Dan Brunner - The Rise of Tren de Aragua

Summary

Cleared Hot: Episode 363 – Dan Brunner on The Rise of Tren de Aragua

Host: Andy Stumpf
Guest: Dan Brunner
Release Date: December 2, 2024

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1. Introduction to Dan Brunner

Andy Stumpf welcomes Dan Brunner, a former FBI agent with over 20 years of experience in anti-cartel operations, particularly focusing on Tren de Aragua (TDA). Dan shares his extensive background in law enforcement, highlighting his expertise in organized crime and his insights into the evolving landscape of transnational criminal organizations.

Notable Quote:
"Dan, 20 years in the FBI, anti-cartel operations largely out of the New Jersey area. Very steeped in knowledge and experience..."
[00:45]

2. Understanding Tren de Aragua (TDA)

Dan elucidates that Tren de Aragua is not merely a street gang but a sophisticated transnational criminal organization backed by the Maduro government in Venezuela. TDA's operations span across multiple South American countries and have infiltrated several states in the United States, including Montana.

Notable Quote:
"It's a transnational criminal organization... They are an organization based out of Venezuela with the support of the Maduro government..."
[06:34]

3. Criminal Activities and Expansion of TDA

TDA specializes in various illicit activities:

• Human Trafficking: Smuggling young Venezuelans seeking a better life into the U.S.
• Narcotics and Weapons Smuggling: Moving drugs and weapons across borders.
• Extortion and Prostitution: Employing tactics similar to other notorious gangs like MS-13.

Dan discusses TDA's strategic expansion into the U.S., particularly highlighting their presence in states like Montana and their integration into local Venezuelan communities.

Notable Quote:
"They are committing crimes all throughout South America and now moving into the United States... They're pushing Venezuelan young girls to strongholds like Bozeman, Montana."
[07:11]

4. TDA’s Presence in Montana and Local Implications

Dan points out that Montana has become an epicenter for TDA activities, especially in cities like Bozeman. The influx of TDA members has led to an increase in human trafficking, drug distribution, and other criminal activities within the state.

Notable Quote:
"Bozeman is probably the epicenter for the TDA in Montana... they're probably not even seeing it."
[07:56]

5. Challenges in Combating TDA

Several obstacles hinder effective law enforcement actions against TDA:

• Language Barriers: Many TDA members speak Spanish, complicating investigations.
• Resource Limitations: Overworked FBI agents and limited support from higher authorities.
• Community Trust Issues: Illegal immigrants fear engaging with law enforcement, making it difficult to gather intelligence.
• Organizational Sophistication: TDA employs advanced methods like Bitcoin for money laundering and coordinated tactics for crimes.

Notable Quote:
"If you can't say more than 'ho cha, serve,' you're not going to get anywhere with these communities."
[40:36]

6. Personal Experiences and Insights from Dan Brunner

Dan shares anecdotes from his tenure at the FBI, including high-profile cases against MS-13 and his involvement in Task Force Vulcan. He emphasizes the structured hierarchy of gangs like MS-13 and TDA, the importance of inter-agency collaboration, and the frustrations of bureaucratic red tape that often stalls critical operations.

Notable Quote:
"Ms. 13 was very strict. You don't do something on behalf of the gang without getting approvals... that's how it moved."
[74:37]

7. Recommendations for Enhanced Safety and Awareness

Dan advocates for increased public awareness and proactive measures to combat TDA's influence. He emphasizes the importance of:

• Situational Awareness: Being vigilant about suspicious activities.
• Community Engagement: Building trust between law enforcement and immigrant communities.
• Education on Scams: Informing the public about common fraud tactics to prevent financial losses.

Notable Quote:
"The best thing people can do to support the podcast is support the brand that helps bring me here to the studio."
[04:09]

8. Future Outlook and Collaborative Efforts

Looking ahead, Dan discusses his transition from the FBI to collaborating with local law enforcement in Montana. He is actively involved in forming specialized units to target human trafficking and other TDA-related crimes in the Rocky Mountains, aiming to leverage his expertise to mitigate the organization's impact.

Notable Quote:
"We're putting together a team to see what we can do... to combat human trafficking, smuggling..."
[81:24]

9. Conclusion: Navigating a Complex Threat Landscape

Dan and Andy conclude the episode by reflecting on the current state of U.S. law enforcement's ability to handle transnational criminal organizations like TDA. They acknowledge the challenges but remain cautiously optimistic about collaborative efforts and increased public awareness as pivotal in addressing these threats.

Notable Quote:
"We're going to make it through these next eight years. We will survive."
[116:03]

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Final Thoughts:
Dan Brunner's insights shed light on the intricate and evolving nature of Tren de Aragua and its ramifications within the United States. His experience underscores the necessity for robust law enforcement strategies, community collaboration, and heightened public vigilance to effectively counteract such sophisticated criminal organizations.

For those seeking further information or assistance, Dan encourages reaching out through his consulting firm, BrunerSierraGroup.com, and subscribing to his weekly newsletters focusing on security awareness.

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Notable Quotes Summary:

• "It's a transnational criminal organization... They are an organization based out of Venezuela with the support of the Maduro government..." – Dan Brunner, [06:34]
• "They are committing crimes all throughout South America and now moving into the United States... They're pushing Venezuelan young girls to strongholds like Bozeman, Montana." – Dan Brunner, [07:11]
• "Bozeman is probably the epicenter for the TDA in Montana... they're probably not even seeing it." – Dan Brunner, [07:56]
• "If you can't say more than 'ho cha, serve,' you're not going to get anywhere with these communities." – Dan Brunner, [40:36]
• "Ms. 13 was very strict. You don't do something on behalf of the gang without getting approvals... that's how it moved." – Dan Brunner, [74:37]
• "We're going to make it through these next eight years. We will survive." – Dan Brunner, [116:03]

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Listen to the full episode on Cleared Hot to delve deeper into Dan Brunner’s experiences and his strategic approaches to combating Tren de Aragua.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Morning, everybody. Hope you had a pretty awesome Thanksgiving. This comes out on Monday, which I think is Cyber Monday, so it's going to be madness. If you didn't get enough on Black Friday. Talking about that, let's get into who makes this episode possible. Everybody knows the answer to that question. It's black Rifle coffee. Let's head to the website. It looks like they still have a Black Friday sale going on right now because this is being recorded on Sunday, the day before the episode comes out. So 30% off site wide. I bet you that is going to last for Monday as well. Let's see what we got here. 70% off. Select items. The ID me customers. Those are for military members or people who can verify our government id. Apparel gear, coffee bundle samplers, all these things. From now until the end of the year, it's going to be me talking to you about gifts for people in your life who either like black raffle coffee or like the brand. Maybe they like coffee and they don't even know about the brand. I am on a recommend. Let's just start here. A bundle or a sampler. Let's go to the sampler. $22.99. Four bags of coffee. Looks like they're a little bit smaller than the 12 ounce bag, but you're exposing them to the brand. What do we got here beyond black? Just black AK and silence to smooth. Those are great roasts. I have all of those for sale at the coffee shop. And let's just say maybe you want to get them something that they can make their coffee in. We're in the equipment section right here. And I mean you could just go to town. So think about Christmas now because it, I mean, this is December 1st. As I'm recording this, I don't even know how this works. I mean, I know how a calendar works, but at the same time, it's a wild thing to me that we're into December and that's it. Best thing people can do to support the podcast is support the brand that helps bring me or brings me here to the studio. I actually brought myself. But it allows me to bring the episodes to everybody. Yeah, they provide me the economic ability to make this podcast to provide it to people for free. So best way you can support me is to support them. My guest for today is Dan Bruner. He and I connected over email, but it was over the originally the topic of Trend Aragua, which is a Venezuelan gang, that I did an episode of Change Agents about working with Ironclad, the company that I work with to produce change agents. Dan, 20 years in the FBI, anti cartel operations largely out of the New Jersey area. Very steeped in knowledge and experience, not only in tda, but other cartel associated gangs, individuals, how they're put together, their network, how they're coming into the country, how they are structuring what they do inside of the country that ties back to their home of origin. Pretty wild. And there was this article that came out and it was either 13 or 16 states that TDA or Trend Aragua is active in Montana, my home state is one of them. And Dan lives in Bozeman and he bases his business out of Bozeman. I think that's probably the epicenter for the TDA in Montana and it is directly in front of people and they're probably not even seeing it. So why would I not host a former FBI agent? Well, between the last two Mondays, we have 45, 50 years of experience at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Very different trajectories, obviously. Chris Piotta, last week's guest, went a different direction. Dan, specifically focusing on the Jersey area organized crime cartel. And let's just get into it. Episode number 363 with Dan Bruner. Enjoy.

[A]

Okay, got the red smoke.

[B]

Sun runs north and south.

[A]

West of the smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on with it, baby. Give it to me. I mean it.

[B]

I don't know. We did like two and a half hour episode yesterday and afterwards he's like, hey, you know, just the videos were turning on and off. Like, dude, tell me during. It's not like this is live. We could have fixed it. Even though my tech skills are horrible. Dan, where do we begin? How about that? I just saw the. I'm just going to call it a tweet because I feel like saying an X is dumb.

[A]

You know, I was just listening. I was listening to one of the other podcasts where he was like, what is it called now that it's on X? Is it a tweet? Is it a tweet?

[B]

Sketchier.

[A]

Tweet. Sketchier. Everybody knows that. Everybody still knows that she.

[B]

Is he a congressman or senator?

[A]

Elect senate. He is senator elect.

[B]

Okay. And he tweeted about the trend. What was it, 13 or 16 states that they are in now?

[A]

16 confirmed.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think that number is a lot. I think that number's a lot bigger.

[B]

It wouldn't surprise me. And our lovely state of montana happened to be on the northern edge. I think they had highlighted them in orange. You actually, I saw you hopped on there.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Saying, hey, I know a thing or two, so maybe reach out. So that's current as of yesterday. What the hell is trend? Aragua. Are you pissing in a bottle over there, Michael?

[A]

It's this pipe behind me. Okay.

[B]

But also, yes, I'm in the bottle. I wouldn't have been upset with you if you are, because of the dedication to your job. But I heard what sounded like pissing into a gatorade bottle, and I didn't want to look. But also, I had no choice.

[A]

But here's the trick is. This is what you get. Here's the trick. We used to do this when I was in the. When I do surveillance, you keep a detergent bottle, a laundry detergent bottle with a little bit of soap at the bottom and a big, wide top.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Gatorade bottle is traditionally. But the trick is you don't want the smell in your car. So you keep a tide bottle that was almost empty. Use that. Not to mention, you could probably use that two or three times before you have to empty it.

[B]

That makes sense. The number one rule, too, is always use bottles that have a different circumference opening.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Because being confused on that. I have never drank my own piss, but I have been in the room when other people accidentally had.

[A]

You're not gonna accidentally drink from a tide bottle.

[B]

And you're not. So write that down, Michael. Two different size bottles. All right, so trend. So break this down.

[A]

So trend is a venezuelan, and everybody calls it a gang, but I'm not calling it a gang. It's a transnational criminal organization.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And here's why is. They are. They're not just a street gang. They're not just, you know, kids on the street and, you know, you know, just operating, you know, a little bit of theft here and there. They are an organization based out of Venezuela with the support of the maduro government and that they're committing crimes all throughout south america and now moving into the United states.

[B]

What do they specialize in, crimes wise?

[A]

Well, a lot of what they do is. Is what you would call, you know, what Ms. 13 had been doing for years. But they have Just elevated it to the next level. They're working human trafficking, obviously, smuggling, bringing young girls up here. They're bringing Venezuelans, legitimate Venezuelans that want to live and have a good life up here. They're trafficking them up here. They're having those people move narcotics, weapons through the border into the United States. And those young girls are being pushed to Venezuelan strongholds where there's Venezuelan communities such as Bozeman, such as other areas of Montana.

[B]

Was that also the gang associated with the Colorado apartment complex?

[A]

Yeah. So here's the thing that a lot of people in the United States don't understand is everybody's like, oh, you know, they took over an apartment building and that was, you know, we can go into like half an hour of how fucked up that was, that situation Aurora was and how the government of Aurora Colorado tried to. Oh, nothing to see here. Nothing to see. Like in the Naked Gun where the fire is burning. Nothing to see. Nothing to see. When actually yeah, there was, yeah, there.

[B]

Was actually a lot of ring cam footage to see.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That was pretty terrifying.

[A]

Oh, absolutely. But here's the thing is this is not a new thing for trend. They were doing this in Chile years ago. They were doing this in Chile years ago, taking over apartment buildings. There are apartment buildings, entire floors of buildings that were taken over by members of TDA and they were extorting, they were conducting homicides, they were drug trafficking. And then when those individuals of TDA are discovered or they were being indicted by the Chilean law enforcement pdi, when PDI moved in and charged them, TDA then picked those members up and moved them and they would be end up here in the United States. So now you have experienced gang members moving into these Venezuelan communities which are largely large amount in one of the numbers I like to say is 10% rule. For me it's the 10% rule. You got 15 million, 10% of them are people with nefarious acts. You know, I feel like that's fair. Right. And so you've got 90%, you have a huge Venezuelan communities here in the United States and you put one member of TDA inside this organization or these communities and then you're going to be finding, not to mention 12, 13, 14 year old kids who aren't doing anything, they're not employable on the streets. And not to mention these members are using the same tactics that el salvador that ms.13 did. Find a family member, figure out what families they have back in Venezuela and say you're going to give me 10% of your take home Pay or else someone in Venezuela will get a visit from our TDA members. And those Venezuelans here who are working legitimately, they have, they don't have a choice. They're illegal, you're in this country illegally. So they're not going to go to law enforcement, they don't trust law enforcement. So they'd rather just pay. So that goes on constantly. So you got sex trafficking, weapons trafficking, drug trafficking, extortion, prostitution. And they're all taking notes from the Chilean organized crime. And one of the suspicion is the recent break ins to the homes of Mahomes and Travis Kelsey. The individuals that were breaking into that homes were heard speaking Spanish. So they were overheard speaking Spanish. They were in and out in five minutes. So they knew where they were going. And this was a coordinated attack. So one of the considerations, what they're thinking about is this was the South American theft group which has been working, you know, here in the United States for years. It's a Chilean organized crime that sends tourists, Chilean individuals to the United States, commit the thefts and then bring the proceeds back to Chile. Well now they're saying that the Venezuelans have been taking that and making it their own doing what they've learned. So they, a lot of times they. So we all know Travis Mahomes who's got video and ESPN follow them through their home and that's the intelligence they all these people need.

[B]

They know, okay, yeah, they're doing the recce forum, right?

[A]

That's the room that we know and that's why I tell all my clients is saying listen, get your homes off the Internet.

[B]

And also don't let news crews fucking walk through.

[A]

Don't let news crews.

[B]

This is where I keep my diamonds and here's my non serialized firearms.

[A]

That's exactly what they're doing, right? That's exactly what they're doing. They're just saying here's a silver platter, here's my home. Oh by the way, I won't be home on this date because I'm gonna be in Seattle.

[B]

Yeah, my travel was available for the Internet to look at.

[A]

So they were in, they were out five minutes because they knew what they were doing and they were overheard speaking Spanish. So there's been a lot of discussion of whether they're South American theft group or this is the TDA work. So TDA has artificially spread through this country in the last year and a half, two years. I worked Hispanic gang crime for 15 years with the FBI in New Jersey. I know Ms. 13, I know Trinitarios I know TDA. In March of last year, in 23, I went to a conference. While I was still with the Bureau, I went to a conference where a lot of South American countries were there. And we were there to talk about a new gang called Trend and their spread as they moved through South America. And they were barely in the United States. Texas, Florida, a little bit of presence, but they hadn't spread. And there's only one thing that I could say to show the reason why they spread so rapidly was the immigration at the border. And that's the only reason. I mean, nothing spreads that fast artificially. This was, you know, they let in millions of people across the border.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And this is the result. Well, now it's too late. They're here. Now we have to deal with it. We have to attack them head on. So, yeah, I've. I've heard that they were in Montana probably like seven or eight months ago, but I wasn't comfortable in putting it out there.

[B]

Why Bozeman of all places?

[A]

I mean, it's probably construction. Construction.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

There's a huge Hispanic community. Huge Hispanic community. Mexicans, Hondurans and Venezuelans are the.

[B]

As far as the manual label for the construction that's going up there.

[A]

Yeah. A lot of construction in Big Sky. A lot of construction at the Yellowstone Club.

[B]

Jesus. We were literally watching a YouTube video about the housing disparity in Montana. Minutes before I came and picked you up, they were talking about those two specific areas.

[A]

Yeah, no, no, no. The number of construction, you know, you know, sites that are all going up and they're constantly still going up, and it's just. It's baffling us. It's just like how they're building so much and it's. They're creating so much infrastructure that, that these general contractors are bringing in everybody. They're bringing in anything. And that's the thing that scares me, is that they're hiring anybody. Okay. And especially with situations like the Yellowstone Club up in Big sky, you're dealing with high money, you're dealing with actors, sports event, you know, sports athletes and stuff like that. And the people who are building the houses are just saying, hey, general contractor, I need you to build this house. Okay? General contractor turns around and says, I need 15 guys to work with me. They're trusting the general contractor to make the right decision. That general contractor doesn't want, doesn't care about the, you know, what backgrounds they are, whether they're MS.13, TDA or other organized crime gang units. So you've got, you know, quite a bit of criminal activity. Again, 10% rule. 10%, vast majority of these, of migrants. Like I said, my parents were immigrants to this country. My mom's from Chile, my dad's from Argentina. Vast amount of people are good people looking to earn a better opportunity here in this country. But the 10% rule of 15 million, that's a shitload of people.

[B]

So if they're allowed to get their hooks in up here. Let's just use Bozeman as a hypothetical. What does that look like? Targeted approaches, targeted theft. I mean, like the things that you talked about. Are they going to try to burrow into an apartment complex in the Bozeman area, Same extortion? What would you estimate that it would look like or hypothesize?

[A]

I think that my theory would be that it's going to be very similar to the environment. So obviously Bozeman has a very small footprint. Population 70,000, 80,000, something like that. So to dominate a apartment complex within the Bozeman area is probably going to get a lot of attention.

[B]

More so than Aurora, which has got.

[A]

A larger population, huge community, huge Hispanic community. People that need to remain silent. So I don't believe that that's we're going to see the apartment. I think we're going to see a lot more subverted, covert, quiet type of criminal activity. You know, having a house of prostitution of young girls in within the Hispanic community. You know, the Hispanic workers come back, they take advantage of that and they work it. Obviously, there's a lot of narcotics on the reservation. We know that. We know that the CEJNG and Sinaloa are in the area, which is wild.

[B]

They chose those as their base of operations. But then if you look at it from a 30,000 foot view, pretty fucking smart.

[A]

But here's the other thing is intelligence that I've gotten is that that those are the two cartels that TDA works with, is CJNG and Sinaloa. So the fact that they are here and that CJNG and Sinaloa also have this territory doesn't surprise me. So, you know, I sent you that photograph. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna say why, you know, why I identified that. But you can see these. It was in plain, plain view.

[B]

I made it almost. Yeah, I was gonna. I'm not gonna say what it said either, but. Because it just said what it said.

[A]

Right, right. But somebody like I said, of our, of our world.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, we're able to see that and go, oh, and when I show that photograph to other people who, you know, don't. Aren't familiar with this world.

[B]

Yeah, that's going to go, right?

[A]

They're like, oh, no, that's. That's what that means. No, no, that's not what it means. That's. That's our identifiers.

[B]

So where you and I are sitting right now, I think we're 54 miles from the Canadian border. How you know, for the TDA in Venezuela also, I kind of want to work the way back on how loosely or tightly connected they would be to the controlling aspects of it in Venezuela. Who is at the top of the tda? Is it a group of people? Are we talking one dude sitting on top of a heap of cocaine and money? Because that's how I imagine it.

[A]

Well, it depends on where you look at the hierarchy and the command structure. So the Colombian authorities just detained, just arrested the number two man which is supposedly on the totem pole. He was in Colombia, in Santander, Colombia. So the Venezuelan TDA doesn't necessarily sit in Venezuela. You've got leadership that are everywhere. And the exact structure, it depends on who you talk to. Insight.com is excellent resource. I know you've had Sean on here. I talk to him regularly, like I said. Really? It depends on which way the wind blows. But I know that they're very tight with the President Maduro and his organization, his government there, to the point where I've understood is that he's given them a number of gold mines that for them to mine. He just says, here, take this gold mine and this. You know, it's being, it's happening in Colombia too, and other countries. So it's not just Venezuela, not against tda, but other criminal organizations are literally taking over gold mines that are in the, in the, in the hills. So supposedly TDA has a couple gold mines that he said, you mine it, you sell it, it's yours. So TDA takes that gold, moves it to the United States and Europe, sells it, and then returns that profit and proceeds into the organization. So it's literally a circle that they're taking gold from Venezuela under Maduro's approval, but then in turn they have to do Maduro's bidding. So in Chile, about a year ago, there was a lieutenant from the Venezuelan government, Venezuelan army, excuse me, and he had fled to Chile to hideout. He was a staunch opposition to Maduro. He was a lieutenant in the army. And obviously he would be Persona non grata in Venezuela. So he fled to Chile. TDA found him in Chile, captured Him, tortured him, excuse me, kidnapped, tortured and then murdered him, obviously in very plain sight. Those individuals, I think, are still being, they're still on the run. A couple have been taken into custody in other countries. But the fact is TDA did this. So it's not that, you know, he did anything wrong to the tda. Tda, you know, was doing the bidding of Maduro. Is there anything clear to, to lock that in? Of course not, because we're not going to get to, into Venezuela. Yeah, but where there's smoke, there's fire. I mean, it's there. So you've got now, I would guess somewhere between three to 5,000 members of TDA, I think here in the United States. I think that's a, a relatively good number.

[B]

And what was the conference you went to where they were just getting a footprint?

[A]

That was in South America, in Ecuador when I went. That was in March of last year. Fuck yeah, that was in March of last year. That's just one year. And now we got three to 5,000 members. But that doesn't include, you got all the kids in New York City, you know, all these 13, 14, 15 year olds who are in the Roosevelt Hotel getting recruited because they're not doing anything. So what are they going to do? Especially with, you know, the arrest procedures at NYPD and you know, the da, they're not charging the kids with anything.

[B]

So you should unpack the Roosevelt Hotel. I didn't, that didn't hit my radar until relatively recently. I don't think most people even know what you're talking about when you say that.

[A]

So the Roosevelt Hotel is a very. Used to be. Excuse me, used to be a very, very nice hotel in New York City. I lived in New York City for three years. So I was FBI Newark, New Jersey for 20 years, but I lived in the city for three years with my girlfriend now wife Christine. So we lived in Upper east side. So we got to see this firsthand. The Roosevelt Hotel is a beautiful building that got turned over by the administration of New York City and turned it into a migrant hotel for migrants coming to the United States when they got shipped from the border straight to New York City. And then they just had. They needed to put them somewhere. So New York City said, here, here's the keys to the hotel. And that New York, that entire hotel has turned into a migrant stronghold. You literally have videos on YouTube, you can look at it, that you can't get in there unless you're one of the migrants. You can't get in if you're A reporter, they don't support it. There's. I just saw a video yesterday of a kid who does these type of interviews and he confronted a. Looked like maybe somewhere around 13 or 14 years old coming out, speaks to him in Spanish and he says hey, are you. You know, and he starts flipping gang signs and everything like that. And he asks him about, you know, you know, the 42nd street member of TDA. So there's supposedly, I don't remember exactly what it's called. El Hombre or Nino de Corentedos, the kid of 42nd street and who is supposedly TDA. And they go out and do crimes along in Times Square. They do robberies, pickpocket, jewelry theft, you know, any type of crime. But they're not getting charged by nypd. They may get a ticket or a citation and then they're released and they're back at the hotel that night.

[B]

Are you able to find any good stuff about the Roosevelt Hotel, Michael? Any images or videos?

[A]

Oh yeah, a lot of videos here.

[B]

Let's see what you got. I just. It blows my mind that this is not openly talked about more. I would like to think that it's not suppressed or maybe there's so much going on in the world that people. It just doesn't hit the top of the news cycle.

[A]

I think it's become such like the norm. It's kind of like eh, Silver Roosevelt Hotel, you know a. It is what it is. Yeah, there you go. I mean this was five months ago.

[B]

Hit play on that, Michael. Yeah.

[A]

It's been dubbed by the city as a new Ellis Island. The Roosevelt Hotel was turned into a migrant arrival center in May 2023 and.

[B]

Became the one stop shop where newly.

[A]

Arriving migrants could get information 247 about what to do and where to go next. Since its arrival center opened its doors.

[B]

Around a year ago, it has welcomed.

[A]

More than 150,000 migrants from 160 different countries.

[B]

Holy.

[A]

Warm meals at the cost of the taxpayers. Let's just make sure we remember that. Since its inception. He says once migrants arrive they are quickly registered. We ask for your name, the size of your family, give you wristband for the wood. We know and have line of sight.

[B]

Into everybody in the building now.

[A]

Come on.

[B]

Migrants are led to a room that.

[A]

Is set up as a health care clinic. Every migrant is screened for any disease they might have contracted along the way, offered medical assistance, screened for depression and are able to get vaccinated. City officials say that so far they.

[B]

Have administered more than 70,000 vaccines.

[A]

Enable us to Enroll kids in school almost instantly upon one day live in York City.

[B]

After this, migrants are connected to a.

[A]

Case manager who will help them decide next steps.

[B]

If they want to connect with family.

[A]

Or friends in a different state, the.

[B]

City will help them get there.

[A]

If they need a shelter bed, the city will then assign them to a shelter site and help them get started.

[B]

Are they staying in the hotel itself as well?

[A]

That's. Yeah, that's where they sleep and stay. Yeah.

[B]

Because all of this is just like the first floor.

[A]

Correct.

[B]

Where they could probably.

[A]

It all looks great for the media. It always looks good for the news. And then when you go upstairs, there's no, you know, first floor supervisor. There's no. It's just here. Here's a building, here's your rooms, and we see. I mean, you look at.

[B]

What's that picture, Michael? That one or the one to the right of it?

[A]

Yeah, this is just the outside. Yeah, that's outside the hotel.

[B]

Fuck.

[A]

Yeah. No, it's bad. I mean, it's really, really bad in New York City. My wife Christine lived in New York City for 16 years. She loves New York City. And she's saying, I wouldn't go back because of what's happened since the de Blasio administration. And then obviously, Mayor Adams kind of is balancing. He's on the fence and he's been charged federally for some crimes. But de Blasio took it in this direction. Mayor de Blasio took in this direction, and he completely has sent this and created this environment. But here, this is just one example. This is the Roosevelt Hotel that I know. I'm sure it's happening in Chicago. We've seen stories in Chicago, Denver, other sanctuary cities where this is happening. And you don't have. Okay, sure. What he said. Okay. They give us their names. Okay, my name's Pablo Hernandez. They're not going to have id. They're not going to have anything. Why would they give that? Not to mention what you mentioned on one of your other pot with the other clared hots a couple weeks ago was the notice to appear. They get the encounter at the border.

[B]

It's in the mid-2020.

[A]

It's 10 years.

[B]

It's in the mid-2030s.

[A]

In 2015, when I was working right at the height of my MS.13 gang work, notice two appears were nine years out. That was in 2015.

[B]

And then let's add the stat to that. It's less than 1% of people actually.

[A]

Appear when they receive a PA. Why would they?

[B]

I honestly can't Give you a good reason why they would, especially 10 years down the road.

[A]

And they're never at the address which they give. The border. They never give that.

[B]

Well, they give them a wristband, though. Let's not bl. Let's not gloss over that.

[A]

They do. Yes, I'm sure that wristband is. Sure that wristband is very well kept. As soon as they walk out that facility. God.

[B]

Okay, so. All right, let me see if I'm understanding this. So from wherever they're coming from, wherever the origin. And this is another thing I was talking with Michael about, too. The Lake Riley case. I believe that's her name. It was murder. That's in Georgia, right?

[A]

Michael Lake and Riley, I believe so.

[B]

I'm stepping on my dick with giving bad information. I am almost positive that that's not that big. Yeah, it's metaphorical.

[A]

All right.

[B]

Just come along for the ride. Michael, I'm almost positive that individual has flown directly into the United States. From where? I'm not exactly sure. But it's not. It wasn't an issue of somebody coming to a point of entry at the southern border or the northern border and then working their way in. The government. The taxpayer flew that individual directly in. And so I'm assuming this is whether they get bussed or flown, however it is they come here, let's say they do check in. Is there any level of idea or understanding or oversight of. Cool. Check in, get your wristband, your kids get enrolled in school. But what do. What if you just poof and vaporize the following.

[A]

Yeah, there's absolutely no oversight. Yeah, that person could absolutely go, poof. Get a nice meal for a week and then go. I'm gonna head out to New Jersey where my cousin is, and, you know, go work construction out there. And then they just completely disappear because, okay, great, you gave your name, but you don't have a cell phone, you don't have ID you don't have Social Security, none of that. There's no form when they check in. I'd like to know what's next. Okay, they've checked in. Great. Then what? Okay, you put a name that necessarily is their name on a piece of paper. But here's the other problem, is when there's the encounter at the border. A lot of countries, like you said, Venezuela, Cuba, we don't have a relationship with. So we can't check them. So we don't know how many Venezuelans have come in who are members of TDA because we can't run a background check, not to mention There are millions of migrants coming across the border. We're not gonna be calling Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, saying, hey, how about this name? How about this name? How about this name? So it's just an enormous amount. And, you know, my partner on a lot of these Ms. 13 cases was an ICE ERO officer, you know, deportation officer. So he and I worked hand in hand on a lot of these ms.13 cases. He would tell me the stories of, you know, how he was in 2018, 2019, at the border, and it was 30,000 a day. And he'd just be like, yep, here, boom, print. Okay. And this was years ago, so I can't even imagine. And these. There were 15 million encounters in the. During the Biden administration. I don't know how many weren't encountered.

[B]

Yeah, because it doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't put into perspective the gotaways.

[A]

Right?

[B]

It's. Do you think either political party is telling the truth about what's going on at the border?

[A]

No, I think neither. Neither. I think the. No, I think the Republican Party is telling the truth as to what is going on at the border, because that's the truth. And that's the truth hurts the Democratic Party. I mean, it hurt the Biden administration. Clearly, she lost. That was one of the things that.

[B]

I think it was probably one of the major things.

[A]

It was one of the major things. And, you know, I said that when. When she picked Waltz as her running mate, I stood there and I said, I mean, I couldn't believe that she didn't pick a Navy captain, senator out of Arizona who's on the border. What more sign of strength would that be? But you went with Tim Waltz. I'm like, okay. Not to mention the hundred other mistakes the Democratic Party made in this election. But the Republicans just ran with the truth, and they're saying, this is how bad it is down there. Now, I think that there's a difference between what's on the media. Where I talked with Sean, he was on your other podcast, Change Agents. Change Agents, Right. And his information is from the media, which is you gotta be careful with what you see on the media, because CNN barely reports Trende Aragua, whereas Fox News and New York Post have it on there every other day.

[B]

Alien heavy.

[A]

Right. So you have to find where the middle is. But what New York Post and Fox News are talking about is fairly the truth. Because like I said, I was a street agent for 20 years. I never became a supervisor. And I loved working cases, so I loved being on the streets, working the streets. Of New Jersey and talking to these migrants and immigrants and people in the El Salvadorian community and the Honduran community and the Guatemalans. And I got to know them very well, and I got to know what the truth is and what the reality is. What you see in the media is 50% of the truth. The other half is what I try to get out and saying, listen, we need to talk about the truth of how bad it is out there. We need to talk about how bad it is that TDA has spread to a number of states, and up until this week, we never. Montana was never on the map up until this week. I knew seven months ago that TDA was in Montana, so they've been here for seven months. But I wasn't. You know, it's not my position to make a statement out there like that to say they're here in Montana without a possibly jeopardizing, you know, law enforcement action, you know, that, you know, the Gallatin County Sheriff's office or Bozeman PD may be doing or the state. So I didn't want to put that out there, you know, just, you know, jeopardize something that they're working on. Because if. If TDA became aware that we're aware, then they may change their tactics. And obviously, I didn't want to jeopardize that. But this is definitely. I mean, this is. This is the tip of the iceberg.

[B]

Right now, which is insane. I mean, using the iceberg metaphor, you know, 90% of an iceberg is underwater. 10% is what you see. Yeah, I don't.

[A]

But here's the thing is, okay, we're talking about, you know, Trend Aragua. That 10% is not all TDA. That 10% is not MS.13. That 10% is people who are against the US interests. So we're talking Chinese, Iranians, you know, other. Other Northern Korean, you know, from North Korea. So we're talking a lot of other individuals of foreign nations who have clearly subverted our system and entered the United States and are here with this director A. The FBI clearly stated about a year ago, the red lights are. They're spinning. I mean, they're flashing because, you know, we are in a position. They just arrested. They just charged a guy, I want to say, this morning, for planning to bomb the New York Stock Exchange. They arrested him this morning. FBI just unsealed an indictment that he was planning. He had explosives and was getting ready to detonate and conducted an attack on the New York Stock Exchange before Thanksgiving. Fortunately, he was talking to undercover FBI Agents.

[B]

Dumbass. What do we got here?

[A]

Yeah, this was this morning.

[B]

Michael, that's Moana.

[A]

Yeah. I can't control that.

[B]

Florida man arrested Wednesday reboot the US government by planting a bomb at the New York Stock Exchange. I hate to tell you buddy, but those servers are not going to be destroyed. Even if you destroyed the stock exchange, no information would be lost. Not a fucking shred of it. Oh man, I'm going to.

[A]

But here's the.

[B]

Here's Haran Abdul Malik Yener. That is a fucking mouthful of Florida. Well, by way.

[A]

By way of floor.

[B]

Yeah. Charged an attempt to use an explosive device to damage destroy building. He began investigating in Feb. Okay, so it sounds like this year based on a tip he was storing bomb making schematics. Interesting. In a storage unit they found sketches many watches with timers, electric circuit boards and other electronics could be used for building explosive devices. He told an undercover FBI agents he wanted to detonate the bomb the week before Thanksgiving. And the stock exchange. God.

[A]

Yeah. Yep. And here's the crazy thing, all right. This guy's clearly a moron. Did something stupid either. Posted online and then brought the attention.

[B]

Dozen people who aren't morons.

[A]

Exactly. That's what worries me. And that's what Director A was talking about is that's the red light is this guy was a moron. The one that scares me is the lone wolf. You know like the San Bernardino shooting from a couple years ago. The husband, wife.

[B]

That one was wild because they never actually interacted other than online with the ideology that radicalized them. I had that one of the cops in here. I think he. He was in the. I think he shot the husband. But it was awesome. They respond. Not that the situation was awesome by any stretch, but he was talking about just the carnage and what they did. And they ended up getting in a gunfight in. In the road. But yeah, they got. They got radicalized over the Internet, which is.

[A]

That's. That's 21st century.

[B]

That's even another step.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Removed.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The lone wolf.

[A]

I mean that's what scares me.

[B]

So now. I mean through the lens of. It's been an interesting few weeks. Obviously the election I think surprised 50 of people. Cool. Whatever. We're all going to be okay. Even though some people are legitimately melting down. Ellen DeGeneres. I don't know if you caught that.

[A]

You saw that move to England.

[B]

England. In a move that nobody gives a shit about, but yet somehow is mainstream media. Go live your life wherever you want.

[A]

De Niro and Bruce also threaten. I Think De Niro was supposedly going to pack up and Bruce Springsteen was going to pack up. And a lot of people, a lot of. A lot of these artists threatened them.

[B]

Like, listen, if anybody gives a shit.

[A]

This will be in the news for five minutes, and then tomorrow we're going to be talking about something else.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You really want to make a difference. You don't agree with the election, that's perfectly fine. But if you didn't vote, don't say anything. You don't have. You don't have a leg to stand on. But this is how elections work. This is how this country voted in our country voted to bring in the Republican administration. Clearly across the board.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, so the new borders are. I'm going to. I'll paraphrase my words, not his, for clarity. It's essentially the dildo of justice is coming, and it's not lubed.

[A]

So, yeah, pretty much.

[B]

And it is melting people down. There are mayors of sanctuary cities already coming out and saying, we will not provide assistance in any way. I've even seen one report. And I need to dive into this a little bit more, where a mayor essentially said that they would deploy their local law enforcement to impede the federal agents in their attempt to stop deportation. I guess. And my point, all this is. So there's a very interesting checker or chessboard out in front of you of moves being made.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Do you think it's even. I mean, first, it's like you're in a canoe and you're only worried about shoveling water out. And meanwhile, there's still the hole where the water's coming in. So first you have to. Again, I'm not an expert in canoes, but a. Stop the hemorrhaging.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

In using the canoe analogy. Right. Stop the water coming in and then find a bucket to start clearing the water out so the boat doesn't sink. Do you think that's even possible with the immigration, really?

[A]

No. No, I don't think. Based on what the Trump administration proposed, you know, mass deportations, again citing one of your previous podcasts there. It can't. It's not possible. It's not.

[B]

What are you listening to over there?

[A]

That was an accent.

[B]

Standard deviation. What video do you have pulled up?

[A]

Nothing. Well, now you gotta show it.

[B]

Yeah. What is it? What were you watching?

[A]

It's 65 Creedmore versus 308 Winchester.

[B]

Is this just what you're watching over there while we're talking?

[A]

I don't quite remember how I got to this. It was a natural Evolution.

[B]

All right, that's fine. I support it. That's an interesting topic for me. 6.5 Creedmoor and 308 are a very different round. Aim soft tissue with 6.5 Creedmore, 308 might punch bone. It's fine.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No, I don't think it's possible to do what he is proposing, you know, at the millions. I think you had brought out the stats. Like if we deport 2,000 a day, it'll take I don't know how many years to deport 50, you know, because.

[B]

I think some of it is a little. It's more rhetoricy to try to prepare people.

[A]

It's part of the campaign.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I don't even get that. I would say I don't know the man at all. I would have to imagine that he realizes what he is saying is practically impossible. I think he's just prepping people for the change and wind.

[A]

Yeah, listen, I think that there's. There's multiple layers of, you know, migrant. In the migrant community to go through. You've got all the criminal elements. That's the easy. Get them out.

[B]

How do you start there?

[A]

Right. Well, here's the thing, is where do you draw the line? So first of all, if you. If like the Lake and Riley murderer, he was sentenced to life without parole, so he's in US Jail for the rest of his life. All the people that I sent to jail in my years, they've gotten 20, 30 years typically, or some, some of them got mandatory life. So they're in federal prison for life.

[B]

Are they actually serving that though? Or is. But is there a little subject where.

[A]

That says 20, the federal sentence? If you're sentenced to life, you're doing life.

[B]

What if you're doing sentenced to 20, do you get out in 10 or is the sentence 20, 20 years?

[A]

So you'll get sentenced. The sentencing guidelines will say 20 to 30 years and then the judge will hand on the sentence at the trial.

[B]

But you're doing that many days.

[A]

You're doing that many days. Right. So you're doing that many months. So when you're. When you completed your sentence, you then are handed over to ICRO for deportation. You're already, it's already final order, deportation has already been been issued for you. So that guys are out. So they have to serve their time first. Everybody else will, you know, is deportable. So in other words. But we gotta find them. So if they're not in jail, they're on the streets, they've been Charged with assault. Where? In New York City. Say a TDA member was charged with assault. He's not gonna be held at Rikers. He'll get released pending the trial. Right, well, we need to go find those guys. So we've got those 1 million or so individuals that we can go find, but it's gonna take time to find them. Yeah, because here's the problem is A, we don't know where they are unless there's an active investigation on them. But B, the problem is members of their own community are not going to turn them in because let's say you go into the Venezuelan community, let's say one of the biggest hurdles for a law enforcement agent in to investigate these crimes, to investigate Hispanic crimes is the language barrier. Yeah, I speak Spanish as my first language, so I was, I was able to recruit sources, build a rapport with people. If you can't say, you know, ho cha, serve, or. And that's it, that's the extent of your Spanish, you're not going to get anywhere with these in this community. And that's why it's so difficult to conduct these investigations. That's why in the FBI, they lean heavily, the gang units have lean heavily towards Bloods and Crips. Bloods and Crips, those gangs. Because there's no language barrier.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The Hispanic organized crime is not looked at very. That's a lot of work. I mean, the FBI agents that I know, everybody's taxed, everybody carries five, six, seven cases. The U.S. attorney's office, they're hounded. Unless you have a certain threshold, I mean, unless it's $100,000 loss, U.S. attorney's office won't even touch the case. So it's fucking wild because they're so overworked. So getting to that point where you're inside the community, let's say hypothetically, you do you talk to a Venezuelan, you know, a restaurant owner, you say, you know, we're looking for this guy. She's not going to say anything. Sorry. She's not going to say anything. And here's why. Because she, if she goes, there he is over there. There's 19 other TDA members right next to him going, oh, you just deported my buddy.

[B]

Yeah, we'll see you when it's the least.

[A]

We'll see you. We'll see you later this evening at three in the morning. See if your restaurant is still standing there tomorrow morning. So she's not going to do it because she has her own self interests. So nobody's going to turn in these 1 million. But like I said, let's go back to the theory of the mass deportations. You don't have the infrastructure, you don't have the numbers. I think, you know, President Trump's proposal of deploying the military, I think that's also dangerous.

[B]

I think it's a horrible idea.

[A]

Horrible idea, because you're not asking military members to do law enforcement action, let.

[B]

Alone the fact that they're not trained or equipped.

[A]

They're not trained, they're not equipped. Deadly force policy, you know, all those. You're tons of questions before you even get to there. They're doing law enforcement action. You're seeing Humvees and military guys walking down the streets of Union City, New Jersey.

[B]

Yeah, nobody wants that.

[A]

Nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. So you, you go back to the deportation officers of icro. Let's say, okay, we're going to deputize FBI agents to do that. Okay, that's. But there's only 13,000 FBI agents. Not all.

[B]

I also feel like they're extremely busy.

[A]

They're extremely busy. They got a couple of things going on. So there's lots of things that have to be done before we get to that point of, okay, mass deportations, whether the hypothetical of building a camps and internment camps, which I think, and the 1798 situation, which President Trump is referring to, of the Legal Alien Act. But that's not going to work because we have to be in a state of war with that country, and we're not in a state of war with Mexico, Honduras and things like that. So there's a lot of things that need to be done. We're not going to be doing mass deportations in these next four years. He's got four years to do this. It'll take him one year minimum to spin up to get the resources in position. I think a lot of it was campaign rhetoric, you know, because that's what the people want. I get it. You're absolutely right. We need to get a hold on this. We need to lock down the border 100%. But getting rid of what's already here. Listen, I'm all ears to hear what the solution is and how the borders are. I think he's a great guy. I mean, Tom Holman, I think, in his name is.

[B]

Yeah, I believe so. Yeah.

[A]

I think if. Hey, go for it. I think it's. But it's going to be very, very difficult, if not impossible. I just don't see it happening.

[B]

We were talking about it on the podcast yesterday, and it was an interesting point brought up by the guest. And that is not in addition to the logistical obstacles, there is the optic. And what media, certain sections of the media are going to focus on are videos and pictures of women and children. And that will lead the news, even though that is a portion of the people that are going to get wrapped up in this. But that is going to be a continuous uphill, pushing the rock uphill, trying to fight against that social.

[A]

We're still talking about the cages at the border from years ago separating the fence. We're still showing those photographs of those videos and, and it's going to be.

[B]

Exactly the same, if not worse.

[A]

Right. And they're still going to be showing that and still going to be there. And I, you know, okay, we have, you know, control of every, both houses and the presidency and the Supreme Court, I get that. But that's still not going to change the freedom of speech. And CNN and msnbc, they're going to be talking about it. And you know, the next election cycle is in two years. So you don't want to, you know, push it the other way too quickly because you've got an election cycle in two years, you got a lot of senators, members of the House, and you don't want to lose because there's such a narrow margin.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So he has to balance it and going, okay, how far can I push this before getting to something like that which will push, you know, lose some senators or lose some members of the House and then he loses control of both houses.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So he's got to figure out what the balance is. Yeah.

[B]

I'll be curious to see which of the campaign promises are fulfilled. Even Doge, as an example, which horrible fucking name cracks me up. I mean, you know, Vivek and Musk, I don't know shit about either of them other than what you can, you know, read on the news. Open source, a great idea. I'm really, really curious to see how, though, what mechanisms are they going to use to accomplish this?

[A]

Listen, I mean, I spent 29 years working for the government since I was 21 years old. I spent nine years in the Navy, 20 years with the FBI. So I know, I've seen firsthand that there is waste, fraud and abuse and going, wait, what?

[B]

Even at a baseline level, bloated bureaucracy. Yes, let's start that there. Because the waste, fraud and abuse is, I think, at least corollary.

[A]

Well, I would look at that as wasteful. Yeah, you know, the bloatedness, I call that as wasteful. Let's, you know, let's use this appropriately and you know, the amount of money that is just getting dumped into different agencies. Listen, one of the things that I always say is hsi, Homeland Security investigation. So that's the investigative branch of Homeland Security. I've got some really good friends and I'm still very good friends to this day in HSI and there are some very, very good people in HSI. But you look at how HSI came to be. HSI was only created, I don't think 2008. So seven years after 9, 11, and they were getting dumped, Homeland Security was getting dumped. So much money. And one of the theories, what happens at the end of the fiscal year? What do all agencies do? Let's spend this money because we don't, if we don't want to give it back.

[B]

December was a great month at the commands that I was at because they would say, do you need 2,000 pairs of boots? Because we have enough money for 2,000 pairs of boots. Yeah, you use it or lose it.

[A]

Use it or lose it. And that's how in my theory, that's how HSI came to be. HSI does the same job that we do at the FBI. At the FBI, they same investigation, same tape, a little bit more. You know, there's some changes to differences but if you look at it on paper, we essentially do the same job.

[B]

How do they determine which organization does.

[A]

What then it's just whoever's there first. It literally comes down to that, who is there first. So example, the Aurora, Colorado, let's go back to that. HSI was the lead agency on that one. FBI was not so FBI. So I knew about Aurora about three months before it hit the media because the, the building owners reached out to me and they were like, hey, can you help us out? We know about your background, you know, Ms. 13, can you guide us, tell us what we should do, what we should do? I said okay. And they had told me that they had been in meetings with the FBI and that in those meetings the FBI said HSI is going to take it, we're good because it goes back to what I said before. FBI kind of like Hispanic crimes. We don't have this. We got enough to do with Bloods and Crips and the other English speaking gangs. So let HSI take it. And that's how that got punted to hsi. Now what HSI did, I don't know. And what FBI did, I don't know. But from what I understand is after it got in the media, FBI Denver was like, let's start a task force. Let's get these guys. Well, that's not what you said back in June. You know, so there's, you know, each FBI division, you know, works the crimes in their area, their aor, and they take their marching orders from FBI headquarters. So whatever decisions were made at FBI Denver, they have, you know, he has his whole, the SAC and the ASACs look at the whole spectrum of work. And they made that decision of saying, okay, we'll give that to HSI for whatever reason. But it's something that FBI Denver could have worked if they wanted to. So that's what I'm showing is you've got two agencies that are doing the same thing. And that's where I look at it as just like were spending millions of dollars for hsi and they're doing a good job, they're making cases because there's plenty of work to go around, there's plenty of federal crimes to go around. And that's why the U.S. attorneys are so overwhelmed, because there's just so, and there's such burnout at the U.S. attorneys. So I worked RICO cases, which are extremely, extremely complex cases for most of my career. And I did two RICO cases that went to trial, both of them successful. But to get a RICO case, you've got to find a U.S. attorney that you've got a good relationship with, you got good communication with and you got work in it for years. It's a year's investigation and U.S. attorneys, they're just, they're coming into the gang unit and they're spending a year there and then they're bouncing because, so they're getting their year into to the, to service and then they're out. So you're not finding the relationship to build the long term RICO case because then you got to spin up a new ausa. So it's a lot more complex, so it's a lot less RICO cases being worked. Not only AUSA is being moved out, but FBI agents who don't know rico, they don't know how to work a RICO case.

[B]

Why are they so complicated?

[A]

Well, a RICO case is you gotta find. So each individual conducts a racketeering, racketeering type of crime. So if you're a member of a gang and you commit a robbery and you steal something at the store just for yourself, that's not rico. But if you sell drugs or commit a robbery because that'll elevate your status in the gang or that money is moved back into the gang for their coffers to buy Guns to buy drugs to spread the fear of that gang. That's a racketeering charge. And I have to show two predicate acts. So if a MS.13 member in Union City, New Jersey shoots another guy in the head, I have to shoot that. The shooter was predisposed. So in other words, they had the conspiracy. Hey, let's talk about, let's go shoot that guy. And then he pulled the trigger. That's murder in the aid of racketeering. Because that shooter was looking to get his, his tattoo, to get his, you know, his status moved up in the gang. And he was spreading the fear of RICO, the fear of MS.13. Those are racketeering. But then, so getting somebody to. But we have to show that the individual is a member of the gang and did it for the gang. That takes time, that takes interviews, that takes flipping individuals. So that takes. So we had a homicide in Union City, New Jersey in 2015. We took the, we took them off the streets in late 2015 with a minor federal charge, but took them into custody to get them off the streets because they were. We didn't want them doing more crimes. We took us three years. We did the superseding indictment was until 2018.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

And that was three years that we had to just interviews, pressuring, you know, talking to individuals, getting the, you know, figuring out, you know, where the little tickets were and going through a motel to find a lift. One individual ticket where they checked into a motel on the way to conduct a homicide and to show that as proof. And then we would take that ticket to show it to one of the individuals that was in custody and say, hey, listen, you're looking at 30 years. Or you can flip. Because we got this little ticket showing that you checked into the hotel on such and such a day. And we have other people who are saying the same thing. And that's just talking and talking and talking. And so it took three years in 2018, superseding indictment. And then it was the trial because of COVID We didn't do the trial until 21. Yeah, 21. And then that's just the federal court system. And then we did six week trial and then they were all found guilty.

[B]

What kind of sentence you get off that type of stuff?

[A]

Murder in the interactary. Mandatory life if you're found guilty. Conspiracy to commit murder. I believe the sentencing guidelines is about 20 to 30 years. Somewhere in that range. I think that. And then other type crimes is somewhere between 10. So 10, 20, 30 years is for the guys that were part of the crew Leadership. A plea for the leaders would be somewhere in the 35 years, and that's if they pled guilty. If he went to trial, it was going to be mandatory life. But if you were to plead guilty to murder in the aid of racketeering, you're looking at 30 years.

[B]

Damn. How did you end up working for the Bureau? How'd you find your way there?

[A]

It was funny. So I joined the Navy in. Oh, no. 94. I went to OSA school.

[B]

Same.

[A]

Yes. Damneck. Beautiful place. So I spent five years at sea. I went on the Stark and the McInerney, two fast frigates out of Mayport.

[B]

How was the OS job? I never once saw a radar scope.

[A]

Loved it. It was the best. It really was.

[B]

Yeah, just in the cic. Just.

[A]

Yeah, I loved it. I loved being in. Being in the know so that we were there. We had the CO and the XO and we'd be in comms and communications. Listen, I never saw action. I was off the. I was off. Off the. I was off of a Rock in 94. We did meth crews, so we did Desert Shield, and we were just loitering just for. Waiting for a tanker attack or something like that. Never happened. But I loved it. I loved doing it. You know, I had some great OS1s under me, over me, excuse me, and, you know, watch officers and watch soups, and there's no way I would have learned as much as I did if not being in a fast frigate, if I'd gone to a carrier. You're doing that. That's it. But on frigate, you were doing firefighting, you're doing security, you're doing quarter deck watch. So you're doing a lot of different things on an ffg. So I had a lot of fun doing, you know, doing different jobs. And then after five years, I did four deployments in five years. And then I got shore duty and I went to the Naval Academy. I was at Annapolis for three years, where I finished my degree. So I'd started at Syracuse in 91. After a year and a half, Syracuse said, yeah, you can leave now. You can go now. Bye. Bye. There's the door.

[B]

It's not us.

[A]

It's you. Yeah, it's you and your grades. So we were not really happy about you. So it took me a couple years to be able to be comfortable with saying that, because that. Syracuse kicked me out, and it was just bad grades. It's just I wasn't, you know, applying myself. I wasn't going to class. I was just going to have fun. I was going to football games, basketball games.

[B]

It's the college wedding.

[A]

It was. And I just. And so after a year and a half, Syracuse said bye bye. And I joined the military to straighten my life out. Navy did that while I was at the Naval Academy at night. I did night school through the University of Maryland, finished my bachelor's degree. And then 911 happened. A couple months after 911 I went to, you know, I was contemplating should I re up. I was at nine years. So I was looking at either being an XO on an LCAC or going to be Air Intercept Control and AIC on a carrier. So those were the two billets that I was looking at if I was going to reenlist.

[B]

So were you going to switch from being enlisted to officer?

[A]

No, no, no, no. To be the XO. The XO and an LCAC. Your OS's.

[B]

No shit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you're what, six year mark? You're probably E6.

[A]

I was nine year mark. I was in E6 at the time. Yeah. So I was an OS1. I got my OS1 in Annapolis.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And then a few months after 911 I was like, I said I had my bachelor's degree and a senior chief said the best thing I went to him, I said, because I was looking at chiefs that were getting out. Chiefs and senior chiefs that were doing their 20 years and they were, they were getting out and they weren't doing anything. I mean, unless you're an officer, you're, you're nothing, you know, as soon as you get out. So I was like, what should I do? And senior chief said, get out. See what you can do with your, with your degree. That all right. So I was considering my options. FBI Baltimore was recruiting for new agents because they were pumping through right after post 9 11, they were pumping through 50 new agents every two weeks. So they came to the Naval Academy and I was a room full of commanders and lieutenant commanders and, you know, aircraft and you know, aviators, submariners, everything. And I'm just one enlisted guy in the room and I'm saying I don't have a chance. So she was talking about this and that and you know, figuring you're one accountants and you know, decorated warriors and everything like that. And she said, well, we're also looking for people that can speak languages. We're looking for Mandarin, Farsi, Hindu, Spanish. And I said, wait, what was that thing you just. What?

[B]

I'm not so good on the Mandarin. Farsi.

[A]

Yeah, the Spanish thing.

[B]

How much did he say? Spanish?

[A]

I think I could do that. I was like, all right, let me tell you. September 11, 2002. September 11, 2002, I took the phase one examination. And then.

[B]

Have you thought about the Bureau at all before that, or was it literally.

[A]

Oh, no. Yeah.

[B]

This moment in this room, it was.

[A]

No, no, no. I had been thinking about FBI, Secret Service, all those, but I thought they were just so far out of reach. I was kicked out. I've been kicked out of school. You know, obviously your degree.

[B]

No, I don't think anybody gives a shit once you get the degree.

[A]

Right. And that's the thing is. That's the thing is they don't care about what the GPA was. Do you have your experience and your degree?

[B]

They want to flip a page in the resume. Okay, cool. There's the degree. Moving on.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's exactly what my recruiter said. Hey, can you check this box? Yes. Good. All right, Moving on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I raised my hand, I said, yeah, I'll give it a shot. And then September 11, 2002, I took the phase one exam. And then September 7, 2003, I reported to Quantico. One year. Took it. Took back then it was. It was. That was fast.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now it's taking, I believe, a year and a half, two years for.

[B]

Did you know after you had graduated Quantico or I guess going into it, did you have any idea what your career path was going to look like or did you determine that later on?

[A]

So you get your orders week six, where you're going to be stationed. I knew Newark, New Jersey was going to be where. So everything. So in week one, you write down one through 56, every field division, where you want to go. It's your dream sheet, one through 56.

[B]

They don't. Why go to 56? Can you just do top three here?

[A]

No, they want the fuck. There's people that get 54, 55. I mean, they really get screwed. Whoever got the bottom of the pile in the class would get a cash pot. So we. Everybody threw in five bucks. Whoever was the worst pick would get the. The worst, you know, get at that.

[B]

That's fair. That's gonna help. At least round the edges, around the.

[A]

Edges a little bit.

[B]

You get shit faced one time, but you still gotta go there.

[A]

Newark was seventh on my list. I had one through 10. Everything in the Northeast, that's where my family was. So 1 through 10. And I. And so what you do is when you, you get your envelope with your orders in week six, you hand it up and go My number one pick is Boston, which was mine. I said, but I believe I'm going to blank. And I called it. I said, I believe, because I talked to the previous classes, and there was no Newarks. There was no Newark, New Jerseys. And I was like. And I was talking to other people in the class, and nobody had Northeast. And I was like. And my New York was way down. I did not want to be in New York City. So I was like, I believe I'm going to Newark, New Jersey. Newark, New Jersey. And that's it. And that's it. That's. So I spent 20 years in Newark. I reported there in January of 04, and everything was. Everything was it. Everything was international terrorism. So I got sent to an IT squad for four years, then was able to shift to a DT squad, domestic terrorism. And I did white supremacy, skinhead work, which is. New Jersey is one of the worst in the country.

[B]

Really.

[A]

Number seven. Yeah. Because there's such. Tell you what, New Jersey is one of the biggest variety of you. In North Jersey to South Jersey, you got clan. In West Jersey, near Trenton, you have skinheads, like your traditional skinheads down in Atlantic City.

[B]

Do those two get along?

[A]

They understand each other, but there's no, like, hey, let's, you know, let's party together.

[B]

You do your shit, we'll do our shit.

[A]

Because it's different type of people. I mean, your clans are. What people don't understand in New Jersey is you literally have, you know, the Northeast, northwest New Jersey, that's Pine Barrens. That's, you know, it's like people who.

[B]

Think New York is only the city.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Upstate's a touch different.

[A]

Right. So it's. It's. It's out there. And you got. That's why you have Oxford. You had a Klan, a Klavern in Oxford, New Jersey. It's no longer there, but you had Klan Western. In North Jersey, you had white nationalists. And down at the Jersey Shore, you had skinheads, your traditional boot stompers. In Atlantic City, you also had the Atlantic City skinheads. So acs. So you have a lot of different ones. So I spent four years and, you know, great partner of mine was the state of New Jersey, my Brian. And I worked a lot of those crimes for four years after that, I had to, you know, make a decision. I was like, where do I want to go? I wasn't being utilized for Spanish, but I really wanted to get into that world. And I got diagnosed with a brain tumor, so that kind of derailed things a little bit.

[B]

What got you in there to go even get a checkup.

[A]

So it's actually just a few days ago was the anniversary of 12 years. So I was, you know, dating my. So Christine and I had been dating a couple months, but I was suffering massive, massive headaches. And what I didn't know at the time were seizures. So I was, you know, losing.

[B]

When you were sleeping?

[A]

No, no, no. I'd be awake. I'd be like on the phone and I feel like my lips getting numb. But I thought it was just exhaustion.

[B]

I like where your head's at. Don't ever go to a trained medical professional. Nope, be a dude and suck it up. I thought it was just quietly in the corner.

[A]

Christine to this day says, so I suffered. I went through this for months. I ran a tough mudder with my sister with a brain tumor. And I didn't know. And then after the tough mudder, I had back to back episodes one after the other.

[B]

And for people listening who don't understand the statistics of why women live longer than men, we're kind of describing a few.

[A]

This is it right here. Christine saw me have one of those, you know, seizures, and she saw me and my hand went up like this, which it had never done. Like that?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then she said, what is that? I was like, what? No, it was nothing. It was nothing. I'm fine. I was just tired. And she has an uncle who has Parkinson's and another uncle who has ms, so she knows the science. So she said, no, that's a neurological. You need to go get that checked. So going along those lines of what you just said, I went. I made an appointment and then canceled it.

[B]

Fuck. Yeah.

[A]

And then I went, ran the tough mudder, had back to back episodes one after the next. And then I was like, all right, maybe it's something. So I went, got it checked. Neurology, she told me she's one of five things. Brain tumor, nothing, Mississippi. So it was a list of five things, only one of them was good. Whereas she goes, it could be just nothing. She goes, but it's probably one of the other four had an MRI on October 30th of 2012. The next day, Hurricane Sandy hit. Flooded out the MRI facility in New York City. So I didn't get the MRI results for 10 days. Then the neurologist calls me at my office in FBI Newark. And then she says to me, she's like, hey, can you come into my office? That's not good.

[B]

I didn't say, that is good. No, can you just tell me over the phone.

[A]

She's like, no, just come on in.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

And then. Which means.

[B]

That's great news.

[A]

So. Yeah, it was about the size of a racquetball and been growing 12 years right across the top of my head.

[B]

Was she at least impressed at how long you put it off?

[A]

She was not. No. No, she was not happy. And to this day, Christine does not like it. She's like, God damn it. You know, I saved your life.

[B]

So my wife says about my intestinal blockage. I keep telling her I think it would have been fine. It would have worked. It was a tummy ache.

[A]

Let's just say, hey, listen, just throw a couple Advil in there. You'll be fine, dude.

[B]

It would have been the. I would have been done 100 years ago.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or they would have taken a pitchfork and tried to relieve the blocked intestine that way. But either way. Yeah, she. She directly lied to me and said, hey, just let me drive, and we'll just work our way towards Salt Lake. And drove immediately to an emergency room, of which I'm laying on the emergency room floor profusely, obviously sweating within five minutes. And, yeah, to this day, see, I. I saved your life. I'm like, I don't think so. I was actually just playing along because I didn't want you to feel bad.

[A]

Yeah. So she. So we had the surgery. It was on the 16th of November of 2012. They literally scooped it out, popped it out of my head, and it was about the size of a racquetball. It'd been growing so much that it actually started growing out in a second direction.

[B]

Do you. I mean, I'm assuming you were completely unconscious for this.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[B]

We got. We got skill saw along the head.

[A]

So there's a. There actually is. There's actually a box where they just, you know, cut out of my skull.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because it was right at the top of the head. It was. Perfect spot. Okay, so you guys can. I've shaved my head.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You can see a little scar there.

[A]

So I've shaved. I shaved my head so much that I've gotten away. I've taken away this a lot of the scar, but they took a box out. You can actually feel the screws. My kids always be like, let me feel the screws, dad. And because they put a plate right on top of the. Of the. The skull part, the head cut, and they scooped it out.

[B]

That would have been your chance to get a dolphin fin or something. Like in. What's the one where the guy Michael he whistles and the arrow goes around. Guardians of the Galaxy, dude, you could have had that shit.

[A]

So I asked them, I said to them, I said to. I say, doc, he's like, can I get that little piece put into a little jar with formaldehyde? I'm gonna put it at my desk and say whenever I have a situation, I'll be like, I'll ask the tumor because that's a part of me. Because they asked me, they're like, are you gonna name your tumor? And I was like, nah.

[B]

It's a really weird question.

[A]

Apparently a lot of doctors do. I just was on the phone two days ago with a friend of mine in Connecticut. His 16 year old son got diagnosed with the exact same tumor. It's a very, very common tumor, the meningioma tumor. It's the most common brain tumor that's out there.

[B]

Is there a particular cause for it? It just happens.

[A]

It just happens. A lot of people have a tumor, but it doesn't grow. So it's just. It's. So the men. The meningioma film around your brain. So you have, I believe, three films around your brain. The meningioma layer is one of them. Sometimes tumors grow in it, sometimes they don't. A lot of people do have it and some people don't. This was a. It's uncommon for younger people to have it. But I was talking to him and he's like, yeah, the same thing. Doctors asked him, hey, did you name your tumor? So I wanted to put on a little jar. They're like, no, we can't do that.

[B]

I feel like they have to incentivize.

[A]

I want to be like my eight ball and just ask the. Ask the tumor. What should I do?

[B]

Yeah, very few people would find that as funny as you and I do, which I'm fine with. Immediate resolution of any of the symptoms?

[A]

Oh, yeah, no, everything was gone. Everything was shockingly enough. Shocking is amazing. So I took off the next month and a half and went back to work in January. And then a few months later, I transferred to the gang unit. I was able to. And then just happened to be that the agent was working Ms. 13. She transferred. She got transfer orders and I was going to be her co case. And then when she transferred, they just said, here you go. Do you want to work Ms. 13?

[B]

I was like, okay, finally digging into your language skills.

[A]

And that was it. And I never saw back. And I spent the next 12 years working MS.13 Trinitarios, which is a Dominican gang. And then I Got tapped for a task force out of headquarters, working. I had stayed in New Jersey, but I was one of three agents picked for this task force where we went after. It was a crew called Joint Task Force Vulcan. And we went after the hierarchy of MS.13 from the top down.

[B]

In the United States?

[A]

No, in the world. So this was A.G. barr, this was the Trump administration. He tapped A.G. barr to create this task force. And the AUSAs in New York, New Jersey, the top AUSAs around the country were all brought together because obviously we had Covid and we had communication so we could stay in our home offices. And they tapped three agents, me and two others, two of them are still active, to be part of this task force and find leadership that is not in jail. So a lot of Ms. 13 leadership is in El Salvadorian jails right now.

[B]

And I feel like it's not stopping them from running the organization at all.

[A]

No. Well, we just, you know, we get the guys that did something and you know, we've gotten a couple of them out of Mexico and that's where they've set up shop. In 2015, Ms. 13 middle management, moved to Mexico and worked, started getting together with the cartels and they've been running operations in the United States from Mexico. We indicted them federally. A number of them. A number of them. We did a catch and capture with the Mexican government and they would capture them, walk them to the border and deport them because they're illegal immigrants in Mexico, they're El Salvadorian citizens. So they'd walk them to the San Isidro border or in Texas and then literally turn them over to the United States. And this was a great task force. We work with hsi, atf, dea, every agency was involved with this. So we would do the investigation and capture. And I would be. My AOR was Mexico, so we would do the investigation and capture. I'd go to HSI and say, hey, I need. So you can't just walk across the border, you know, as we know, you can't just walk across the border unless you have a one day parole so you can enter the United States freely on this date. And here's your letter. And we would do that. We'd grant that to these individuals that were wanted. They'd get walked to the border and they would be granted one day parole into the United States. They're not committing a crime committing in the United States, but as soon as they walk on us, so it'll be like, oh, look at you, you're wanted here in the United States. And that's how we took them into custody. So. And I was working with the immigration, Mexican immigration, because they would deport them, they would walk them to the border in Mexico.

[B]

Are they cuffed the entire time? Yeah, in my mind, I'm planning out there should be this five foot gap between the US And Max. And they like, you got to give them a chance.

[A]

Run here, go.

[B]

When you hear the click and the cuff comes off and we're not saying you're going to get away, but the US Is five feet that way and the Mexico is five feet this way.

[A]

And the corridor is four walls of chain mail.

[B]

So stretch the hammies out a little bit. What do you want to do? Right. Man, that sounds. That's not even sporting.

[A]

No, we got a couple of them. So they're, as far as I know, all the captures that I did, they've all pled. So they're all. No, excuse me. One of them decided to go to trial and then he pled right before the trial was supposed to start. That was Mullah. He got his. I think he was in Ohio, so he was charged. And then another one, which I can't talk about his name, but he has pled. So those are. So they were good captures. Middle management, the senior leadership. We're not going to get them from El Salvador. They're in El Salvadorian jails for the rest of their life and they're indicted here in the United States. But El Salvador won't turn them over to us.

[B]

That's what it is. Going backwards a little bit to the white supremacy stuff. Is there a repetitive nature in the type of crimes those guys are getting into?

[A]

Well, the white supremacy, this has been a long time since I worked it, so I don't know really what's going on right now.

[B]

Yeah, I'm just kind of curious. The types of stuff you saw when you were working it, it was kind.

[A]

Of, you know, keeping an eye on them, you know, and talking to sources in case they started to plan something, whether it be drug trafficking or whether it be weapons or something. Back in 2012, they weren't like, hey, let's go bomb or let's get attack a synagogue like they are today, these days. So it's a little bit different now, but it was a lot more, hey, we're going to keep an eye on the situation. If there's drug trafficking and they're using it to further their cause, then yeah, that's domestic terrorism. Because they want white supremacy or they want white nationalism. So that was our goal, is to get those. And I never had major. Major cases like I did in Ms. 13. In my Ms. 13 years. White supremacy, it was a lot more was at the state level.

[B]

You mentioned the Bloods and Crips a few times too. And growing up in California, I heard those terms and had absolutely no idea really what it was. I associated with only Los Angeles because it was dumbass kid up in Santa Cruz and assumed that there was no gang activity there, which maybe there is, maybe there's not. I don't know. I wasn't involved with it. Are they still alive and banging in the US because you almost never.

[A]

Jersey. Jersey. I know that. I know. So the gang unit in F.B.I. newark is. They're. They're busy. I mean, there's.

[B]

Those guys are still banging it out.

[A]

They're banging it out. Newark, Irvington, Elizabeth. Yeah, they're. They're busy. I mean, it's. They're there. I mean, I think they've just got the stuff. Street rep, and everybody knows it. But I differ. It's just like. So in the gang world, you don't go around saying, hey, I'm a Blood, you know, you're. Or Ms. 13. You don't say, I'm an Ms. 13. You have a clique. So in Ms. 13, you had different cliques in Bloods and Crips. I'm definitely not an expert to know this, but they have different Grape street or something like that along those lines. They're designated their neighborhood. So In Union City, New Jersey, back in 2015, you had three cliques of MS.13. You had pinos Locos, Salvatrucha, juveniles Loco Salvatrucha, and Hudson loco Salvatrucha. Every Ms. 13 is Loco Salvatrucha. And then the first word is typically, you know, whether their neighborhood or Normandies or the major ones. Normandy's one of the major ones. Where you have. It started in California or started in North Carolina. Those are the ones where people identify themselves as Normandy. In New Jersey, you had Plainfield, New Jersey, you had Plainfield Loco Salvatrucha. Pls. Now, I know that there's. I've heard that there's different new cliques that have moved into Plainfield. So Pls actually kind of went away when we indicted them in 2013 and demolished them with 14 of them in custody. So it's all about, like, their local cliques, but they receive orders from the larger.

[B]

So I was gonna ask. So they're under this umbrella organization, but operating a little bit independently and collaboratively.

[A]

If need be, as Ms. Yeah. So the three clicks in Ms. 13 in Union City were all. They were all worked together because they had one leadership, one member who was in charge of all three. That one member would then communicate to middle management who would be in Mexico or El Salvador and get their orders. And Ms. 13 was very, very strict. You don't do something on behalf of the gang without getting approvals. You had to. You had to request permission to do homicide, drug trafficking. And they knew about this, and there was just no way about it. You were not working. You weren't an independent contractor. So you got those permissions, you got to do that. And that's how it moved. The communication line came from El Salvador to Mexico to the end. Sometimes it would go up to the senior leaders, sometimes it wouldn't, depending on how big of a case it was. But I don't know how it works on the Crips and Bloods side. But the Emirates 13 is very structured, and that's how TDA works too. It's very much communication. There are kidnapping cases in South America where the ransom is being collected by US Members. There are members here in the United States that are collecting ransom for a kidnapping that was conducted in Peru or something like that. So they would be communicating with an individual here in the US to collect the ransom, to release somebody in Peru. So there's, you know, there's a. There's a former official for FBI official who came out and he said in the media, you know, most gang experts. And I remember this quote because it burned in my brain, most gang experts agree that trend Aragua is not very sophisticated. I stopped and looked at and I texted him right away. I said, how can you say that? That's. Well, my information comes from headquarters. I said, well, that's exactly the reason why you're saying that. Because the people at headquarters don't know the reality of how sophisticated this gang is. I talk to the guys on the streets. When the guys on the streets put it into reports, they get to headquarters. That's all the management is reading, is reports. So they don't see the sophistication. They don't see the communications like the case agents do. So I disagreed with him. I mean, this is a very, very sophisticated cane. They're using Bitcoin, they're money laundering, they're moving the gold. As I was saying. So this is a gang that is, you know, moving everything. And the thing that worries me the most is the human trafficking. I mean, I'm working with Dustin Diefenderfer down in Bozeman.

[B]

One of the most complicated last names ever.

[A]

Diefender. And you know how I learned it? Watching your. One of your podcasts before.

[B]

Before we even went live. Or maybe I did it when we were on air. I'm like, hey, man, how the fuck do you say your last name? Because you're like, defer.

[A]

Defer. He's like, Dustin.

[B]

Yeah, just Dustin.

[A]

Just Dustin. So, Dustin, I was just talking to him this morning. He's on his way to meet up with Justin. I know he was working.

[B]

Jared Hudson.

[A]

Jared Hudson. Excuse me, Jared.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So he's on his way to meet Jared right now. Yeah. So Dustin and I are working in Bozeman to put together a unit, kind of like Jared's got. But we're gonna do the Rocky Mountains.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To combat human trafficking, smuggling in the.

[B]

I'm in on this. Where do I sign up?

[A]

We're talking right now. So he's brought me on board.

[B]

Can I shoot pedophiles in the face?

[A]

I don't think that'll be legal, but we'll talk.

[B]

They try to touch my penis.

[A]

There we go. That's self defense. He's threatening my. He's threatening me. So, hey, Self defense.

[B]

This is my issue with. Actually. And I told Jared the same thing. My issue with being around these people is I don't know if I'd be able to hold myself back.

[A]

Yeah. So.

[B]

Because, like, life in prison that this guy got in Georgia.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

For that fucking 911 call of her fighting for her life for 18 minutes. Go listen to that if you're a parent.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then tell me. Anybody tell me that life in prison. And I mean, I don't care if he's having the most horrendous life in prison. I would hope that he is just getting ass over gets.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To the degree that Elon Musk calls him and asks him for advice on his tunneling operation every day. Whether he's wearing a mask. Batman mask. I don't know why Batman mask. Even that is not enough. Like, it's. I mean.

[A]

No, agreed. And it's. It's. That's why it's tough is because there's two things. There was two. Like. Like if the FBI ever said, hey, we need to transfer you. There was two areas where I was just like, no, I'm not gonna do that. One of them was the. The VCAC squad, the Violent Crimes Against Children. The VCAC squad. And they're excellent. Top. Some of the top agents that I know. And they're, you know, vetted and cleared Yearly and make sure that they're not, you know, they're drowning. And the other one was white collar crime. I just didn't have the patience to sit there and look at spreadsheets. And so, yeah, those are built for that. I was built for the gang world, which I did and fell in.

[B]

I know some people who work in the ICAC world, the Internet, Crimes against children.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I know that there is software that exists that does the best that it can to try to shield them from some of the things. But, dude, your. Your brain, it's gotta be like you're drinking tea. Right. It. The longer that that teabag is in there. I'm sorry. The color of the water changes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And at some point, it's more tea than it is water. And I have. God, I have nothing but an immense amount of respect, but I could not. I couldn't contain myself.

[A]

And that's why I'm helping Dustin put together this unit. So he's working with Jared and the North Carolina crew and other guys to build a Rocky Mountain team. They're gonna. They're gonna. They're gonna come on board as directors and. And for our 501. And then wouldn't Dustin need to become.

[B]

A sworn officer of some kind? There's some legalities.

[A]

Exactly. We're figuring that out. And they have. They're gonna bring me on board to, you know, be more of like the case agent and kind of like putting the pieces together.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, we're getting together, you know, a group of guys to be the guys who hit the door, put together the case and. But I'm just gonna look at it from a 3,000 foot, 30,000 foot and go make sure we have all the pieces. Communication, relationships, you know, if we work with Gallatin county or the state of Montana, you know, there's, you know, I've got various meetings in place to meet with people to look at, to kind of facilitate that, but we're getting the best people in the. In the area to be a part of this. And, you know, whether it's on the reservations and finding all these sex houses that TDA may have, or if it's getting, you know, some pedophile off the street, you know, we want to. And that's. We're. This is not just Montana. We're going to look at the Rocky Mountains.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So we're going to work Denver, you know, all of this area, this region. So we're putting together a team to see what we can do.

[B]

What was the full name of it? It's going to have to be catchy.

[A]

I don't know if Dustin hasn't named yet. I think it's just the Rocky Mountain right now. I think he's calling it the Rocky Mountain Task Horse. I think it's something like that, but acceptable. It's got to be, it's got to be catchy.

[B]

It's kind of like Rocky Mountain Rma.

[A]

See, it's got to be. You got to have a tricky like that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Gonna have to be able to do a coin, you know, a little challenge coin with it.

[B]

Oh God, I hate those things. My wife absolutely fascinated by them.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I explained to her.

[A]

But there's a lot of people out there that love them, them, that they're just obsessed with them, that they're, they're. I have so many of them. It's just, I just.

[B]

Have you ever had somebody on you at a bar?

[A]

No, I've never had somebody. Never had that either.

[B]

So for people who are completely lost space right now from military perspective, the challenge coin, I don't, I don't have one anywhere near here. Those. I'd hold it up probably the size of a 50 cent piece, which most people probably don't even know that size anymore. Double sided. In the military you can get challenged at a bar. I don't even know what the actual creation purpose for these things was. They were always used in bars, right. So somebody challenges you, you throw a coin down, there's going to probably be a rank associated with the coin that you put down. Like one time I did some tandem stuff for one of the deputy directors for the agency. And so he gave us all the high level guys, travel around with them. It's like this is a two star equivalent, a three star equivalent. So let's say you throw down one that's a one star equivalent, an admiral in the Navy and you think you're challenging somebody and they throw down a two star equivalent. You pay the person with the lower rank. One gets paid or if you don't have one in your wallet. And again, I don't know if that ever happened or if I was ever there, but I heard it talked about all the time. But people get into these things and some of these designs are intricate. There's the bottle cap, crazy ones, there's ones that are shiny and one's a.

[A]

Canine paw because for canine unit there's some crazy.

[B]

It's wild. I threw away, I'm not joking, one of the rollable garbage cans probably when we were leaving San Diego to move up Here. And my wife Leah is fascinated with these things, and I don't even have the heart to tell her the metric ton that I threw away. But so I put a post out on Instagram. I'm like, hey, my wife digs this shit. And she filled up like two flags, so.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Oh, no, no, no, no. Yeah, it's. It's.

[B]

It's collective, real thing.

[A]

It's an obsession for a lot of people who. It's crazy.

[B]

By the way, Michael, she has decided that the coin flag at the house will be here in the studio somewhere. Just filling you in on that.

[A]

I'll bet you it's right behind you. Right there.

[B]

Maybe behind the curtain. Now I'll put it somewhere in the hallway or where she can see it because she still gets them every once in a while. Right now, it's sitting at our house. House. Which was not the expressed desire I had for trying to get her challenge coins. I didn't want them just be strewn about the house. So we're gonna hang it up and. Yeah, right. Challenge coins. How did we even get on that? Oh, yeah, the Rocky Mountain would be.

[A]

Yes, Rocky Mountain.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So. Yeah, no, I think that would be good.

[B]

I'm in on this.

[A]

I don't know what. Dustin. Yeah, no, tell Dustin, like I said, just. Yeah, we're meeting next week once he comes back from his op that he's gonna be doing. Yeah, I like the way Jared sets it up.

[B]

It's a force multiplier. Right. He goes out there, he teaches you, gives you the structure.

[A]

See, but it's different for Jared because he's a tfo. He's a TFO with hsi, so that's different.

[B]

Yeah, he's playing in the legit federal law enforcement space.

[A]

Right. So which makes it. And I listened to what Jared was talking about on. Is that it's. As the law enforcement agent, he's able to carry both, you know, hats well.

[B]

And he's making sure that he's. Local law enforcement is my understanding.

[A]

Right.

[B]

They're executing the operation.

[A]

Operation, correct. And that's. That's. The plan is to. We're going to build a relationship with one of the locals. Dustin and I are both in Gallatin County. We're not in the city of Bozeman. So whether we go to the sheriffs or we go to the state, that's. That's to be seen, like I said. But we want to build a relationship with one of the local agencies and have them a part of the task force so that they are and then I'm keeping everything in line with the case, making sure everything is collected properly so that we could hand it off to the. To the DA if they have to carry the water. They have to carry the water. Exactly. Making sure that I'm collecting everything correctly for the DA for them to charge.

[B]

I feel like Dustin and I mostly. I should be deputized, because that would help.

[A]

I think that's awesome.

[B]

I don't know how any of that works.

[A]

Me neither. I know that I don't.

[B]

You're good because you got HR218. You got 20 years of federal law enforcement. You're good to go in any state.

[A]

Yes. Yes, that's true. I didn't even think about that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, no, I loved it. I'm excited to do it. And, you know, this is, you know, something that, you know, I wasn't anticipating, but Dustin reached out. I got, you know, hooked up with him, and through Nick Jones, Nick cooked me up with Dustin. And Dustin and I have been chatting for last couple for the last month or two to put this. This thing together. So I'm excited about doing that. That'll be. It'd be good to, you know, take care of these guys and, you know, make sure that they're dealt with properly.

[B]

Why'd you decide to leave the Bureau? Sounds like you were having a good time.

[A]

First off, 29 years was long enough. I felt like, you know, Since I was 21 years old, I worked for the government, so for me, that was number one.

[B]

How did your Navy time count in your bureau time?

[A]

Paid for it. I had to buy it. Yeah. To buy it back.

[B]

What do they charge you per year?

[A]

I think I paid somewhere in, like, the 4300 range for nine years, which is not bad.

[B]

That is actually. Isn't bad. Rolled into a retirement.

[A]

Right, because that was in 2003. Yeah, so. Yeah, exactly. So that added. So that added nine years to my retirement. As soon as I retired, I had to do 20, and then I would get the nine years, so I retired as if I was 29 years. From a retirement perspective, pension wise, we're not great as FBI agents. We're retired. We get. For 20 years. You have to be 20 years old. You have to be 20 years and 50 years old to be able to retire. Okay, mandatory is 56. Okay, 56, 57. Somewhere in there. And for. If you do 20 years with government service, you get 36% of your pension, a 36 of your high three. But with the nine years, I got 45%. So listen, I'm not arguing it was good. It's good pay. My pay, you know, as an FBI agent after 20 years was, you know, fairly good. So, you know, I was happy with that. So I looked at it this way. It was. It was a. It was a couple fold. One, 29 years, two. As soon as I turned 50, I was like, okay, I'm going to have 29 years government service. The more I get, you know, if. Because I was theorizing, I was like, I was going to go find a job. The older I get, the less marketable I am. I can earn more. If I get out with my pension and the salary, I'll be making more than I'm making as an agent. So that was another reason. And I was tired. I was tired of the bureaucracy. Love the Bureau. It could use some change. It can use some change. Especially at doj, there needs to be change.

[B]

What would cause that change?

[A]

Management.

[B]

Is it literally, though, something like a new administration coming in and lopping heads?

[A]

I think the problem. So here's the problem. The problem I found is that at the stages where we dealt with early, this is something I was seeing since 2015, 2016, is that people that were getting into positions of seniority within the FBI sometimes. But a lot of times at the doj, people were as further away from being a case agent that they were getting. The less they were remembering where they came from being a case agent, and the more they were looking at their future and whatever agency, their political future, not politics, like being a politician. But. So a lot of my cases had international ramifications, you know, whether it be capturing somebody or arresting somebody or charging somebody. So a lot of these had to go up for approval. You know, I wasn't just dealing with a bad guy in Newark. Sometimes I did. But a lot of these had to go up for approval. And a lot of times, especially at doj, they would look at it and they go, okay, this is a good case. This is a bad guy we need to put in jail. But if this goes bad, how could it reflect on my career? I might not get that next promotion. So why don't we do this? Let's shelf that project for. And we'll talk about it here in two weeks. And that was constantly the conversation. And I was directly experienced this on one of my cases. It was constantly, we'll talk about it in two weeks. But I need. No, no, no, no. We'll talk about it in two weeks. And the reason was I would hear behind the channels, I'd hear back Channels was that, you know, these people wanted to get promotions and that's what they were doing. And that's one of the reasons why I go on cnn, Fox News. You know, I got into that network because I was tired of these, you know, senior leaders, you know, on there, knowing what they're talking about when it was something about a case agent should know. I was a case agent for 20 years. These guys, they've been retired for 10 years and they're great guys. I'm sure they're fine. They spend a career and they're honorable FBI agents and they put their assistant directors sacs. They haven't seen a case file. They've been retired for 10 years and then they didn't see a case file for like 15 years.

[B]

Yeah, they can give you the broad strokes, but it's the same thing as people who ascend the rank ladder even in the SEAL community. I mean, if you're getting into the flag officer level, you could probably talk ad nauseam about the doctrine of the SEAL teams and broad strokes. But you are as far as you are going to possibly be from the boots on ground reality.

[A]

Right? And I was tired of dealing with that. Let's see, this could hurt my career. Let's see if I do that. And I was just tired. I was exhausted of fighting. I was exhausted of fighting the bureau saying Hispanic gang crime is important. Exhausted from just, you know, constant, you know, just hitting a brick wall and then just going around. And that's what, that's why I was successful, I think, you know, as a case agent, I mean, because I was constantly going around it. And you know, to the case of like in 2016, I had a, an Ms. 13 member who was in Plainfield. He was a fugitive. He murdered one of his buddies, chopped him up and disappeared. And then I said, and I'm the type of guy who's like, let me throw the kitchen sink. And I would try and, you know, put posters up. I thought he was in Maryland, Virginia, you know, okay, boom, boom. And then they'll be like, okay, you're not going to catch him. And I was getting not negative feedback from these attorneys off. They're like, you're not going to find him. It's okay. And I was like, no, let me put on 10 Most Wanted. And there was a spot on the 10 Most Wanted. And I put him up. Four months later he was found, you know, he found in Maryland playing soccer. So he was so another soccer. So WALTER Giovanni Gomez, aka Cholo. So he was indicted in 2011 he stabbed one of his buddies because he thought he had been, you know, talking to another gang. 18th Street. Chopped him up, stabbed him, cut his throat, beat him with a bat. I mean, multiple ways to kill him. And he jumped out a window. When Union County Prosecutor's office came to arrest him in 2013, they came to arrest him, and he jumped out a window, disappeared.

[B]

What floor?

[A]

Second floor. So he survived.

[B]

They didn't even think about going to get back of the house.

[A]

Nope. That's where he. Come on. Set up a perimeter or something. Right. Went off into the distance, disappeared. Rumor was that he was in Maryland, Virginia, where there's another MS.13 stronghold. So we went to trial with the rest of his buddies. And then as soon as the trial was completed in 2015, my AUSA said, go forth, find him. Because they didn't want me to find him before that because it could jeopardize the trial. It's a major, major trial. Four month long. And they said, go forth. Took me about a year. I put him on the 10 most wanted in April of 17. Kids were born in August of 16. Yeah, April of 17. I put him up in August of 17. We got a phone call. Guy was playing soccer and looked across the field and said, looks like the one. That guy looks like the one on the billboard. So we went in. We did surveillance on a house, and we watched a car. The part was a female. She. We followed the car. We thought we were just doing. Getting plates. We followed the car to. And we were not an arrest team. We were just getting plates on the vehicle and getting an idea of what was going on from the tip. Went to a strip mall, and out he came. He was getting a haircut, and then we jumped on him, and that was it. That was August. That was August of 17.

[B]

How long was he on the run for?

[A]

I believe five years.

[B]

Did he even try to run when he saw you guys?

[A]

Nope. Nope. He took it. He played, and we got him, and we transferred him out to New Jersey. He pled guilty for the charge, and he's doing. He. He did the homicide. That's a good example. 25 years. So he pled guilty to 25 years because we had multiple people. We had just completed the other trial with multiple people that were witnesses and testified. So he knew his goose was cooked. He was like, all right, they already got those guys. You know, we went to trial with, I think, eight and eight of his Copart cohorts. All eight of them were convicted. So he kind of. He already saw writing, was on the Wall. The writing was on the wall. He goes, if I go to trial, I will get life. He goes, let me do 25 years. So he pled guilty to 25 years.

[B]

How's the Bureau? Well, how much time do you have to give the Bureau, letting them know you're not going to continue working for them? What's that process like?

[A]

I think, if I remember right, is six months, six month notice.

[B]

You got to write him a letter.

[A]

It's all click, click, click, click, click, click. Everything is on the. Is via the FBI, FBI net on the classified side. So it's just filling out paperwork, hr, and then getting this and make sure you know what you're doing. It's a good process. There's good people at headquarters and know that everything's set straight. But I knew, like I said, I knew September 6, 2023 was my last day.

[B]

Do they just start winding you down after that declaration? A little bit, yeah. Handing stuff over.

[A]

Well, because like I said, that was the official. But you're talking to your supervisor. You're already telling your, hey, I'm out of here. So. Yeah, it was, it was, it was. So it's funny that when the, the caseload that I was carrying is I was the MS.13 agent for New Jersey, that was it for Newark FBI. There was, you know, the other. So you have what's called resident agencies, the smaller offices throughout the state. And there's a couple.

[B]

I think there's one just down the road, actually.

[A]

Right. And there's one in Bozeman. Yeah, there's, I think, nine RAs in Montana.

[B]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's one here in Kalispell.

[A]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there is. So you have, you know, other agents that help out, but I was kind of like the guy who really worked it for New Jersey, and I had to start handing off the cases to other individuals who spoke Spanish and a couple individuals that didn't because that's the way it worked. They were like, he's the new guy. Take the cases. So whether, whether, you know, somebody is still, you know, being done. I mean, I didn't leave with any major cases on the, on the platter, but I know there's still activity going on up there. I mean, I know in New Jersey it's still very, very active because it's, you know, 9 million people that live in New Jersey.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And a big huge portion of that is Hispanic communities, the Salvadorians.

[B]

So what do you do on your last day at the FBI? Just an office pop on the Way out.

[A]

Yeah. So we had a nice party. We had a nice party. Everybody signed a little, you know, thing for me. And, and for me, it was. I had the big poster. The Public affairs office, when we had the capture of the 10 most wanted, they gave me the big posters. So the posters that were at the press conference, so they gave me those. So everybody signed the back of those. So I've got those hanging in my house, in my basement. And that was it. That was, you know, I was like, okay, bye. It really was. I mean, I got some nice stuff and it was very nice. I got some great people, U.S. attorney's office, other people in the gang unit. So it was good. But like I said, everybody retires. And that's one of the things that I found that's curious. Ten years ago, so the mandatory retirement, I think, is 57. But you can ask for extensions. You can ask for one year extension, one year, but mandatory is 60, no matter what. You cannot be an agent after your 60th birthday, so you can ask for one year extensions. Ten years ago, you were seeing guys asking for one year extensions constantly. 57, 58, 59. They were asking, hey, I just want to stick around for another year because it's great work today. You're not seeing that anymore. You're not seeing people ask for extensions. You see people bouncing soon as they're.

[B]

Eligible, the second that their clock ticks.

[A]

Over, as soon as their clock ticks over, you know, because they're just like, they're sick and tired of, you know, the bureaucracy of why we're here. There's a lot of still great people that go past 20, and I'm still very, you know, really good friends with a lot of them. But you're, you're not seeing the, hey, let me stick to 58, let me stick to 59 type of thing. So a lot of people are going straight to 57, and then they're just like, all right. Or, you know, I've been fortunate enough. I've. I have two kids who are eight years old, twins. So I'm lucky enough now that, you know, I've retired so I can spend time with them. I'm Mr. Mom for them. So, you know, so Christine, you know, she can go do other things. She's, you know, she's, she's really the brains of the operation with our company.

[B]

As is the way.

[A]

As is. She's, she's literally, she's brilliant.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I do a lot of the Mr. Moms. I get up at 6am get their food, their breakfast ready, backpacks ready, blah, blah, blah. And it's. And it's just, this is one of the gifts that I get because I get to spend time with my kids. Whereas a lot of agents, you know, Christina and I met later in Life. I was 39, she was 38. We didn't have our kids until 42. And a lot of these guys who are agents, you know, met their wives when they were in their 20s or 30s, and then they had their kids. So their kids are going through college now, and that's why they stick around for an extra year. Oh, let me finish this college, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then I'll go retire with my wife. Now I get to spend time all these years with my kids, go to their Jiu jitsu, go to the Gorilla cup, and do all these things with them and not have to worry about. Okay, I got. I got a source calling me or something, So I carry one phone now. It's great. You know, I used to carry three phones. There was a time when I carry three phones, and I just. I don't have to worry about it anymore. It's. It's huge relief. I missed it for, like, about two to three months afterwards. And then I visited a buddy of mine in Boston, and I stayed at his house. And he was an. He's an agent in Boston. And I went into his house, and I'm standing there in the kitchen watching him come home from work. He's got his gun, his badge, his phones and everything. His bag is dropping it all. He's on the phone with the source. And then I'm like, yeah, okay, I don't miss it anymore. Yeah, I, I. You just helped me get over that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I don't miss that. I mean, I loved it while I was in there. I loved the adrenaline rush of working a source, making a case against. Against, you know, you know, a MS.13 or something like that. And I loved it, Absolutely loved it. I wouldn't change anything for it, but I'm glad I'm in this phase of my life now. And this is. This is really what, you know, what I'm working for and, you know, having this company and creating with Christine and, you know, we have this company down in Bozeman. We do the security consulting. She's a forensic accountant, cpa. So she's, like I said, brilliant beyond, you know, beyond dreams. But I'm happy. I'm out.

[B]

How'd you pick Bozeman from Jersey? Not exactly. Like their neighboring cities?

[A]

No, they're not. It's not around the corner. So I. So I'd always wanted to come out west. I grew up skiing Colorado, so I grew up skiing out west here. And Denver had been what I'd wanted to get for years. I wanted back in the Navy. I wanted to get Cheyenne Mountain. I wanted to go there, but I couldn't get orders. Then when I was FBI, I tried to get FBI Denver. But transferring within the FBI isn't like your traditional. Like you see in the movies. Oh, I want to be in Denver. There's a list. There's a list. You gotta. If you want to be a street agent, there's a list where you have to sit on. And based on the seniority, they'll call you up. Yeah, but I wasn't anywhere near those because Denver's popular. So I just had to wait until the end of my career. And I knew it. So we had looked at Denver that in 2018, I decided I was going to retire at 23. So in 2018, we were looking at Denver West Denver. And then Denver's not the Denver that we knew anymore. So it's, you know, kind of a. So we said, okay, maybe not Denver. Where else do we want to go? Good buddy of mine who I grew up with in Connecticut, Jeff Green, he. And he. I got to, you know, I reached out to him, so he was living in Bozeman, and I said, jeff, where do I go? He's like, come up to Bozeman. So I reached out. So I flew up here, landed in Bozeman back in 2019, and said, Spent five days there, flew back to New Jersey, said, christine, you gotta go see this place. She flew up there, saw it, she flew back. She goes, that's it. That's where we're going. And we bought a house back in 2020, right before the big climb.

[B]

Yeah, that'll be beneficial for you in the long run.

[A]

Oh, yeah, it is. If we had to pop our shoots now, we'd be fine. Yeah, we'd be fine. So. So that was it. Bozeman was it. And we decided in 2020 that that was where we. And we rented the house out. And now we. There's no way we could get into this house now based on housing costs and everything like that, but we landed in Bozeman. Beautiful. Love it. And right now we're getting into the season, which. Which is why we came here. The winter is skiing, and, you know, we'll be at Bridger bowl, we're at Big sky, we'll be skiing with My kids, I want them out there. Winter time and being outdoors, the winter's here. Love it.

[B]

I actually think a lot of locals try to make it sound worse than it is. Now that you know the cold snaps are real, you get one or two per year, it's gonna be negative. Fill in the blank.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

But the rest of the time, especially here in Kalispell, it hovers right at, around freezing here in the valley.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And the snow is just getting nuked on the mountain and not, I mean, occasionally it's a little, it's funny. Slide down here.

[A]

Christine had to go back to New Jersey this, this past weekend. And back in New Jersey it was 55 degrees and people were in coats and hats and she was in a tank top. She's like, she's like, this is fine. It's 55 degrees.

[B]

It's their one chance to get their pat of gooch out. That's why they need their arctic, you know, level fucking express jacket.

[A]

So, hey, listen, however it works for them, for us, it's, we love it. And you know, I'll be outside in a 40 degrees and sunny day. I'll be on a short sleeve shirt. And it's, it's beautiful. I mean it's absolutely gorgeous and I love it. And this is why we moved here and then we set up here and I want the kids. I did not. I wasn't happy in New Jersey anymore. I wasn't happy. I spent 20 years on the shitty side of New Jersey. Seeing the absolute awfulness and just the traffic and the congestion. I know people love it and they, and that's great. And they have a lot of families. That, that's great. But I was tired of it. I mean, driving up here this morning took me just about 4, 45, 4 hours. That's a drive to Washington D.C. from New York City. And then when we did that and I had to do that, you would, you would do it for like an overnight. I'm. As soon as we're done here, I'm driving back. Because it's a super easy drive.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's, that's not bad to look at. Whereas in New Jersey you're going 55, then you go 30, then you go 80, then you go 20. So it was just constant depending on the waves of the Jersey Turnpike, the Garden State. Listen, I loved it and I wouldn't change anything about that because I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for New Jersey and what I did. But I'm glad I'm out and you know, I understand that there's a lot of people that are, that are doing the same thing. They're just like, we got to get out of it. Because it's the congestion of people living on top of one another. It's just, you know, how do we.

[B]

Get people to pay attention to the danger that does exist without going too far over the top? Because that's, that's people are told, you know, there's this existential threat and the guillotine is halfway up and it's going to come get you at any moment. The math and stats don't really support that narrative.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But it also shouldn't be ignored. There has to be this realistic, reasonable middle ground where we can openly talk about the threats that do exist.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm curious what you think for your average, let's just call it for your average Montanan, what can somebody do to actually at least enhance their situational awareness or safety?

[A]

Well that's one of the things I do is every week, maybe one or twice a week I write a newsletter on my sub stack where it's just, I put out just awareness of shit that's out there, whether it be a cyber crime, whether it be a gang or whether it be drug, new drug that's out there or new scam that's out there. So I try to make people aware of it. And that's the biggest thing for people to be is aware. So I, so one of the, do I do security consulting for clients which are of the YC Yellowstone Club level, you know, high net worth type people and just giving them advice and saying, hey listen, you know a lot about money, you know, how about making money?

[B]

I know about people who want to take it from you. Violently.

[A]

Exactly. Violently or not violently. So I know of people, one of my clients, so he got scammed using social media engineering. Social engineering. So he lands in Miami. Lands in Miami. And his phone, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Text messages. So you know, when you, when you, you know, log into a website, a lot of times they say, we'll send you a four digit code. Please enter this code. Right. Second, second tier identification. So he was getting, someone's trying to get your Facebook, someone's going to this, this. So he got like six or seven different websites saying that you're getting, someone's trying to access it. So for him he panics like, oh my God, somebody's trying to hack all my accounts. One of the accounts was where his bitcoin was cryptocurrency and that was One of them. So he's like, somebody's trying to get my crypto. He gets a call from the crypto company saying, hey, listen, we see that somebody's trying to hack your account. And this was a us, An American, not like, you know, something from a foreign country saying, hey, we can see somebody's hacking in your crypto. We want to help you out. We want to secure, make sure, blah, blah, all right? And they're talking him through this, and he's giving all the information up like that. $800,000 in crypto gone. It was a targeted attack.

[B]

It wasn't coordinated.

[A]

Coordinated attack. US Based interests. US Based individuals. A lot like a group called Scattered Spider. That's the group that attacked Las Vegas. So they attacked Las Vegas using engineering and figuring out a way in, and then they attack it. So this was essentially, you know, people like, well, that was a scam. No, this was a robbery. They. They engineered him with the. They put him into fear. Then when they called him, he's like, oh, my God, thank God you're calling me. I want to protect my. My crypto, which is in there. And he didn't realize that he was talking to those that were sending those text messages. So these are the types of things.

[B]

What an elegant system it was.

[A]

You can't. You hate, but you can't say, but. That was pretty good.

[B]

Yeah. To be able to follow it up with the alerts on the phone, to follow it up with a call pretending to be the person that they would want to talk to into the first place.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Those are different than the calls I get from the IRS agents that are clearly in India.

[A]

I can't. I can't stop getting these phone calls of, you know, we see your tax.

[B]

The tax love them. I call them back.

[A]

I. I mess with them. Christine's just like. She'll be like, just. Just hang up.

[B]

Like, no, they want my credit card number. And I'll pretend like the film glitched for, like, the last two digits and sit there and back and forth. Oh, man, I've had. It's amazing.

[A]

It is. Is. It's. It's fascinating. Or the. When you get the text message where it says, hi.

[B]

Oh, I love that one.

[A]

Hey.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, this is. I'm Judy. Is.

[B]

This.

[A]

Is. This.

[B]

I know Sophia, and I've done the change episodes on that where those are. You know, they're like, in Malaysia and there's a slave.

[A]

Yeah. Slave markets.

[B]

Totally. And, yeah. So I'll just string those people along to a degree. I don't know what that says about me, but, you know, but yeah, so.

[A]

I try to keep these people, you know, aware of the situation and it was alarming. So Christine's a cpa and we spoke at a CPA conference in Missoula a couple months ago. I taught a one hour session on different scams that are out there. And it was alarming to see some of the most common scams that the grandma scam. And I would ask the room, I'd say, how many have you heard of the grandma scam? I only got like two or three out of a room of 40. And just like this scam has been around for years and they are not aware of it. So I want to put the awareness out there of saying, hey, listen, these are the things you need to be worried about. These are things you need to be prepared for because when they take that money, you're never getting it back. That 800,000, that's gone. That's gone. You're not getting it back. So the unfortunate of them targeting the elderly, you know, they, you know, oh, your sons. And here's the thing is using AI these days, it's crazy how much. So the grandma scam used to be where I would call the victim and I'd say, we're holding. So there's two versions of it. One, we're holding so and so prisoner in the background. So they know that he's in Mexico. And then you have a woman's voice in the background and they will, we're holding a prisoner. Give us $20,000. Now you could literally based on using three seconds of your voice, they find from a Facebook video they can recreate, say, hey mom, I'm being held, I'm being held captive. Can you please.

[B]

You and I are like, there's just screwed. Yeah. As far as the AI software, video and audio for both of our voices.

[A]

Yeah, there's a 25 million dollar scam that was. This one shocked me. So a guy gets called, I think in Beijing. I don't know where it was exactly. I think it was China. He gets called from the CFO from the company, says, hey, we need you on a zoom call. And he gets on a zoom call, puts up on the screen and he's talking to the entire board and the CFO is at the head of the table. We need you to transfer $25 million. Okay, here you go. That entire room was AI. That voice was AI. Everything was AI. It was a $25 million heist.

[B]

It's only going to get better.

[A]

25 million.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's crazy.

[B]

It's only going to get better.

[A]

No, it's just. We're just at the beginning of it. I mean, it's just the expansion, the amount of, like, chatgpt, you know, the new ver. Every version that comes out is just explosively bigger than the previous version. And it's shocking. I mean, it's really, really scary about the amount of progress that AI does. And if a room of 40 CPAs who are educated, smart individuals, only two or three of them know about the grandma scam. Yeah, that just, to me, scares me. It's just like, you know, they just live in their world, and people are almost kind of like they. They don't want to know about the. The. And that's one of the problems I see with Montana, is especially in Bozeman, is that Bozeman may have been the. Oh, we don't need to lock our front door. We're safe. We're fine here. It doesn't matter if your door is locked or anymore. Yeah, you've got criminal elements, which are in Bozeman now and other cities here in Montana. Billings, Missoula, Helena. Right. Kalispell. So, yeah, you should be locking your door. But even if you don't lock your door, you got an Internet. It comes into your house, your WI fi. People, you know, and, you know, people laugh about, oh, TikTok, you know, the Chinese can't get. You know, what do I. Who am I? Well, if they get access to your TikTok, they got access to your passwords. They ask us your passwords. They ask us your WI fi. They got access to your WI fi. They got access to. To everything in the house that you connect to that WI fi.

[B]

And then there's people like my dad who have a cell phone, and he would scream his Social Security number at some person pretending to be an agent so fast. And here's my password, and save my body. And can you imagine my dad, Michael? He is susceptible, the most susceptible human being to a fucking scam. What do you mean? Here's my password. Here's my date of birth. Here's my code. They just be like, oh, thanks, sir. All your problems solved.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Yeah. And then he'd come to me months later because he doesn't want to admit any of this shit to me. And then he would tell me about it, right? Like, what the fuck, man?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Why'd you do that?

[A]

I know.

[B]

I shouldn't have told you. You're just gonna make fun of me. You're being A dumbass. Of course I'm gonna make fun of you. Not that he's been scammed, but God damn it, he's susceptible. So you got a couple hour drive left and been at it for a few hours. What. What do you want to leave people with? Are you open to taking other clients, answering people's questions when it comes to security stuff?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. People can reach out for me on my website, brunerciergroup.com I have my substack of Bruner, sierragroup.substack.com I put out my newsletters, like one or two a week. But I'm more than happy to, you know, reach out to me and, you know, I'm. Doesn't matter where it is. I mean, I. I've had clients that are overseas in other. In foreign countries, but I'm here to help out, you know, and, you know, create the, you know, the make people aware. Technically, I am a PI here in the state of Montana, but I'm not doing PI work, so I have that on my website. But, you know, there's plenty of other people. I know a couple guys here in Kalispell that do work. So I'm more than happy to, you know, I'm not doing the, you know, sit on a house, take photographs of a cheating husband. No. Done enough surveillance in my years. I'm just like, I'm good. Not that it's not important, but there's another PI over.

[B]

There's other service providers available.

[A]

They'll be fine. So I provide like that. Like I said, I just want to make people aware of it and, you know, making sure that they're. They're aware of it and the crimes and the dangers that are out there, which they are.

[B]

What do you want to leave people with? Close it out. Final thoughts.

[A]

Listen, I love. I'm super happy in my career. And like I said, you know, I talked shit about, you know, doj, FBI and, you know, the administration and. And we're going into murky waters. We don't know where this is going to lead. I know that much. But people were tired of the last four years. I know that, you know, I've been asked about, like, the new, you know, if there's going to be a new director, who should it be? You know, I've been asked about that and then saying, listen, I know that there are certain people that are good for the job. I know that there are certain people that I don't think are good for the job. And that's just me being from the street agent position, who I think would be a good fit for the. For the director. But no matter what, at the end of the day, we will make it through these four years. Yeah, we'll make it through these next eight years. We will survive. I don't think. I know that you've talked about a civil war. I don't think we're going there. I don't think that's. I don't think it's possible, especially with what you were saying is, you know, north, south, and, you know, we're.

[B]

So how do we split? I think it honestly fell into a lot of the rhetoric that drove it in the direction that it ended up going as well. They chose to try to paint a picture that I think most people could see was objectively false. And people are smarter than they are given credit for. You tell somebody who is intelligent enough to read the world for themselves that it's raining on them and they go outside every day and it's not raining. They stop fucking paying attention.

[A]

Yeah. And to all the people on the left and on the right are screaming and they're. And we're talking about the extreme left and right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, they're crying or upset or this and forcing their, you know, those are the left and the right. Okay. They're not going to dominate the conversation. So let's just let them be. Let them be crazy. We're not going to change their minds. And that's just. Is what it is.

[B]

It's actually the best advice is to let them be. Because nothing is going to change their mind.

[A]

Right. Nothing's going to change their mind. The amount of conversation. And that's what's great about this country. That's what I love this country. It's like, listen, you want to believe what you want to believe, go for it. But don't tell me you are wrong. Hey, listen, I don't believe in what you believe. Great.

[B]

Hey, have a great day.

[A]

Perfect. Have a nice day. Hey, let's just, you know, and I hate to say let's agree to disagree, but that's really what it is. And you know what? We've made it through previous times, hard times. This is going to be a tough time, some people think, but we're going to make it through. And Ellen leaving for England. Good for you if you want to do that. That's why it's a free country. I spent 29 years serving this country so people can say things that I disagree with. I may not like what they say or beliefs that they believe. Or religions or, you know, sexuality or personality or, you know, races. That's your opinions. That's. And we're fine with that. And we're gonna be. We're gonna be fine, and we're gonna make it through the next four years, and then we'll. We'll go through this all over again.

[B]

Do you know we're gonna start hearing about the fucking 2028 election?

[A]

Oh, no, we already are.

[B]

By, like, late 2025.

[A]

I've already been seeing. I've already seen. So I follow on my Twitter, I follow both sides, both left and right, and I look at all the conversation, and I'm already seeing certain members of the Democratic party positioning changing and running for governorship, like in New Jersey. Mikey Sherrill, a Naval academy grad, running for governor of New Jersey. I'm looking at her, I'm going, she's. The next year is 2025 is the election for governor. I'm going, she's positioning herself. If I'm not wrong, she's positioning herself to put herself. I'm already seeing. Jockeying for position for 2028.

[B]

I just want a good six months off. I just want.

[A]

No more text messages. No more fucking text messages.

[B]

It was amazing the day after the election, my text message volume precipitously down.

[A]

Well, there was. There was one race that constantly I was getting was the Arizona race for what? Her name was Lake, I think was her name. So.

[B]

Oh, is it Ricky Lake?

[A]

Ricky Lake or something like that? Where she was. There was still a count going on for weeks afterwards. I was still getting text messages. I'm like, I have nothing to do with Arizona. Why am I getting your text messages?

[B]

The amount of sheehee messages that I got.

[A]

Sheehy and tester. Sheehee and tester. That's. I mean, people don't understand being not here in such a close race because it was such a close race. People from now Montana just don't undergree the amount of text messages, the amount of mailers. Oh, that's another thing.

[B]

Another thing that went down. The amount of mail that I get is back at a normal level.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It would be legitimately a quarter to a half inch of just garbage.

[A]

This is like three days. You just like.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I would never look at any of them. Yeah, I never look at any of them.

[B]

I don't know why they do that shit. Unless it's people like my dad who's like, inventorying those things by fucking alphabetical order, like.

[A]

But I'd like to know. I'd love to know. I talked to the people with marketing and going this is going to target this age group. And I believe that they, from what I understand is the targeting is the sink the 60 and over because that was what they were used to.

[B]

That's what they're used to. And the text messaging is probably for a demographic more of our age and below. I'm sure it was all over social media, depending on what platform you were on. Yeah. I mean, whatever. Spend your money however you want to.

[A]

Yeah. Hey, listen, whatever makes you happy.

[B]

Yeah. All right, man. Well, thanks for making it better. We'll get you out of here.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

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