Scott Payne (Code Name: Pale Horse)

Summary

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The Antihero Podcast — Scott Payne (Code Name: Pale Horse)

Date: September 8, 2025
Topic: Part Delta Force. Part Street Cop. All Truth.

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Overview

This episode dives deep with Scott Payne, a former undercover FBI agent and law enforcement veteran whose 28 years on the job spanned street-level narcotics, infiltration of outlaw biker gangs, fighting corruption, and confronting domestic terrorism. Known for his straight talk and gripping stories, Scott ("Big Country"), joins hosts Tyler (Counterculture Inc.) and Brent Tucker (FRCC) to recount harrowing undercover operations, moral complexities, and darkly humorous anecdotes from the front lines.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Scott Payne’s Journey into Law Enforcement

• Background & Early Days
  • Played college football at Charleston Southern University; first law enforcement gig was with Greenville County Sheriff’s Office.
  • Undercover work began as a vice/narcotics investigator at the local level before jumping to the FBI for broader opportunities and higher pay.
  • Early lessons learned working as a bouncer: building interpersonal skills and street smarts.
• Quote:
  "I look and sound like trash, but on paper, I'm pretty good. And nobody was hiring white guys. That's what they told me." — Scott Payne (15:13)

2. Transition to Federal Law Enforcement

• Why the Move?

  • Frustration with local pay and stagnant career development.
  • Admired the FBI's SWAT and undercover training rigor and opportunities.
  • Quote:
    "If you don't lie, man, I mean you can five years, you're GS13." — Scott Payne (23:33)

• Challenges & Culture

  • Discusses differences in undercover process, training standards, and organizational culture across agencies.
  • Open about mental and physical toll: "I crashed. I ran out of wax, man." (90:51)

3. Undercover Work: Realities, Risks, and Ethics

• Street-Level Narcotics & War on Drugs

  • High-speed, dangerous operations with little time to prepare or vet suspects.
  • Skepticism about "winning" the war on drugs: "Can it be won? No. Can we thwart stuff? Yes." (31:23)
  • Observations on supply chains from Mexico and the devastating effects of opioids and fentanyl.

• On Wearing a Wire & Getting Made

  • Describes defensive, quick-witted techniques to stay safe; open discussion about fear, adrenaline, and life-or-death decision making.
  • Closest call: Nearly exposed in an Outlaws MC clubhouse strip-down.
    • "Because of the stress of the situation, the adrenaline dump. I forgot my middle name, which was insane because I knew it." (77:40)
    • Survived only through quick thinking and what he calls "divine intervention."

Memorable Training Point:

"You've got to know your limitations. Sometimes you're not the guy for the job." — Scott Payne (46:08)

4. Infiltrating Outlaw Biker Gangs

• The Outlaws MC Case

  • Two-year undercover operation in Massachusetts; invaluable insights into gang culture, risk tolerance, and relationship building.
  • Discusses how different chapters have contrasting criminal involvement; winning trust through "being sexy" (i.e., useful) to criminals.

• Tense, Defining Moment

  • Forced strip search by gang enforcers, while "wired to the hilt."
    • "Had I seen plastic, I probably would have just tried to fight my way out. Because in that world, to me it means if there's plastic on the floors... they're gonna kill me." (81:22)
    • Saved only when the would-be searcher failed to find hidden equipment.

• Impact of Undercover Work on Mental Health

  • Admits to a breakdown after years "without knowing how to decompress."
  • "Safeguard unit" debriefing — a program for psychological safety started by Joe Pistone (Donnie Brasco).

• On Building and Betraying Relationships

  • The sting ended with the arrest of closest confidant, highlighting the personal cost of undercover betrayal.
  • “One of the downsides of undercover is building those relationships that you got to betray.” (96:23)
  • Some former targets reach out, reconciled after serving time.

5. Corruption Investigations

• From Rural Dirty Cops to High-Level Bribery
  • Illustrated with stories (e.g., Tennessee operation: "They called me the Marlboro Man").
  • Describes systemic corruption, falling standards, and the need for constant vigilance against dirty cops.
  • "There's not a whole lot a good cop can't stand worse than a dirty cop." (105:44)

6. Reflections & Philosophy

• The Pendulum Is Swinging Back
  • Rise in pro-cop, pro-gun sentiment:
    "You see the pendulum swinging... it is, bro. Taylor Sheridan shows and the top shows... The Reachers and the Jack Ryans..." (12:43)
• Teamwork and Knowing Your Role
  • "Oddly enough, people think of undercover work as singleton-type things. But there's still a lot of teamwork." (47:06)
• Faith and Divine Intervention
  • Multiple near-misses attributed to “God, not odd.”
• Humor as Coping and Connection
  • Quick wit and self-deprecating humor as essential survival tools, both for cover and personal resilience.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On nearly being discovered while wired:

  • "I'm shitting gold bricks. But I'm talking, I'm not vapor locking... Just trying to buy time." — Scott Payne (79:19)
  • "The entire damn time I was in the clubhouse, do you know what song was blaring over the speaker system? 'Give me three steps.'" — (88:04)

• On the sacrifice of undercover work:

  • "I could have easily hit that proverbial fork in the road, I could have easily been the other side, which I think is what's helped me be good at what I was at." — Scott Payne (110:02)

• On community and trust:

  • "At the end of the day, it’s going to end up to human intelligence. And groundwork." — Scott Payne (60:24)

• On conflicting emotions with targets:

  • “There's still likable people. It's hard not to acknowledge that.” — Brent Tucker (97:24)
  • “In the book, I don't dehumanize... Some of those relationships, I mean, you really build.” — Scott Payne (97:29)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Early street cop stories and lessons: [15:00–18:00]
• Jump to the FBI and undercover bug: [18:00–23:30]
• War on drugs, the futility, and cartel insights: [31:00–36:30]
• The Outlaws MC infiltration and near-exposure: [74:52–82:09]
• Discussion on corruption within police ranks: [98:57–108:54]
• Reflections on the toll and weirdest moments: [110:02–115:43]

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Notable Anecdote (Funny Story at Close)

• “Johnny Two Fingers” origin, as told in rural Tennessee:
  • “One day he's out there on the farm ... he gets behind a donkey. ... The donkey comes back and takes two of his fingers off.”
  • “Everybody knows that he's got two fingers missing because he was having sex with a donkey and the donkey bit his fingers off... And he still lives here? Why would you not move and change the story?” — (114:01–115:38)

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Book & Where to Find Scott Payne

• Book: Codename: Pale Horse (Simon & Schuster, New York Times Bestseller; audiobook read by Scott himself)
  • “If you go on Amazon... top one will be me... Everything under it... China and everything else... make my face age with AI. If I look like that in about 20 years, that's pretty tough.” (112:18)
• Instagram/X/Threads/LinkedIn: @ScottPayneBigCountry

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Tone and Style

The episode blends gritty, candid storytelling with banter and dark humor. The hosts are supportive but probing, giving Scott space to delve into operational nitty-gritty and raw reflections. There's mix of reverence for frontline law enforcement and healthy skepticism about government and systemic integrity.

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For Listeners: Takeaways

• Undercover law enforcement is equal parts adrenaline, psychological warfare, and heartbreak.
• Success relies on adaptability, humility, and teamwork—no matter how "lone wolf" the job seems.
• The war on drugs and public corruption are ongoing, adaptive threats; the fight is never over.
• Even in darkness, there's room for humor and the occasional miracle—“Is it odd, or is it God?”
• Real heroes often bear invisible wounds and have stories that don’t fit the Hollywood mold.

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Transcript

[Scott Payne]

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[Brent Tucker]

And this is my personal best.

[Scott Payne]

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[Brent Tucker]

Because your personal best is greater than anything.

[Scott Payne]

And I end up in the mountains and we didn't really have a whole lot of intel other than that's the house and there was a long driveway in the woods. It's probably some booby traps. You get in there trying to buy some weed, dude's got a rifle pointed at you. And his brother walks out and he says, my brother says, you're a cop. Oh, man. In my head I'm going, your brother's right.

[Brent Tucker]

Your brother's got a good head on.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Hold on, we're not recording. Do you want to buy a shirt to support me?

[Scott Payne]

Know what?

[Brent Tucker]

There it is.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

People want to see their sausage get made.

[Brent Tucker]

An appropriate level of inappropriateness. Something happens in my family tonight. The adult divorce isn't. Isn't coming to rescue my, my family and my kids like it is. First responders that are, that are going to save my my family, they want.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

The culture to be down. They want people to not want to be cops. And the people that do want to be cops are now walking into the job scared to do.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm gonna try to act like it didn't happen. Although we, we all know it did.

[Scott Payne]

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[Brent Tucker]

And adaptability allows first responders to act quickly and effectively in critical moments.

[Scott Payne]

Apollo empowering those who protect and serve JV Team for life. No headset. I'm good.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, no headset. You know, people Say you're our third guest. Like I said, it's been on Joe Rogan. We keep on hearing the same thing. Like, man, you guys are a lot cooler and your set's a lot nicer than his. And we just hear it over and over again.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

It's. Thank you, though. It's nice to hear.

[Scott Payne]

Thank you.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

We appreciate it.

[Scott Payne]

I've kind of already started leaning that way. I mean, I was laying the groundwork earlier, the whole Dalton Fisher story.

[Brent Tucker]

We did have a hot tub in here for an episode.

[Scott Payne]

I did that.

[Brent Tucker]

That went over with mixed reviews.

[Scott Payne]

It is pretty cool to walk in because it's like an industrial thing. Like on. Online. It says his studios at his new house that he built out in Austin. No, man, you get picked up. I told him, I said, I feel like I'm going on an undercover. Yeah. They're like, why? And I go, I'm being picked up at my hotel by somebody I've never met who's taking me somewhere. I have no idea where the hell I'm going. Right. To meet a bunch of people I've never met before. Yeah, I know. I'm looking. Hey, look, I'm looking. I'm like. I'm like, all right, there's a pen that's. Looks like I might be able to stab him right through the back of that baby.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Yeah, that's. I've always wondered because. And then you just say bye and they take you back to your hotel and that's it.

[Scott Payne]

Pretty much. I mean, he took care of it. We went out to the. To the Mothership comedy club.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, nice.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Oh, yeah.

[Scott Payne]

And it was actually Kill Tony headliners. Really cool. And my dumb redneck ass bit on one of his. One of his things. He was like, hey, what is it? What do they call that again? And I was like, hey, so and so. And he goes, there's the redneck up in there. I was like, damn it. Well, we'd like.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

We'd like to offer you two appetizers at Applebee's tonight.

[Scott Payne]

Night. Yes.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Or chili is your choice.

[Scott Payne]

Every time I donate blood, cuz I'm on low tea. It's like, hey, here's your Texas roadhouse. You get fried pickles or a blooming onion.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

We can guarantee unlimited rolls.

[Scott Payne]

Unlimited rolls? Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Does he have a Terminator video game machine in his waiting room?

[Scott Payne]

Pretty cool.

[Brent Tucker]

I mean, just.

[Scott Payne]

I need to take a picture. I'll take a picture and send that to John Cook. Who's. Who's. I mean, Robert Patrick's brother in law. That's who's now in. Like, everybody's moving to Nashville area.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Yeah.

[Scott Payne]

Out of LA and stuff.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

I knoxville to Nashville.

[Scott Payne]

Three hours, two and a half. Two and a half tops. And you gain an hour. I'm one county away from central time zones. Oh, God.

[Brent Tucker]

I know that. I just made that drive twice.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't believe we didn't run in each other last week. I didn't really walk the floor that much, though.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, we're back in the corner in the kids zone. They didn't hook us up.

[Scott Payne]

It's just natural where you put, you know, coffee, cigars, and burger.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

You were the kid. That's a thing.

[Scott Payne]

It is in Tennessee.

[Brent Tucker]

The reason.

[Scott Payne]

Right. Why do you think I moved there, man? Jack Daniels is me. Yeah.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Can you give me that lighter?

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. I saw tank tops. I just want you to know I. I brought my sleeveless. I wear sleeveless stuff all the time. Not saying I got big arms, it's just that I paid a lot of money for the ink. Yeah.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Our AC is working today.

[Scott Payne]

I'm more freely moving the alert schools. That's what always happens. I think I put the ones, two of them this year in Memphis. Like, near Memphis. Hot as hell. Yeah. We get out there, first venue shot, we have to call an audible. We end up on a second floor with no AC all week. Like, I just didn't even shower in the morning. I'm like, there's no. As soon as you walk in there and put on, like, a mask to get shot, I'm like, I can't see it. I can't see. I do the trick. I get the dawn soaked dawn dish soap and just put a little dot, rub it, Put it on. Yep.

[Brent Tucker]

All right, let's do it.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Welcome back to the Anti Hero podcast. Part Delta Force, part street cop, all truth. I'm Tyler, owner of Counterculture, Inc. Go to counterculture incthreads.com use promo code antihero and save 15 off the best. And Counterculture graphic tees, stickers, hats, team room flags, ranger panties, sweatshirts, hoodies. We got it all. Counterculture inkthreads.com promo code antihero. Say 15%.

[Brent Tucker]

And I'm Brent Tucker, owner of FRCC. That's First Responders, Coffee, Cigar and Cask Company. Go to FRCC shop and use promo code FRCC15. That's FRCC1 5. To get 15% off the world's best coffee, cigars and bourbon.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

And of course, this episode brought to you by Human Performance TRT, you go to hp-trt.com use promo code HERO and save 20 off. Not just your initial month, but every single month that you're a subscriber with human performance. And if you've done blood work within the last six months, whether it be your private doctor or the va, you can upload that blood work and they'll waive your lab costs. So go to hp-trt.com use promo code HERO and save 20% off every month.

[Brent Tucker]

And please consider joining our Patreon to continue to support us. Helps keeps the light on the there's two different levels for a Patreon with different access, but all in all, almost all of it. You can get direct messaging with us. You can get behind the scenes, future guests, different group and group chats as far as fitness, guns, general, you name it. That place is really taken off to be a kind of a party of its own and it's really cool to be a part of. Also we do our Thursday Night Live every Thursday night, 8pm Eastern Standard Time until whenever we're done. That one's for the boys.

[Scott Payne]

Mm.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

There's a. We're looking. We're not looking to. We're almost done with those first stages of our merch store. So that's a. That's just taking a little bit to get off the ground excited.

[Brent Tucker]

I bet. I think we're gonna have some really good T shirt ideas in that merch store.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

And we've got some apparently we I'm out out of double X's for this podcast.

[Scott Payne]

Oh really?

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

First day X is all in so.

[Brent Tucker]

Nice we got a bunch of Jack dudes.

[Scott Payne]

Maybe maybe we'll. We can.

[Brent Tucker]

We can trade you some double xls for some larges.

[Scott Payne]

We'll figure. We'll figure that out. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

The Speaking of double XL with us today we good way we have Scott Payne. You know sometimes you get that ironic nickname like Curly for a bald guy. This isn't one of those Big country is here with us. I think. I think I can figure out put two and two together where you got your name from.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Five seven, five eight.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah maybe these days we made him.

[Brent Tucker]

Put his chair down so he doesn't tower over us. Yeah gravity the but you're probably not as tall as you once were after 28 years of law enforcement, 23 of those years coming in the FBI. He's been doing undercover work since 1996. And some of that undercover work includes motorcycle gangs, domestic terrorists and fighting corruption. Thank you for your work. Thank you for all you've done and thank you for Coming on the antihero podcast.

[Scott Payne]

Thanks for having me.

[Brent Tucker]

The. You've been kind of doing the. The circuit here of late. Dalton Fisher, you do that one.

[Scott Payne]

Yep.

[Brent Tucker]

Joe Rogan.

[Scott Payne]

Yep. That was right out the gate.

[Brent Tucker]

Andy Stumpf.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, I did Andy before the book came out. He has a new one called Agents Change Agents. Okay. That one.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, those three right there. Solid. Solid podcast with solid guys.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, I've been. I've been blessed, for sure. Especially coming. I mean, the book came out when.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

The book come out.

[Scott Payne]

March 25th. Okay. And then March 26th, I was on Rogan, and March 27th, the Rogan show was posted.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

So, man, that you're talking about divine intervention, that.

[Scott Payne]

Yes, sir. That was. You know, you just ask and you know, trust me, it didn't. It didn't go past me that the chair my butt was sitting in. All the other butts that have sat in that chair. You know what I mean? You're sitting there and you're like, what the heck? Yeah. I did get in my head that morning. Once we started talking, I was fine, but I was in my head because I'm like, this isn't just me coming on as, you know, Scott teaching a block of instruction. Yeah. At a conference or narcotics conference. This is like. Or a SWAT class or something. This is like my life story, and this is it.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

You have to imagine Joe in his underwear.

[Scott Payne]

Well, I. It's probably. It's probably the whole aura of me feeling super small in there anyway. But I felt like my chair was real low and his was up. Like, almost like a judge, you know, I'm sitting in the box and I'm looking up at him the whole time.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, hey, they got. They got to hear good stories too. You know, they got to bring on good people.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And so really, it's. It's really a. A tip of the hat to what you've done and what you've been a part of. You know, I appreciate it, and it's awesome that I think that's truly. Again, just shows where we're at as a country to where these are the. The most popular podcasts in the country and there's. And they still want to hear stories like this. Yet he could be having the Kardashians on, you know, if he wanted. But the American people want to hear Americans putting it to bad guys and doing good things.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. That. That pendulum swinging back. And it is as well. I mean, you know, it was a long time of anti gun and it's like, bro, you. I mean, if you were the main character in a franchise movie series where you where you killed hundreds of people every movie.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

I make a living off being a playing a cop and having guns but I mean I police and anti gun.

[Brent Tucker]

And then if you make it big enough you hire people with guns around.

[Scott Payne]

You to keep everything in your life. You're paying them a hell of a lot more money than the cops you pay. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

What got you big was guns. What keeps you safe now that you're big as guns and you're going to go out there and you know talk down about guns crazy.

[Scott Payne]

You see the Pendulum swinging. It is Taylor Sheridan shows and the top yeah shows and the reachers and the Jack Ryan's and all that stuff.

[Brent Tucker]

So yep, love to see it.

[Scott Payne]

And Terminal List Terminus was a good one. Terminal List two is coming the well.

[Brent Tucker]

Now we want to hear your story from. You know give, give our listeners a a chance to hear what you've done.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Where they might not have heard of Joe Rogan's.

[Brent Tucker]

Hey, not as, as I would say I'm a fan of his. I am a fan of his. How many show, how many Joe Rogan shows have I watched and not watched because of work like doing. Looking up. Yeah looking up Tim Kennedy, looking up John McPhee or some other people that I may be doing. But yeah outside of that I just don't have three hours to watch.

[Scott Payne]

And he put down that three week did. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

So but he is one of my go to's. If I have like a road trip and I have like four hours to kill, you know I'll, I'll go and see the last 10 or 20 guests he has and pick, pick my favorite one. So I watch him just not very much I think.

[Scott Payne]

Well as I was telling you guys where we started the whole podcast world, I wasn't like deep, deep in it but since the books come out I've done so many shows. It's. There's. I find in some like man, I never knew this was here. So now I'm following that one kind of thing. But yeah, yeah, I mean that Joe, I mean right out the gate that was an unbelievable experience. There were a lot of the comments were like man, top five Joe Rogans. This is the way it used to be. He hardly spoke and three hours. So yeah, I mean I couldn't, I couldn't ask for nothing better that's for sure.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm glad you got that out of the way and some of those other smaller rinky dink podcasts because it's all downhill from Here.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, those were. They were.

[Brent Tucker]

They were building you up to the pinnacle of podcasts, and now you're. You have a refined story to tell that you can.

[Scott Payne]

Now you're here.

[Brent Tucker]

So ready? So let's hear it. What? Gosh, 28 years. What?

[Scott Payne]

How.

[Brent Tucker]

So when did you start law enforcement? How old were you?

[Scott Payne]

So I graduated college. Okay. I graduated college in 93.

[Brent Tucker]

Where'd you go to college?

[Scott Payne]

Charleston Southern University. And basically North Charleston, South Carolina, was already a bouncer for many years. I know. Shocker, right? I know. He looks like he walked off a point. I'm about to say Point Break. That's the other movie. Roadhouse. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

So cliche, but I love it.

[Scott Payne]

There's a reason these. These.

[Brent Tucker]

These stereotypes exist.

[Scott Payne]

I know. Like, you run into, like, a. Before he passed, may he rest in peace, Bray White, the wrestler. His real name's Windham Rotunda. We were. We were friends. Yeah. And, you know, same thing. I mean, I was a bouncer. I'm like, yeah, I got it. Run into a DEA guy. Man, what are you? I was a college football player, and I bounced like a cookie cutter. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

I love it.

[Scott Payne]

But, yeah. So when I was already working those, I started getting law enforcement exposure because a cop would work the door, and if I was the head bouncer, I'd go out there and talk to him, make friends, learn. Trying to learn. Yeah. And then. Because the way it went is if we kick somebody out once they were in the parking lot and raising hell, then cops could lock them up for disorderly kind of thing every now and then, it'd be bad enough fight to where they had to come inside and help, but. Or start putting cuffs on people. But I started learning a lot through that. And then when I graduated, I applied with, like, four different departments in South Carolina. But even with a3.8 average my last two years coming out on the dean's list, playing NCAA football, I look and sound like trash, but on paper, I'm pretty good. And nobody was hiring white guys. That's what they told me. I'm like, well, that's cool. But I wish I'd have known that about two years before I graduated, because that's kind of what I put everything into. And then I went to try to get a job at the security at the mall, and they said I was overqualified. And I'm like, wow, between a rock.

[Brent Tucker]

And a hard place.

[Scott Payne]

What do you want me to do? So I went back to bouncing Shocker, but I got picked up by the Greenville County Sheriff's office in 93. And I went to the academy, and I was in uniform for three years. And my last two years, I was a vice narcotics investigator. So at that local level, state and local level, the academy was in Columbia, South Carolina. South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy. So once I'm a vice narcotics investigator now, I can go get certified in undercover techniques. I can get certified in technical surveillance and things like that. And that's where it really. That's where that bug really came from.

[Brent Tucker]

Looking back, starting out at a small department, like, do you.

[Scott Payne]

Do you really.

[Brent Tucker]

Do you see that as a lot of, like, your. Your core fundamental, like building blocks, you know, getting. Getting some lessons learned out of the way there. You learned a lot there. You could get away with a lot there. And I don't even mean that in a bad way.

[Scott Payne]

You could.

[Brent Tucker]

It's smaller. Sometimes you can. That's where you. That's where you want some of your learning experiences from. Or how would you describe that? Or is it like, hey, there's not a lot you can do, sometimes smaller departments and just move on as fast as you can, you know?

[Scott Payne]

Well, I'll say for South Carolina, Greenville county was a big department. Okay. And we fell under the CALEA standards. We were. Calea. I guess it's certified. Yeah. And. Right. Yes, certified. Right. So we were. We were on the up and up. But, like, even through the book process, I look back, and I had to go back to, like, high school and all these things, and I started looking at how I've always been. Like, I love connecting with people. I love talking to people. I don't care if you're big, small, smart, dumb, crazy, whatever. I like it all. And that kind of. I saw that parlaying into my. The way I am and the way I deal with people now. Does that mean you got to have that to be an undercover? No. I mean, I've no. Awesome undercovers. Unbelievable undercovers. And they hardly talk, you know, it's just. Just knowing the technique and being believable. But once I got to the sheriff's office, I mean, I had a mentor, Gary Ward. He was the world's strongest man in the late 80s. He came in after Cashmere. Yeah. I mean, he's a beast. He was always first. I'm like, what does it take to be second or third? I wait in the car. But he had done an undercover and biker stuff, and I was a biker. I was learning to be a biker. I grew up on motorcycles. And I don't know, man, the bugs just started getting Me, you know, it's.

[Brent Tucker]

I said smaller only because I was thinking of FBI national versus local, you know, of sorts. But yeah, I get what you're saying. The. How long do you, what made you want to make the jump to federal?

[Scott Payne]

It's probably. Well, there's a, there's several factors, but in the, in the beginning it's probably money, which is not right but not wrong. Yeah, yeah. But if you look right, if you look at like a lot of sheriff's offices, police departments, I still see it happening today. County council will give themselves raises every year. They will not give the cops a raise. So it gets to the point to where at five years in or four years end, they raise the starting pay. So if you got a four year degree, you get to come in with this amount of pay and at some point you're passing a two striper that's going to be training you and they let you know it every day. Yeah. That they're not happy about it. And then I ended up in a situation where same thing happened to me. So if five years at the FBI, if you look and you say, where am I going to be in five years? Well, as long as you don't get fired. And it's pretty hard to get fired as long as you don't lie. Well, I say that I don't know about now. I have heard quite a few people to get walked out now and I'm like, well, maybe that's not JV team for life.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

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[Scott Payne]

But as far as when I was in there, if you don't lie, man, I mean you can five years, you're GS13.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

As I say, they have a pay scale.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, your pay scale. I mean when I got to the academy at Quantico, you know, you're in there, you've got people who are former doctors, former attorneys, former major accountants, people making, well, six figures. And we get our first check because you don't get that first check for a month. So you're sitting in Quantico starving because I showed up with I Was starving because on my way to get ready to go, I threw the main bearing in my crankshaft, had to buy a brand new engine for my truck. I needed rotors and brakes all the way around, new tires and a clutch. So I showed up with just enough money in my pocket to pay for the uniforms. So I was waiting on that first month check, scrounging in the cafeteria, you know, playing songs for somebody to give me some money or something.

[Brent Tucker]

You sound like a country song right now.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. So when we get our first check, I said the same thing the other people said. But I'm gonna tell you what was said. They look at their check and they go, holy shit. Because they're looking at how much money they don't have compared to what they're looking at, right? But I'm looking at mine and I went, holy sh. I go, do you know how many side jobs I'd have to work to get this from? I mean, for a month, I'm like, this is insane. And that's just your starting rate. So I was the guy that took everybody to Ruby Tuesdays and bought everybody.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, man, I missed the question. Hate to. Hate to walk it back, but I will. When. When you're doing some of the counternarcotics.

[Scott Payne]

I'm gonna show my stupidity here. The.

[Brent Tucker]

Is there. Before we get into, you know, your. Your bigger cases, when you're working, again, use this word relatively, at. At the smaller department, but a larger department for, you know, city department.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Is there a case that sticks out in your mind? Like, you know, I really. I'm really glad that I got to do that at that department. Is it a. Or is it just the collective of cases you got to be a part of?

[Scott Payne]

I would say collective because on the street level, you're usually going so fast, you know, and it's very dangerous. A lot of times it may happen. Like just say we're on narcotics squad together, and I go into some pretty in depth stories in the book when I was at the sheriff's office. But it might be like I come in and you say, hey, country, I'm running. My mom source is going to make a buy from this guy. You mind going with him? No, not at all. See, it's going so fast. In a perfect world, you want to have as much intelligence as you can. But I'm just hopping in the passenger seat to be a good witness, because, I mean, there are sources for a reason. A lot of times, I mean, it might be an addict or somebody's working Off a charge, right? And we want to make sure nobody's pinching the dope or whatever or keeping money or pocketing money. So I hop in one time and I'm like, yeah, man, I'll go. And I'm in the passenger seat of the van. It's like cold and damp outside. I remember because I had like, maybe like a thick jacket on and a stocking cap. And we come rolling around the corner, and I can't remember if I was wired or not, but I definitely had the money. And we come rolling around the corner and I look, and the way it was set up there is at that point in time, in the mid-90s, if you're in a hot drug trafficking area, let's say it was a certain street in Greenville, South Carolina. Well, they're just running up to your car and they're just slinging the street level. Hey, man, give me a 20. Give me a 20, you know, so that's one rock. And the high only last 15 minutes. So you pull back around the block 15 minutes later. Give me another rock. Give me another rock. However, I did not look like I was crackhead. Yeah. Because I was probably 280 something.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Scott Payne]

You know, Unless I just fell off the wagon, right? Or just started. But we go around the corner and this source is driving the car, and I look and I go, oh, shit, man. Because the dude running the corner, I look and I suck at names, but I never forget faces, right? And I'm real good with articulate stuff. It had to be for my job, right? But I come around the corner and I look, and the guy that's standing on the street corner kind of directing all the dopers that are bringing the dope. It might be dope's hidden in a wall or in a bush or something. I see his face and I realize that two weeks earlier I helped Southern Command do a search warrant. And I'm the guy that jerked that dude out of a bed, cuffed him, slammed him on the ground, cuffed him, then went to the station, then tried to build some rapport with him. Talking about tattoos. Yeah. So I'm looking at him going. And this is the lack of preparation. Right? But can you really do it when you're going that fast? Right. It's a tough thing, but because sometimes on the street level stuff, at least when I was working, you may not know who you're buying from, you know, they're selling, but we got to go through and try to get a shot, try to identify them, and then build the case that way. But yeah, man, I looked and I was like, oh my gosh. And he eyeballs me and it's that old Econoline white panel van, right? And he's walking around that front engine block. And like I said, it's cold and misty and he gets right here to the window. Now inside, I'm shitting gold bricks. I'm sweating, my heart's going, you know, but I'm trying to be cool and I'll. He's looking at me and I'm looking at him and. And I got the money in my hand. I might have been 100 or whatever, but I look at him and all I did was I was like, what's up? Like that. Yeah. I don't know if that's how it came out. I didn't, I didn't never listen to that recording again. But. But he looks and he's looking at me and he's looking at the money, looks at me and he looks at the guy and goes, go ahead. So when we arrest him, of course he says, I knew it. I knew were the law. I said, you almost knew I was the law. You probably had 75% of surety, but you had 25% agreed.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. And greed wins most of the time in that world.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

My buddies that are in narcotics now, like right when they went in, I mean, they arrested all these dudes in uniform and I'm like, these guys don't recognize you? And they're like, no, surprisingly enough, these guys might be what you're saying, like the greed takes over.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

And they see green more than they imagine.

[Scott Payne]

How many people are coming through that.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Door every day and they're like, you.

[Scott Payne]

Know, it's just running and running and running. Unless you sit in there and start hanging with them and you know, and again, like fast level dope buys. I can come up with a reason I'm not smoking with you tonight or doing a line with you tonight. But if I'm going deep undercover and I've come in as a user and you hadn't seen me use in a month or more. Yeah, get ready.

[Brent Tucker]

At least at your level. And where you guys were doing work, do you think you did any thing? I don't say anything.

[Scott Payne]

I know.

[Brent Tucker]

Are you winning the war on drugs?

[Scott Payne]

Not necessarily. And I'm probably going to make. I mean, I just, I just met the other week, my. My friend passed away at my church. He was the leader of our small group. He got diagnosed with brain cancer. Then a year and a Half later, he was gone. He is cousins with the guy that just got appointed the head of dea. So I played at the funeral or the celebration of life. And then we went to the house afterwards and we were talking. He assured me of some great things, you know, and, and I love that. But sometimes when you talk to somebody that works, nothing but drugs. Which is funny for me to say because no matter what squad I went to in the FBI, I still had some drug nexus. Oh, gosh, that's just my luck. Right? But the war on drugs itself, I don't know, man. I mean, in my mind, if you're asking me right here, transparently, can it be one. No. Can we thwart stuff? Yes. So my answer would be, what if we took off a truckload coming into Greenville county and Greenville county was dry for two to three months, then that's just, that's we succeeded. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

I think it's a question that, I think is a question that should be asked. Like as a, as a, as a military person, I don't get offended when people like, hey, was Afghanistan worth it? Valid question. Like, these are, these are. And both. I think when, when you worked it now, I worked Afghanistan, you worked the war on drugs. People get emotionally attached to what the answer is. But I think we should look at this and just subjectively, whether it was or not, I just don't think we're really looking at. It's just as a, from like a headquarter or a policymaker or a lawmaker. The answer, I don't, I don't even think they question it. And it's just always yes and more. And I don't know when we're going to look, look at and say, well.

[Scott Payne]

It'S like, should we.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

It's a, it's a counter. You have to counter it or there would be terrorists everywhere. You have to counter the drugs or our kids would be getting dealt it in school. So it's just a.

[Scott Payne]

And it ebbs and flows. It ebbs and flows. And it's for me, like, okay, let's look in Mexico because most of the stuff I ever worked, all my career, 28 years, all the dope came from Mexico.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Scott Payne]

You know, and east Tennessee. It was all coming through Atlanta, north of Atlanta, all the way up through Tennessee. But that was cartel related. Yeah. On the border. I lived on the border for six and a half years. Of course that's cartel related. Right. But it's supply and demand. So let's say that cocaine is huge, but something else isn't. Well, they're, they're doing cocaine. I mean, that's what they're doing. They've got, they've got like, almost like conga line warehouses set up. And let's just say we pop a load that comes in and it's all packaged in cylinder shaped PVC pipes. And it's supposed to be this company with some kind of plaster or something. And we take maybe two, three loads, same address, whole new name coming out of Mexico. Now it's squares instead of cylinders. And it's. And they're just trying to change it, but like Ice, man, everybody used to do shake and bake and all of a sudden Mexico's like, no, this is, we can, we're going in on this. But it's so freaking cheap. Yeah. When I switched from criminal to domestic terrorism about my last six or seven years in the FBI and I started dealing with members of Aryan Nation out of the Tennessee Department of Corrections. And I'm interviewing people with my cohorts or I'm just tagging along with people who are awesome, awesome law enforcement officers. Generally when you're, when you're doing that drug interview, you're looking at, hey, man, what is. Okay, if an ounce of cocaine is running for about 900 to a grand, then usually you go off of that. Okay, well, heron was probably like a grand to 1100. Ice will be somewhere else. I was interviewing people getting crystal meth, straight, pure. And they were paying like 400, 500 bucks an ounce. And I told them they were full of shit. I'm like, you're lying. You're lying. There's no way. But I hadn't seen it yet. So once I started diving in and everybody, we all started diving in, we're like, oh, my gosh. And I'm talking to my buddy who's over narcotics in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He says, scott, we got kids living in their parents basements. Can't rub two nickels together. They're sitting on three kilos because they pull the money to get a quarter key or half a key. But when they go down, the cartels, like, that's cool, but we're going to front you two and a half keys. But if you don't sell it and bring the money back now, you're going to get the cartel treatment. You're going to get tortured, we're going to come kill your family, your dogs, everything. And it's just. So. It's a supply and demand thing. So then when fentanyl gets big, because you got to look, I was Blessed enough or cursed enough to be on the cusp on some pretty big cases that were dealing heavily with the opioid crisis. When everything was coming out of Broward county here in Florida, it was the Mecca. There were no. There was. They weren't tracking anything on how to. People getting prescriptions. Like one undercover I did in east Tennessee, I think identified like five organizations they were coming to from east Tennessee.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Like the pill mills.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. Southeastern Kentucky. They were coming all the way down at least twice week. They drive, I mean, a piece of crap car. If I drove it or you drove it, we wouldn't make it a block. But they make it all the way to Fort Lauderdale and back. And that's back when you could go in and go to your doctor. You pay 300 cash. They give you the cocktail. They don't even look at you. You walk out and under the same roof as the pharmacy. You fill the script and you drive down the street and go to other doctor. That's how bad it used to be. And that's when the oxy 80s were available. So that went for a dollar a gram. So that's $80 pillow and crush it and snort it. But once we started. So your heroin cells started going down, there wasn't really a drive for fentanyl. And then we start coming through and doing these big pill mill cases and legislature and stuff starts getting changed and, and case law. And now it's like, okay, they've cracked down on the pills. We can't get them from dirty doctors anymore. Let's go back to the street. Yeah. And now you're seeing all this stuff from fentanyl. And the last. It wasn't too long ago I talked to an acquaintance who's FBI former cop. And he's told me that they've got some. China's pushing in some new fentanyl that, that Narcan won't even work on. Yeah. Evolve.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Yeah. Because we would have, we'd know when a batch, a bad batch would come out. Because one night just be overdose, overdose, overdose, overdose. Like within a two mile radius of each other.

[Scott Payne]

Which really means it was a good batch. Yeah, it means it was too pure. What I'm saying is, is when you wake up the next morning and you see 18 teenagers laid out dead. OD. Yeah. It's because the product was too pure.

[Brent Tucker]

Is that, that, does that have an effect on you? You know, as, as a law enforcement working, working it. When you feel like they're just going to change it and you either feel like. Do you ever Feel like you. You got ahead of it, or you're just. You're just always behind, and then you find out what they're going to jump to. Then you have to figure out what they jump to, and you're always kind of chasing them rather than, you know, being on the. On the offensive, or does it kind of ebb and flow?

[Scott Payne]

I'm saying ebb and flow. Picture Tom and Jerry. Picture Roadrunner in the code. We come out with a new radar. We come out with a new speed detector. They come out with a new radar detector.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, right.

[Scott Payne]

We come out with something that can beat their speed detector. They come out and. It's funny.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

It's the same company that makes both.

[Scott Payne]

Did you hear what they're doing over there? For an extra grand, I can get you this. All right, Devil. I mean, I've heard this before, but, yeah, I think it. Evan flows. But for me, I did end up changing. That was one of the things I looked at, because at one point, I thought about leaving the FBI and quitting. I got down to McAllen. The management and the environment was so bad, I thought I was going to quit. And I was already talking to dea, and I knew if I went dea, I'd have to go back to the academy. But I'm like, can I keep my same pay? And they're like, yeah. But then I started looking, and no offense to da, atf, or the other great, you know, DOJ organizations that are out there, but FBI has a SWAT team in every division. You can be a SWAT operator. You can be a tactical instructor, a firearms instructor. When you want to be an undercover in the FBI, we have a certification process, and it's not easy.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Scott Payne]

And there are a lot of building blocks. It's not, hey, you get training in the academy. If you want to work undercover, you can. If you don't, you don't. It's. It's. It's pretty. It's very deliberate. Yeah. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Not you saying not so with the D.A.

[Scott Payne]

Well, just. I'm not going to just. I don't want to piss anybody off. Yeah. From what?

[Brent Tucker]

I just.

[Scott Payne]

From what. From the years that I did it, the way I understood it was, you get the training at the academy. If you want to do it, you can. If you don't, you don't. Now, if you want to get other training after that. Yes. But as far as a certification process, process where you've got an undercover coordinator in your division, which was me for many, many years in mine, then say, you come to me and you say, hey, Scott, I'm kind of thinking about really, really interested in undercover. Well, let's sit down and talk. Yeah, let's shoot the shit. Do you drink? I might take you out drinking if you drink. Well, let me see you. How you acting? Yeah, right. I'm not letting you know that, but.

[Brent Tucker]

Tells a lot about it.

[Scott Payne]

Exactly. Right. Because we don't want to find out you can't handle it or.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Scott Payne]

Or when you drink tequila, you can watch the horns grow out of your head. We don't want to find out why you're on a recording undercover while the cover team is going, what? And they blue hell is going on. So, yeah, I, I don't know what.

[Brent Tucker]

Was so bad about the, the culture. Whether was. Was it like a FBI wide culture problem or just something like in, in your.

[Scott Payne]

When I wanted to leave.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, when you wanted to go there.

[Scott Payne]

It ebbs and play. There's one thing I'll say that I learned in the FBI and it's like good supervisors come and go, bad supervisors come and go. Only one point in my career because my MO was be above average. Now that's probably sad to say. It was very rare, but there was one point where I was on a squad in East Tennessee and everybody was a big hitter. So all you were trying to do was stay average. Right, because everybody was killing. So that means I had to work harder because in my mind, if I was above average or one of your top producers on cases and source development and things like that, you're bringing in the stats, then it would be harder for management to say, Scott, you can't do this undercover, or Scott, you can't do this SWAT school or Scott, you can't go run this active shooter response trainer. If I was above average, I thought that maybe we can meet somewhere in the middle because I get it from a management standpoint, if you think, you think by having my butt in that chair nine plus hours a day that you're going to get more work out of me, that's not true. I'm just going to look like it's going to be like watching paint dry and I'm going to be miserable. I like doing more than one thing, but I've also done that to my own detriment, which I cover extensively in the book about crashing mentally and physically and finding out I got pts and whatever else and I pushed myself too far. I found my threshold at that point in time in my life. I passed it and yeah, but there was one time where I had a supervisor and A supervisor. That supervisor. And man, that whole line where I said, good ones come and go and babies come and go. They wouldn't go. They wouldn't go. That's.

[Brent Tucker]

That's when it gets paid.

[Scott Payne]

They could God bless them because no one wants them. That's true on one part. Yeah. Because they put in for plenty of jobs. The other one was just like, I went to him and I consider him a friend, you know, But I'm like, I gotta ask, how much longer do you have?

[Brent Tucker]

And they were like, curious.

[Scott Payne]

They were like, with the closed door, just me and him in his office. And I'm like, good question. I'm like, I just gotta ask. And I get. Well, mandatory retirement's in two years, but I think I'm gonna try to extend. And I. That's what I said it right there too. I said, I can't make it two more years. I can't. I'm not a quitter, but I can't do this. And that's when I, that's when I kind of pulled a trump card. And maybe I shouldn't say trump. It might offend people. An ace. Okay. Is that offensive? I don't know. Not yet. Right. But yeah, I pulled a card and said, look, I'm stepping down from everything, and my SAC is the head of the office. Within a week and a half, had me move to joint tourism task force. Okay. Oh, cool. But I didn't go there to take a break. I went there to make cases and learn and try to take the experience I had and apply it. And that's what we did.

[Brent Tucker]

The. I think it's, it's, it's a, it's a double edged sword. Did anyone ever give you any pushback? We joke around, you know a lot about your size. Like 6 foot 4 at 1.280260.

[Scott Payne]

Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

You're a large man.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

You stand out, but.

[Brent Tucker]

You stand out, but you're not like, you know, just off the charts, but you do stand out, you know? And was there ever a point in the undercover world where, like, we don't want someone that stands out or are they smart enough to be like, you know what this is? This is. These are your qualities of standing out. And this is where. This is where we can utilize them.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a case by case basis. I will say this. The undercover program, during the height of it, that I was a part of, it was the most diverse unit of people I've ever been in my entire life. I mean, black, white, Gang banger, biker, rich accountant, clean cut. Right, whatever. You. I mean, you name it. Hispanics, you got the Latinos. We got the what? I mean, we had it all right? And it was always funny for us to converge somewhere to put on training because like you say, you're walking through the casino or a mall and. And this bystanders see these big ass brothers, you know, looking like gang banging thugs, jacked, walking up, and then they see these biker looking dudes, and we're all like, what are you looking at? And they're like, what are you looking at? And everybody's, oh, my gosh. Diving under tables and stuff. And then you just run up and hug, what's up, brother? You know? But you got it. The first thing I say is, you have to know. You. I know. I'm a talker. You had piston on here, what, week ago? Yeah, right, so. So Joe's not a big talker. Like, Joe can probably ride in the car for five hours and not say a whole lot. I can't. I think the Lord put me here to fill silence with noise, you know? So, yeah, you have to know. You have to know who you are and be honest with your personality. Like, and that also helped me undercover. Like, there are hours of recordings of me just sitting there going, right, no how. And I'm bored. And I want to talk, but they're talking, and I want to get that evidence. So. But there's been times where I've gone on a case where a buddy called me and said, hey, I need you to be the closer on this. So dirty doctor, blah, blah, blah. I want to get him for drug trafficking. So I go in. He's been doing all kinds of nefarious shit with women. And I mean, like, use condoms in the trash can after a visit and stuff. It's not hard to figure out what's going on, especially when you just got through prescribing a bunch of pain pills. But, man, I wasn't the right guy for the case. I walked in there, I met that dude, I played my role, and, man, I don't know what. I don't know if I reminded him of somebody that took his lunch money. Yeah. Or something. But he did not like me. And after that second, I think it was the second visit, I went back to the case agent, his buddy, mine. I said, hey, man, I'm not your guy. I said, this dude just basically cut me off to the point where I was even like, what are you. Are you accusing me of something? You know, I'm like, You know, because I'm like, I never said anything like that. So I'm just trying to power lift and blah. Whatever I said. But yeah, sometimes you're not the guy.

[Brent Tucker]

I think it's a really interesting point to make that. That self assessment that you're not the guy because there's a competitive part of you that. That wants to be the guy. And you're like, I'll figure it out.

[Scott Payne]

Like, I'll.

[Brent Tucker]

I'll make it work. You almost. Some people look at it, almost take it as an L that you did something wrong when you're absolutely right. There are some people you're just not going to win over. And if your personality or whatever it is, it literally could be something like, he doesn't like the way I look, you know?

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

I remind whatever someone he hates, you know, and you got to walk away from that.

[Scott Payne]

We just think of your military background and your comp. Background and just intelligence in itself. I may have set up the meeting. This may be my. My gig. But I need you to go with me or you to go with me or all three of us together. And this is the one I got lined up. And when we start talking, they clearly shut me off. But they take a liking to you. Well, that's yours now. Yeah. Because we're just trying to get the best we can get, you know, so no harm, no foul.

[Brent Tucker]

But it goes back to, you know, the. Oddly enough, people think of undercover work as more of singleton type things. But there's still. And. And it can be. There's still a lot of teamwork that goes. Oh, yeah, undercover work.

[Scott Payne]

Absolutely.

[Brent Tucker]

A lot of teamwork. Now some of it may be behind the scenes and there's. And when you are more singleton of sorts, you're the one putting it out.

[Scott Payne]

There, but it's a village behind it.

[Brent Tucker]

But that's right there.

[Scott Payne]

You got a case, you got people surveilling you, you got planes, whatever it may be. Yeah. Some people could be running a wiretap. That takes a bunch of people. Did you.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

How often do you wear wire all this?

[Scott Payne]

Well, that's my job.

[Brent Tucker]

We're in a wire right now.

[Scott Payne]

I think you guys are recording. Trying to get rid of us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I should be asking you. I mean, I'm sure that. I'm not sure. I know there's some people at my form. Organization that do not like me.

[Brent Tucker]

Is that why they're talking so much before the.

[Scott Payne]

And I started doing this to you? Scott, why are you walk that way? I gotta catch in My hip. Come on. Come on over here and talk to my shirt. Yeah. I've actually got videos for training of not necessarily undercovers, but sources. And you give them the wire, and, I mean, you're watching the video, and you're like, what are they? They literally got their hand in their pocket, and they go. And if you walk over there, like, walking right next, I'm like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Remember when I told you to act like you were.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. If you look like you're doing something wrong, you're probably doing something wrong. Yeah. It's pretty wild. And. And I. But I love. I love the technique. The technique is a very intrusive technique. It's right there with doing a wire tab, because, I mean, you're. You're. You got to get approvals. You know, you're violating somebody's privacy. You're going in there and. And maybe depending on the situation in the beginning, I may or may not wear a wire, you know, because I'm pretty sure you're gonna check me. But at some point, I mean, that's my job. Yeah. As an undercover, I'm supposed to be getting it for you.

[Brent Tucker]

What was the. Or was there a point where you're the closest? Or, like, I'm caught several times.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Or have you ever been actually caught?

[Scott Payne]

No, thankfully, I haven't.

[Brent Tucker]

After 24 years, 23 years, something like that.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. There's. There's a. You'd think.

[Scott Payne]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

Not ask that question.

[Scott Payne]

It's.

[Brent Tucker]

It's out there somewhere. Like, someone has been absolutely caught.

[Scott Payne]

Oh, yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Obviously, it happens. We never really hear those stories.

[Scott Payne]

Well, it happens.

[Brent Tucker]

And it may not even be your fault, you know?

[Scott Payne]

No, no. And it could be a quick thing. It could be like my bus, where everybody's there, and somebody's like, you know, I mean, I've got videos just for training purposes. It's like on the other side of the door is a SWAT team or quick response team, and they're ready, and you got a code word and everything. Drug seller walks in, shuts the door, and before they even give. Before they can even breach that thing open, turn the doorknob. Eight shots have been fired because there was a rip. Nobody knew. The guy just came right in, pulls right out of paper bag, start shooting the source, you know, the person trying to help us get done. I've had several, which is not a son. Definitely not bragging. That kind of makes me dumb, I guess. But I end up in these violent situations. But, like, even. Okay, local stuff. Like I told you, the guy walks around. It's a guy just jerked out of a bed. Two weeks earlier, another one, I'm going up mid-90s again. Weed was a big deal and I'm going up to buy weed. But at least back then in the mountains, what I found is it was always like more like a family thing. Like, it was like, I'm not rolling up on a corner and you throw me a joint, say, brother, come on in the house, man, let's just burn one together, that kind of thing. And I end up in the mountains. And we didn't really have a whole lot of intel other than that's the house and it was a long driveway in the woods. It's probably some booby traps. You get in there trying to buy some weed, dude's got a rifle pointed at you. And his brother walks out and he says, my brother says you're a cop. Oh, man. In my head I'm going, your brother's right.

[Brent Tucker]

Your brother's got a good head off.

[Scott Payne]

Your brother's right. Because I'm looking at his brother going, I locked him up. I locked him up when I was in uniform.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

What, to recognize you?

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. So, but I mean, I'm just gabbing it at that point. I'm like, well, how do I know you're not a fed? You know, blah, blah, blah. Right? I'm out of here. Whatever.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Lie denied, make counteractions denied three times.

[Scott Payne]

But then like the big ones that I've talked about in the book and on the shows, one of the ones was the Outlaws. That was, that was the big one. That's probably the closest I've ever been to getting, I mean that, that, the white supremacist one there at the end, the, the radical extremists, the accelerationist, which we can talk about later. But that, that one, they almost found me like that or found a tracking device. But the, the Outlaws, that was the closest one.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Really?

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Because they have to live to some degree paranoid, right? That, that, some.

[Scott Payne]

How many years, how many years has the mafia and 1% of biker gangs been getting infiltrated by law enforcement? We're like at 40 something years now, right? Easy. So, yeah, easy.

[Brent Tucker]

It's, it's even harder to infiltrate, infiltrate someone who's paranoid, who knows it's, it's going to happen. So we talk about putting that into a degree of difficulty and something that's already difficult now. You got to do it when they're expecting it.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

It's, it's, it's what year's not the outlaws.

[Scott Payne]

Probably 05 to 078. Ish. Oh.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

So, okay, you were, you were after all the 90s, early 2000s ones that, you know.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Like J. Dobbins and Billy Queen.

[Scott Payne]

Well, Jay's came, Jay's happened after.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Really?

[Scott Payne]

My. It's gonna be close. Okay, it's gonna be close. But Billy Queens was before mine and I've never met him. So I'm on your show. We've. We've got mutual friends. I hear great things about him. We've passed each other just like Jay. We passed each other in the night at conferences. Like, I'm on my way in and they're on their way out or vice versa. I spoke at one the other day and they said, sheriff, if Mark Lamb was there that morning, I'm like, well, dad gun. If I'd known that I walked in.

[Brent Tucker]

Here, you know, but, but to some degree you have to think about when the stories go, they go big and everyone hears about them. But there's, you know, I'll be a little bit dramatic about it, but there's a, there's, there's a motorcycle club and in every city. So what's the chance of it happening to your motorcycle club? You know, is there, is, is it playing the numbers of sorts to that?

[Scott Payne]

Well, are you doing bad stuff? Are you just, are you just a riding club?

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Scott Payne]

And just doing some street level narcotics or even if you're a 1%er club, what I've started finding, is it really dependent on the chapter? Yeah. So like. And let's just take the case I did in Massachusetts. You've got Taunton, Massachusetts and Brockton, Massachusetts. They're very, very close to each other.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Scott Payne]

So in the Brockton chapter, let's say it's 13 to 15 dudes. Pretty much everybody's got a full time job. If they did time, they already did it and they're out. Other than maybe some street level stuff like a bump here and there, a little personal use, cocaine, maybe selling a little gram or something. Right. Like, but federal level, deep cover, I don't know. But then you go to Taunton and out of 13 to 15 dudes, one and a half had a job. One had a towing company, the other one was a tattoo artist and piercer, but I don't think he worked all the time. So that's why I say half. Everybody else straight thug, everybody else not a job. I mean, hustling, selling dope, prostitution, extortion, home invasions, carjackings, the spectrum. Yeah. And they would make fun of Brockton Right. They'd be like, hey, it's like one would hop in a chair and the other one go, hey, you want to go visit Brockton tonight? You know what I mean? Because they're like. Because the older guys are like saying, hey, you need to quit bringing so much heat. When the younger guys are like saying, I'm an outlaw. I'm a 1 percenter. Yeah. This is why I did this. Right. So I said this the other night at place I spoke. It's like, you know, am I saying all 1 percenters are doing illegal stuff? No, but it kind of goes with the whole thing of being a 1 percenter, right? Yeah. I mean, it came about.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

How dare you lump me in the crime category.

[Scott Payne]

You know, it came about in the, in the Vietnam era. And the president of the American Motorcycle association, these biker clubs were forming when guys were coming back from overseas. You know, no decompression, no transition. Now all of a sudden you're telling me you got to start acting like a model citizen. Yeah. And they went, started creating biker clubs so they could do some rowdy stuff and bond. So the president of the American Motorcycle association came out and said, listen, nationwide, whatever, all the channels, a media blitz and said 99 of all motorcycle riders and owners are good law abiding citizens. It's only 1% that's bad. And they took that 1% and put it in the bag.

[Brent Tucker]

I never heard that.

[Scott Payne]

You didn't know that?

[Brent Tucker]

I didn't know that.

[Scott Payne]

That's how I came.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Literally nameless, provided for them.

[Scott Payne]

So you're like, you name, right, I'm a 1%, right. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

They took that red with it.

[Scott Payne]

Badge of honor. Yeah. Yeah, so.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, that's funny.

[Scott Payne]

And then you get like different clubs with different things. Like, you know, the filthy few. May mean you've done something here, blood brother. May mean you've beat somebody, made them bleed. And then you got all the other crazy stuff. Purple wings, brown wings, red wings, whatever.

[Brent Tucker]

So that section of the Massachusetts motorcycle club, you spend some time with those guys?

[Scott Payne]

Two years.

[Brent Tucker]

Two years with them. How to. How'd that process go with, you know, getting introduced to them, having them accept you going through the initial who is this guy Phase. That, that whole story a little tough.

[Scott Payne]

Because I'm a country guy.

[Brent Tucker]

I was just thinking that we said Massachusetts.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. But not hard to get noticed in the bar when I go up and order a drink. You know, my first office in the FBI was New York City, so I already know or knew what it was like to be a guy With a southern draw. Going into an Upper east side Manhattan bar and saying, hey, can I get a Jack and Coke? Three bud lights? And they're like, say that again. Give me a Jack and Cook. 3. But last, darling, you know, they'd be like, is that for you? And I go, yes, it is. And they go, it's on the house. I'm gonna. All right. But I got up to Massachusetts, and I knew the bar culture. Like I said, I used to bounce and stuff, right? And it was a gentleman's club, which I always say caveat is, it's not really a gentleman's club, because I didn't see any gentleman in there. And neither was I when I was in those clubs either. Either. But. But coming as a father that has daughters, you know, and girl dogs. I don't even have a boy dog. But what's.

[Brent Tucker]

What's your cover for. For being up there as a southern guy in Massachusetts?

[Scott Payne]

So I grew up landscaping, okay? But I had to start looking. How in the hell. What am I gonna say? I'm landscaping three months out of a year, right? Oh, yeah. I'm only coming in for a week, right? Like the job. Yeah, exactly. Right. Ice sculpture, you know, whatever you want out there in the front yard. But I went in and I started doing a lot of research with my dad, my stepdad, meeting some of their friends and stuff. And I would say, hey, you guys got any ideas on something that would allow me to travel with my background? And one would be like, how about a heavy equipment operator? And I'm like, would I be traveling for that? Like, wouldn't I be moving there to get a permanent job? Or. And then you start getting into minutia. Like, on a Kubota, that's actually reverse and invert, on the John Deere, that's actually forward. And I'm like, I'm gonna get tripped up, right? So we started looking, and I found out about, like, legit line of work where you're a site survey specialist, so you're going and looking, like, for investors. In this case, I had investors in Dallas that backed me up and sent me around the country looking at property to buy and flip, whether it be mercantile or residential. I'd pull the property records, go down the clerk of court, do all that kind of stuff. So that gave me a reason to be there. And then, I mean, really, right off the bat, they were already telling me criminal stuff. And then I just started kind of letting it come out that, wow, I'm a criminal too, right? Shocker. But it Wasn't entrapment. It was all predicated. That's why you get a lot of people going, oh, look at what you did. You went in there. I didn't make nothing up, man. I mean, if you're not doing anything wrong, and I'm not talking about today's climate when everybody going down rabbit holes and stuff. I'm saying for my years, if you weren't doing anything wrong. Okay, what's. I mean, like, I've gone undercover. I've ran undercover as well. We went in for five, six months, and at the end of that five or six months, we're like, they're not doing anything illegal. Yeah, yeah, I'm out. We can pull chalks and maybe go talk to them, right? Special Agent Scott Payne. How you doing? Like to talk to you about. Yeah, been watching you for about a year and a half. I'm not gonna lie. But looks like you're a pretty good person. And what we really want is nobody to get hurt. So maybe from this point forward, let's have an open line of communication and if you hear of anybody that's going to be hurt, you know, or something crazy going on, maybe give me a call. Maybe I can reimburse you. That's all about. Yeah, that's. At the end of the day, it's going to end up to human intelligence. Yeah. And groundwork.

[Brent Tucker]

Exactly.

[Scott Payne]

Because.

[Brent Tucker]

Because if you like being overseas, it.

[Scott Payne]

Really is JV team for life.

[Brent Tucker]

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[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

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[Brent Tucker]

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[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

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[Scott Payne]

JV team for life.

[Brent Tucker]

If. Because if you just pulled out and, and, and left you, you kind of would have left with nothing. But by the way you guys ended it. You're continuing to expand your, your source network. It was even though you didn't leave with, you know, indictments and.

[Scott Payne]

Right.

[Brent Tucker]

And you, you left with something.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, just another, just another connection.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, another relationship and connections. Connections make the world go round, I'm telling you.

[Scott Payne]

So I got up there and I really lucked out. Or you can say divine intervention as I use a lot these days. But the first night, so what I did because I knew those bars worked certain ways. I went to the strip club when I pretty much knew they weren't a bunch of outlaws in there. That might be one in there, but it might mean day shift, you know, and, or right at the end of day shift, in the beginning of night shift. And I might go in there and I'd walk in and in Massachusetts you could. It was all nude and it wasn't by every other state I've been in. In order for it to be all nude, you can have liquor, but you could bring your own liquor. Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's like a catch. Oh, you guys want to make it? Look, I'm asking you like, you know what I mean? According to you. According.

[Brent Tucker]

According to you. Go ahead. I'm learning something new here as well. Go ahead.

[Scott Payne]

I got a friend and what he told me, you should have seen it. I mean. But I went in there and I would order two Jack and Cokes or two double Jack and Cokes and I go sit down and it's like it's slow. So somebody comes over, says, hey, you know, it's just a business. It's Just the way the bar works. It's like, you know. You want any company? Yeah, I do. And if it's $20 for a dance, maybe I'll tip a 20. The next thing you know, you can see that going through and everybody's whispering, oh my gosh, he's got money. Next thing you know, you got four or five people around your table and you're just shooting the shit. Give. Give the gab, talk to the bartenders and whatnot. And you're just making a presence is what I did. So the day or evening that I was in there, it wasn't the first time I was in there. Yeah. And say an outlaw is like, who the F is this guy? Which is what was said. Maybe they talked to the bartender and the bartender says, oh, that's Tex. You know, we call him Tex. He's from Texas. He comes here all the time. All the time. Like twice. Yeah, but it's human nature. Yeah. It seems like was this big. So that's how that kind of started. And then I was being loud and boisterous, which is kind of my thing. And I had a bunch of people laughing at the bar. And eventually one of the guys that they had good intelligence on, he liked to be surrounded by big dudes and he liked to be the center of attention. And he ends up calling me over and. And we start fast forwarding. The next thing you know, I'm invited to the kind of like a Northeast regional run. It's called the Lobster Fest. And it was held at Brockton Clubhouse. Okay. So I'm invited to that, man. Just like all throughout the case. I may get you guys to know me real well. Y' all may trust me, you may like me, but now we go to a party and I've watched the president from another chapter stand this close, point to me and go, who the F is that and where the F is he from and what is he doing here? And you got it. You got to know your stuff. Yeah. But as time went on, we started. They come to find out the thing that I portrayed roll up a trade was a high ranking member, if not the owner of international theft ring. And. And it's true, the stuff happens. Steel cars, stuff like that. You take it to the border, you take it into Mexico, you trade that for the cartel or you sell it. Because on the border, at least at that time, my. My motorcycle insurance almost tripled. Actually, it over tripled. From New Jersey. I was in New Jersey. I moved to McAllen, Texas. My motorcycle insurance, I got my first Bill. And I'm like, what in the. I called USAA bike theft. Yeah. They said, oh, yeah, Harley Davidson gets stolen all the time. And I'm like, oh. And then. Then the other was v8.4 by fours. Whether it was a suburban, Tahoe pickup, quad cab.

[Brent Tucker]

They were big because it's so close to the border. They just push across the border.

[Scott Payne]

Absolutely.

[Brent Tucker]

Maybe we should put up a fence there.

[Scott Payne]

You know what? I'm glad you circled back, because really, you talk about the war on drugs. The thing is, is we've got it. We've got a. We got to close that condom. You got to close it down a little bit.

[Brent Tucker]

Sure.

[Scott Payne]

You know, I mean, because the harder you make it to get things across. And I mean, they. They know on the border, they know how to do ruse. I mean, it's not really a ruse. So we take off 500 pounds of dope, you know. Well, now we're stuck processing that. And they're like, great, because now they're running like 100 kilos right through that same spot. Because we're tied up, right? Yep.

[Brent Tucker]

They're.

[Scott Payne]

They're not dumb. I'll give them that.

[Brent Tucker]

They're. And they. They adjust. They adjust well.

[Scott Payne]

Money, man. Money.

[Brent Tucker]

Greed. Greed will make someone get real smart real quick, real creative, real quick. But, you know, that's. That's with legal and illegal stuff. You know, both. You think. You think Mr. Ford did the. Started the assembly line because he was lazy and just wanted it to be easier to put cars.

[Scott Payne]

Kentucky Fried Chicken.

[Brent Tucker]

That guy was a gangster. He got into shootouts with. With rival Chicken. Chicken people. You think I'm kidding? You gotta watch the series called the Men who Built America on History Channel. Talks about them, and it's crazy.

[Scott Payne]

Wow. Maybe I should have referenced Jack Daniels, because if all of his statues. He's only about this time. But yeah, he.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, he took a turn. That's right.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. So back to the other. It's entertaining. So the long and short of it, the. I'll speed the two years up because I've talked about it. I mean, unless you guys want me to D deep. Because I talked about it on a lot of interviews and it's in the.

[Brent Tucker]

Book, but you can speed up on it.

[Scott Payne]

But the thing is, is over that time I started, what they would do is they would report vehicles stolen so they'd get their insurance money, and then they sell it to me at a stolen price. Okay. They believed I was taking them back to Mexico.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Scott Payne]

And then we started. They started making money. Then we started Doing things like that. And then it got to the point to where I had trust. And it'd be like, hey, Tex, we just jacked this dude. We just. They literally did it legitimately. Did a carjacking, Took a dude at gunpoint out of his vehicle. And they're like, this thing is hot. It's got a tracker on it. It's hot. I'm like, don't worry about it, you know? And then I have a. Another undercover, maybe a very seasoned one, may not be, but doing a cameo. They drive up in a truck and we load the vehicles up and then. And then they. They leave and we're off to fight another day.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Did they ever, ever, like, you were so good at it? Were they ever, like, how are you so good at. Like, how are you not getting caught? You're calm, you're collected. I'll take care of it. And then nothing ever happens to you. Does that ever make them think, like.

[Brent Tucker]

You can't be too bad at it, but maybe you can't be too good at it at the same time?

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, but if you're looking at me at that point in the role I was playing there, I mean, I could legitimately sell it because I knew all the ins and outs. I was dealing weekly with Texas department of public safety, and I would talk to their auto theft people and I go, is this kind. I talked to the other investigators about grenades and what is this going for over in the border and all this. So I was getting it all legit, man. What up? And. And then. And then it gets to the point to where there's a hell's angel president murdered and there. And the case teams running a wiretap. But now I'm calling it and I'm kind of dirtying it up, talking to them, and they're like, yeah, if you come out here, man, you need to be strapping and blah, blah, blah. And. And then, you know, we do a sturgis run and it's sturgis the day I arrive, like five outlaws are shot point blank range. And it was the hells angels that did it. And then it's just stuff like that. But as time went on, I gained more trust. And as I said, they. Well, I didn't tell you from day one when I met the president, Joe Dogs, president of the Taunton chapter, When we stepped outside and he says, where are you from? I said, I'm on down on the border of Mexico. His next sentence was, how much can you get a kilo cocaine for? And I was, I think, like, around there, it was like a 13 grand. Down on the border, it's like 11 or 13 grand. He's like, oh, that's cool, man. But his mind, he thought, well, if I brought them all up to him, they'd still be 13 grand. And I'm like, no, that's not how it works. That's why up here, they're about 25, 30. You want to come down to the border? Yeah. If you want to come down to the border, pick them up and risk bringing them back yourself, that'll work, but that's not how it works. And then the case team had them dealing dope, and. And so the predication was all there. So we get to this point at a year and a half in the case where we up the ante. We being the FBI, we had a DEA agent assigned to the case team, the United States attorney's office. We're like, look, they've been asking for dope this whole time. They're all predicated. Let's give them what they're asking for. And we set up a drug deal. And the thing that was the thing about it is at that point in time, at a year and a half in, I had befriended this guy named Scott Town, who to this day, any undercover I've ever did, absolute closest relationship I've ever built. I'll build some close ones. But me and this guy clicked. We're like, cut from the same cloth, if you will. Yeah. And he was my closest relationship. The second closest at that time would have been a guy. His road name was Clothesline, Brian de la Vega. He was the enforcer for the Taunton chapter. And then it would have been the president, Joe Dogs. And then trickling on down. So the night before the op, what they're going to do, they. We've laid this whole thing out. You don't just throw it out. It's got to be believable. My story's got to be believable. If you don't. People talk all the time. They're like, man, you know, what about this? What about. You have to believe me. If you don't believe me. I mean, there's all kinds of things you can do. Yeah, but if you. What I've generally found in the criminal world is, how am I sexy to you? If that's you making money, then you need to make money off, you know, it's the criminal world. So the night before the op, Joe Dogs tells me to come over to the clubhouse, and for the listeners that don't know, at least in this one percenter clubhouse, I was not allowed to touch the door once it's locked. I'm not allowed to answer the phone because I'm not patched. Could I have patched? I say yes. They asked me on multiple times. Yes. They said, man, we want you to patch. And I painted it back to him one night on a recording in the clubhouse with the door locked with a bunch of outlaws. And I'm like, look, that's very humbling. I really appreciate it and I would love to do it. But let me ask you a question. Look at where I'm at in life right now. I'm not here by being stupid. I'm here because I've been successful. Why would I subject myself to 6 months of absolute BS being your probate, your kid, you're my dad, whatever you want to call it. Prospect depending on the club and not be able to drink. Sit over there all weekend long serving you guys, getting called out at four in the morning to change the oil and all this other stuff. I get it. It's a rite of passage. I got it. I got to pay my dues. But I'm sitting here drinking for free right now, right? And they're like, oh, wait. But I was like, I'm not trying to piss anybody off, but here's what I'll tell you. There have been. We talked about how many years motorcycle gangs have been infiltrated. There are hundreds and hundreds of law enforcement officers, whether it's a state and local or whatever, that got patched into a club. But how many of the cases were successful? Yeah, that's a good saying. So, like, do you lose yourself? Do you lose your. Some people get addicted to dope because they did it. They lose their marriage, they lose their job, they lose their life, and it's just not worth it. And we had a different game plan and we were getting everything we wanted.

[Brent Tucker]

So what was the benefit of it?

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, so. So, plus I explained to the case team, I'm like, look, I. Look, my ego would love. I would love to have one of these patches hanging. But if I'm probate and they say, text, get your crap. We're going to go jack this person. I can't say no. Yeah, I can't say as a probate or a prospect. Good. No. I'll tell you what. You guys go handle that. When you get it, bring it back to me and I'll get rid of it. That's not how it's going to work. So you got to look at things and know your group and it's not always easy, but we set up a drug deal, and we were going to be doing a drug protection. They were going to be helping guard a shipment coming from my cartel contacts, going to another cartel contact. And the night before I get the call, I go over weird exchange in the beginning with Joe Dogs. I was kind of cocky. I'm like, why did you even call me over here? Right? So I come back when they're ready and I go in. And the long and short of it is at some point, Clothesline comes up to me and he says, hey, Tex, you got a minute? And I'm like, yeah, I've been in that clubhouse umpteen times, man. There's only one door I've never been in. And just let me describe to you. When you walk in the door and you shut it, it's cinder block walls. Pretty sure it's in the block. And then it's. And then it's a steel frame door, Deadbolts, locks, welded hooks with a metal bar across that. So from a breacher standpoint, pretty tough.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, it's got some dogs on it.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, it's pretty tough. So. And then you can't touch the phone or nothing like that. So there's one door I've never been in, and that's the door Clothesline led me through. And he grabs a cigarette and ashtray. I got my jack. I'm following through this door. And as I'm going through the door, another outlaw comes in right behind me. It's a tight stairwell. I get down there and they brandish their weapons. They let me know I'm not free to leave. And then he proceeds to tell me, look, this is what Clothesline says. I mean, I've seen the damn recording and relived it so many times. He's like, hey, there's a lot of shit going on right now. It's my job to take care of my brothers. So from there, he tells me to write down my full name, my date of birth, all the information I can give. And then he told me, I'm gonna need you to take all your clothes off because I'm gonna check you for a wire. Problem was, guys, because I was wired to the Hill, right?

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Oh, shit.

[Scott Payne]

So I'm wired because we're a year and A half in U.S. attorney's office wants this information. The FBI wants this information. I mean, it helps with search warrants and stuff. If we're in the clubhouse and they're talking about the drug protection and other criminal activity, right? Yeah. So because of the stress of the situation, the adrenaline dump. I forgot my middle name, which was insane because I knew it. It's just.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Was your middle cover your cover name?

[Scott Payne]

My cover name, yeah. But I was Scott Calloway and I couldn't remember. I was writing it down and I'm leaning in and I'm actually blessed enough to put the. This training block on that covers this period of my life in front of like Navy seals, HRT and stuff like that. And they pointed out, they're like, bro, your hand wasn't even shaking. At least that the camera can pick up. I said, well, I was trembling on the inside. And if you hear the recording, the voice you hear right now is not the voice you hear on that record. Recording. Yeah, I'm freaking out. My throat's tighter. It sounds like I'm an octave higher. Almost like a chipmunkish. Yeah. And you know that auditory exclusion where everything's going, woof. Slow motion, right. Time dilation, everything's clicking screenshots. And then, then it hit me because as I was going through the Rolodex in my head, I'm like, oh man. I remember my initials were SAC because I thought that was funny because that's the head of an FBI office and I knew I'd never be one, so. So it hit me. That was Scott Andrew Calloway. I wrote that down. And now it's time for me to take my clothes off. And again, had I not been wired, it would just been an embarrassing situation. Getting naked in front of two guys. And basement's very generous. I couldn't stand up straight. I could probably touch the wall on both sides. It was a tight space. And of course the adrenaline dump and the fear factor doesn't help the fact of me. It's making it smaller. Yeah. And so I take off. I take off all of my upper body clothing, coat, shirts, whatever it was called.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Wire on your leg.

[Scott Payne]

Well, I had it somewhere. I had more than one too.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Oh really?

[Scott Payne]

Because I like to carry backups, especially if I was doing video. Because back circa 2006, 7, you couldn't imagine how big of a device you would have to have to run non stop video all day. Right. So I did that and I took my. All my upper body clothing off. I took my boots off. I dropped my underwear and jeans down to my ankles. So from the ankles up, butt naked, he's checking me and I'm shitting gold bricks. But I'm talking, I'm not vapor locking. That's something we teach. So I'M like even saying, I'm like, hey, should I ask what's going on? You know? And he's like, well, you know, blah, blah. And I'm even coming back and saying, you know, like I told you guys, you asked for this, if nobody wants to do nothing, nobody has to do nothing, you know? Yeah. We turn around and walk away. It's no big deal. Just trying to buy time. And I think I'm done. And so now that adrenaline dump, now I'm coming back up, right? He's checking me, I'm naked now I'm pulling my pants back up. I get my pants and underwear back up. And then he grabs a piece of clothing. And when he grabs that piece of clothing, I had a recording device in it. And he starts kneading it with his fingers. He's grabbing it and as he grabs it, he goes, hey, I'm not going to find anything here. I don't want to. Like some pictures of my old lady. And I'm like, no, actually I say, if you listen to record. I go, I hope not, you know, because I don't. I'm crapping gold bricks again. So he, he starts needing the jacket and he's going up parts of it and I, and I, you can hear me on the recording. Don't even know I do it, but I'm watching and I just go, because I don't know what I'm gonna do. Yeah, okay. I fight two guys with two pistols. If I make it out of there upstairs, there's 12 more outlaws with a locked door. I mean, what am I, what am I doing? I did look for plastic on the floor. Had I seen plastic, I probably would have just tried to fight my way out. Because in that world, to me it means if there's plastic on the floors.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Oh, they're gonna kill you.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, they're gonna kill me. And turn top of the plastic and then four corners and drag me out. Nothing to clean up. But he looks right at it and he misses it. And divine intervention for me. And he hands it to me and I immediately start going back into my role. I'm like, hey, so tomorrow if you come out to help with this thing, I was gonna be with it and then I crack. Self deprecating humor is a big thing I use. I am a jovial guy, but it's also a defense mechanism. When I'm scared shitless, I'll crack a joke. Yeah. You know, and that's what I did. I was like, well, I'm glad I didn't wear Any white underwear or something like that? You know, that night I didn't sleep.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

I would have quit right there.

[Brent Tucker]

Hey, I think I'm done.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. Anybody got any brown pants?

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Man? That's what I was going to ask you. At what point do you just jump to the other side of your head? Like, now it's on. Were you going to wait for them to go for something?

[Scott Payne]

No, I'll tell you. The question I always get asked is, what would you have done if he found it? And I remember it like it was yesterday. And I had two responses. One, because he already threw me the bone about the girl. If he just said, what is this? I just said, I don't know. Some pictures of yo lady, you know, the only other thing I had was the gig is up. I'm an undercover FBI agent. I can walk out of here and we can see each other in court or all hell's gonna break loose. Problem was, is that would have been a bluff on my part because to my knowledge, every time I'd ever been in that clubhouse, my cover team could never hear me. Yeah. Just whether it was the equipment issue back then or whatever. But my understanding was they never could hear me, so it would have been a bluff. So I'll make it out of there. And I party that night with Scott town, and Joe Dog's the president, and I'm pissed. I shouldn't have been pissed. I mean, I'm undercover. But I took it personal. And I was laying into him. I'm like, you effing, blah, blah, blah, let me wait till tomorrow. You show up, I'm taking all your clothes off in the middle of the parking lot kind of thing. See how you like. And. And I remember one point Joe Dogs was like, well, yeah, text. But listen, man, there's a lot at stake here, man. I mean, you know, there's some guys are concerned because there's a lot of risk. And I said, yes, there's risk because it's effing illegal. You. You ask, then we doing it or not. Right?

[Brent Tucker]

I'm taking a risk, too.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, exactly. And I pointed that out, and I said that. I said, you. You guys, if it goes south for you, you go to jail. If it goes south for me, I use what the cartel did. I said, not only would they kill my family, they will torture my family slowly, and they will kill my animals and everything else, but the next day, we. We pull it off, but Clothesline doesn't show up. Oh, let me. Let me rewind it a bit. That night, when I Go to hand in my equipment, I find out that the two task force officers who were on the case the entire time, a Sergeant Higginbottom from Massachusetts State Police and Joe Cummings, detective at Brockton pd. They are unbelievable. They're awesome. Something in that initial meeting with Joe Dogs made them think something wasn't right. And they had pulled close enough and they heard everything, and they had radio because essentially it's the beginning of the shift. Even though it's like 8 o' clock at night, it's the beginning of our shift, right? They radioed back to Boston, and to my understanding, everybody that was there was heading down with blue lights and sirens because they told him, hey, they've got Scott in the basement, they're stripping him, and he's wired to the hilt. So that was very shocking to find that out, because they could have pulled the trigger. They knew that clubhouse. Their idea was. They knew the door. Their idea was if it got bad enough or they felt like it was time to pull the trigger, they were going to drive the van into the wall right beside the door to kind of breach it around the door. And then I tell this. This is kind of comical, but it comes from a good place. The case agent was a buddy of mine. We went through the academy together. And that night, when everybody's like, oh, my gosh, my gosh, I'm turning over the equipment like four or five in the morning, he says, hey, man, when I was coming down the highway with my blue lights and sirens on, I felt like I was in the basement with you. And I looked at him and I said, you weren't. It's good to feel that way, bud. I'm like, I'm happy you feel that way. But let me tell you something. I was looking for any friendly face down in that hole. So the other big thing about that is I bought my wife a burner phone back then because we had a newborn. My youngest daughter was about one. My oldest daughter's about three. And everybody knows what a burner phone is these days. But basically, something doesn't come back to nothing. So I could call her from my undercover phone. So no matter if it was four in the morning, five in the morning, seven in the morning, I'd call her and say, hey, baby, it's me. Just letting you know I'm done going back to the hotel. After I sleep, wake up, I'll give you a call. So that night when I called her, first thing she says is, are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, why? And she Said, I don't know. I was driving with our daughters in McAllen, Texas, at such and such time tonight, and I got this overwhelming feeling, and I pulled over on the side of the road and started praying for you. Well, I mashed it up. That's when I was in the basement. Whoa.

[Brent Tucker]

That's crazy.

[Scott Payne]

That's a hell of an oh, shit signal. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

I wish I could remember the guest that said it, but remember the guest that said. I'll never forget what he said. He's like. He used the phrase, is it odd or is it God?

[Scott Payne]

Right? And.

[Brent Tucker]

And, you know, there's several parts of, you know, Was it Jay? I think it was before Jay. I can't remember.

[Scott Payne]

Drew, do you remember.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Taylor Cavanaugh?

[Brent Tucker]

Was it. Might have been. Might have been Taylor Kavanaugh. I'd like if credit where credit's due on that one. But I remember them saying it me like, yeah, I'm gonna take that.

[Scott Payne]

Well, let me know, because I'm gonna permanently borrow it. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Same thing as, is it odd or is it God? And chances are it's God.

[Scott Payne]

Dude. It's insane, because even if you look on a map, I'm in Boston, Massachusetts. She's at the bottom of. Right. But I will tell you something is kind of crazy. And I told you I already got a stupid sense of humor. But after watching that video and watching that video and watching that video and watching that video and reliving it and typing it up and then using it for training, I'm listening the entire damn time I was in the clubhouse, do you know what song was blaring over the speaker system?

[Brent Tucker]

No.

[Scott Payne]

Give me three steps. Yeah, the entire time. The whole song, for the listeners that don't know, is about getting out.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Scott Payne]

You give me. Give me three steps. Give me three steps. That's it. And you'll never see me no more. So in my stupid sense of humor, this is what I'm thinking. I'm like this, Lord, if I'm not supposed to go in that clubhouse tonight, if you'll just give me a sign, won't you give me three steps? Hey, did you turn that down? I'm trying to talk to Jesus. Listen, Lord, as I was saying, give me a sign. You'll never see me no more. I said, cut that, Leonard Skinner. So I'm like, I don't know if Ronnie Van Zand was trying to send me a message from the grave or not, man. But I'm like, what an idiot. Even the song told me to.

[Brent Tucker]

The other part about that story. And I've heard a similar, you know, type of story with other undercover agents, which is you, you want to talk about now, as always, the guys on the ground get the credit. Like their, their lives are. They're the ones really putting it on the line. But there, there are times where those guys have to make calls back there and there is no right decision. Like if they'd have waited, they're hearing this.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Do they wait so long until you die and then live with that the rest of their life?

[Scott Payne]

Exactly.

[Brent Tucker]

Or do they go in early and not trust you? They don't know. And then ruin everything after you tell them later. Hey, guys, I had it. We didn't have to ruin this thing, you know, early, you know, over it. And they got it. There's. There's no way for them to know which answer is the right answer. So it's too late.

[Scott Payne]

And that's what I'm saying. So they got to know me for that year and a half or more. Yeah. And they, they knew my baseline. Clearly they could hear I was scared.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Scott Payne]

Like the first time I played that, I let my wife hear that recording.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

That was a fucking.

[Scott Payne]

She started balling and I didn't think about why. It's because she's knows that's my best friend. She knows the sound of my voice. She's never heard me that scared. So that's what was tearing her up. So, yeah. So the next day we pull off the deal. We had 40 kilos of cocaine, a thousand pounds of weed, moved it from one truck to another, and that was a big lick for the conspiracy that they, that they wanted. And then from there you keep gaining trust. And then we kept building stuff till the end of the case. When the case end, it was around August, I think of 08 or 07. Like I said, it was a two year case. So remember me telling you I crashed mentally. It happened during this case. So I had been. For about a three year period, I'd been going non stop and I got to a point to where I wasn't taking care of myself. But I took that war mentality and applied it to every aspect of my life. In other words, sleep. Yep. Sleep enough when I'm dead. Which makes no sense because you're dead. I'm like, you're not sleeping, you're dead. Yeah, I caught myself saying it at a conference one time and on the stage in front of it I went, I didn't make any damn sense.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Scott Payne]

I'm dead. But I believe your threshold changes. Just like your workout comfort zone changes. Sometimes I take off jogging and I'm like, man, I feel like, good. Sometimes I take off jogging and I'm like, how long have I been running? And I look, it's been like a minute. I'm like, oh, God, Right? But at that point in time, I'd been going for three years, and I'd gotten thinner and thinner on taking care of myself. I didn't know how to decompress anymore. I literally couldn't. When I was asked, what do I do to relax, I couldn't come up with nothing. I mean, I work harder. Well, yeah, I'm like. I mean, I work out, but I'm like, that's not really. Is that relaxing? It's great for your body. You're releasing endorphins. But it's not like I'm playing Yanni and I'm all, namaste, you know, I'm like, I'm throwing. Trying to throw plates across the gym. But I crashed. I came back from an undercover op. I slept probably close to 20 hours the first day, maybe close the second day. An average of over 16 hours a day from Sunday to Friday. And I woke up Friday, and I had a buddy call me about another undercover gig. But all he asked was, how you doing, country? And I said, not too good. And after about an hour on the phone, he let me convince myself I needed to self report. And I called Safeguard and then the FBI. The Safeguard unit is under the undercover program. Joe Pistone helped create it. Him and another guy are the ones that created it. And it's specifically for the psycho, the psychological well being of the undercover. Wow. So you sit down and do some tests, and then in those tests put numbers into a graph. Then you sit down with the clinical psychologist. Then you sit down with somebody like Joe Pistone. And that's the. That's the kind of process. And I self reported, and they came down to McAllen, did an on site and said, you've been diagnosed as over assigned. Because over what? Over assigned. Okay. Because I wasn't just undercover in my career in the FBI. I was only listed full time twice, maybe three times that. And then from what I saw, that was rare in the day and age where I was undercover because I was also a case agent. And as I said earlier, I was a big hitter on the squad. So when I would come home, I would have to run cases. And just through attrition of everybody leaving the border, all of a sudden, one. One day, you're the senior person. Yeah. You're the. You're the principal relief supervisor for the squad, which means that the boss is gone. You run the squad first. I had the majority of the top 10 sources. The majority of the top 10 cases. I was on SWAT. I ran all the tactical and firearms for that for the McAllen and Brownsville offices. And I just. I ran out of wax, man. Yeah. And so they agreed to let me finish the Outlaws case on the phone. So I'm now talking to Scott Town, who's still my close friend, telling them, look, I got married. You know, I got married, but I'm getting divorced. I got to get my kids. She's from El Paso. I got to get her and my kids to El Paso. But after that, bro, I'm pulling shocks, and I'm coming up to Massachusetts, and that's what I did to stall time in that. In that time, one of the guys, Tim Sylvia, not the UFC fighter Tim Sylvia, who is a friend, but it was another guy who was an outlaw and got out of prison. He met me before I crashed and immediately wanted to start giving me stolen vehicles, wanted to buy coke and all this stuff. So I was like. I called the case team, and I'm like, look, he just called me, and he told me he basically won't. If I can get him a kilo at 18 a grand, he wants 10 of them. I said, but in the meantime, he's got a Hummer. He's got a, like, $100,000 BMW. He's got some other stuff he wants to sell. Do you guys want me to try to set it up? And they said, yeah, absolutely. So what I did is I set it up to the truck drivers that would usually play truck drivers for me, doing cameos. They went up to pick up some vehicles from Tim Sylvia. In that meeting, you can even hear me on the phone, because the truck driver, an undercover, calls me and says, hey, Tex, I'm standing here with, you know. What's your name again? You know. Okay, Big Timmy. Okay, Big Timmy. You can hear my voice talking. And he puts me on the phone with Tim, and Tim's like, hey. Because I'd agreed to pay him 21 grand for the vehicles, because for selling prices, usually about 25, 20, 25% of the real price, at least it was then. So I go. He says, hey, man, I'm going to report that BMW stolen Friday. I said, can you make it Saturday? Give me 24 hours more now. Then I'll know for sure that thing's going to be in Mexico. And then he gets Back on the phone with the undercover, the undercover asked me how much to pay him. 21 grand. When they went to load those vehicles, that's when he hit them for the same deal he asked me for. Hey, can you get them at 18 a piece? Well, I can buy 10 of them. And that was the reversal that took down the case. But the downside. One of the downsides of undercover is building those relationships that you got to betray. Yeah. So here I am, somewhere in Nevada, helping, putting on undercover training. I know that the case is being taken down. The next morning, I get back to my room. Lord knows what time it was, and my next tails chirping. I check it. Scott Town's left me a message. They already did the takedown, and they got the two truck driver. Well, supposedly the two undercovers and Timmy and another guy. So I call Scott Town back, you know, on the next hill. Yeah. And he says, real raspy. He's like, hey, I just want you to know, it looks like you're two truck drivers, man. They and big Timmy, they got locked up. I don't know what's going on. Somebody just called me and told me, and I'm like, okay. I said, well, maybe they're doing something on their own, because it's not for me up there right now. And he said, okay, okay. He goes, listen, man, I'm gonna get up and get cleaned up. We'll find out what the hell's going on. I'm gonna call you back when I find out. And I said, okay. His last words to me were, I love you, brother. You know, my last words to him were, I love you, too. And I hung up. And within about 45 minutes, the SWAT team hit his house, knowing exactly what's.

[Brent Tucker]

About to happen to him. Yeah, it's tough. It really is.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

I've asked some other, you know, guys that. Basically, that question that you already got ahead of, I mean, there's just no way you spend that much time, even with. Even with bad people. There's still. There's still. They're not 100% bad 100% of the time.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

They're still likable people. And it's. It's hard. It's hard not to acknowledge that even.

[Scott Payne]

In the book, I don't dehumanize. Yeah. Like, I love a success story. There's a lot of people, especially since I've been on Rogan, that have hit me up on Instagram, that I put in prison. Really? And I ain't talk to them in forever. And now we're friends. I mean, we were friends anyway, technically, you know, I mean, I was Scott whoever and I was a criminal, but they didn't know I was an undercover FBI agent. But some of those relationships, I mean, you really build, you know, I've had people call me up drunk, down on me after they got out on bone. Hey, Scott, Is she boy Mike? Because I'd leave my undercover phone just in case it was a threat or something. Right? Is she boy Mike, I just want you to know I love you, buddy. I know you just doing your job. I said I love you, too. You know, again, back to car cartoons, man. It's the sheepdog and the coyote clocking in. Morning, Sam. Morning, Ralph. And then they fight all day, clock out. See you in the morning, Sam. See you in the morning, Ralph. You know, I don't know why my cigar keeps going down.

[Brent Tucker]

Thanks. Because you're talking.

[Scott Payne]

That's what we brought you here to do. Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, the switching gears just a little bit on the domestic terrorist side or. Or even. Even corruption, for whatever reason, just because it's a little bit off the. The beaten path. Maybe. I mentioned about the. The corruption cases you worked. What's. What. What. What is what type of corruption? Why that corruption? What does that mean? So that type of person, that type of criminal activity.

[Scott Payne]

So corruption runs on all levels. Right. And the FBI has done great cases. Like going back to Abscam.

[Brent Tucker]

No, I just found out about that.

[Scott Payne]

With Joe Damn Boat. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Watching the movie I found, I was like, man, I hope the FBI is still looking into our. Our. Our Congressman that way.

[Scott Payne]

Well, after Abscam, I know you'll be shocked, but Congress came up with something that essentially said, if you're in. If you're investigating Congress people, we need to know about it. Yeah, right.

[Brent Tucker]

Of course.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Of course they did.

[Brent Tucker]

Of course.

[Scott Payne]

Look, I've got friends in Congress. I've got friends who are politicians.

[Brent Tucker]

Sorry to hear that.

[Scott Payne]

I know. But I mean, you know, it's just like I look at some of the stuff they do, and I'm like, if. Because it's under the Congress, it's like that's. That's a crime. If for anybody else, if I did it in the street, I'd be locked up.

[Brent Tucker]

Explain with that. That I just. Real quick with Operation Ones case, people weren't. Yeah. So long ago.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. Bribery. Taking bribes for it. So a lot of times you get, like, elected officials, congresspeople. The corruption might be you're. I'm paying you bribes so I can make sure I Get the contract for the recreational area. So stuff like that.

[Brent Tucker]

And so the FBI agents essentially got these congressmen out on a boat and we're making these, These deals.

[Scott Payne]

And everywhere else. Yes, and everywhere else. And Abscam. Because it was. It was. It was Arabs, right? Undercover. And I mean, one of the. One of the main ones is a mentor of mine. Yeah. Like, I mean, I'm coming through the academy. And he was a firearms instructor at that point.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, then it was big hit, hit, hit these active, you know, these current sitting congressmen up for. For corruption. Had them red handed. They were talking to undercover FBI agents.

[Scott Payne]

Yes, sir.

[Brent Tucker]

I can't believe that. The first time I had heard of that.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, but so we do like. I mean, personally, I didn't get called for those kind of gigs. Mine were more like rural dirty cops.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Scott Payne]

But you have to show this is systemic. And the issue really comes down to. It's kind of hard because what I always saw was I know for a fact Scott Payne's dirty. Well, how do you know? Because my brother, Sister's boyfriend. Right. Nephew says so. Well, I need. We need something. I can't get. We can't go indict somebody, so. But if you get enough replacement reports, we can be proactive and go after it. And that's what we did. In a rural county in Tennessee. I. I went in as a. They started calling me the Marlboro man because I went in there and I had like stolen goods on the truck and we were moving stolen goods on a. Sounds very similar, but if I had something that was believable or maybe I had a different business model, you know, like that I set up, like, I move furniture sales and we sell at places that are always going out of business. And that happens. There's like a liquidator and they send it out and then they're like, okay, man, Boston's got a store. It's hot. It's going out of business, which is bs. It's not going out of business. But what they do is they send out a thing going, hey, you're a VIP member for the first three days. You get top notch. And then what we may have is lamps and chairs and paintings. And maybe what we do is we go up and set up our stuff on their floor because it's going to sell fast, as if it was almost hot. Right. And then that store gets a percentage of what we're selling. So something like that. But I remember being back there with the. There were some. There were some country folk, for sure. A lot of pill users. Lower. Lower economic status. And. But I came in there with a purported stolen case of cigarettes. And a master case holds 60 cartons. That thing was gone in seconds. And I was like, I think I know how to get in. I think I'm like, they don't have a problem getting their dope. They don't have a problem getting their whiskey, but, boy, they hate paying this much money for cigarettes, you know, so. So then he started doing that. They could actually call me the Marlboro man for a long time. And we got reports. We did get one cop that was dirty. He was buying purported stolen stuff from me. Buying. Hell, I watched him before he. When he was a reserve, I watched him do dope. I'm like, yeah, how do I paint this for him to not know I'm an undercover. I'm his friend. I'm proud of him for becoming a cop. Maybe I should say, you ought to stop doing cocaine if you're gonna be a cop, because I'm pretty sure they're gonna test you at some point. Yeah. And then pills and stuff. Stuff like that. And then maybe stolen iPads or whatever they thought they were getting generators and whatnot. And we got a constable that was dirty, but that one kind of petered out at a certain point because there's only so far the source could go. The constable got burnt. So we just. We took the case down, and we. I think we indicted, like, 51 people on that one.

[Brent Tucker]

I. I love that. And. And I'll tell you. I'll tell you why. The, you know, people lately, and rightfully so, you know, are putting cops under a microscope. Every public servant should be put under a microscope and should. And should be able to pass that test. I have no problem with. With that.

[Scott Payne]

I mean, you took an oath.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Scott Payne]

And you didn't do it for the money.

[Brent Tucker]

But at the end of the day, you know, you can say, oh, look, there's dirty cops. You know, and he's proving it. The point to me, he's actually proving is, yes, there are dirty cops.

[Scott Payne]

And.

[Brent Tucker]

And you know who caught those dirty cops.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And that's. And that's why our law enforcement still is great.

[Scott Payne]

And there's no one else caught him.

[Brent Tucker]

Cops caught him.

[Scott Payne]

And a lot of these dirty ones. Like, if you look back at the history of, like, New Orleans PD and, like, Juan Jackson did Operation Shattered Shield in the hot wash, you start looking, and you see the hired standards have really dropped.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Scott Payne]

Like, you have people that actually have felons on their Felony on their record. But I mean, like that, that case, Operation Shattered Shield, dude, there are uniform cops riding around with kilos in those in their squad car trunk, ordering hits while they're on duty. Wow.

[Brent Tucker]

We're. We're getting our water from, from a, from a, A muddy pool.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

So you, you don't think we're gonna have dirty water? Of course, when you lower standards, that's what you're doing. You're dirtying up the pool. When whether it be morally, physically, mentally, all those are unacceptable. We cannot lower our standards. But that's, that's a. We talk about that on the podcast all the time.

[Scott Payne]

The big thing for me also is this. This one's better. Sure. Than I was running out. Now, the big thing that I always say is there's not a whole lot a good cop can't stand worse than a dirty cop.

[Brent Tucker]

Yes.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, I remember being at the sheriff's office. As I told you, I was vice narcotics. So in Greenville county at that time, gambling was illegal. So that's the vice part, along with prostitution stuff. So we had a great source. We went out and we started laying up on these operations. And once you start developing patterns, they were pretty predictable. Like, I didn't have to lay in the woods all day. I could like pull up at 11 o' clock and go, all right, in five minutes that car is going to pull in. Yep. They're picking up the money right now. The night before we're going to do the takedown. They don't know. I say they. There's a lot of people that do not know who our source is. That source causes and says, hey, just so you know, they know you're coming. They know what cars you've been driving. They know that it's been a convertible. I mean, I'm sorry, a T top iroxy red. We know that this is, you know, Bronco 2, whatever. They knew it all. And we're like, how hell. And we just pulled chalks. We're not going to hit it because all the stuff be gone anyway.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, right.

[Scott Payne]

Money, cards, whatever they're doing slot machines, all that stuff. So I become an FBI. Well, I'm in FBI training. I'm new agent in training. I'm at Quantico. My buddies from the narcotics squad call me and they say, we got him. I said, what? Sounds like three months later. They waited and waited and waited till like, everything was good. Then they hit it. Well, they went to do the search warrant on the main guy's house that was running all the gamblers. There was a. There was a detective from my sheriff's office who was in for maybe ten grand or more in debt. So does that mean that he's the one that told? No, but damn, you know, And I'm like, look, there really shouldn't be levels. You go home and you do dope and you're breaking the law. That's. That's very bad. That's terrible. But in my mind, if you're screwing over your partners and stuff that have been out there for months, laying in the woods, doing an op, I mean, come on, bro. So, yeah, it happens, but you got to thwart that stuff and then you got to go after it.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Or putting you in danger.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's like. So like that public. Public corruption case I worked in rural Tennessee. Well, there's cockfighting, but it's like family business. These people have been here for I don't know how many years, and cockfighting is normal. So, okay, cockfighting is illegal, but it's normal. So you pull up to the cockfight in the middle of the woods and you see cop cars there. Okay. But also in the parking lot, blatantly open are pill deals, opioid deals, cocaine deals, this, that, and the other. So that's a slippery slope. Yeah. You're already here and something's illegal.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Bloody water right there.

[Scott Payne]

Exactly. So that's a slippery slope. You know what's going to happen now? And one of the things that cracked me up was I went in there and I'm watching the fights. I'm starting, throwing down bets. I'm doing all this stuff. I go over the concession stand and I asked for a beer. She goes, oh, we can't serve alcohol. That's illegal. I said, this is. This is where you draw the line. That's right. Well, this whole place is illegal. Everything you're doing is illegal. I'm even illegal. I just wanted a beard, damn it.

[Brent Tucker]

You can't make it up.

[Scott Payne]

Actually, I can go outside and get an Oxy 80. That'll drug me up for the next several hours.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, Although our careers were vastly different, the, you know, there was a level of risk in my military career. And every now and again, in fact, more. I should have done it more, though, I stop and whether I'm on a little bird somewhere or a blackhawk in the middle of nowhere, I stop and I go. Is a pretty cool life.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

I can't. Like, this is a government funded life. I got paid to do this. What a crazy life. Life's Pretty good. And there were, like, certain parts of your story that at the end of the day, like, there's got to be a point at least. Like, you're riding a motorcycle. Not exactly going to work 9 to 5, and you got to be thinking to yourself, life's not that bad. Not today. Not today it's not. We'll see what tonight brings. But right now, I'm an FBI agent getting paid to ride my bike with. With a couple buddies, and I could.

[Scott Payne]

Have been a 1 percenter. I could have easily hit that proverbial fork in the road. I could have easily been the other side, which I think is what's helped me be good at what I was at.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. Absolutely.

[Scott Payne]

But, yeah, I mean, other. Now, don't get me wrong, that whole strip in the basement, almost getting caught and dying thing, I didn't like that. But not worth a couple. That's a night I don't want to do over. I'll pass. But Deuces. I'll be at the bar. But. But, like, riding, like you said, getting in fights. I mean, it was just like being in college playing ball. I was like, I had a blast, you know, I mean, you got to be able to articulate, right? I'm like, for sure, you know, you can't be going out, getting in fights and stuff. Stuff. But they were. I mean, you know, how many times can you get hit before you can claim self defense? I'm like, you know, one. I'm like, all right, dodge that too. All right, take them. Pretty good.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Now that was a punch to maintain cover.

[Scott Payne]

I was attempting to apply a mandibular strike, and he moved. Funny thing happened.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, Scott, man, I can't thank you enough for coming and sharing your story, you know, one more time.

[Scott Payne]

And.

[Brent Tucker]

And with our audience. I really appreciate it. I know you got things to do tomorrow. I really wish you could hang around for a live tomorrow. Are you gonna be here for life tomorrow?

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. Nice. I'm not flying out to Friday.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Scott Payne]

Somebody says, cigars and whiskey, and I'm.

[Brent Tucker]

Like, look, I got my wish. Never mind.

[Scott Payne]

There you go.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

What's up? Working.

[Scott Payne]

What? We.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

He forgot his book.

[Brent Tucker]

Name of the book where they can get it. Go ahead and promote yourself a little bit.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

I'll put the book on the screen right now.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah, yeah, we'll put it up there. It's codename Pale Horse. And the subtitles, like, How I Infiltrated. How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis. I wasn't too hot on that subtitle because if you read it, it makes it sound like the book to me. It makes the book sound like it's just white supremacy stuff. And it's not right. You got bikers, murder for. There's some crazy stories about some of the things that have been said on murder for hires or pedophile hiring me to kill the kid even. Listen.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

God, you know what? There's a special place in hell for that guy now.

[Scott Payne]

That player. I didn't bond with it all that one. I couldn't find anything in common.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

No kidding.

[Brent Tucker]

We got at least something for the book. I suppose.

[Scott Payne]

So there's so codename Pale Horse. I will say you can get it anywhere. Simon and Schuster. If you go on Amazon. Just be aware of scams. The top one will be me. It's the side shot of my face. Everything under it we've. They take them off daily. But China and everything else is like Agent Pale Horse workbook. And they make my face age with AI, which I thought looked pretty cool because I'm like, if I look like that in about 20 years, that's pretty tough looking. You know, I'll take that. But yeah, anywhere. Simon and Schuster, bookstores. And I will say that the audiobook is me. And that's what threw us. I mean, I was on. Like I said, the book came out 25-3-26. I was on Rogan the audiobook. I did. And that's what kicked us. Within three months we were New York Times bestseller. And I love an international to now I love it.

[Brent Tucker]

You're on Instagram as well.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah. I don't have Facebook. I might as well get it at this point. But Instagram, X LinkedIn threads, it's all at Scott Paine Big Country. There you go. All one word. Oh, yeah. Scott Pain, Big Country.

[Brent Tucker]

Last thing for. For I let you go. Give us a funny story. It can be undercover. Can just be silly stories.

[Scott Payne]

Give us so many.

[Brent Tucker]

Give us a funny story. Usually that's the problem with a life like yours. It's. It's. You got to go through the Rolodex.

[Scott Payne]

I know there's so many because here's one. It's in the book. All right. It's in the book. On that public corruption case. We're sitting down with the source and we're. And one of the people giving us information. Information. And I'm showing pictures, trying to identify people and he says something like, hey, that's Johnny Two Fingers. And I'm like, johnny Two Fingers. He's like, yeah, Scott, Johnny Two Fingers. Like I'm dumb because I don't know.

[Tyler (Counterculture Inc. owner)]

Oh, common spelling.

[Scott Payne]

I'm like, oh, my bad. I mean, I don't. I don't know. What is it? Oh, hell, Scott, everybody knows who Johnny Two Fingers is. And I said, well, I don't. Who is it? He said, look, he. I said, why do they call him Johnny Two Fingers? He said, look, he said, scott, one day he's out there on the farm, and he got behind this donkey. It was a hot, sweaty day. He was looking for some action. He gets behind a donkey. He starts having sex with the donkey. Apparently, the donkey doesn't like it, and he's got his hands right here on the donkey. And the donkey comes back and takes two of his fingers off. No, I'm pausing as well, because I have a new agent out of the academy. Very smart, prim and proper female who's dressed like a FBI agent. I look about like this, and the source don't even have a shirt on. And I'm having to translate because he's so country. And that says a lot coming from me. So I said, wait a minute.

[Brent Tucker]

Wait a minute.

[Scott Payne]

Everybody knows that he's got two fingers missing because he was having sex with a donkey. And the donkey bit his fingers off. And he says, yeah. And I said, and he knows. Everybody knows that he lost his two fingers for having sex with a donkey. And he is. Well, hell, yeah. And I said, and he still lives here. Why would you not move and change the story? I mean, woodworking. I mean, the table saw.

[Brent Tucker]

Exactly.

[Scott Payne]

Give me something.

[Brent Tucker]

That was my first thought. This story right now is between you and a donkey.

[Scott Payne]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And the donkey didn't tell everyone in town how you lost. You, too.

[Scott Payne]

Don't give him Shrek. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

[Brent Tucker]

And, yeah, so he. He told it himself.

[Scott Payne]

Told it. Yeah. And then, of course, I look back at the. The. The newer agent training, and her eyes are kind of big. And I look and I go, are you getting all this? She's taking the notes.