Jay Dobyns
Appearances
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. I'm at the Mesa, Arizona clubhouse. Beautiful clubhouse, like a Hell's Angels museum. And there's dudes standing around with guns out and pointing guns, asking these questions. Why are these guys talking shit about you? So I had a shoulder holster that held a pistol on each side.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
There is. Like in our new agent academy, you get some very low level exposure to it just so that you can understand the mechanics of what an undercover operation might look like. Whether you're on the point or not, you might be on a cover team, you might be on a surveillance team. So we do advanced training early on in our careers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And then ATF has a program that's called the Enhanced Undercover Program. Those agents get extensive training. They have the cutting edge equipment available to them. as far as electronics and support and all those things. But there is no replacement for like being in the fire. And you don't just get dumped into those assignments. You grow. And with experience, you start small.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I'll just speak from my own experiences. You start off buying dime bags and eight balls. You're not buying cartel level dope. You're getting a feel for the street. And then for me, every one of those experiences, I learned something from. If I did something right, if I said something right, I learned from that. That worked. That's a good technique.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
If I got something wrong, if I made a mistake, I learned from that too. Don't do or say that again because it didn't work out very good.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
That's a very good question. It was maybe one of the most audacious plays in the history of investigations. We initially infiltrated a biker gang in Tijuana, Mexico, named the Solo Angels. They were a standalone outlaw motorcycle gang based in Tijuana. They had members in the United States as well, in California. We had an informant that gave us an introduction to that group.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
But we infiltrated the solo angels, not to investigate them for their crimes, but simply to be able to wear that solo angels patch in Arizona, in the presence of the Hells Angels, and have credibility that we were already part of that culture. There were actually two infiltrations within one case. We infiltrated one gang in order to have credibility in the eyes of another gang.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
We did a pretty good job of convincing them. And part of our sales pitch was like, look, you guys are down here in Tijuana. Nobody really knows who you guys are. We're going to wear your patch and we're going to be solo angel members, but we're in Arizona.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And we are going to be riding next to the most powerful, the most notorious, the most famous outlaw motorcycle gang in the history of two wheels. We are going to bring credibility to you. That was part of the sales pitch. We're going to put you on the map. at least initially, that was appealing to them. That was intriguing because the Hells Angels, there's a lot of motorcycle gangs out there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
There's powerful motorcycle gangs that are international in nature, that are violent, that are dangerous, that are doing all kinds of crazy things. But none of them ever have been or ever will be the king of the mountain like the Hells Angels. They are the pinnacle of the outlaw biker world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
If you ask some school teacher or some auto mechanic or a used car salesman, what do you think of when you think of outlaw bikers? Their answer is going to be Hells Angels. They're part of Americana. They're part of the crime and punishment stories of America, of the world at this point. They're instantly recognizable. They're automatically feared.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
They have an aura of intimidation about them that just the name scares people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Well... Yeah, very much. It's not like you decide that you want to be a Hells Angel, whether it be in an undercover role or just as a common man citizen. You don't knock on the clubhouse door and ask for an application. The process doesn't work like that. People start off as an associate. They're just loosely on the perimeter. They might attend runs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
They might openly be supporters of the Hells Angels, buy the t-shirts, buy the hats, put a sticker on their bike. The associates, if they catch someone's eye,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
are asked to hang around which is an official title in the biker world a hang around is exactly that someone who's hanging around the club and they're deciding is club life really for me can i really do this and then they're being watched by members and those members are deciding is this someone that we want to keep around is this someone that is showing that they have the right stuff
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
From the hang around phase, then you become a prospective member, a prospect. And so with the Hells Angels, I don't know if this is universal, I was told as a prospect, you're a member without his patch. Like all our rules apply to you, all our bylaws and protocols and policies and all those things and all those standards that we live by, you have to live by them now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
as a prospect you're trying to prove yourself they're going to tell you where to be when to be there how to be there and it's non-negotiable as a prospect i was involved in some like outrageous crazy schemes on the high end up to a member ringing your phone at two o'clock in the morning and saying like i want a vanilla milkshake from mcdonald's everything in between and you better perform because everything you do is a test everything you say is a test
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
How you walk, how you talk, the motorcycle you ride, the condition it's in, what you know about it, your car, where do you live? Is there mail with your name at your house? Is there food in the refrigerator? Is there a half-eaten pizza in the refrigerator? Is there beer in there? Is there garbage in the waste? Is there toothpaste in the bathroom? Is there toilet paper and soap in there?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Like every single aspect and element of your life is being scrutinized. to confirm to them that you're a real person.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Like, for example, you just set up an undercover house and you got some furniture in there. Like, me and you can walk in there and look around and say, no one fucking lives here. No one's spending any time here. When you live in a place, regardless of how, whatever your standard of cleanliness is or your maintenance is, there's going to be evidence and examples
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
of someone living there and so all those little things yeah that makes sense which came back like again i wasn't a biker investigator and i didn't know a whole lot about motorcycles i still don't to be quite honest with you even after spending two years with these guys but there was a time when i was having like a mechanical discussion about motorcycles with one of the members.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
He was getting into the intricate mechanics of how a motor works and what I needed to do to make a tune-up and do those kinds of things. And I just stopped him. I said, dude, you're talking way above my pay grade. I roll this grip and it goes forward. I squeeze this handle and step on this pedal and it stops. When it doesn't do that anymore, I bring it to someone like you to fix it for me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I knew better than to try to fake being some expert in the world of motorcycles because I couldn't. I would have been found out instantly. They would have called my bluff quicker than you could snap your fingers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I think like any good cover story stays very close to the truth. You don't want to invent a lie that's so massive that you're lying to yourself. You want to have a story that in your own mind, you're telling the truth. And then you take personal events and personal aspects of your life that you can talk about intelligently and in detail and just morph those.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Well, really not. That was the beauty of ATF is that, at least initially, they let you chase what your desire is. And then you find out if you're any good at it. If you're not, move on to something else. Undercover work is nothing more than a tool in an investigator's toolbox.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
So I think in one of our previous interviews, we talked about when I was shocked. So I got shot early on in the job. I took that story and recycled it many times, but I didn't recycle it, obviously, as a drug deal gone bad where I was shot. But I could talk about all the details in that. I can show them the scars on my chest and on my back.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I can tell them a legitimate, accurate story, but the details have been morphed. Yeah, that makes sense.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
That was a lengthy investigation. There's been others that are successful that are shorter, and there's been others that are longer. Like, I had all I needed after two years on the same case. Like I said, really, that's all I had ever done in my professional life was seek and work in undercover assignments. But that one case... That Hells Angels case ran from 2001 to 2003.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
There's dozens of ways to investigate cases, traditional research-based cases, surveillance cases, wiretap cases, search warrants. We can go on and on of the techniques that are available to us to investigate a case. Undercover work is just one tool in that toolbox. I'm biased towards it because that's what I spent my life doing, my professional life doing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
There's a unique aspect to that as an undercover operator, as an infiltrator. You're living their lifestyle side by side with them. If they have a 14, 16, 18 hour day, you have that same day. If they go for three or four days on end with no break, you go for three or four days on end with no break.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
The difference is, and the difficulty is, as a law enforcement officer, your day actually starts before their day. You have to plan and brief and get with your team and set your objectives and set what your mission is for the day. Then there's fluidity within those plans. You run for as long as they need you to run with them, and then they go home, but your job's not over.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Now you have to process evidence and log evidence and write reports and do all the backside of the investigation. Take your notes and turn them into official police reports.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
after two years of this, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, at the end of the Hells Angels case, I'll tell you, man, there were nights where I was just mentally and physically and spiritually exhausted. I would literally cry myself to sleep, like boo-hoo, baby cry myself to sleep, thinking like, I can't go one more day. I can't do this anymore. I'm out of gas.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And this one member notices, like, my hand is starting to make its way towards the pistol. And he said, Jaybird, let me ask you something. Can you outdraw my trigger squeeze? And I was like...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And then I'd get a couple hours sleep and recharge the battery and wake up in the morning and say like, okay, I'm feeling better. Let's try again.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Say with regards to the drug use, not every Hells Angel out there is a drug addict. Not every one of them is smoking meth or snorting coke or... whatever it is they're doing. There's many of them that are living actually pretty healthy lifestyles, which is against the stereotype. But there are some that are cocaine, methamphetamine fueled.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
So you got to keep up with everybody, which was a struggle for me. And I started popping hydroxycut diet pills, the ones that had raw ephedrine in them. They've discontinued the ones that I was taking. You could buy them over the counter. There was nothing illegal about them. But the bottle said not to exceed two of these in a 24-hour period, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
So I'd pop a couple hydroxy cuts and they'd give me a kick in the ass and I felt pretty good and I could run. But I built a tolerance to that. So instead of two, now I needed five. And then instead of five, now I needed 10 or 15 to get through the day. And by the end of the day, I was like poisoning myself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I was eating handfuls of hydroxy cuts, smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, drinking Red Bulls, trying to artificially fuel my energy so that I could maintain pace with these guys. The tempo that they live at is extreme.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
There was an event in the middle of the case. I was a full-blown hydroxycut addict trying to keep up. There was a story that came out I think it was baseball spring training. And there was a baseball player who was found dead in his hotel room at spring training. And they concluded that he had overdosed on hydroxy cuts. And I heard that story. I was so bulletproof.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I viewed myself as being invincible. I hear this story of this guy. highly conditioned fine-tuned professional athlete that went down to hydroxy cuts taking too much hydroxy cut i remember i heard that story and my first reaction was ain't happening to me i ain't going down like that i don't know what the circumstances were around this guy ain't going down like that and i kept going
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
all those other techniques do not allow you to place a living breathing human being a trained law enforcement officer next to a suspect or inside an organization or inside some crime scheme And then come out the other side and report to a case agent or a handler, prosecutors, ultimately a judge and a jury, what you saw, what you smelled, what you tasted, what you heard, what you experienced.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I'll tell you what my wake-up call was. Sure. I'm at the undercover house one night and probably three or four in the morning. My eyes pop open and I sit up in bed and I'm drenched in sweat and my heart is beating so fast that like I put my hand on my chest and I couldn't separate the heartbeats. My heart was racing so fast. I couldn't calm it down. I couldn't settle in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I got in my car and I drove to the entrance of the emergency room of a hospital in Phoenix. I wasn't coming out of role. I was not going to compromise my role or compromise the case. I pulled up as close as I could to the entrance to the emergency room.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
i pressed myself into my steering wheel of my car i pushed my seat back up that would pin me there and hold me there and i opened the door my flawed reasoning my flawed logic my solution to this is i was like if i'm truly having a heart attack I'll slump forward on my car horn and someone will come out and see what's going on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Or I'll fall out of this car into the parking lot and someone will say, hey, man, we got somebody that's sick out here. But after I went through that experience, I probably had a good full bottle of hydroxy cuts sitting in my medicine cabinet at home. I went home and I dumped that whole bottle in the toilet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
You know, you buy it over the counter and you think that, okay, like, don't worry about the warning label. You can buy it over the counter. You pick it up at the drugstore. It can't be that bad. It's not going to hurt you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I felt like that every day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Those cases, when done right and when properly recorded, like typically don't see a courtroom. We've overcome the entrapment issues. We've shown that our suspects are predisposed to commit crimes. And so when you have a sworn law enforcement officer raising his right hand in the witness box, that's a compelling element of a prosecution.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
It's compelling to the jury if he or she's a good witness and it's compelling to a judge.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Part of my cover story, part of my persona that I recycled over and over again through multiple cases.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
an element of that cover story was that i was a gun runner and it made sense in arizona in the west i would tell people that were involved in whatever level of criminal activity i buy guns cheap i obtain guns cheap in arizona in the united states and then i arranged to have them shipped into mexico where they're sold for 10 times as much it's reverse drug trafficking
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I guess that's part of life. I always tell people wisdom is always something that came to me right after I needed it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Well, I just was talking to some people recently and they were saying like, what's the key element to undercover work? And They came out with like complacency was one of the answers. You can't get complacent. You can't take things for granted. I said, really, there's only one big rule that you can't violate. Don't get dead.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Don't get killed. There's no individual. There's no suspect. There's no target. There's no scheme. There's no organization that's worth dying for. If at the end of the day, if everything went wrong, if you made every wrong choice, but you go home at the end of the day, you're okay. You're okay. You'll have a chance to fix it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
There was an event, just what pops to mind, there was an event when the solo angel cover story, our association with the solo angels, came under question. And again, it came under question by my mistake, by my error. We had infiltrated the solo angels, as I said earlier, just strictly for credibility in the eyes of the Hells Angels.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Once that infiltration was completed and we were wearing the solo angels patches in Arizona, I stopped servicing that solo angel relationship. Like I had gotten what I needed from them. I see. I wasn't continuing to develop that relationship, which in hindsight I should have been. So members of the solo angels started leaking out to members of the Hells Angels.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
These dudes came down here and got their patch and we never see them. Like they never come down here anymore. They don't send us money. They don't come to our parties. They don't come to our events. They don't come to our meetings. Like they're invisible to us. You need to keep an eye on these dudes. I'm not sure that they are who they say they are.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
That word gets back and I get a call that like I have to meet and we got some problems and I'm meeting with a shot caller. I'm meeting with a bad dude. I get this call so I know that this story is floating around there. Then I get this 911 page. We were still using pagers at the time, at least for part of our communication. I get this 911 page from Joe Slotelli's.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
You need to get out of the house, man. They're coming for you. They're sending a hit squad to the house.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
No, our undercover house. Thank God, but still terrifying. So we gather up and scramble out. And sure enough, three or four Hells Angels pipe hitters were prowling around the house and they had guns out. One guy had an axe handle. They were coming to take care of business with us. So I go to this meeting. I was certain that I was walking into an assassination.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I thought like, when I started doing my initial research into the Hells Angels, for us, knowledge is power. The more that we know about something or someone... the better we're able to deal with it. In my initial research into the Hells Angels, one thing kept jumping out at me. They kill their own. If they feel compromised or betrayed, they had a longstanding history of killing their own members.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And that always stuck in my head. I'm being summoned to this meeting. I thought, man, like I'm walking into an ambush. This is going to be an assassination. And part of my mindset at that point, which again is, you know, people are going to see this and say like, man, this dude was off the rocker. Like I had stopped being afraid of dying. I didn't fear dying anymore.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
So if you're a criminal and you're involved in the criminal community, whatever your scheme might be, and I give you my cover story, this is what I do, it makes sense to you. It's plausible.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I was like, I'm probably going to get smoked here. Let's see what happens. Let me see if I can save this. So I go to this meeting and I'm confronted like, hey, these guys in Tijuana are calling you out. They're saying you're counterfeit. Man, are you a cop? Are you an informant? And at that point, I fell back on this history of communication and trust and loyalty that I had established.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And I used events. I basically built a case for myself. I took pictures of myself in Tijuana at the Solo Angels Clubhouse with Solo Angels members, arms around my shoulders.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
at their parties and i put physical evidence in this guy's hand and said do i look counterfeit do they look like they're treating me like i'm counterfeit here's what happened yes they're right i don't pay any attention to them you know why because i'm paying all my attention to you i'm spending all my time with you i'm devoting all my energy to you guys they're jealous they're pissed off
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
What I told them was going to happen is not coming true. I'm not taking care of them. I understand why they're pissed off. They're just pissed off for the wrong reason.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And this guy got on the phone and he called off the dogs. He's like, man, everybody stand down. I believe them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
That's just so stressful to be in that situation. That wasn't the end of the questioning. That was just that kind of diffuse things. Yeah, you live to fight another day. There was more questions coming from other members. I hadn't quite satisfied everybody yet. I'm at the Mesa, Arizona clubhouse, which was a very powerful charter in Arizona.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
25 members, beautiful clubhouse, like a Hells Angels museum. And there were pipe hitters in there. And there's dudes standing around with guns out and pointing guns at me, asking these questions. Why are these guys talking shit about you? What's the deal with these solo angels? I wore twin Glocks. I had Glock pistols. I had a shoulder holster that held a pistol on each side.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
So I always had these Glock pistols with me. And this one member notices like my hand is starting to make its way towards the pistol. And he said, Jaybird, let me ask you something. Can you outdraw my trigger squeeze? And I was like, no, it ain't going down like that. And my female partner leaned into me and she said, if you're going down tonight, I'm going down with you. She was so fearless.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I was scared shitless. And she might've been scared too, but she didn't project it, man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
We're allowing guns to be trafficked. I'll give you an example. ATF got wrapped up in a past operation. Your audience might be familiar with it. It was titled Operation Fast and Furious. Yeah, I remember this. So ATF's jurisdiction is to interrupt and investigate firearms trafficking. So there was this scheme, these out-of-bounds ATF supervisors and a few employees were
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I'm not sure if there's a majority or minority universal position on that. I just know that from my experience, the women that I worked with were absolutely amazing investigators, amazing undercover operatives. I know that there were circumstances where women would be involved in an undercover operation I was in And the quote unquote experts were telling them, this is too dangerous for you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
This isn't a woman's job. And the beauty of that is that the women I work with proved those experts wrong. They were intelligent. They were brilliant investigators. They were street smart. They were courageous. And in a few instances, absolutely fearless. So I do law enforcement training. I continue to do that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I speak at events and conferences, and I make that a point to speak to the women in the audience to tell them, don't listen to the experts. You're every bit as capable as any male operator out there, and in a lot of cases, better. You have an advantage. I think when a woman's president
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
you've got all these pipe hitter alpha dogs with their necks bowed and their shoulders back when a woman is brought into that situation it almost takes the testosterone out of the air it lightens things up a little bit it changes people's demeanors and i think that any of us regardless of what you're doing whatever you have that is to your advantage you should put it in play and it's not just an undercover work it's in business or
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
whatever it might be. And so if you have the ability to deescalate and to bring comfort and confidence into a situation like a lot of women do, why would you not use that? Why would we not take advantage of it as investigators?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Universally, law enforcement is a male-dominated profession. Of the sworn officers in the United States, 75% are men, 25% are women. And that's plus or minus. I don't know entirely how accurate that is, but I'm close. In undercover work, 30 or 40% of the undercover operatives are women. So there becomes a disbalance in that great investigators, great undercovers see the value of having a woman
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
were allowing guns to be trafficked. And they were doing it with the intent like, hey, we're going to track the end game. Where are these guns going to land? They knew they were ultimately going to the cartels. They're letting guns go to a drug trafficking organization. The way it was found out is that one of the guns that was allowed to go into Mexico
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
as part of the undercover package, and we're always looking for our advantage. We're always looking for what can we do to stay a half step ahead of the power curve. That last story, like the Mesa Clubhouse, where this confrontation was taking place, this questioning was taking place, So she's there with me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
That's the exact same location where a woman named Cynthia Garcia came to the Mesa Clubhouse to socialize and party, got out of line, said the wrong thing at the wrong time in front of the wrong people. Basically, she insulted the Hells Angels on their turf, in their house, in the presence of multiple members. And they boot stomped her to the brink of death.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And then they rolled her up in some carpeting and put her in the trunk of a car and took her out to the desert Apache Junction outside of Mesa. And they cut her head off.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And we were aware, at least suspicious of who was involved in it. This female agent was operating in that exact same environment where this woman had been at least pressed to the edge of death. And so when I talked earlier in a flattering way about the value of women and how they can do anything on this job that the men can do, that's an example.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
God, that's scary, man. That's so awful.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Yeah, I had an expense account. If I was out socializing, if I was out partying, I had an expense account. I could buy beers. I could buy cigarettes. I could buy food. My undercover houses were paid for. My vehicles were paid for. I wasn't incurring personal expense in this operation. My lifestyle was being funded. With regards to the tattoos, I got a lot of tattoos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I didn't get one tattoo ever for the purposes of undercover work. I got tattoos because I wanted them. Now, did those tattoos maybe help the aesthetics of my appearance? Yeah. Make me more believable? Yeah. Yeah. Did I have members of the Hells Angels doing the tattooing at times? Yes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
You go get a tattoo from a Hells Angels tattoo artist, that's going to give you three, four hours of personal, intimate time to have all kinds of conversations with that person. I didn't get any tattoos because I was like, oh, I got to get inked up so that I can be believable. Like I was buying guns and bombs and drugs before I ever had any tattoos. That's interesting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
When the Hells Angels case started, I had a tattoo that was a tribute piece to the four ATF agents who were murdered at the assault and the raid of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, when the David Koresh investigation. So ATF tries to hit this compound. Everything goes terribly, tragically wrong. And we had four agents killed that day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And I was a young agent and I knew a couple of the guys that were killed. So I had a little kind of obscure tribute piece to those agents, but it had the date on it, February 28th, 1993, which was the day of that event. Before I started the Hells Angels case, I had that tattoo not covered up, but altered because I thought, man, these guys pay attention to everybody else.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
came back into the United States that was used to arm a rip-off crew. That rip-off crew was confronted by a team of Border Patrol agents, their BORTAC unit, their tactical unit, and they got in a firefight south of Tucson, outside of Rio Rico, Arizona, halfway between Tucson and the Mexican border. A Border Patrol agent was killed by the name of Brian Terry in this shootout.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
They pay attention to everything. And if they do any research into what February 28th, 1993 means or what took place in history on that day, I potentially could have some hard questions to answer. I was ready to dance around it. I was ready to talk around it. But I just figured, let's just avoid that problem before it becomes one.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Yeah, the case was winding down. They were ready to start with indictments. We had massive amounts of evidence, guns, bombs, drugs, thousands of hours of recorded criminal conversations. In my first levels of introduction to the Hells Angels, I asked a very innocent question, and it was in response to the casino riot between the Mongols and the Hells Angels at the Harrah's.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Can you tell us briefly what that was?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Yeah, there was a big biker run called the Laughlin River Run, which took place in Laughlin, Nevada, which happened to be right across the river from my undercover house in Bullhead City, Arizona, separated by the Colorado River. And I believe April of 2002...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
the hell's angels cross paths with the mongols at the harrah's casino and there was a massive riot that took place under hundreds of close circuit television shooting stabbing people being killed it was chaos prior to harrah's i knew that there had been this long-standing bloodbath war with the mongols for the hell's angels which was a demonstration of it of how extreme it was
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
But I would ask Hells Angels, if I'm going to be with you guys, what are my rules if I cross paths with a Mongol? Like, how am I supposed to react to that? And I was repeatedly told, it's your job to kill Mongols. That's what we do. And so I put that information in my back pocket. And then we ran for two years with these guys. The case is getting ready to come to an end. And it's wrapping up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
It's running out of gas, to be quite honest with you. It's expensive, right? Isn't that what kind of- Very expensive. You're funding every aspect of the investigation, the task force. And I should say that, like I'm telling these stories, we had an entire task force and every important aspect of a criminal investigation was covered by an expert.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
There was a dozen people who were every bit as committed to the case as I was, making all the sacrifices that I was as part of this task force.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Yeah. I don't know what the final number was, but it's not a cheap operation to do a long-term deep cover infill case.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Yeah, there's definitely a cost reward algorithm there that people decide far above my pay grade. It is what it's worth. So I pull this information out of my back pocket in essence and tell members of the Skull Valley Hells Angels where I was prospecting, there's a Mongol in Mexico and he's running his mouth down there. And he's saying that he kicked our ass at the Laughlin riot.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
that he's proud of the Hells Angels that died there, and that he's going to start pushing Mexican methamphetamine right up into Arizona, right into Phoenix, right into Sonny Barger's backyard, and there's nothing that the Hells Angels can do about it. And I said, I want to go down there and kill that guy. And I was waiting for the reaction.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
If someone tells me or you or any common man that they're plotting a murder, that person's dialing 911 as they're running the other direction. They gave me the pistol to commit the murder with. They told me how they wanted it done. They're like, man, when you pop this dude, pop him in the mouth, pop him in the eye, pop him in the ear.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Somewhere where that bullet won't have trouble penetrating his skull and it'll bounce around in his skull. Scramble the dude's eggs. And so it was off that they had shown their willingness, their ability, their predisposition to be involved in this murder. And so what we did is I told them I was going to Mexico to commit this murder.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
The gun that was used to kill Brian was a part of the Fast and Furious trafficking operation. These supervisors who, in my opinion, were not only corrupt, they were criminal in how they were conducting this investigation, completely 100% unjustifiable and out of bounds. They were actually
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Actually, what we did in reality is we just went outside of Phoenix. We found a desert area that was nondescript. We dug a shallow grave. We had a Mongol motorcycle vest that was seized in another investigation. We put it on the back of one of our task force members. We duct taped his hands behind his back and duct taped his feet and dragged him into a grave.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And then we had a homicide detective that built us a crime scene. He used blood and parts from a butcher shop to create this murder. How do you pick the guy who has to get covered in pig blood? It's like, oh, you're the new guy, man. Sorry. Then's the breaks. I told the homicide detective, I said, here's the story I'm going to tell.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I'm going to tell him that I saw this guy coming out of a cantina and I smacked him in the head with my baseball bat and busted his head open. Then we stuffed him in trunk of a car and drove him out to the desert and finished him off with the gun that you gave us.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
So the homicide detective who had hundreds and hundreds of homicide investigations under his belt, he built the crime scene to fit my parameters, to fit my story. Yeah, that's kind of fun somehow. We took pictures of it. I cut the Mongol vest off the back of our quote-unquote victim as evidence. I put it in a FedEx box.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I addressed the FedEx box from Mexico to my undercover house, gave it a couple days, and then called the Hells Angels and said, man, we got to talk. We got to get together. What's up? What's going on? Tell me what happened. I'm like, I can't talk about it on the phone. All I can say is that Mongol in Mexico blew a head gasket. That's all I'm going to say.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
So we meet with the members of the Hells Angels and I hand them a FedEx box. And like we talked about, like the smallest details needed to be covered. But it was sent, apparently sent out of Mexico to my undercover house. And I handed them the FedEx box. I said, there's no way I was crossing the border with evidence of a murderer in my trunk. But I knew that if I didn't bring...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
physical evidence of this back that the story was going to be nearly unbelievable. I knew I had to show you. And so one of the Hells Angels takes the FedEx box and he's kind of got his back to the rest of us. He's turned away and he sets the FedEx box down on the couch. First thing he pulls out is the bloody mongrel cut. And we can't see what he's looking at.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I know what he's looking at because I know what's in the box, but no one else does. And you hear him say, whoa. And then someone says, what is it? And he turns around and he's holding up this mongrel cut and there's blood all over it. And then they start looking at these digital photographs of this guy with his brain scattered in the dirt and duct taped and in the shallow grave.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
So everything I told them, I was providing physical evidence. It was a completely fabricated homicide. But... that was probably the most audacious street theater that i've ever heard of and what made it so audacious was we've bluffed murders and things like that before but we were selling a murder to murderers who were members of an international organized crime syndicate.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
The stakes were extreme. I had my undercover partner with me, a Phoenix detective who was an amazing undercover operative. And so when we called them to come and talk about the murder, I hear the motorcycles arriving. Then I hear the boots on the gravel coming closer and closer. I remember I told my partner, I said, dude, do not let these dudes stand behind you. Do not let them get behind us.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
They are either going to embrace us because we did what we said we were going to do and we killed one of their rivals, or they're going to kill us because we're implicating them in a homicide. I don't know which way this is going to go.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
using the body count of violence in mexico to justify that there were too many firearms in mexico they were fueling it they were pouring gasoline on their own fire trying to justify their operation That is an extreme example of outrageous government conduct. In addition to fraud, waste and abuse and corruption and criminal activity. I'm not an ATF hater.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
we are putting them in a compromising situation. We are now making them aware of a murder and showing them evidence of it that they knew internally they had sanctioned. So we were the weak link in this story.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
We skipped a step. We faked it. We didn't actually put it through. We made it look believable. We could have taken extra steps. Like the point you're making is not a bad point.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Those are all good points. And had that happened and had we not covered that base, wouldn't have been a good move.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
The ultimate prosecution of the case was very frustrating to me based on the reporting, based on the testimony that was available, based on hundreds of hours of criminal conversations that were recorded. That case is every bit as prosecutable and winnable today as it was in 2003. With that said, the case goes from ATF to the prosecutor's office.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And then when the attorneys got it, there's all kinds of questions and issues and they can't settle on how to deliver the case into the courtroom. Plus there's other ongoing investigations that potentially could have been compromised. And so rather than compromise other continuing investigations, the prosecutors decided, look, we're going to reduce some of these charges.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
We're going to try to get some plea deals. We're going to dismiss some charges. We're going to try to smooth our way through this prosecution, which when you've spent two years of your life, when the blood, sweat, and tears, and risk, and life and death situations that we went in, when the prosecution doesn't have its full chance, that's very frustrating. But
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
As an undercover agent, you don't get to control everything. I didn't go to law school. I don't get to control those legal decisions, those prosecution decisions. My opinion may be heard, but I'm not making those choices.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I'll tell you what ultimately changed my perspective. The case ends. And through discovery and through the legal process, you know, the Hells Angels learned that Jaybird Davis, the gun runner, debt collector, hit man, is actually Jay Dobbins, an ATF agent. The death and the violence threats start flooding in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
The tiger's not going to change his stripes. These guys are who they are, and they live up to their reputation. There was a contract put on me. It was farmed out to the MS-13, to the Aryan Brotherhood, at least exposed to them. There was talk that the 18th Street Gang in LA was interested in looking at it. There was lone wolf assassins that were popping up. We ultimately found out about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
There was an MS-13 member that was locked up in Arizona. He was transferred to a facility in Virginia. When he did his intake interview in Virginia, he told the investigators, you guys better get some help for your boy Dobbins out there in Arizona because they're going to get him. He's greenlit for a murder and there's a lot of people sniffing around it. So that came out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I love the agents with their boots on the ground that are out there confronting violent crime and trying to keep bad people from doing bad things to good people. Like I have the most admiration that you can have for those people. But you can't defend that as an ATF agent and as an operation that my agency was a part of and orchestrated and ran.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
There was a series of threats, a series of events that corroborated and validated that there was a murder contract out there. Ultimately, in the summer of 2008, my house was burned to the ground by arsonists.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I lost everything. They came to get me and burned my house down.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Yes, my personal house. And what was frustrating about it is that I had this small group of supervisors who were ignoring the threats. They didn't want to react to the threats. And I never said, look, these threats are valid, credible threats. I was saying, you have an obligation to chase them to the very end.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And if you can't prove the case, you have an obligation to confront people and say, like, dude, our guy's hands off. You don't get to do this. By chance, going back early in our conversation, these same supervisors who would not support me when the threats came home were the same supervisors that were running ATF's operation Fast and Furious. These guys were operating with impunity.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
They believed that they were above the law. And so ultimately, to give you a long answer to a short question, My perspective changed when not only I was under threat, but my wife was under threat. There was threats that targeted my wife, targeted my kids. When those people decided that I wasn't worth conducting an investigation for, it caused me to question everything I felt like I stood for.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I felt like I stood for good, and I felt like I stood for truth and justice, and that my purpose to take a stand against the predators And I realized the people that I'm working for that are calling shots on what happens with my life, they don't give two f**ks about me or my f**king family. It caused me to question everything I believed in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I'll say this. I live with concern. I choose not to live in fear because if I live in fear, they own me. They control me. But I've seen firsthand what they're capable of. I know their history. These guys have their PhDs in violence and intimidation. They're very good at it. They're the masters of it. So I live with concern. I don't put myself in bad situations. I don't want a problem.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I do everything I can to try to avoid problems. But I don't hide. I'm doing an interview with you. But I also know any massive criminal organization, I don't care if it's the mafia, I don't care if it's street gangs, I don't care if it's Russian organized crime or the triad or whatever. If they want you, they can get you. You can't hide in today's world. You just can't.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I tried to run from those threats for a while and it was unsuccessful. And I was like, dude, you just have to live your life. I know there's people out there that hate me. I know there's people out there that would love to see me dead. But if I live my life in a fearful way, they continue to own me. I'll tell you something that good that came out of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
The good thing that came from it is that like all these experiences elevated my faith. They elevated my spirituality. I realized that I got through this life. I got through this career and all these events that we talked about and hundreds more that are just like it because God had his hand on my shoulder and was controlling the things that happened to me. I'll say this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I learned the hard way is that if the only time you're talking to God is when you're in trouble, you're in trouble. And my faith has grown. And my trust in God has grown. If that's what it took to get in my faith life to where I am now, then I think it was a good investment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Well, and the cartels are sending cartel members, emissaries across the border into the United States to buy guns, what appear to be legally. They're actually filling out the paperwork. They're going into gun stores. What is this called again? There's a name for this. It's a straw purchase, straw purchasing firearms.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
They're not portraying that these purchases are for themselves, but their intent is to go to someone else. They're landing them someplace else. Now they have the problems of how to smuggle them over the border and all those things. But the cartels are the greatest contraband smugglers in the history of contraband smuggling. They know how to get contraband back and forth over the border.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
They're very good at it. And so in that scheme, person A buys a gun or multiple guns here in the United States, and everything appears to be proper on the surface. Paperworks filled out. They passed a background check. They received their guns. They land on the other side of the border, and then they're being used in violent narcotics trafficking. It's our job to disrupt that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
It's our job to investigate those schemes. And then sometimes they get greedy. You go in and you buy a couple AK-47s and it goes good and you don't have a problem. Then you go back and now you want five AK-47s. That goes good. And then pretty soon, you're ordering 15, 20, 25 AK-47s all under the premise that you're buying them for yourself. Are there gun collectors out there that accumulate...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
massive amounts of weapons and they have more than one of a make and model of a firearm? Of course they are. But you know what? They're not breaking the law. They're not using them to hurt people. They're gun collectors. It's part of their hobby. It's part of their lifestyle. They're not hurting people with them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I don't know that need really comes into play. If I'm abiding by the law and under the Second Amendment and I'm a supporter of the Second Amendment, our citizens' rights to bear arms, if someone wants 25 of them and they've got the money to them and they've got a gun locker and they've got them stacked up, they get satisfaction from that, but they're not committing crimes with them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And they're not doing anything wrong. And there's people that want exotic machine guns and they want silencers and they want very high-end weaponry. They're exercising their right until they start committing crimes with them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Well, just like there's been examples of armed robberies, narcotics robberies for drugs or a stash house that has money in it. There's some massive firearms collection somewhere. That's a target for crime as well.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
There's an application process that involves a background check and identifying what you intend to purchase. And only after that background research is done are you then allowed to actually make the purchase to obtain the firearms. I can't go out and buy a fully automatic Uzi or Mac-10 and then go back to ATF and say, hey, man, I got this Uzi. I'd like to register this gun.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
It's all got to be done in advance. Okay.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I know there's people that argue against that, but... There's also an element out there that doesn't want any background checks, any application process. It should be entirely free trade. I don't agree with that either. But the people that are law-abiding citizens that want to accumulate firearms, they're not doing anything wrong. They're exercising their constitutional rights.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I have firearms that even as an ATF agent, I had to apply to ATF to get permission to own those firearms. That's interesting. That all kind of makes sense. I wasn't allowed to go out and say, hey, look, I'm an ATF agent. Here's my badge and my credentials. I'll take one of those and one of those and one of those. I have to go through the process too.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Yeah, you know, for our tactical units and in some places, probably uniformed cops that are patrolmen, there's exemptions for them. But there's people that are very passionate about that issue. There's lots of moving parts to it. I don't think that there's any like super simple explanation to any of it. There's multiples of millions of firearms in our country.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And there's billions of rounds of ammunition in our country. Whether you like it or not, it's part of what America is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I'm 100% behind it. How do you argue that with smuggling their product illegally into our country and poisoning our citizenry, that they're not terrorists?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
I'm not some constitutional scholar, but by classifying them as terrorists, I believe an aspect of that is that it now allows us to use the military.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
And so, you know what? You want to play this game? We're the best in the world at playing war games. You do not want to fuck with us.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
There's tens of thousands of innocent Mexican civilians who've been caught up in the violence of the drug game and have been killed. tens of thousands. That might even be a conservative number that have nothing to do with that game, but they've paid the ultimate price for at least being too close to it or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
Because that drug violence, that narcotics violence, cartel violence is indiscriminate. And it's not just firearms, it's explosive devices too.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1137: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Three
One, I think that goes to why they have a need for that weaponry, because it truly is an arms race. Good luck outgunning the United States military. It's not going to happen. We have the baddest cats on the planet. We have the best warfighters in history, and they would love nothing more than to get a crack at that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
And so to present a case becomes overwhelmingly favorable behind an undercover investigation. It's not based on a wiretap and trying to decipher what you think you heard or a surveillance. or recovered evidence or historical investigation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
No, Jordan, that's the trick. And that's where the skill set, the character and the personality of the ones that do it that are successful truly comes out, is that not only the Hells Angels, any criminal organization, any unit that has spent time together, there's loyalty there. And those groups are inherently paranoid. And they're paranoid for a reason. That paranoia keeps them out of prison.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
They're traditionally untrusting groups of people. So how do you build that trust? For me, I was a salesman. That's the way I looked at my job. I was a salesman. My product was me. So I had to figure out what are my suspects looking for? What do they value? And can I craft a false persona that fits that, that allows me to approach them, spend time with them, ultimately gain trust?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
When you gain trust, you build loyalty. Sometimes you build love in some cases when you have enough time to spend with someone, but you do it with the known intention that ultimately you're going to betray all those things. The human factor, it's strange. It's odd because God didn't build us that way.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
To intentionally build someone's trust and love and loyalty with the opening intent, I'm going to betray this at some point. It's unnatural.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
So as you're building trust and trying to build credibility in the eyes of the suspects, For me, I had to constantly remind myself that this character I'm portraying, this false persona that I've inherited, if they find out the truth, like, they're not going to ask me not to come around. I'm going to get a straight razor drag across my throat or a baseball bat on the back of my head.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
That's going to be the reaction to it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
As I was researching the Hells Angels, and when I was asked to participate and lead that undercover operation, I wasn't a biker investigator. There were dozens of agents that I felt would have served that role better than I did. But knowledge is power for law enforcement. The more we know about whatever our suspect or crime scene is, the better we're able to investigate it. So in doing my research,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
in the Hell's Angels, trying to figure out who's who in the zoo. Who exactly am I dealing with? I learned all those obvious public things that are easy to find out. They're classified as an international organized crime syndicate, 5,000 members, 500 charters. They're in 60 different countries all over the world. But the one thing that kept jumping out at me is that
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
They're willing to kill their own. They had a historical track record of murdering their own members if they felt betrayed or compromised. And so that was always in the back of my head. These dudes will kill you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
That's a term that's used in the outlaw biker community, which says that we are the one percent of this world. that are outlaws, that are criminals, and they're proud of it. They advertise it. They're not shy about it. It's a badge of honor for them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
There's millions and millions of people out there and that ride motorcycles in groups and for all the joy of it, the brotherhood of it or sisterhood of it, not just the Hells Angels, but all these outlaw motorcycle gangs. truly pride themselves in being that 1% that is outside the law.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Like in the Hells Angels world, they portray themselves publicly as being like these fun-loving rascals who have this common love of riding motorcycles together. They just don't want to live by society's rules and society's laws. They want the freedom to do and go and be who they want to be, which there's not many people that will argue with that mentality on the surface.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
But when you see behind the curtain, they have pages and pages, volumes, almost books worth of rules and policies and procedures and protocols that you have to live by to exist in that gang, far beyond what any of us as a common citizen or common man have to live by.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
For me and for my career, which like everybody's got their own approach and their own techniques and their own styles and strategies, it's very individual. And I'll preface it by saying this. I was never the best undercover agent out there. I've never said that publicly or privately. There's dozens of people that I admire who I think were better at the job than I was.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
What I was good at was creating what we call street theater. And street theater is inaccurate conclusions based on accurate observations. So I would accurately... let suspects see me. I would let them see me buy drugs, buy guns, be involved in beatings, doing debt collections, selling stolen vehicles, whatever you name it. I could create that scenario.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
What they didn't know, the inaccurate part of it, is those scenarios were staffed and manned and acted out by other undercover operators. They were skits. They were hoaxes. Jordan, if you're my suspect and you see me buy machine guns and pay for machine guns or receive machine guns and you're there and I put them in the trunk of my car and you're handling them,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
You've just witnessed what you believe to be machine gun trafficking, firearms trafficking. That's way better than me telling you some story about what I do. I've involved you in it. I paid you. I gave you some cash for watching my back on a debt collection. And now you tell your friends, hey, you know what this guy, what he says, he's legit. I was there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
from another undercover who had a script. It's almost like a play or a movie, almost knowing what the dialogue is going to be, let alone like what their actions and what marks they have to hit. It was very much like a play or a film.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
For me personally, I had the equivalent of a playbook that I could put into play that had some loose scripts we could use. It was almost like, hey, look, today we're going to do a debt collection. Everybody Turn to page 17 of our playbook. These are the roles we need filled. This is how we're going to portray it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
This is how it's going to look to the suspect that we introduce into this debt collection. This is the vibe we want to create for this guy. By the time the Hells Angels case was presented to me, I already had 15 years of undercover experience. I'd bought guns hundreds of times from street guns, from pea shooters, handguns to shoulder launch rockets.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
I'd bought bombs from PVC homemade pipe bombs to servo activated remote control C4 devices. I bought dope from dime bags and eight balls to cartel level dope. I'd been involved in infiltrating home invasion crews and schemes. portraying myself as a contract killer in Murder for Hire cases.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
I never considered myself an expert in anything, but I had spent 15 years building and developing the tradecraft of undercover work. So when that opportunity was presented, I was pretty confident, even though I was entering a world that I probably didn't fully understand that I could sell them that I was a gangster. Who is selling shoulder-fired rockets in the United States? You know what?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
You'd be shocked. Really? You'd be shocked. We did a case. Where a home invasion crew, they were doing narcotics robberies. They wanted an RPG for use in their scheme. This is what you're looking for? Guess what? I know what the black market is. So it sounds outrageous. It does. It sounds crazy, but it's all crazy. Every bit of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
When someone's hiring you and going to play God with someone's life and someone approaches me and says, hey, I want to hire you to go kill Jordan. Okay, I can do that. And then I approach Jordan and say, dude, today's your lucky day. Someone wants you killed. How am I lucky? They've involved the cops. They've involved the police.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
So if you will cooperate with me, if you will play your part in this scheme, you are going to help me catch the person that is contracted to have you murdered.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Because you killed me? Is that how it works? And even before that, I'm going to take you and I'm going to use makeup and Hollywood theatrics. And I'm going to take pictures and videos of you being murdered. And then I'm going to take those pictures back to the suspect as evidence, as proof that you're dead. I never crossed paths with anybody who said, man, I'm not willing to play.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
I'm not willing to help you find and capture and investigate and charge and prosecute and convict the person that has hired someone to murder me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
These crews were building and selling and buying explosive devices as well. It's such an intimidating tool. A bomb is such an intimidating tool. It's so indiscriminate. If you have a gun and you point it at someone, plus or minus, you're going to be at least close to your intended target. A bomb is indiscriminate. That's intimidating just to find a bomb.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
If you found a bomb on your car like that in itself and the indiscriminate nature of it and what your imagination of what that could have created is massively intimidating.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Before. Before, okay. Before, yeah. My operation was before Kenny's.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
No, but you also look at how the cartels conduct their business. They're shooting RPGs, they're shooting rockets at each other, and some very exotic weaponry is being used. If you're on the other side of that battle, and, hey, these guys got shoulder-launched rockets? And you're going to think twice before you jump into that fight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
That's a great question, and it's all of the above. There's no bottom line to do it. It is the solicitor's interest and willingness to participate in the scheme. If someone says, I'm going to give you $1,000 to go kill this guy, as an undercover or just as a hitman, you could say, you know what, I ain't doing it for $1,000. It's 10 times that. It's $10,000.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
If I'm being solicited to commit a murder and I decline, if I blow through what they can financially afford, how do I now walk away from you knowing that you want someone killed and now I'm just going to walk away from it because we can't agree on the price? Yeah, now you're a liability, right? So you basically have to agree to it. I was involved in a home invasion investigation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
I'm leaving a meeting. I'm at a Waffle House parking lot and I'm leaving a meeting with an arm full of pipe bombs from a young man. And as I'm leaving, he says to me, hey, I need some help tightening somebody up tonight, man. Are you willing to come with me? I need some backup. Like I've accomplished my mission. I have a handful of pipe bombs that I just purchased from him.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
I wasn't interested in being involved in whatever his personal life dispute was. So I declined. That night he goes out and commits a murder. He kills the guy. Like I wasn't fully understanding what he was asking me to participate in. I was sued civilly. Me and my partner were sued civilly by the murder victim's family saying that we should have known. We should have anticipated.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
what this guy intended. There was no indications that he was going to become that violent or that's what his intent were. Now, the civil suit was ultimately dismissed and it was partly dismissed
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
By testimony saying like, do you think knowing what I do for a living, that if I thought this guy wanted assistance in a murder, that I would have stepped away from that and just stood back and let him commit that without intervening? I would not have done that. I didn't understand what his intentions were.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
But nonetheless, once you become involved in a murder-friar case, everything else comes to a stop. It's almost like the hands on the clock stop moving because everything in your personal life, in your professional life, now has to be put on hold because you have to see this through. If I've been solicited to commit a murder, And I'm not quick enough or I'm not good enough at what I'm doing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
And the solicitor goes outside of me. And what happens if he crossed paths with a real hitman who's really going to do it? Can't take the risk.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
You can't drag your feet because you have to be proactive now. because waiting is dangerous.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
You know, it actually reinforced my reason to join, to be honest with you. I got hired on a Monday. I didn't have any law enforcement experience. Four days later, I was a very much remote part of the arrest scenario. As the main team, as the raid team approached the suspect, he took off running.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
I gave chase from way in the back, ended up catching up, and the suspect disappeared into his neighborhood. It was a pretty rough neighborhood and had just vanished. In the search for him, he was hiding, and I ended up getting isolated.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
And he popped up and had a gun on me, put the gun to my head, was holding me hostage, walked me towards one of our vehicles, one of the law enforcement vehicles that was there, intending to use that as his escape with me driving, pushed me in the front seat, was behind me with the gun held to my head. The other agents, now realizing what happened, began to surround the car.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. a debt collector, ultimately like a quasi kind of unprofessional hit man. And so my cover story wasn't one that I invented or just used for the Hells Angels case. It had been one I had developed and perfected over years and years and years of undercover operations. And I just recycled it. I had become comfortable in playing that character.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
And he's screaming at me to drive, to get him out of there, to help him make his escape. Like I said, I didn't have any experience, but I knew better than to drive off with this guy holding a gun to my head. I knew that there was a bad end game to this scenario.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
I wanted that end game to take place while I had some partners around versus 20 miles down the road, kneeling in some ditch being executed by this guy. My initial plan, there was a telephone pole, probably 30 yards in front of us. And I was like, I'm going to run us into this telephone pole as hard as I can. As fast as I can get this car going, I'm going to hit this telephone pole.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
I had become comfortable in being Jaybird Davis, the gun runner. I could talk about the nuances and the tradecraft of firearms trafficking, explosives trafficking. I could talk about debt collections. with a level of expertise, having studied it, having talked to people that did it for real, defendants, criminals, suspects.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
So when I presented that persona, I was presenting with a high level of confidence.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not sure that I've got at least the perfect answer for it. The outlaw motorcycle gangs, to some extent, operate in obscurity. It's not like we see them every day. When we see them, they allow themselves to be seen. They advertise who they are with the cuts, with the vests they wear. They're advertising their membership.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Typically, and I'm going to speak to the Hells Angels, like I can't speak in this big picture that encompasses all motorcycle gangs with the Hells Angels. If you're not crossing business with them, if you're not involved in the operations of their gang, many times they're typically not hard to get along with.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
It's not like these guys wake up in the morning and say like, who are we going to go beat up today? They do what they do. If you cross paths with them and then get sideways with them, they're some of the baddest cats on the planet. But like, I didn't find them to be getting up in the morning and pouring themselves a bowl of Cheerios and then saying, who am I going to beat up today?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Who am I going to shoot today? Who am I going to rob today? Those things that I was involved in were all elements that were part of their lifestyle well before I ever arrived on the scene.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
And I went to turn the ignition and then plan B hit my brain. And I pulled the keys out of the ignition and dropped them to the floorboard. And I told him, I said, dude, I dropped the keys. And as I leaned forward to grab the keys, the gun rolled off my head and he ended up pressing it into my back.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
And then my partners that were surrounding the vehicle, they lit him up from every direction, both the passenger side window, the driver's side window, the rear window. They ventilated this dude. It was a five or ten second lead and glass storm like you would see in a Quentin Tarantino movie. That's what it was like. And in the process, the suspect shot me in the back. The bullet went in my back.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
It went through my lung. It narrowly missed my heart. It exited the left side of my chest. Four days on the job, I'm bleeding to death in this trailer park with blood coming out of my chest like you're holding your thumb over the end of a garden hose. This giant pool of blood was growing around me. And I was like, man, I haven't even gotten a paycheck yet and I'm dying.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
You haven't gotten your key card.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Yeah, he didn't make it. The agents, after the shooting takes place, he was in the backseat of this car, pull him out of the backseat, it was a two-door Monte Carlo, and pushed me into the backseat where he was at to make the trip or try to find a hospital, try to find some help. We were in a pretty remote area.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
But the truth of it is, after having survived that, one of the very best things, maybe the best thing that ever happened to me on the job, was that event. It taught me how quickly things can go bad, how quickly things get violent. I wasn't brought up like that. I was brought up like in the happy days, a Richie Cunningham, white picket fence, both parents, family.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
So to learn the law enforcement game, like I had to learn it on the job. I wasn't born into that kind of life. And so The doors that opened, contacts it created in a weird way, the credibility it created because I couldn't wait to come back to work. I think everybody was waiting for me to retire, to resign, to use that as an excuse to get out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
It was my excuse to try again and see if I could get it right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Oh, trust me, I still got them. I still get them. Dude, you're the guy who got shot four days on the job. You're that guy. How'd you manage that? Yeah. Like, I still get them. I deserve them. I earned it to be mocked and to be made fun of, especially having survived it. And hopefully I tried to survive it with a good, positive attitude. Always looking forward. This is life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Trying to take a bad situation and make something out of it. I truly believe life is 10% of what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
When I was confronted with that, like, okay, well, what are you going to do now? And I'm like, what I'm going to do now is try to recover, try to heal and go back to work and see if I can do this right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Those groups are inherently paranoid. They're paranoid for a reason. That paranoia keeps them out of prison. They're traditionally untrusting groups of people. So how do you build that trust? For me, I was a salesman. That's the way I looked at my job. I was a salesman. My product was me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Yeah. So prior to being involved in law enforcement, I was an athlete. I played college football. I had a very successful college football career. But it wasn't because I was an amazing athlete, a great performer. I was constantly surrounded by people who were bigger, stronger, faster, more athletic than me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
The way I was able to compete as an athlete was to outwork my competition and play the game as recklessly as I could play it. That translated to law enforcement. Outwork the competition, outwork your peers and be reckless about how you approach the job. I'm not sure that's the advice that I would give to a young officer, like, quote unquote, be reckless about it. But I am who I am.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
The tiger doesn't change his stripes. That's what my personality was. That was my character trait. And so I just applied that to now coming off a football field to a law enforcement career.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Absolutely. I was an ATF agent. And with ATF, they do a pretty good job of kind of letting you find your own way. And undercover work is truly nothing more than a tool in an investigator's toolbox. There's dozens, if not hundreds of ways to investigate a case. Undercover work is one of those ways, but it's where my interests lie. I didn't know if I would find any success, but I wanted to try.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
That's actually why I came to ATF, because the ATF undercover program and historically our operatives were the king of the mountain. They were some of the legendary figures in law enforcement. I've always said, if you're a baseball player and you play shortstop, you want to play for the New York Yankees. You want to be Derek Jeter.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
As an undercover agent, if you wanted to play with the big boys, you wanted to be an undercover agent in ATF's program.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
I think in today's world and in today's political world, that's the debate. Like, why do we need ATF? ATF grew from Prohibition, the Eliot Ness quote-unquote untouchable stories, as they were investigating Prohibition, illegal liquor, and liquor trafficking. Those gangsters in the 30s
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Used guns, machine guns, Tommy guns, Thompson machine guns, which led to some of the gun laws when a still was discovered out in the wilderness. It was nearly impossible to dismantle that and bring it back to civilization. So they blow them up. So ATF kind of naturally inherited the firearms laws, naturally inherited the explosives laws.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Then in 1968, the Gun Control Act is put in place, which elevated the gun laws after Dr. King was assassinated, after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, which led to the Gun Control Act. that enhanced regulation of firearms. ATF didn't actually become its own bureau until historically, I believe like 1972. It's not an old agency. It's not a big agency.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
There's probably more FBI agents in New York City than there are ATF agents across the country.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
I'll tell you a funny backstory that plays into that. There was a Tony Scott movie years ago titled Deja Vu that starred Denzel Washington. That story originally, Denzel is an FBI agent, and he is investigating this bombing of a tour boat, which kind of leads to this big, massive destruction.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
There's some ATF people that consulted on that film and said, this would be much more authentic if this was an ATF agent. investigating this crime. It fits ATF's jurisdiction. And Tony Scott flipped that character from an FBI agent to an ATF agent. And people were like, oh, what are you doing? Like, no one knows who these guys are.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
But Tony was big on authenticity and being accurate and trying to be historically accurate. So I'm agreeing with your point. Not a lot of people know who ATF Ultimately, ATF, because of the gun laws, because of the arson laws, we have some narcotics jurisdiction.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Ultimately, ATF became the equivalent of the federal violent crime police, which led to our ability to investigate narcotics robberies, home invasion crews, murder for hire cases, those types of cases that have a gun or bomb element to them that give us jurisdiction. And then we became very good at investigating those types of crimes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
Well, I think that our jurisdiction lent itself to undercover work in a lot of ways. Firearms jurisdiction, explosives jurisdiction. We overlapped into the narcotics world. But why has ATF gained notoriety or become prolific at undercover work? It's because that program was supported and encouraged. And then when I came on the job, I got hired in 1987.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
The other federal agencies were looking for very specialized skill sets in the people that they hired. Like the FBI, for example, was looking for people with legal backgrounds. accounting backgrounds, chemistry backgrounds, all those kinds of things. ATF was recruiting from police departments, state and local police departments. So they were hiring agents, new agents that understood
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
The process of investigating a case and how to work informants and how to develop information and all those things. So the core of ATF's agent padre were like true criminal investigators who wanted to get down in the weeds. They wanted to get dirt underneath their fingernails. They weren't specialists.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
And then you take that with some of the people that came on with that courageous mindset of saying, not only let me investigate this case, let me insert myself. Let me put myself in the middle of a crime event. And like, now I'm biased to the undercover technique. I'm biased to it because that's what I did for 27 years. But my bias is based in
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1111: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part One
There's really no better way to investigate a case because you're taking a living, breathing, trained law enforcement officer, inserting him into a crime scheme or a crime event or a crime group. And then that person is reporting back out real time to a case agent, a handler, ultimately to a jury and to a judge and to prosecutors. What he or she saw and smelled and touched and heard.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. I tried to defend myself. I said, I'm not a light switch. I can't turn this on and off. I have to be on all the time. People that treat what I do for a living like a hobby end up dead. And then her response was, I understand that. But when you come to this house, you better install a dimmer switch and dial that attitude down.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I was the last rung on the ladder. So I wasn't in a place where I could like jump up and go sit down and put my arm around some shot caller. They'd be looking at me like, dude, punk, who are you, man? Like, I don't know who you are. Get the fuck away from me. I was respectful of that. I had to earn the ability to speak to people like that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I suppose you could just show up and do that, but I think you would draw suspicion by doing that. Like this dude's trying too hard. I had to try hard without giving the impression that I was trying too hard.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Would it make things easier? 100%, obviously. It goes back to earlier in our conversation about outrageous government conduct. If ultimately my investigation ends and I am a witness in the witness box and I'm telling a jury and a judge what I experienced, that defense attorney is going to say, you know what? My client that's sitting next to me here is the defendant in this case.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
And that agent did everything just as bad, was just as nasty as my client. You can't just nonchalantly violate the law and then expect to not be held accountable for it and then hide behind a badge or hide behind an undercover persona as your excuse.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
If you were doing that, what kind of credibility would you have as a witness?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
My kids were born into their father being an undercover agent. That's all they've ever known. We had rules like at my house. We had our own protocols. It's not like you can never, ever see your kids again. You're out in public. You're interacting. One of the rules I had with my kids was the equivalent of a traffic light.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
If I was with my daughter or my son and we were approached by a suspect in a case, like I would tell them, think like a traffic light. If it's red, just stop what you're doing. Hold tight. I will figure this out. If it's yellow, we need to be cautious. We need to be on guard. If it's green, we can just go. And so I would tell them like, hey, you know what?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
If I'm holding your hand and we cross paths with someone, yellow light, that means, hey, we need to be careful now. We need to pay attention. That did happen to me. I was with my daughter a At one point, and I crossed paths with one of the suspects in our case, the Hells Angels case, and it was very matter of fact, hey, who's this? That's my daughter. It was part of my cover story.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I built my cover story very close to the truth. But I do remember telling her, I see this guy approaching and said, do you remember the traffic light? She's like, daddy, I'm not sure I remember it right now. And I'm like, it's okay. We got a yellow light right now. Just be cautious.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
But then after we separated, I told her, if you ever see that guy again, you run as hard and as fast as you can and don't stop. I will come and find you. That's a scary person. As an undercover agent or officer, you still have a real life. You still have families and you have backgrounds and you have all those things that any normal real person has. You don't just completely walk away from that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
At least I never did. There may be stories of where people completely left their family, completely left that life behind and never touched it. I think Joe Pistone, I think Donnie Brasco, like at least touched on that to some extent. That's a guy who's on the Mount Rushmore of undercover work. He's so legendary, but he still overlapped with his family at times, too.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
There's pages and pages and pages of typewritten bylaws, things that you can and can't do. One of the things that like stunned me in today's world, and now granted we're talking about 20 years ago when this investigation was active, but nonetheless, even 20 years ago, like written in the bylaws were no rules.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Fill in the blank with the most offensive, obscene word you can use to describe a black person. No fill in the blank in the club. That was written down. It was in their bylaws. And I remember reading that and I was like, man, I get that there's this racist element to what we're doing, but like you guys wrote it down and made it part of the bylaws. No blank in the club.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Not every Hells Angels patch that I crossed paths with was a murderer or a rapist or a gun runner or a drug trafficker. There were plenty of them that I crossed paths with that weren't actively, at least actively, involved in criminal activity. When I crossed paths with those people who weren't actively criminal, like, I didn't have much interest in them. Like, why?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I was like, OK, like I'm not making these rules. And that was for me, to a large extent, that was compromising because I wasn't raised that way. That's not the mentality I had. Like I was an athlete, like I had spent my youth and as a young adult in locker rooms and on sports fields with people of all different colors, all different backgrounds to say that
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
There's a rule written down that I cannot associate or be friends with this person now. It was unsettling to me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
One, like a writing rule, and I can't say for certain that this was written down, but it definitely was impressed on me, was that as a prospect at writing with other members, I could not let my front wheel cross that members back wheel. It was a violation of that delineation of status within the gang, at least not without being invited.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
If you're riding behind someone and you're behind a member and you're being respectful and he waves you up, come on. Okay, now I've been invited up, but I couldn't do that on my own. I did one time without knowing the rule. And when we stopped for gas, a member came back and said, next time you do that, when I hit you in the mouth, you'll know why.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
There was a time I wore rings on all my fingers and I had a ring that had the Nazi SS lightning bolts on it. It was a prop. That wasn't my mindset or my mentality. Yeah. I assume it wasn't part of your police uniform. It was a prop. And a member of my charter came up and said, you got to take that ring off. That type of paraphernalia is illegal in Germany.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
In Germany, you can't display like the SS lightning bolts or a swastika in Germany. So in support of our German brothers, we no longer have that on our vests. We no longer wear that type of paraphernalia. So you need to get rid of that ring. And I was like, okay, lesson learned. A week later, some time passes by and I still hadn't taken that ring off.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
And the member came up to me and said, remember I told you about that ring? I'm going to tell you one more time to get rid of that ring. I told you why. If I see you again and you're still wearing that ring, I'm going to take your finger off with a tree pruner and I'm taking the ring off. And I did not doubt that he was being serious.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I thought I was like, hey, man, they're going to love this. This is the vibe that I'm trying to create. And it was like a violation of, you know, that bylaw, that protocol, that rule. I had to learn a lot on the fly. It was not the world that I lived in. Every day was trying to, like, get better at it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
You know what? Like, I'm going to say yes. I'm going to assume that there are. I don't know.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Your faith level might be what you might believe in. With the Hells Angels, the religion, the true religion, the only religion is the religion of the Hells Angels. That name, that death hat center patch, They have historically bled and died in defense and fighting for that. That is their religion.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
It's more important than their wives or girlfriends, than their kids, than their jobs, than their house, their income. There's nothing more important to those true believers than that Hells Angels name and that Death Head logo. And they are very much willing to die for it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Unless that guy could open a door to someone who was involved in that, like I didn't have time to waste on those guys. One of the positions they take in their defense is that we're a club, we're not a gang. There's two different definitions. They actually fit both. we're not an international organized crime syndicate. Well, they do fit the definitions of that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I found that there's every element of society is also within that gang. There was affluence. There's people that were wealthy, that had money, that had good jobs, that had nice houses, that had nice cars, all the way down to, I had a neighbor that was a hell's angel that lived near my undercover house that was living in the equivalent of a homemade tent with dirt floors.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
He would come to my undercover house and his wife and they would bring their daughter, who was a little girl, probably six or seven, eight years old at the time. They'd come to my house specifically like once every couple of weeks so they could take a shower. They'd knock on the door like, hey, bird, can we come in and use your shower, man? It was so sad. They were dirty.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
They didn't have any accommodations. And I'm like, man, of course. What am I going to do? Say, no, you can't come in my house to take a shower.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
This was a very well-respected Hells Angel in Arizona, like an old school Hells Angel.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Or whatever he was making definitely wasn't going to improving their living conditions. I'll tell you that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
You know what? It's a constant challenge. I'll give you a story unrelated to the Hells Angels. Let me back up a little bit. The way that that question was characterized, it made it sound like every Hells Angel and every family and every kid was being abused. That was not the case. I saw families being treated respectfully and women being treated respectfully.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I saw some being treated very much disrespectfully. Typically, the women that were being disrespected volunteered themselves into that. They were more than willing to be participants in whatever it was that was going on. There was others that were treated with huge dignity and huge respect. And I don't want to put them all, from my experience, into one lump.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
But I'll tell you a case from outside the Hells Angels case. I had bought some bombs from some suspects. And so I meet them at a hotel room. And I go in and mom and dad are the ones selling the bombs. And there's a little girl that's probably five years old sitting right there on the floor of this hotel, terribly dirty floor.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
She had like one of those onesie pajamas on that's got like the bottoms and the tops all in one piece with the zipper in front. filthy, watching cartoons. I do this bomb deal with mom and dad and I leave with my bombs. And this little girl was like, obviously not a participant in it, but there was no effort made to remove her from the presence of this explosive transaction.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
But one of their statements is that we're not a criminal organization, an organization that may have criminals within it. Like the police. There's some accuracy to that too. But if you're part of an organization and your organization is saturated with criminals, then yes, you are part of a criminal organization. You don't get to split the hair on that
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I'm walking back to my car. I've got these bombs and an ice cream truck is coming down the street. And I put my bombs in the trunk of my car and I told my partner like, hey man, hold on a second. We got to do something kind here. So I bought an ice cream cone and I went back to the hotel room and the door was slightly ajar and I pushed the door open.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Mom and dad likely automatically think I'm coming back to rip them back off for my payment for the bombs. Pistols come up like instantly on me. And I'm like, man, time out. Easy, man. I got an ice cream cone for your kid. I just wanted to bring a little bit of kindness, a little bit of happiness, like into that kid's life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
If it was only for the five minutes it took to eat that ice cream cone, I wanted that kid to be treated like a kid for a minute instead of being present and in essence, a victim as part of an explosives transaction.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
When you witness something like that, it's not hard to try to imagine what are this kid's chances? Could this kid end up going to medical school and being a brilliant surgeon? Maybe the intelligence could maybe be there. But like, how can that ever happen? How does this kid ever have a chance to escape this?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
The opportunity, if they were some type of savant, the opportunity to ever put it on display is next to nothing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Because if you can't do that, you're not welcome here.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
We made pretty quick work of that case, and Child Protective Services came in and intervened. I can't tell you what the result of that was. I can't tell you if the kid was ultimately taken into protective custody or separated from mom or dad. That was not Even my objective, any of these cases, from the Hells Angels case to the hundreds of other I worked, it was never personal for me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I never set out to ruin anybody's life. I never set out to, like, destroy a family. I never said to myself, I'm going to make sure this guy spends the rest of his life in prison. That was not my job.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
My job was to infiltrate criminals and crime schemes and then gather evidence, gather intelligence, bring that back out, report that to a case agent who would then take it to a prosecutor and then present it into a courtroom. My job wasn't to try to ruin people's lives or make sure that anybody paid the price that justice decided be paid was. It was never personal for me. I had a job to do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I did it the best I could. People don't like it. People don't like undercover work. They don't like the use of deception by the police. I get that. No one wants to be betrayed. Any adult, by the time you reach adulthood, you've been betrayed at some point. Like a boyfriend or a girlfriend has broken your heart or a friend has left you, whatever. It sucks. It sucks living through that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
It's a terrible feeling. I never got any joy from that. I never danced on anybody's grave and said, ha ha, I got you. I always like post-arrest when people that I had investigated and when I had the opportunity were like in their lowest moment, I always tried to like display some kindness to them because I didn't get any satisfaction from seeing them broken.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I think occasionally there is some Stockholm syndrome that occurs. I was very aware of that. I worked hard to avoid that. I woke up every day and reminded myself of who I was, what team I was playing for, and that if these guys figure out who I am, I'm not long for this earth. I reminded myself of that. But There is maybe a sexy, glamorous element to that lifestyle, to the freedom of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
You walk into a nightclub with a Hells Angels vest on your back, with a Hells Angels patch, Man, in that world, you're a celebrity. People are stepping out of your way. The Red Sea part lets you go to the front of the line and people are buying you drinks and giving you drugs and women are throwing themselves at you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So I thought you did a great job. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Not because of who you are, not because you're charming or handsome or whatever those other variables might be. It's because of that patch on your back and the notoriety it brings and the reputation of violence and intimidation it holds.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Anytime. Anytime. It's been an honor to speak to you and to communicate with your audience. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
If you take somebody who is an unknown, is invisible in society, when they put that vest on, like I said earlier, they become a celebrity. And the Hells Angels, unlike any other motorcycle gang, through their history, have become beyond mythical. They've become part of Americana. They are part of American history, of the history of crime and punishment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
And so all those events, all those historical events, events like the Altamont Motor Speedway, where they were bodyguarding and protecting the Rolling Stones at this massive concert, 1969, 300,000 people in attendance. And they killed a concert goer, like in front of all these people, like events like that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I was crossing paths with guys who weren't even born in 1969 who were riding that reputation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I watched it. Like, where are they doing next? Where are the Sons of Anarchy? Where's Jax Teller going next? And Hollywood and television, not just in the motorcycle gang world, but when they're depicting the crime world, be it traditional organized crime or whatever, they portray it in a sexy, glamorous, appealing way. The truth is, when you see behind the scenes, it's not sexy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
It's not glamorous. It's a nasty, dirty, bloody, vomit-covered scab of a life. That's the truth of it. But when I realized that very early on, before the Hells Angels case, just when I began to saturate the crime world as an undercover agent, and when I realized it wasn't glamorous, it wasn't sexy, it was nasty and dirty and bloody and dangerous,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
And when I realized Hollywood has lied to me, Hollywood has created this illusion for me that is not true. When I realized the truth, I loved it. I loved every day. I felt like I had a purpose. I felt like I stood for something. Like my job was to get next to bad people who were doing bad things to good people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
When I became an ATF agent, I considered that my highest honor to be asked to stand up and defend innocent people against the predators.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Absolutely. And they're very good at infiltrating and saturating all these elements of society, including law enforcement, to gain intelligence. Knowledge is power, but knowledge is power on both sides. It's power for them, too. The more they know, the more they know.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I was not a part of this investigation, but as an example of what we're talking about, the Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls murders. Death Row Records had hired off-duty LAPD officers to be a part of their security team. Those LAPD officers were previously Bloods gang members. And so they had insider information. And I can't speak to the details of that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I know in this 30,000 foot view, looking down historical perspective of that investigation, that was by design.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Well, because a kid like, grows up involved in a gang, does that automatically mean he's not gonna be a good policeman? I think it's the other way around.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
It does, but if you hold on to that gang mentality and if you hold on to that loyalty now as a lawman or a lawwoman or a member of our military, You know what? Now your loyalty is divided.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Well, those standards in today's world have been loosened a little bit just because of culture and society. Sure. Not entirely, but they've been loosened at least from when I got hired on the job. But like I was one of those guys. I was one of those guys who got hired who didn't understand the street and had to learn it on the fly to be effective.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I think the illusion of trust comes from our street theater examples of showing them and involving our suspects in crime events and creating an illusion that they ultimately believe to be accurate or true. I think we're talking about two different things to some extent. But when you're dealing with an informant, with a confidential source of information, they have all different motivations.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
They're human beings as well. The first thing is to figure out like, what is this person's motivation? Have they just found like some integrity and they have knowledge of something that they're uncomfortable with and they wanna do something about it? Maybe. Are they looking for revenge? Maybe. Are they looking for a payment, a reward? Maybe.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
There's a lot of different variables, but part of assessing how much trust you place in a confidential source is identifying what's their motivation to help me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Someone's trying to work off charges and they're being leveraged into cooperation. OK, that deserves a certain level of confidence or trust and decided individually versus someone who maybe just morally and ethically is opposed to the world that they live in and wants to do something about it versus the guy who's like, I'm neither one of those people. I just want to get paid.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I'm going to help you in return for a paycheck, for a reward. There's so many different motivations that someone might have that's part of the equation, that's part of the trick, figuring it out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Like I was in a motorcycle guy. And so now you're dealing with people who are motorcycle guys. Some of these guys have been riding motorcycles since they could walk. And they ride them in daring ways. And they ride fast. And they ride hard. You're riding in formation at times, sometimes 20, 30, 40, 50 people deep, two by two, side by side.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
You could reach over and touch the handle grip of the motorcycle riding by your side. You're 18 inches behind the wheel in front of you, stacked up all the way down. If you're a master motorcycle rider, you got to be on your game, but you might be comfortable in that. I wasn't. I was at a point in the investigation when I felt like I had built some trust and some loyalty and some love.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I was telling Joe Slotella, I was telling my case agent, these guys aren't going to hurt me. They're not going to kill me. They're going to protect me. If we get into a problem, you know how I'm going to die in this case? I'm going to die on this case running my motorcycle into a telephone pole trying to keep up with these dudes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
These guys ride the equivalent of the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds. They ride in precision and they're very good at it. One of the first times out, I was riding with the Mesa, Arizona charter, and they were very good at it. They rode in a very tight pack. And I'm at the back of the pack, and the president came up to me and said, keep up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
What he's saying, look, if we blow red lights, you better blow the light. You better lay off the brakes. Don't embarrass me. Don't be that guy who like hits the brake when the light turns red. Blow through. I was white knuckling, riding with these guys. At least... probably the first half of the investigation. It was a two-year investigation. Towards the end, I felt pretty confident.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
I felt like my skills maybe not had caught up to these guys, but I was competitive. But getting to that point, I was like, man, I would get through at the end of the night, like bar hopping with these guys going from spot to spot. And I would get back to my undercover house and think only by the grace of God was I not killed on that motorcycle tonight. Wow.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
And anybody that's seen a motorcycle accident in real time firsthand. Oh, my gosh.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
Terrible. The aftermath of a bad motorcycle accident is something that once something has been seen, it can never be unseen. You don't want to see it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
You know what? I think very much in the criminal world applies to real world applies to society. When you treat people respectfully, you can expect or demand to be treated back respectfully. And I tried to do that. I tried to be very human about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two
When I shook hands with someone, when I was being introduced to someone, I would take my sunglasses off or lift my sunglasses up so I could look them in the eye. If I had riding gloves on, I would take my glove off and shake hands fist to fist, skin to skin. Those little elements of displaying respect and then knowing your place. Like I was a nobody, man. I was at the bottom of the barrel.