself into. I think that was a madman like that to approach him like that. And then all of a sudden everybody wants to leave. He's not going to have that. Remember they all said, I want to leave. They'll start giving people notes. You want to get out of here. Yeah.

And then the video, the one guy trying to stab him. Remember that one? One guy tries to stab him. And then the reporter says, we got to get out of here. This is get out of control. And all of a sudden that's when they follow them to the tarmac there and the planes and they kill him. If you haven't read the book, if you haven't seen their interview, Jackie Speier does a great interview.

She survived. She was an assistant. She plays dead for 24 hours, taking five rounds in and lacing a tarmac for 24 hours, playing dead until the Army of Guyana comes in and she's saved. They thought they had killed her, and she plays dead. If you haven't seen Jackie Speier's interview, listen to that and what she says. She would later become the congresswoman in his district years later.

Good stuff. All right. That's good. Yeah, I did not. Hey, with me, you get true crime. You get an all dimensions with me and I can talk. No way you're getting monetized. So I will let you know if it does. And we don't even do politics. We just did true crime. I can have more fun with politics too if you wanted. That's another time.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And you can see my poster behind me here, ATF Undercover. You liked it? Thumbs up? Yeah, that's the book.

So what I'm reading, what I saw, Sheriff, I met him briefly from Pasco and I knew Sheriff White from before out there since I worked so many years out there. And I know you're in that area. Um, unbelievable and holiday that poor Uber driver goes near Texas, his wife. Hey, this is my last delivery of the day. I should be home right afterwards. Right? That's the last thing he does, man.

I'm working with Sean, man. He's a busy guy. So you're getting the other ones on Audible? I'm trying to pull a lot of them on Audible. It's a lot of work. It's for him especially. I did the writing already, but I'm always cranking more out. I would like to put psycho killers out there on Audible because I think people really – it's scary.

And I think people need to know how dangerous serial killers are. They're everywhere. I think people don't understand how prolific they are.

um psychopaths a day that they actually come into contact with and don't even know it don't even know it i don't know if that number is correct i don't know how you figure that number out but i don't know but but there's many of those are jekyll and hyde that's for sure they can have a normal life and at night they transform themselves into the social path psychopath which they have no consideration for life they don't care they don't care about life existence and what's sad is a lot of them prey on young children and that's heartbreaking

That really is, because they never had a life. And they die horrible ways. And that's why people have to be stranger danger, be aware of your environment, and don't trust anybody you don't really know. I mean, Bundy was really good at this. Remember, I don't know, you saw the documentary on Bundy. Yeah, he was... Super charming. No, everybody said he was charming. Everybody said he was charming.

How about he has the crutches, right? He always has the books. And he has the young lady say, can you please help me to the car? And the second they help him in the car, boom, gets thumped in the head. And he knew how to kill people quietly. And all these guys learned that quickly. It's not about shooting someone, making noise or stabbing where this could be yelling and screaming.

You thump them in the head and then they break their neck or they do whatever. And that's it. Quiet, like a chicken, right? Quietly, done. And then he does bad things later. And those are more things that they would do. If you're interested in that, look into it. You see my book. But I can really describe more of the stuff that he does afterwards, which is unbelievable.

Where were you born? Yeah, I was born in Los Angeles in California. but raised in South Florida in Miami. And, you know, I've always had some interest in law enforcement, obviously. You know, you grew up in the same times. I was born in the 70s, and I grew up when I was younger in the 80s with Miami Vice, right? And I'm in South Florida, right?

How cool, you're seeing Don Johnson, you know, you're watching the cool cars, the Ferraris, right? You're thinking, man, that is pretty cool. So that always was, you know, always in the back of your head, and you're looking at that, but never thought, I would ever do that kind of work, really.

I thought it was cool and I liked the guns, I liked the training, I liked putting out these bad guys and the cocaine cowboys were huge back in the 80s. Well, Years later, I go to college. I went actually up not far from where you're at, up to St. Louis University. It's a Catholic university. And I got my degree in political science and history. Then I come back to FIU in Miami.

He walks in the door.

and it's lights out guy kills him and um horror stories and I guess he was putting his his body in like body bags so uh unbelievable you just don't it's dangerous anywhere I tell people and I think with psycho killers I talk about the element the culture what happens people don't realize how many of these serial killers are among us they're everywhere you don't have to be a guy like Bundy

So now we're looking about the mid-90s. And I'm working my degree in international relations. And I was able to go to law school. I got accepted to a law school in Lansing, Michigan, Thomas Cooley. And, you know, the farthest thing in my head, but, and I'm seeing the prices, how expensive law school is.

And this is mid nineties, a lot more now, obviously, but even in the mid nineties, and I didn't have a, I had a scholarship in college. I played tennis, a number one for my school, but it was going to cost me about like about 30,000 a year. 30,000 a year, three years at least, you have housing, you gotta get your loans for all that stuff. And I'm thinking, and I know how competitive is law school.

And some people are saying, man, that's a lot of money. But I already have my degree, very athletic. I was good shooting. My dad taught me how to shoot. Early in life, we'll go to the range. My dad was a gun. So I'm copping with a firearm, right? I'm athletic. And I'm thinking, wow. And I noticed internet just started, right? This is 1995.

Windows came out and I didn't use it in college, but I said, man, this is the future. Right. So I got myself a computer and I taught myself because this is people that said, what are you doing? What's what's emailing? What do you do? I got myself a Yahoo account. People prodigy. Right. People had no idea what the stuff what dial up. What are you doing? And it's like, well, this is the future.

um psychopaths a day that they actually come into contact with and don't even know it you know what john wayne gacy's last words were i mean bundy at least when he was fried there and all sparky his last words were say tell my family i love them and you know whatever all that at least that's something right right john wayne gacy kiss my ass that's his last words kiss my ass

And people like, no, I don't think this is going to last. I think now I think this is going to be that I was one of those guys. I was like, this is going to catch on. People are not going to spend their time online. What? What are you talking about? And I was like, oh, no, I think it will. Especially when I saw everybody pumping, especially get government jobs.

That's one of the reasons I went on there, because USA Jobs was available to look at what's opening. And I was interested in going with customs. So I applied for customs, right? They were looking for Spanish speakers, which I grew up Miami. My parents are Spanish Cuban. They came, grandparents from Spain went to Cuba.

Then after the Castro revolution, they came to the United States and they lost everything. And they have my family that started over again. And I'm fortunate enough to be in this great country and quite well within one generation. The wealth they lost in Cuba, I've done quite well in this country. And it's a very fortunate, great nation that we live in. And I talk about them in my books also.

So I work on that and I put in there. And so they need people because in Miami, in Miami International Airport, most of the flights, 85% of them come from Latin America, right? So they want the customs officials to be able to engage and speak Spanish because it's easier to catch people who are mules or smuggling drugs. You got to know what you're dealing with.

And I grew up in Miami, so I grew up with all the different cultures from South America, from Latin America, from Mexico, a lot of my friends. So I knew all that and I spoke Spanish. So I put in for the jobs, right? And I got it pretty quickly with customs. That was something where I was going to law school and I said, this is better because now I'm making quite a good money.

I'm going to have a good pension, right? I'm in law enforcement and I really enjoy, it is satisfying what kind of work I'll start doing. So you start there at the airport, you get your teeth into like password processing. And then I make one of their lead teams with customs called the contraband enforcement team.

And at the time, the 90s, in Miami, South Florida's making some of the biggest seizures in the country, right? You know, you still have the Cali Cartel, you still have the Medellin Cartel, and they're still pumping a lot of drugs. And I don't like what the Mexicans are gonna do when they take over.

They're doing it the school way with cargo, they're doing it with ships, they're doing it with the Florida and the Caribbean. And that's how they're getting it through to, especially in Florida. So it wasn't uncommon. after you and the job.

No, no, back then, back then. The Medellin, Cali, all those guys have collapsed, and now the Mexicans. And I've written books about how strong they've gone. And they're almost more powerful than the Columbus ever were. You talk about El Chapo, El Menchils, and I'll go into that also, how strong they've become. and how they changed the game completely and how we have to change.

or Dahmer, who have these high, or John Wayne Gacy, who has these crazy numbers, right? 30, 40, 50, whatever. Some people are serial killers, and they kill every so often. They may have four or five, but the key is they kill a few, they lay low, go down, and they keep on doing it again. Some of the guys, and they live in society like normal.

And I've written about that too in my experiences. So I get in there and so I'm now in the middle of the drug war. I'm the front line with customs. So what do you do? I mean, what does that detail consist of? Yeah, so Miami has a ton of cargo that comes in through Latin America, right? And also passengers, a lot of it coming in.

And my job in the border, you know, border authority is everything that comes international is subject to search, right? I don't need probable cause like I would later when I became an agent, which is a complete different game.

So it was a lot easier to make seizures and make arrests because when you come in, you have your questions, people can be searched and you figure out what's going on right there.

And with cargo side, everything comes in, and especially from Latin America, transnational country, it wasn't uncommon for me to see, we got these 850 pounds of cocaine that was coming in a group of fish that was coming from Guayaquil, Colombian drugs, going to Colombia, going to Ecuador, and then being shipped because within five, six hours, it's in Miami.

And the corruption was really bad in South Florida, right? The airport, you had the ramp workers were dirty. You had the longshoremen were dirty. You had a ton of corruption. The money's overwhelming. And that stuff was never going to go where it's supposed to go. It gets ripped off, right? It has the bill lading, right? Where it's supposed to go. But little stuff never go.

When you got that kind of fish, when you look inside this major grouper, you get a kilo of Coke next to a block of ice, right? That stuff was going to get taken out. And that was not uncommon to see 600, 800 pounds coming in and get ripped up. And that's what we got. So what does that tell you? The stuff that got in? Yeah, what stock getting caught. A lot, a lot.

And they knew that was the quickest way to get it in because the demand back in the 80s and 90s, and still today, unfortunately, is enormous for cocaine. I always said the way to stop the cartels, if people stop using the stuff, right? If people got the treatment, the cartels are out of the drug game, right? It's over. That's it. Yeah. We win the war on drugs.

The way we win the war on drugs, I want your audience to know, is from within. from within. But a lot of these bad countries are weaponizing cocaine, especially the Nicolas Maduros from Venezuela, right?

You've got countries who are really enemies, they're communist enemies, and they're selling cocaine because they know that does damage to our country, the workforce, the people, their future, and everything else.

Oh. He died from Venezuela. Cuba saw, but Castro did not want to be called a trafficker, right? Because he saw what happened to Noriega, right? Back in the late 80s, Manuel Noriega, when he got involved, the U.S. ended up invading and bringing him over. The former president of Honduras, Hernandez, He was a big time drug trafficker. He just got extradited to the United States.

Maduro has been indicted.

They have a normal life, and they're Jekyll and Hyde, and then at night, they do House of Horrors.

Yeah, he didn't want to get caught up with that, but he would tolerate some things, but not on the island side because he didn't want to give the United States a chance to bring him in because it happens to world leaders all over. They get involved in the drug game. It's a conspiracy against us in the United States, and we've had the case law, and we extradite these guys and bring them over.

And El Chapo is a perfect example of what happened to him when he finally got extradited, and now he is in the Supermax in Florence, Colorado. And he was a very, very powerful guy and not so much. So I'm in kind of that fascinating view, frontline, right? I'm meeting a lot of people because we make a lot of seizures. So I'm networking with the FBI. I'm networking with ATF, especially DEA, Customs.

At a time where Department of Treasury and after 9-11, everything changes, right? Yeah, everybody changes. ATF would end up going to Justice. Customs would go to Department of Homeland Security. It would leave Treasury. So a lot of things change. We're making a lot of good seizures. Ones that were kind of strange were like people who would swallow, like the pellets. Yeah.

The swallowers, we would get a ton of that. I mean, it is really, I mean, we got a lot, but a lot also got through. And it's really sad because some of these people were peasants, right? They would get used or they say, if you don't do it, and these are the cartels, they go in these villages, right?

And they pretty much forced these guys to do it or they're going to hurt your family, kill the family. Some got paid. I mean, I found it, the guys who went, let's say, if you were from Miami or you were from Puerto Rico and you end up flying to Cali or something like that, you stay there for three, four days. Like, why are you there? What was the purpose of your trip, right?

And the purpose of your trip was to swallow these pellets. And I got really good at it. I mean, you could easily have two or three pounds of cocaine in you or heroin. Heroin really started picking up in the 90s with the Colombians, right? And that's a lot of money, a lot of dope in there. But the problem with that... It's something, if it leaks, you're going to get on your plane.

It's so pure, you're not going to survive. So we get calls a lot of people are dead on arrival. They're on the planes. We got to clear them up. It's not easy to pass either. So if you can't pass this stuff fast enough, even when we catch them, we would have to take them to the hospital, MIA, and give them these laxatives. And it still takes a while to pass it.

These cartel members, if you make it and you're in one of these hotels, which happens all the time, you can't pass the stuff fast enough. They'll put a bullet in your head, they'll gut you, and they'll take the stuff out. So a lot of times they were lucky that we caught them because it was not good stuff for them. And even then, sometimes they still need surgery. The stuff wouldn't come out.

I mean, it's risky, it's sad, it's horrible to see these people. And this is something I'm seeing firsthand. You know, a guy home with me, I say, man, this is the war on drugs. This is how it looks like. This is what's going on. It becomes normal and natural. You feel bad because people are being used, right?

A lot of work. That's true. It's not glamorous, but you're satisfied. At least you're stopping that from going to somebody else that's going to maybe hurt their life. That part there. So you see a lot of that. Miami, it's just a ton of that. They'll put it in the stems of flowers. I mean, talk about the detail of work, right? They'll hollow them out and fill them all up. That's impossible.

I mean, it's really hard unless we had intelligence or a great dog to really hit that because the x-rays are hard to reach. So they would do crazy ways you could imagine to smuggle stuff in. They would hollow out tiles, you know, for roofing and put a kilo in each one.

Right. These people, hitchers. Yeah. Right. People, people, loners, homeless people, people in society don't care about. Right. Missiles kind of people. And they prey on those people and do horrible, horrible things. I know we're talking about my book, but I'll tell you one story here. And hopefully people read this book. It's gotten really popular. And it's called Psycho Killers, right?

That's a level of corruption because that's not really going to where it's supposed to go. That's going to get ripped off. And it's going to other places. So that's how corrupt it was in the 80s and 90s and beyond. And things have changed now. And I'll talk a little bit about that, what happens. The collapse, you know, Escobar was killed. The collapse of the Medellin-Cali cartels.

And then the Mexican cartels stepping up and working with the FARC, which has now changed. Even they changed now. And now they have a different name. And they're working with them. They're bringing the coke to them. And Mexico takes over all distribution. They handle it from there on. They take it all. They don't have to worry about that. You just make it, we take care of it. We go into Colombia.

So the Mexicans pretty much are running Colombia and Central America. They're not just in Mexico, they're all over the region. And then of course, on top of that, you have the collapse with the communism and socialism that's taken over the region, which really paralyzes the whole country. That's why we really have to keep an eye on what's going on in there.

So I made a lot of contacts and I said, you know what? This is cool. I don't mind doing this kind of work, but I wouldn't mind. So they dealt with a lot of agents, investigators to take it to a next level, which is what you do as an agent. I mean, you're not stuck. I'm not stuck to the airport now. As an agent, I get to go all over the country, all over the world, right? Make my cases.

But I dealt with probable cause and stuff like that. So I networked a lot with FBI, ATF, DEA, and Customs. You know, it makes sense since I was already with Customs, I would just go over as an agent, right? Since I've worked a lot with these guys, but they didn't want to give up a lot of their inspectors because they know it's hard to fill those positions. So they didn't want to hire.

So I had to go with other agencies and put in for them because it's not fair to me. I wanted to be an agent. I wanted to be an investigator. I wanted to do other things. So eventually ATF was the fastest one that picked me up. You know, within that time within Department of Treasury, I get picked up with them. And then a year later at 2000, I get picked up as an ATF agent at Tampa, Florida. Nice.

Yeah, because they're customs inspectors, right? That's the term. I think it's changed now, but the term used to be customs inspectors, but you had arrest authority and you did everything else. And then there's the agents, the criminal investigators that go and you give them, hey, I just had this huge seizure right now with this fish, right? 850 pounds. All right.

We can sometimes set up surveillance within the airport, right? Close to the airport, the warehouse. But if it's going, let's say, to New York City, right? Well, they're taking it from there. Yeah. They're, we're not going to New York City. I got to stay and do my job and do the next shift and get some more dope that's coming in because you know what? It doesn't stop.

And I talk about, you know, I mentioned the Dahmers and the Bundys and the Gacy's. And I also have a little history on H.H. Holmes. I guess America's first original big serial killer that some people think was Jack the Ripper also. And we can talk about that on a different show, why similarities, because he was also in London, 1888, during that time period. He also came back.

They knew if they, they factored those losses in because that's part of doing business. Right. With the Colombian cartels. They just keep on bringing it in. Okay, hey, they got this one. Guess what? We just got another 4,000 in. And that doesn't, it's gross. So I wish I picked up with ATM. But sometimes you don't know, right? You take a chance. Sometimes they may say the Southwest border.

Sometimes you might have to go to New York City or a big city where it's really expensive. I got fortunate enough, I stayed in Florida. I went to school, like I said, at St. Louis University up just north of Tampa where you are, Pasco County. And I started working from there. And I was fortunate enough, the group I started, a lot of guys worked undercover.

Because you can't just go into undercover work. cold like that, right? If you do that, you're going to get hurt. I mean, you can watch all the Miami Vice you want and watch all the TV shows and Donnie Brasco. And that was also very popular back in the 90s. Remember Donnie Brasco with Al Pacino and Johnny Depp? Yeah. You watch all this stuff, but there's one thing on television, right?

Like you said, one thing, the real world. And the real world is you've got to know how this can be. Like I said, I grew up in Catholic schools, right? And now I have to learn this world. I learned a little bit for the drug world, which is fascinating.

But now I got to work face to face undercover where I pretend to be like these guys and how to fool some of these guys who are hardened professional criminals. That's all they do and make them think I'm one of them. I'm nothing like it. I was going to say, which is-

It takes time. You got to practice it. And it takes years. So I had good mentors, right? I watch a lot. And you develop your own technique, right? You watch these guys. I spoke Spanish, so that was an advantage. I make sure my English was broken. I didn't sound like that. I just came back cool, right? Right. So you have to come up. I let my hair really long. I think I sent you some pictures.

I don't know if you saw them yet. I haven't seen them yet. Yeah, I've seen them. I'll check them out. All right. I sent some pictures. My hair was long. I had a big beard. I didn't want to get all the tats some guys have because when I got out of it, I knew I'll be done with it. Right. I want to go back to who I was. I don't want to be like, oh, great. I got this now.

People say, what the heck's wrong with this? So that was never me. I never really cared for it. That wasn't my thing. So I wanted to fake enough. The beard's okay. The hair was long enough. You do the accents. You get to know the culture, get to know these guys. It was easier to deal with people that they were not Spanish speakers. You tell your story, who you're working with.

You say, hey, these families are looking, the cartels are looking for guns, right? Because they are. And my job here is to be ATF, is to buy a lot of guns. And these guys, I don't want to fill any paperwork, right? Because I don't want to show up in no shop and put my information in there, right? So these guys will sell me guns off the street, untraceables.

And you pay a premium for that because that's what you want. And a lot of these guys have horrific criminal histories. So I dealt a lot with repeat violent offenders. I dealt a lot with gang members, armed drug traffickers, international firearms traffickers, domestic firearms traffickers. I dealt with armed home invaders, cases for murder for hires. So that was ATF's niche. What does ATF do?

He had family that was also British. So there's a lot of connections between, and he was a doctor. Because the guy who did with Dr. Ripper was someone who was a physician because they were very quick in dismantling the organs and taking things out. Because that's what Ripper did within two minutes. He would take out these female's organs and everything else and dismember them really quickly.

Alcohol, tobacco, firearms. Well, it's a small A for alcohol, a small T for tobacco, a huge F and immediate E for explosives. So we do a lot of gun cases. Needless to say, a lot of guns. And that's what ATF is. And so I found that fascinating. And I knew something about guns, but man, I became an expert on pretty much the Gun Control Act.

NFA, National Firearms Act, and all the different weapons from machine guns, silencers, pipe bombs. You know, ATF is sometimes called, with all the training, ATF stands for all the fun because we would do a lot of shooting. I mean, I trained in handguns from pistols, revolvers, my M4, which is a short barrel rifle, right? I had shotguns. Sometimes short barrel shotguns also we were shooting.

So we trained a lot of different weapons. And then we also were familiarized in case we come across different machine guns, we know what we're doing, right? Got to make sure and check all that stuff out. So that's what we did, ATF. And sometimes early enough, you have to cut your teeth. You know, one of the guys I worked with, he was Puerto Rican.

And he was involved back in the eighties in a shootout where he had a 6.9 millimeter. The bad guy has 6.9 millimeter. He fired the round and his round went into his gun and plugged the barrel. So he's like this and the round goes like this. It's like one in a million. and Hialeah back in the 80s. So it can get ugly and wild. So we had a good time.

We had some good stories and I learned a lot from him and him being Puerto Rican and I saw how he tackled things and all that. So I developed my own style. We worked a lot together and then I grew up and then, you know what also helps? Having good informants. You have a good informants, which way I developed a lot of these guys. They can pretty much, you walk on water, it's a goal.

You say, hey, he vouches for you. Some more questions. Let's do business. He said, you're the guy. Okay, man, this is what you want. No questions asked. And boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. This is what these guys do. But if you have a bad informant who's playing both sides, it'll destroy your investigation. Yeah, you have to have them accountable.

So you really, and once you, that's why I like to, once I have the introduction, I cut them out. Yeah. Done. And I don't want to deal with the drama with an informant. They can ruin your case. I put too much hard work because ATF is a very smaller outfit than the FBI or DEA, right? We have less than 3000 agents, I think 2800, right? FBI has four times that. enormous size.

So we just can't delegate, hey, I need you to do surveillance. I need you to do undercover. I do everything. I'm the undercover. I'm the case agent, right? I deal with property. I deal with my own intelligence workup. I wear all the different hats because you have to, because we're a smaller outfit. If you want to do the bigger cases.

And this guy was also very good at that. So those things we can talk about later with Holmes and the comparisons. There's even a family member out there who believes that his great-great-grandfather was Dr. Ripper. And he makes a great argument why he thinks so and stuff like that, which is fascinating. But I'll talk about a quick story here. about what makes a serial killer here.

Yeah. That's the best way to do it. You have to because, and unfortunately some of these guys have drug addictions, right? Yeah. And they keep on doing stuff. They get messed up and they're not right where they're high, right? And they do stupid things. So those are the factors you got to get into. That's why I was fortunate. Some people don't want to do undercover work. Not for everybody.

I liked it. I really decided I kind of like playing the role. And I dealt with all kinds of people. I just told you about the variety, but I also dealt with the variety of people from different Hispanic groups, different blacks, different other European groups, right? A variety, a variety of people.

and uh because it worked and what i was doing it makes sense it's based on what's really going on the cartels have people they need guns right and by the way not only buying the guns but i also like selling some drugs on the side what else do you have for personal or for other use so i buy doping guns sometimes you come across some other stuff hey i have also some body armor looking for the body yeah i'll take some ballistic armor it's amazing what people start telling you and what they do what else it leads to hey i'm also doing this too

Hey, this guy is also into explosives or into this. Oh, hey, this guy's selling a lot of cigarettes without tax stamps. You know, we do those cases too, a lot less, but yeah, we do all that stuff. So it really opens up when people talk and they feel confident with you, you get a lot of your friends. And I had everything, like I said, for trial purposes, I wanted to make it like a movie, right?

I wanted the jury to feel comfortable. First of all, I had to make the prosecutor feel comfortable. And once he feels comfortable, then the jury. Do you hear that? Yes.

You had Richard Ramirez, right? The Night Stalker, right? He's my last chapter in my book there, chapter 12. There's the original Night Stalker, which is Joseph D'Angelo, who was a former police officer who becomes a serial rapist and serial killer at the time. And he is the original Night Stalker, but they think they're one and the same.

It's not uncomfortable. A lot of people get into making these pipe bombs, right? And they tighten them up in there, but it's also very dangerous. If you don't know how you do it right, they count some with the flit too early and explode. So they have damage.

No, it isn't like playing with, like, firecrackers and stuff like that. You might lose your finger or something, you're not careful with it, but a pipe bomb, that's no joke. And then these guys get really nasty with it. Some of them put, like, shrapnel inside to really do some serious, serious damage. So, um... Yeah, so that's the kind of case I wanted to do.

I wanted to make sure for the jury and for the prosecutor that we had good video, right? I wanted to make sure it is clear. So watching a movie, I wanted the jury to see, okay, this is the evidence, watch the movie. And that's a big difference you see between the federal side. And state and local, right? Especially with the local sometimes, it gets a little bit different.

Federal, we have a little more time to take our time with the case, make it the strongest case we can against as many people as possible. That's why we have a little more time. And it's different. That's why I like the federal system. We have a chance to really make the cases bigger and stronger. And we have good prosecutors. A lot of them are career prosecutors.

and they really know how to make good cases. So that's what I did. I wanted to make sure undercover-wise I had, and sometimes with informants, there's always issues with the equipment sometimes. They could be messed up and everything else. They're not professionals, right? They didn't go to school for this. They don't understand case law. They don't understand entrapment, right?

You want to make sure people understand, you know, this is what they do. This is what they're involved in. You don't want to bring someone who is not involved in this kind of work. They're actively doing this. They're predisposed. This is what they do. And they have the history of doing this. Right. So these are all the factors you got to come. As a professional, you bring that to the table.

And informants are, I'd say, a necessary evil, right? Because they are the eyes and ears in the street. I can't live in the street, right? The reality is I pretend to. Right. And then I go back to the office. I get a lot of paperwork. I got to go to the prosecutor. I got to deal with evidence. I got to talk and give a briefing. So it's a whole different world. And you just show up.

But the good thing about them, even though I would cut them out, remember their eyes and ears. They can still tell you, hey, I heard so-and-so had some doubts about you. Mm-hmm. I need to tighten this up a little bit. When you come back with me and let's have another conversation with them, make sure you vouch for me and make sure, hey, this is the guy, man. There's nothing to worry about.

And then later with DNA and evidence, they realized these were two different killers killing in California at the same time.

So those are the things. You keep them at distance, but you still have to make sure that they're listening to what's going on because that's important because the last thing you want to do is get caught off guard. And I was fortunate enough, I mean, there's always some very close moments, right,

But you're going to have, and I'll give you an example, and I put it in my book, ATF Undercover, which I talk about. And this happens, and I did a lot of work in Pasco County. And I had an undercover apartment in Wesley Chapel. That's where I live. I know, I know. I used to live there in Wesley Chapel, then moved down south when I first started working out there. A lot cheaper than Tampa in 2000.

I know, 54 is completely different than it was 20 some years ago. Well, I live off 56.

right so you got massive lots of serial killers out there yeah so i didn't know there was a second guy called the night stalker i thought that was just the one yeah no he's the original nice soccer d'angelo joseph d'angelo former cop who becomes serial rapist and then they evolve first he starts in the burglaries he goes south and then he goes into and he was at burglary detective

You're not too far from Land O'Lakes either then. No, no. Very close.

Very close.

Yeah. I got to know Pasco really well from making the cases. So I got to know Pasco. I don't know how much you know Pasco County, but I got to know all the way to New Port Ritchie, Port Ritchie, the Hudson area, even across New York, Tarpon Springs, and going to Zephyr Hills. So this takes place, not to this story here, this happens in Zephyr Hills.

Zephyr Hills, people who don't know Zephyr Hills or Dade City, at the time I was working, I would say it was back in 2000s, to 2012. And this story takes place on 2009, 2010. So this is the city of Pasco I'm talking about. And the Mexicans were picking it up, right? They're moving a lot of meth. There's no more meth labs. There's still some, but now they're bringing a lot of the meth from Mexico.

They're just piping it in. And that whole era became a big pipeline. Right. Which I was saying, I think a lot of still drugs and a lot of Mexicans still out there, which this is where everything's changed a lot. And this is a trailer. I meet with this guy. He's a career criminal, drug trafficker. I hand him forward, make an introduction. First time me and him are sitting in the car together.

I meet him off 301. And we're going to drive to these trailers, shady trailers, predominantly Hispanic, right? And he's talking to me. He sent me his history. He said, man, yeah, I'll get you these guns and everything. But I used to move a lot of coke, a lot of product. I was moving two or three easy kilos a week. I was like, okay. So I said, you tell me. I mean, he just got out.

He wants to get back into the game. This is what he does. I said, okay. So he took me there. He's a non-Spanish speaker. And he takes me to the trailers and he said, hey, this is my guy here. He has the guns. Some guys give a heads up a little nervous about this. They say sometimes guys who buy guns a lot are feds. I said, no, I'm no fed. Of course, you got to deny that. You got me.

You got me there. It's over. Let me take you back home. No, that's going to happen. So you deny that. And he goes in there and I talked to his guy who's there, Hispanic, bald head, right? And we're talking a little bit in Spanish. He's testing me out, which is fine. And he goes, he goes to the trailer. So him and I are sitting outside in my truck and I see more people.

We get out of the car and he's on one side. I'm on the other side and I can see there are a lot more people going to the other side of the trailer. A lot more people going inside. He can't see that. I can see that. Right. So I can see that. So you're going to have instincts that say, listen, I just met you guys.

The deal we're supposed to be doing is for an AK-47 with a 75-round drum, two Glock pistols, almost an ounce of meth for a little over $3,000, right? And I don't feel comfortable. He goes, hey, listen, the stuff's inside, but these guys don't want to bring it out. So I drove out here. Normally what you do is you wrap it up, you bring in the car real quick, and we're done.

I get the hell out of here, right? And he said, but he wants to come in. You go inside. And I was like, and I know there's more people coming in. He doesn't know that I know that already. So I'm just like, no, dude, I don't want to meet anybody. I said, no, it's fine. I said, no. And I said, okay, why don't you give me the money? And I'll get it for you. I said, no, I'm not doing it.

What's going to happen is you're going to walk away with $3,000 and I'm going to have a bigger headache to deal with to chase you and everybody else who just stole my money, which that was going to be a rip. So I said, I'll give you five minutes. I'm going to sit in the car. Either you bring it or I'm out of here.

So that's why he became good at that. Then he changes, goes to the dark side, starts doing it. Then he gets into raping the women, tying them up. I think he raped over 60-some women. They're saying the numbers are heinous in California. And then he starts killing them. So, I mean, he would do some real sadistic things when he would tie them up. I'll give one example real quick.

And that's the beauty of being the case agent and the undercover is that I don't feel the pressure. Let's say I was just the undercover and I'm working for somebody else, working their case, right? Sometimes you feel the pressure. You want to make it happen. For me, I'm both. And if it happens, great. If not, I got a lot of work. I got other people I'm dealing with. I got you today.

I got someone else tomorrow, right? So I don't ever felt that kind of pressure. I had to make it happen because I want to go home at the end. That's the most important thing. No deals. Five minutes later, a Honda Odyssey pulls up. Guy pops up with an AK-47. Same for a round drum. So him and I talk. He sells me the gun. I take a look at it. I give him the money for that. And then he has a backpack.

Another friend had bought him. And he sells me the Glocks with the crystal map. I said, hey, dude, next time, just keep it between us. And I don't want to deal with this circus next time. And he understood. And he understood that.

I think they want to rip me off. Oh, okay. I think they want to rip me off. I think they want to take my $3,000, $3,400 and hit me and say, hey, this could be an easy hit right here and we don't have to sell anything. Because you don't know. Some of these gang members, these are gang members, by the way. These aren't average. These are a shitty trailer in Zephyr Hills.

There's a lot of gangs in that area. I want you to understand, a lot of Hispanic gangs, a lot of gang members, saying a lot of meth, a lot of heroin, armed to the teeth.

It seems like it's... Read my book, and I'll give example after example of that area. Go in there and stuff like that. It is hot. And that's when I was there. I think it's gotten worse, what I see, because the cartels have just gotten stronger. When I was there, they were coming up. You know, Chapo was good. Sinaloa was strong. But now you have the rise of CJNG, Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Yeah. Major rival for Sinaloa, right? Yeah. El Mencho, he's now the big player, Cervantes, right? And they're going to war. And all these guys, El Chapo, El Mencho, give your audience a little background. All these guys came out of absolute poverty. I mean, they were selling avocados and oranges in the street and now have risen to be big drug lords where their assets are over $50 billion.

That's according to the Mexican government and the US government. So you're telling me they're not making drug lords in Mexico when these guys, and most of these guys are illiterate. They dropped out of school when they were in the fourth or fifth grade, right? But what are they good at? They're good at killing.

He goes, and he liked to target elderly couple, you know, people that won't be as resistant. Right. And let's say he'll type the guy. He'll say, listen, I'm going to put these dishes on your back. If I'm hearing any movement. from the dishes, right? Because I know you're trying to get out of that. They fall off your back.

That's what El Chapo was nicknamed also El Rapido, the quick one. He was the master of the tunnels. Right. I remember that great tunnel he had the second time he was captured underneath that prison. Unbelievable.

But at that time, I think at that time, they were still, 2015, yeah, they began to go a little bit sideways. Not as bad as now, but it would get a lot worse. But what a corruption. That's one of the things I talk about is that we don't have an equal partner in the war on drugs. The corruption in Mexico is so unbelievable.

And that's the reason I bring that up because during the trial for El Chapo in New York, it was brought, these are government witnesses, testified that El Chapo offered, this is before Lopez Obrador, the president before that with Peña Nieto. He offered him a bribe. Nieto wanted, allegedly, according to court documents, he wanted a $250 million payout so we won't look for El Chapo.

They said, you don't worry about it. You can be a fugitive for another 15 years, right? He said, no, I'll pay you $100 million. And allegedly, witnesses testified he took it. He took it. So if the top of Mexican government is on the take, then we have no chance. This is what the battles we're fighting. You know, you see case after case after general, attorney general.

I mean, just keep on getting arrested for being involved in money laundering and involved in all this stuff here. And this guy El Mencho out of CJNG, he was former law enforcement. He was at Jalisco, right? He was involved. A lot of these guys know the game. They know it.

And he's the same way we just talked about at Mayo when I was reading Guadalajara because now it's the battle for Guadalajara, which is where a lot of stuff is going on. But he looks like he's won because they're trying to split. You know how everything is. Everybody wants to be king, right? Yeah. One day you're the king. They want to take you out, right?

Now, Mencho had guys he brought in that was former Millennium Cartel guys at Split, right? And they want to take over. And this guy's name is skipping right now. But if you look at the videos... He has him tortured, right? Wrapped up, killed him, and then left to the park bench. This is what happens when people betray El Mencho, right? And stuff like that.

That means you're trying to get out when I just tied you up here because he's raping his wife, right? I'm going to kill your children in the house too. So I'm going to do what I'm going to do here. I see any movement. This is all documented reports where he said he confessed to all this. So he talks about what he did. This is, I mean, when I read this stuff, I'm in shock. What's going on here?

So right now, it seems like he still has the lockdown in Guadalajara, which is very important for him. And he's the same guy that you're talking about, El Mayo. He likes to live modestly. Not like Escobar, right? That lived in that big palace, right? Everybody knew where he lived and where he was at, but he bribed everybody. These guys, that's a little key. El Chapo's bounty was $5 million, right?

At his peak when he escaped a second time. After Sean Penn and Cade Del Castillo interviewed him. If you haven't seen that interview on video, man, you guys need to check that out. Rolling Stone Magazine. That's great. Unbelievable stuff. I can't believe Sean Penn did that because you don't know.

I would not have done that. That could have got really ugly. And they almost caught him after the interview because they were tracking the Mexican actress Castillo's phone. U.S. authorities were tracking and just missed him barely, just barely. It will take a few more years to finally catch him again, and they will not escape the third time.

And that's so sad because you know what? Now we have the costs, right? Now the US tax dollar has to pay for keeping this guy for life, feeding him the expenses, legal, everything we pay because the Mexican government is so corrupt, they couldn't do it themselves. And it's case after case like this.

El Cholo was his name. El Cholo was a guy who, his rival, they got wrapped up and executed. Look up his name, El Cholo. Look at the video. You see a guy from CJNG behind him in masks, and next thing you know, he ends up in a park van. You see the pictures, wrapped up, he was tortured, and said, this is what happened to El Cholo, the traitor. You don't play.

So that's how sadistic these people are. Imagine that shit. They come in, he comes in with a flashlight and he says, this is what I'm going to do to you. So that's D'Angelo. He is the original Night Stalker. This guy is also what we call the Night Stalker. They thought when they detected they were one and the same, but they weren't. They're different guys.

And this guy, D'Angelo, this guy Ramirez, he is pretty much psychologists say he wasn't born a psychopath. He was made into a psychopath.

Disney World. No, no, no. No, he's going to the slammer now.

At that level, you got to cooperate. You got to flip. You got to turn. One thing I've noticed, all these guys do, because if you don't, you get the hammer. You get slammed. You get the most time. Yeah, there's that. Yeah. Now, talking about Venezuela, man. Venezuela, with Nicolas Maduro now, is a narco state. It has become a... He's not a communist anymore. Remember Hugo Chavez?

This guy is no communist. This guy, it's all about making money. But the people suffer. He keeps them suffering. This guy's a dictator. He's a narco dictator. He's been indicted by our government. And to bring over, but you know what upsets me is a little politics here, but we'll talk a little bit of everything. My book's all about this, but Joe Biden threw him a lifeline.

Administration, to see if Chevron go back there and get oil pumped up because we don't want to deal with the Russians, right? We're tired of the Saudis, the stuff he's done, and Mohammed bin Salman. So it's like, we want to work with the Venezuelans with all the stuff this guy's done. He's had atrocities to his people. If you're not about him, You're done.

And that's why Miami has been transformed with the Venezuelans coming over. Like the Cubans did from the 60s on, the Venezuelans have brought a lot of money. Doral, only from the middle of South Florida, has changed immensely with the Venezuelans. A lot of the money has come over, transformed it. That's what you're seeing. And people say, well, man, America is, yeah, the United States has issues.

i'm going to tell you real quick how he's made to and this is a family of serial killers now i'm going to explain to how he had he was he was in a family of serial killers which is unbelievable i didn't know any of this until i started researching all this myself and i started looking at it his cousin was a decorated green beret in vietnam older than him but he was killing young vietnamese women over there

I live in Virginia now, and I was fortunate enough to, I like to travel, like history, my background, you know, I taught political science and history. I went to Mount Vernon, and I've gone to Monticello, Mount Vernon's Washington's home, and then Monticello, Jefferson's home. And I visited there, and even it's true, 1797,

You know, Washington had just finished his second term, will not run for a third term, does not want to be seen like King George or a dictator. He says, even then, it applies today. We had issues. You know, it's no perfect democracy. It's not a perfect system, but it's the best that's out there. And I think it applies today, the same thing. It's not perfect, people.

We don't have a perfect system, but it's the best that's out there. Trust me, I've seen, I studied politics internationally, the corruption. Yeah, we're going to have corrupt officials. We're going to have problems, but it's the best that's out there. So that's where we're at with the corruption in Mexico. But the Mexican government, it's probably worse.

I think it's stronger than the Colombians were because their reach is all over Central America. It's all over South America. And they have a lot of people in the United States. And they're reaching not just in customs officials, not just with politicians, but you see it deeper and deeper in our country because the money is so big and so out there. And the corruption is big.

It's corrupt here, but they're corrupting here. So what are our solutions? We need to deal with the problem within. treatment. We need people to get off it. We need people to work on their addictions because it's just going to get worse. And they want to, like Maduro said, like I said, they're weaponizing cocaine to help destroy this country.

They think it's going to fall like a rotten apple from within. People are going to fall and break. And that's what they're trying to do.

And he was really sick. He would dismember them. He would decapitate them and then use his Polaroid camera and take pictures of all that. This would be documented by Ramirez when he confessed later, all the stuff and what they find. So he's a dictator. He's in Vietnam. And he's doing house of horrors on these young women, right? He gets away for three years, never gets convicted.

And another way to attack it was when you're seeing here, you see in Virginia all over the country, and it started with marijuana, it's been, it's getting legalized all over the country, right? Right. You take the, because the Mexican cartels make a lot of money cultivating marijuana, right? So you take that away from them, that's going to hurt their profits a lot too.

So I think marijuana, you're seeing it. I mean, I know Florida is just medical, but I know Virginia got it approved for a recreational. So it is going all over in the Northeast, the Midwest, of course, the West Coast, up and down is approved for recreational. So that's where you're seeing it. It's going that way. I think marijuana, Thomas Jefferson even grew marijuana in Monticello, right?

Founding fathers. I mean, marijuana has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. People have been smoking it, right? It's not my thing. I don't like getting high. I don't like smoking my lungs. But if some people, that's what they want, like cigarette smoking, I'd rather not be around it, right? I like to eat away from that. I don't like to be around any of that stuff here.

But some people like it. I think the edibles now, I think are legal in every state. Gets you high, those edibles. Right. Have you seen that? That's everywhere now.

We're making the money. Right? The states and the federal system. So you have to eliminate marijuana from being a Schedule I banned substance, right? That's the first thing. Because you can do all things at the state level, but if you're still a, you use marijuana, you want to buy a firearm, and an FFL, Federal Firearms Licensee,

He comes back to the U.S. And he starts indoctrinating his younger cousin how to be really sadistic against women. And he starts developing a taste to hurt women pretty much at an early age. He gets addicted to drugs. He gets an LSD. He starts using cocaine.

So prohibited, you can't do that because you're still a drug user, right? If you're a drug user, you can't do that. Marijuana is still on the list there. So a lot of things I know that's passed in the House of Representatives that needs to be approved in the Senate to start making this nationwide because I've seen it firsthand.

I think we're wasting time in the judicial system, plotting judicial system when you have these petty cases. ATF went after the worst of the worst, right? the most violent. That's what we have to focus on. The most violent repeat offenders, armed traffickers, armed home invaders, guys who want to commit murder for hire, you know, international traffickers. That's gun traffickers.

That's what we have to focus on. Not guys who have some weed, they want smoke, and they're doing this on the side. I mean, other places want to have a ZT policy, zero tolerance. That's a waste of time. You're clogging the system. These people should be treated for health issues. You shouldn't criminalize these people, in my opinion.

This isn't coming from guys that have been 26 years in law enforcement who have seen it, right? I just think it is a waste of our tax dollars. It's a waste of time. And we're building more prisons. We need to focus on... And the court system gets overwhelmed with it also. And you don't want any of that. So we have to be smarter. It's marijuana. Yes. Hey, learn the lesson from prohibition.

I wrote a book about it, right? The rise of the outfit here, the Chicago crime bosses. And that's what made Al Capone. That's what made these guys a violence because it was illegal, right? And then once we legalize it, well, there goes that. And all of a sudden, the government's making the money, right? They're getting taxed and everybody can enjoy themselves.

You're not being criminalized for having a beer or drinking whiskey, which was ridiculous, right? The same thing, in my opinion, should apply to marijuana. The other drugs, a little bit tougher to deal with, but we have to come up with solutions. But marijuana is the first gateway, I think, with that.

Because, I mean, everybody in college, you see how many people in college have to go sometimes to really bad areas to get some weed, right? Right. End up getting hurt, robbed. You just go to the store, right? We have to be smart about it.

Obviously, I don't want to be around it, and I don't want to smell it, because I went to Kingston to do some work for training, and everywhere in Kingston, you could smell it. The ganja, as they say. Ganjaman, right? It's everywhere. I really don't, I didn't care for that smell. That's wrong. Kingston in Jamaica, right? Right. Kingston, Jamaica. They grow a lot of wheat.

They call it ganja over there.

And he starts growing into, and he teaches him the tricks of being a beret, how to stalk people, how to kill someone quietly, how to do things, and everything. Everything he did, he teaches. He even snaps one time. and kills his wife. This is the Green Beret. Kills his wife in front of him in a rage. Shoots her and kills her. He witnesses the whole thing.

Yeah, they just had a huge arrest, I think about five, seven years ago. Guy's name was Coke, like from cocaine. Right. Yeah, and the people at Kingston were rioting. Because he always, you know, they provide a lot of work. And, you know, it's like an Escobar type, right? They also give a lot to the community, just like Chapo did, Guzman. They give a lot. They help a lot.

They know that the little people, they want to take care of the little people. So they kind of help the little people a lot because they work for their organization and do stuff like that. That's the same mentality you saw out there in Kingston. Yeah, a lot of people just want to go. If I tell them to go to Jamaica, I was going to maybe work there as an attache.

But once I saw first after two weeks there how the conditions were – No way. I wouldn't bring my family. That's for sure. And I definitely wouldn't go with my family in Mexico because at the end of my career, I promoted and I went to ATF headquarters and I worked there two years and I was helping briefing the director case with one in command for the central region.

who now is number two command for ATF right now. So that's a good contact that I have and working and talking and briefing some of the most sensitive cases that ATF was working. So, and then I was going to maybe transfer to Mexico, but then with the issue with Lopez Obrador, what was going on, who was the president of Mexico, they renounced our diplomatic immunity status as agents.

So you think I'm going to go to Mexico and they don't want to carry firearms. So they don't want you armed. They don't want you to have to do my community and I'm going to be kidnapped with my family. I said, no way. I said, I'm eligible to retire. I did my time up here. I enjoy my career. Thank you so much. And then I got into writing. Right. I did a nice trip in writing.

Well, I've been writing like this by a year and a half now since I've been retired. But I used to write a lot of reports, right? You get good and really detailed in writing a lot, a lot, a lot. So I said, and I always had a thing for it. I like reading. I'm always fascinated.

with uh you know history and political science and current events i'm always reading information so that's what a lot of my books are you know i got fiction non-fiction but i do a lot of politics i do about organized crime and i realized you know i started writing what and i'm not here to promote anybody but you know you know i had a family member she was in the publishing industry for over 20 years right she had she got laid off and i was talking to her and she said you know it's hard at the time you know covet was still around right and it was such a huge backlog

And I said, you know, you might want to look at Kindle with Amazon because you can self-publish. Yeah. And you don't have to wait for anybody, right? And you get like 80-20, especially digital books, like 75-25, right? So, you know, screen on both ends. It's screen for my pocketbook and the screen for the environment. We use the digital books, right? And then I'm now doing audio too.

And shout out to Sean Milo for that. We both know him. He's a great guy. And that should be coming out, my book. If you're not, now he's a big reader. And I've been told a lot of people would rather listen to it. And it's a great, great story. I encourage people to listen to these books and go Audible. It should be out hopefully in about a month or less. It'll be out there.

So I looked into it and it worked for me because I go at my pace. I do whatever subject matter, because you know how it is. A publisher, you get rid of the middleman who only cares about making money. It's not about always making money. It's about putting something out there which I want to talk about.

He gets away with it because he claims he had PTSD from the war. And he's ruled not guilty of reason of insanity. He does some figures in the mental hospital in Texas. And he comes back out and goes back with him. And they asked him, how did that impact you, seeing your cousin kill his wife like that? He said, it didn't bother me at all. I was just fascinated by it.

That's ridiculous. Now, you would have made a lot more money with Kindle for sure. Yeah. I like doing all. I mean, just like I did my cases, I wore many hats. I played out with my books. I do my own book covers. I do my own editing. I write the material. I choose what I'm going to write about.

I just did a book that just came out, I think I forwarded to you on Facebook, a messenger on Jim Jones, right? In Jonestown, on the massacre, because it's now 45 years, and I wanted to do a little bit deeper dive in that, and I found some pretty interesting things in there, and mistakes that were made, and I thought things, and I also gave my opinion, right? Based on my expertise. Right.

There's the worst US cult mass murder in US history. Almost 950 dead, right?

If you haven't heard the Jim Jones tape, because he recorded the whole thing. Yeah. You should hear that. Horrible. Kids are crying and everything else. And the mother, his wife, Marceline, whatever her name was, she's telling him because these are his kids too. He's poisoning. He said, let the kids live. And he goes, just like this, he goes, mother, mother, mother, mother, please.

You know, he's already crazy. Mother, please. Like very sarcastic and nasty. Like says, you know, children hurry because he already killed the congressman, right? He had his goons go out and kill the cop, Leo Ryan and his entourage, NBC and everybody else, Washington Post. They gunned him down because they knew they had 20 defectors. He knew it was over. It was over in Guyana.

And then he said, when they came back, said, hey, some escaped. He knew it was over. He knew they were going to come down, put him in jail, shut it all down. And he was so selfish, he'd rather everybody kill themselves to make that statement. He called it the suicidal revolution, which is insanity. All these people's lives that came in for a better life lost their lives. Drinking the Kool-Aid.

That's what it's called. Drinking the Kool-Aid.

It just fed into the kind of person he was making me.

It's an amazing story. He's another guy that grew up, but I didn't know his background until I researched. This is the reason why I do stuff like this. I love researching nonfiction. I love them. I've done a lot of these. So if you like what we're talking about, check out the book, please. It's on Amazon. It just came out. But with him, he came out of absolute poverty. Yeah. Object poverty.

I mean, out of Indiana, right? In Linn, Indiana, his father was a World War I veteran who suffered serious, serious chemical attacks. You know how the war was in the trenches, right? Yeah. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't work, couldn't do anything. Guy was disabled pretty much. And the pension was horrible back then. And then they had the Great Depression. They lost their home.

The government, the company, the mortgage company seized it. And the family had to buy him a shack. And they lived in a shack with no plumbing and no electricity. An absolute horrible situation. So that's why I think he needs to find something. And I think that's where he found religion and ministry, his cult. Because he would obviously perverse it completely. Right.

And he would end up, you know, the people's temple ends up being a cult pretty much. Because to join, you have to turn all your finances to it. Right? All your money goes to him. He'll take care of you. He'll find your housing. He took advantage, and I hate to say it, he took advantage of a lot of minorities and a lot of disadvantaged people, right?

And a politician because he came up with integration, right? He was one of the first guys integrating the churches with blacks and whites and everything else was unpopular in Indiana, right? He ended up going to San Francisco. Of course, very liberal out there, right? Became very popular. He would help get votes for the mayor.

In 76, Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter was there, and he helped California go blue, right? So he can beat Ford. So that's why they were embarrassed, humiliated, right? Angry. They didn't want a full investigation on Jonestown. But this guy, Ryan, he was a Democrat. but he knew there was something wrong. But this is where I criticize him in the book a little bit.

Well, you know this guy is so unstable, right? They had already information, affidavits to defectors, that they were already doing mock drills like this, drinking the Kool-Aid. They already trained them that if this happens, this is what we're going to do. They have people, what they call white knight drills, where they have gunfire over their heads.

So they would just stay down and they would drink the Kool-Aid. He had all the cyanide prepared for this.

Was it a senator or a congressman? Congressman. Not just a congressman, but the entourage that's with him. Yeah, the staff, yeah. The staff, and there's one lady who was his staff member. She survived by playing dead for 24 hours. on the strip there until the army came in to rescue her. She played dead. She had five bullet wounds inside her. She just wrote a book and a great interview.

I haven't seen her talk about it. She gets very emotional. Now she took over his old position like 10 years ago. So now she's a congressperson from that district. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Unbelievable story. But you know what? A lot of people didn't commit suicide. But what the investigation shows, they wanted to leave. The guards, what he called the red, but he was a communist.

Those who don't know, he's a hardcore, very much Marxist-Leninist communist. He hated this country because obviously the racial issues, he called it pretty much a racist, fascist nation, right? And he wanted to set up this Marxist utopia. out there in Jonestown. He was a big fan of Fidel Castro. He was a big fan of the Soviet Union.

He even had Soviet officials come in and say, this is the perfect Marxist utopia that I have set up here. And they congratulated him. They went out there and said, man, you've done here. But at the same time, these people were oppressed. He hadn't worked 12-hour days. He fed them rice and beans while he ate like a king. And at the end, those who didn't want to commit suicide,

the gun squad, what I call them, the Red Brigade, came out with injections and injected everybody in the shoulder with cyanide. And you see that. And so a lot of people were murdered. And to me, when you're brainwashed like that, you're being murdered.

No, they didn't. You can't. There's no escape. You have to die. When he said it's time to die, it is time to die. There was no like, hey, this was a man. No, these people were murdered. I mean, a lot of people say, you know, especially children, and they have no say in it. They were forced to drink that, small children. They were killed, and there were a lot.

I think there were 200-something children that were murdered, including his own children. And his own wife even protested and said, this has to be a different way. And then it goes, mother, mother, mother, mother, mother, mother, please. He's already in that crazy psycho world. He tells children, we have to hurry, children. We have to hurry.

We have to send a message to the world, the suicidal revolution. I mean, he was just off his, I mean, who in their right mind will see, because he wants to send a message. And he didn't take the Kool-Aid himself, cyanide. He shot himself in the head.

It was the worst mass murder until 9-11, right, with Americans, right? I see that. And with that, so going back to my point, I thought the congressman made a mistake. I know he had a history of being very proactive. He's a Democrat. And remember, this guy Jones helped the Democrats win the 76th election, the national election. He helped.

It went a lot because he was key getting the votes out with African-Americans because he had an integrated church. He was a socialist member. And there's a very socialist area. So. The State Department did not give them a lot of information while I was reading, according to the staff member who survived, what really was going on.

Because remember, they had people already saying about all these defectors saying, hey, dude, they're doing mock exercise. They're torturing people in there. If you stand up anything, they'll put you in this hot box. They'll put you underground. They put you in a well. They really torture people. You better get on the program. There's no escaping. There's no leaving.

This is what they're doing to you. So I think it was a big mistake. Him knowing what's going on there, knowing these guys are armed, he knew they were armed. I personally, just being common sense, is I need the guy in government to help me, give me security, protection. He went unarmed. He thinking that the media guys, oh, you know, I have NBC with me, I have the Washington Post.

He's not going to shoot us with the media here.

I don't think he cared. He cared. He cared, man. He cared. You can never underestimate your opponent. Never underestimate. Be prepared. I think if he would have had the Army or at least some representatives and they saw the evidence, I think they could have arrested him, taken him there, and he would have saved those lives. I think he was just approached the wrong way.

And at the end, knowing that kind of person, how volatile he was, how could they not think that would not trigger that after he'd been practicing that, right? He pretty much said that's what he was going to do. Arrogance. So that's my criticism in the book. If you read it, I blame a lot of the Carter administration at the time. Obviously, he went out there as a congressman.

He could do his own investigation, right? Different bodies of government. You have the executive and the legislator. But they should have given him some support and protection because he was set up to fail. He was set up to fail, and they failed badly. And look what we have, the consequences. So something you got to really think about this guy.

And he really, there's a reason why he created Jonestown because he was this close, again, picked up in the US for obviously tax evasion. He really didn't have a church. He had all this protection as a church, but he was a cult and he was stealing and he was abusing. He would rape the members. He would even rape males. So he was involved in a lot of bad things. So he knew his time was coming.

That's why he set up Guyana. I think originally he wanted to go in Brazil. But it was easier for him because Guyana was a British colony, a former British colony, English speaking. And it just worked out easier for him to go to Guyana, which at the time had become a socialist nation also, very communist. So that's another issue they had to deal with. Interesting read.

If you like what we talked about, I think you'll like the story of Jim Jones. If you don't know much about it, a lot of the younger generation, I've noticed, doesn't know anything about what happened at Jonestown. So, read about it. You'll be shocked. And the video, his video, his tape, the death tape, you gotta listen to that. Of the brink of a madman with a thousand people jumping off a cliff.

Yeah. That's typical with this communist socialist system. Look at Nicolas Maduro. You looked at Fidel Castro. You look at Xi Jinping in China. You look at Kim Jong-un in North Korea. They abused the people, the little people. They think this is better for them. No, this is the best system out here, folks. Don't get conned into that. This is the best system out there.

Nothing is perfect, but it is the best system. At least you can work your way up. You want to get your own education. You want to do things. You can make something in your life here. And it happens. One thing you can never take away from you, and I tell people this all the time, is your education. They can never, no matter what happens, they can never take your education from you.

They can't take your drive from you. They can't take your determination from you. That's built within you. No matter what government happens in here. So educate and be free. And there's a lot of brainwashing. And be a person. Ask questions. Get different sources. Don't just accept one source. And unfortunately, these people did that. And you see the communists do that.

And he was very good at propaganda and brainwashing where you weren't allowed to get other information from other sources. It was his source of information. Healthy diet every day. That way Castro did the same thing. CCP does the same thing in China and I've written about those books in China. They like their one party system as our way or the highway. So end up one of three ways for you.

Either your death, imprisonment, or they're going to kick you out of the country. That's the reality, that's the reality we live in the 21st century.

But we're it though. We're the shining light here. So hey, good thing is we're living the good country. Be happy you were born in communist China or Venezuela or North Korea. Have you ever seen the videos out there, man? That is depressing to see that. So those are the books, also all the kind of books I've written about.

So I have such a huge, for almost, no, I just did 60th, Jim Jones is my 60th book. I just did my 60th book in a little over a year. So it's pretty cool. You can find it. Now I'm doing the Audible books will be coming out. That should be coming out within a month on ATF Undercover. And then I'm doing more with Sean. We're just doing one of mass shootings. We just started that one.

some of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history, and based on my background, solutions to that. I mean, that could be a show within itself, what's going on in our country with mass shootings. That's depressing for me. And how we can stop them and what we can do. I don't know if you've seen the video or not. And I talked a lot about this. I've done shows about this. Ovalde, Texas.

What happened, Rob Elementary? No, I haven't. Yeah, you have to look at the video. 77 minutes while the shooter's in the classroom killing the students and teachers while the police is outside. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've seen bits and pieces. You haven't seen the whole thing. It is really, all of it's out there now.

And what's really upsetting, and you've got to watch this in the audience to look at this, one of the officers, female officers, you know, they forget they have the body cams on, right?

And another guy was recording her because everybody has it on. And I guess she has her off, but he has his on. And they're outside. They are already finally, it was the feds. It was the border patrol. The attack unit came in there. And it wasn't the locals.

They were the ones that went in there, and I think they were like 15, 20 miles away, and they responded, and they're the ones that came in the classroom, and they're the ones that killed them, who killed the Rommels inside there. It wasn't the locals who stayed outside. She said, hey, wasn't your daughter in there?

So I talk a lot about Ramirez and the stuff he does is absolutely horrific to his victims. So if you're interested in this and you want to know more of the psychology, what we just talked about, Psycho Killers has a lot of that. I had no idea. I mean, I started dabbling into it and I had no idea how sick and perverted these people really are.

And one of the guys was saying, no, no, my daughter was a VPK, but if my daughter was in there, I would have definitely gone in. Whoa. Come on. My daughter was in there, but the other people's daughters, children weren't good enough to go in there. I mean, that's what you serve and protect. This is what the call is about.