The Strip Club That Funded the Mob | Mark Sewell

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Great to have you here. I really appreciate it. I want to definitely talk a little bit about where were you raised and what are some life lessons you took from your childhood that led you up into the Marine Corps? Because I know that's, that's a giant, sweeping question, but I like to, to kind of square in some personality in terms of people that go into the military and have success. You want to tell me a little bit about that first? Yeah. [00:00:25] Speaker B: I graduated and went straight to the oil refineries like everybody in Houston does. You're either blue collar or white collar. If you're white collar, your dad works at the corporate headquarters and you probably live on the north side of town. If you're blue collar, your dad works in the refinery and you live on the south part of town. And everybody follows their dad. And I did that. And you can make a good, solid middle class living working in those refineries. I mean, that's, it's not a money issue for me. It was just a job satisfaction issue. So I was a little late to the game. I worked in the refineries for 18 months after high school and said, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. And so that's why I looked at the Marines. Enjoying the Marines. [00:01:14] Speaker A: It was just randomly or do you run across a recruiter? [00:01:17] Speaker B: No, it was, it was something. I did not run across a recruiter. It was something that, you know, had always been special to me. Just out of the, you know, the Marines love to, to take credit for the ability to challenge you. You know, hey, anybody can join the army. Hey, anybody can join the Air Force. That's what they like to say, right? But not everybody can be a Marine. You know that famous old story where the, the recruiters come in and address the high school class and the Marine gets up and he, he addresses the class and he says, I don't even know why I'm here, because I'm pretty sure none of you have what it takes to be a Marine. And then when it was over and he sat down, he had the longest line, right? So kind of like that is, I think, is what drove me to the Marines. I never visited any of the other services and it, besides marrying my wife and my faith in Jesus, it's the greatest step that I ever took. It really is joining the Marines. It opened up my world, gave me so many opportunities I just never would have had. I obviously led me to the FBI, led me to, you know, the experiences in the world, travel and so on. [00:02:26] Speaker A: What types of experiences. Experiences did you have in the Marines that ended up now, in retrospect, translating to FBI or. Or when you applied or decided to apply, what was it that made you make that decision? Did you feel like you had a skill set you developed that would translate? [00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I did. So specifically and technically in the Marines as a signals intelligence officer, I had these, these clearances, as you know from being on the TFO side at the highest level, I had scs, Top Secret sci. So with that I knew that I could pass the background into the FBI. At least I thought I could. Right. So I knew technically I had a skill and I already had a background qualification that the bureau wanted. In fact, the recruiter came to my battalion in the Marines and took seven lieutenants out of my battalion in a one year period. All seven of us left the Marines and joined the FBI in a 12 month period. And we stayed in touch with each other for the next 20 years. [00:03:32] Speaker A: And you, but you did. This wasn't like a normal stint in the Marines either. You did what, eight years? [00:03:38] Speaker B: I did 10 years. Almost nine years, seven months. Yeah. Because I had enlisted time and commissioned and then they sent me back to college and so on. So I had an investment. And part of the mental deal that I made with myself is if I was going to leave the Marines, it would have to be with a federal agency so I could keep my time. [00:03:58] Speaker A: Okay. [00:03:58] Speaker B: Right. So I wouldn't lose that nine years. So the FBI still made you do 20 years, but once that 20 years is over with, you get to add that nine plus years of marine Corps time to it. Oh, So I do 20 and get paid for 29. [00:04:13] Speaker A: Wow. [00:04:14] Speaker B: So. And that's a huge attraction. You know, if you had to leave 10 years behind, if you left Fort Worth PD and went to another agency and you didn't get any credit for it, it'd be tough, right? [00:04:24] Speaker A: I know exactly what that's like. [00:04:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's tough. [00:04:27] Speaker A: But that was my calculation. And for PD was 25 years and I was at 13. I'm like, I don't quite see the light at the end of this tunnel. [00:04:36] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:37] Speaker A: Had I seen the light, it might have slowed me down. You know, taking a pause at 18 years or something. [00:04:42] Speaker B: Man. [00:04:43] Speaker A: At halfway, if I'm really wanting to go, I'm going to go. [00:04:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:47] Speaker A: So I was curious if that was the same kind of decision. [00:04:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. That I did certainly take that I was at the 10 year mark. So I'm at the halfway point and you know, like go now or don't go that type of thing. Yeah, but you know, Also this was 1997 and we thought we had missed the war of desert storm in 1990, 1991, my generation was now the only people that were doing rattle sampling, sable rattling was North Korea. And so there wasn't this next big war on the horizon. So if you join the Marines because you want to fight the bad guys, it didn't look like it was happening. [00:05:28] Speaker A: Right. [00:05:28] Speaker B: So that was another reason that I think you saw people leave and go to the Bureau where you knew that you were going to get the fight the bad guys more regularly. [00:05:38] Speaker A: So did you run into more people? I, I find it interesting too because I almost run across people now that think it's politically incorrect to want to be a cop so that you can chase bad guys and put them in jail. It used to be what everybody said. But you're talking about Marines like they want to be war fighters. [00:05:55] Speaker B: That's right. [00:05:55] Speaker A: And that can't possibly be everybody. But was it a majority of people that were there prepared for war? Because I see a lot of people going in the military because they want to skill and go in and not have to go to war and then get right back out. [00:06:08] Speaker B: Well, go back to the Marine. What's the word I'm looking for? Propaganda. Go back to the Marine. Propaganda. We don't promise you a college education. We don't promise you any of these skills that's going to translate into the civilian world. We promise you an opportunity to defend the country. Yeah, yeah. So no, there was no special skills. Marines don't look for that for the most part. Unless they want to maybe be a pilot or something where, you know. Yeah, you can perhaps see that. But no, it's, it's to go and wear the uniform and be a war fighter. As simple as that. [00:06:45] Speaker A: Amazing. That's amazing. That's good to know too. And I was glad that you said it so candidly because I think. And people have to pitter pat around [00:06:55] Speaker B: and it's still like that today. I can think of a kid that I saw grow up in my community back in Georgia. He enlisted and this has been within the last four years and I still see a social media post and he's, and he's, he's an infantry guy and his whole world is, let's take it to the bad guy. Yeah, yeah. So that's not just my generation or the before me. It's still the current generation. The Marine Corps is doing a really good job of staying focused on that, that they're war fighters. [00:07:26] Speaker A: So you were involved in the nineteen, early nineteen nineties war. [00:07:30] Speaker B: No, see, I say we missed it because I had just gotten accepted a program that takes you from the enlisted side to the commission side. Okay. And that means they had to send me back to college on the Marine Corps nickel and dime. So I was at the Citadel, the military College of South Carolina, when the war happened. And so all of the guys that were with me that had been selected in my class thought, okay, we just missed our war. You know, we were trading a college education for the one war we're going to have in our generation. [00:08:03] Speaker A: Well, and it would interest me to know your thoughts, maybe from your comrades to how, how do you set your mind toward running into the gunfire and doing your job if you disagree with its purpose? Is there, is there ever any conflict when you're dealing with stuff? Obviously you're duty bound and that's an admirable position to be in. But if you really have a notion in your mind that this is the wrong reason to be going, does it, does it leave you conflicted? [00:08:38] Speaker B: I'm sure it would, but I think the answer to your question is I can't recall any situation or think of any situation where that would have been the reality that we would have been conflicted. And if you're talking on a large scale, why are we in Afghanistan, why are we in Iraq, or why are we in North Korea? Or you name it. Those were all. Those are the bad guys. I see the mission. No problems. If you want to boil it down to a small unit level, like, let's take that heel. No, that's dumb to take that hill because there's more bad guys than there are good guys and the payoff isn't worth it. Then maybe that's to your question. [00:09:16] Speaker A: No, I think the first one was, it was more of the overarching thing, [00:09:19] Speaker B: you know, because that was never an issue. [00:09:20] Speaker A: Okay. [00:09:21] Speaker B: The bad guys were clear. I mean, that. No, nobody in my generation ever said, why are we in Afghanistan, why are we in Iraq? You can get muddled down on the politics of once you go there, how are you going to accomplish the mission? But going there was never a problem. [00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah, and those are kind of more obvious. I mean, after 9, 11, I think you had all kinds of people saying, never considered the military until today. And then they went, signed up. [00:09:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:46] Speaker A: So you saw, you saw an onslaught of people jumping into that. [00:09:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So I don't know. Does that answer the question that you had? [00:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. I mean, and it seems A little more obvious. Afghanistan's obvious one. But there's places we've been in that are questionable. And, you know, and in terms. I mean, you're just. By sheer numbers, not everybody is going to be politically aligned. It's a military, for heaven's sake. So you have this mass of people who have different ways of thinking. I was just curious if you've run [00:10:11] Speaker B: across any of that. You know, in the Marine Corps, we used to talk among ourselves and we'd talk about how are we divided up by politics. And we would generally all come to the conclusion that probably 90% of the marine Corps is conservative politically based, and the other 10% would be more liberal based. But that 10% never let their politics get in fear of the mission if they were right there with you. [00:10:34] Speaker A: That's the discipline. Yeah. [00:10:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Let's go. [00:10:37] Speaker A: So you end up swapping in, getting into the FBI. And from my understanding, this one of your earlier. Was it five years in or. So this Gold Club investigation comes up. [00:10:50] Speaker B: It was immediate. [00:10:52] Speaker A: It was immediate. Even sooner than that. [00:10:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:54] Speaker A: So that's peculiar to me, too, because you're a rookie, you're supposed to be doing grunt work. You're supposed to be carrying the guy's [00:11:00] Speaker B: helmet and water, answering the phones. Yeah, yeah. [00:11:03] Speaker A: So how is it that you end up. Is this. Literally your communication skills are that amazing? [00:11:10] Speaker B: I wish it was. Yeah, yeah. I tell. I tell the story in the book that I would. I like to take. I wish I could have taken credit that they. I got assigned to that case because they saw my resume and said, wow, this is our guy. But it wasn't. My supervisor, who's still a great friend to this day, had made a deal with the boss of the office that he needed some bodies, and he was going to get the next four new agents that came out of the academy into the office. He was going to get them on his squad, the organized crime squad. He got one and sent them to the Asian oc. He got one, sent him to Russian. He got another one that sent him back to Asian, and then he got the fourth one, which was me, and I went to lcn, which the mob. And when I got hooked up with my training agent, he said, boy, do we have a case. And we're just getting it started. And. And that was one of the reasons he needed. The supervisor needed bodies, is because he knew that Asians, Russians, and LCN had cases that were ready to go and he needed bodies to help. So I got assigned to that case, and we took it and ran with it. [00:12:20] Speaker A: And you've. How did you get prepped and trained for something like this? I mean, everybody at some point is new to the unit. So what was kind of the process in familiarizing yourself, especially in the Atlanta area of all places, with learning about the mobile. [00:12:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So at the academy at that time in the late 90s, they were still giving blocks of instruction on organized crime. Traditional organized crime. Your New York based LCN Organized crime. Here's what a crime family looks like. Here's the rackets and here's rico. And this is the way we go at them more. [00:12:56] Speaker A: You're talking. This is the end of the. Barely the end of the Gotti era as it is. [00:13:00] Speaker B: The old man is still alive, right. He's in, he's in the prison, he's in the joint. But his son is now the boss, right? Yeah, that's right. [00:13:07] Speaker A: That's. [00:13:07] Speaker B: This is 97, okay? Yeah. The Gotti trial was 91, 92. So the, the old man's still alive. So I went into Atlanta having just the basic understanding through the academy of this is how we work organized crime. But remember, I also got that same training on bank robberies and collar crime and etc. So it didn't really stand out any more than the others. But I had the training. [00:13:30] Speaker A: You guys are Swiss army knives. [00:13:32] Speaker B: That's right. That's a very good way of putting it. The real answer to your question is we had two agents that my supervisor had pulled in to this case because of their previous New York LCN experience. And I learned from those guys. So it'd be just like you getting assigned to a gang drug squad. And all of a sudden there's Joe Pistone or somebody that you can just grab a hold of and learn from. Right, Right. And invaluable. My, my training agent, John Simmons, worked the wires of the Joppa Stone case in the mid-70s. He was part of that original first organized crime squad that New York stood up right after Hoover died. Hoover would never let an organized crime squad exist until he. And then when he died, the Bureau said now, now we're going to have a true organized crime squad in New York. Had it. And, and my training agent was on that squad. And then he continued to work organized crime down in Miami and then eventually up in Atlanta. So I learned from him. The other person on the squad who became my second training agent was also on the Gotti trial in the late 80s, early 90s. So you had about a 10 year gap between those two guys, but they covered the 70s and 80s and into the 90s of organized crime. [00:14:53] Speaker A: Which was kind of how you were still following this and leveraging this investigation. Right. This is kind of an old school. [00:14:59] Speaker B: Yeah, we were. The case took us back all the way into the 80s. [00:15:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:04] Speaker B: Yeah. With crimes that were occurring in the 80s. So to answer your question directly, to learn from those two guys was more valuable than anything I learned at the academy. [00:15:14] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it really was. [00:15:16] Speaker A: You're getting all the shortcuts. I mean, you're not having to learn anything other than what works. [00:15:20] Speaker B: And they had been ultra successful in their careers and they knew the mob. They knew. They didn't know strip clubs necessarily, but they knew the mob and they knew the rackets, you know, because traditionally wise guys had not been in the strip club business. They, they always had this weird relationship with, quote, pornography or the adult business that, yeah, maybe we'll get in it and maybe we'll make some money, but we're not going to talk about it because it's, it's not cool. Kind of like gentlemanly. Yeah, it's, it's okay to shoot you behind the ear, but it's not okay to, to take money from a girl who's dancing. It's just, it's a weird, weird way they looked at things. So they did have their hands in New York pornography, but they didn't talk about it. So there wasn't a lot of FBI presence on the pornography side, if you want to call it that, back in the 70s and the 80s when it was really illegal with the mob. So transitioning that into strip clubs was kind of a new venue and there wasn't a lot of experience there on what should we be looking for? [00:16:26] Speaker A: And so how did you end up developing that? And, and I guess you, you've gone off complaints that this club was becoming [00:16:33] Speaker B: a nuisance, out of control. [00:16:35] Speaker A: But how did you know, or how did the complainants know that it was actually mob related? Or did they. [00:16:41] Speaker B: Some knew just simply because of the vibe in the, in the, in the club. When you look around and you see guys that look like they're right out of central casting and they're sitting in special booths and special corners. [00:16:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:55] Speaker B: And they got their own bodyguard, if you will, there with them. They just pick up on it. You know, that's like a scene out of the movie Casino or something. So. And, and when they interacted personally with the owner or with his top brass, they all had the New York accent, the New York slang, the New York strut. So smart guys were able to put together that hey, there's something going on here. And look, they didn't. The bad guys didn't hide it. We're from New York. This is who we are. Sometimes even brag that we've got friends. So over a period of time, the reputation grew that this was a mob dub club. And then we were able to prove that also. While the. While. While you're the guys, you're asking about the customers, that's how they found out. You know, just the vibe, just their own common sense. And we were able to validate that by looking at this guy's lineage and who he was with before. And there'd been reporting on him for decades back. [00:17:52] Speaker A: Right. So is that how you ended up starting to infiltrate or crack this case? Or how did you essentially start this thing and end up breaking it open and finding out what the best prosecutory avenue was? [00:18:07] Speaker B: The case was already on paper and existed when I got there, just barely. But I came right at the end of the 96 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, and all major investigations got put on hold during the Summer Olympics. And then Eric Rudolph blows up Centennial Park. So the whole office is chasing Eric Rudolph and so on. So traditional investigations kind of went cold. So even though the case existed on paper, nothing had been done on it because of the reasons I just mentioned. So when I get there, it's like, okay, now we're ready to actually do something with this case. And one of the things that John A. Told me is that, look, we investigate the mob, and if the mob is spitting on the sidewalk, then we're investigating spitting on the sidewalk. It's whatever they're doing. And that was really the neat thing about working OC Work. And same thing with gangs is whatever they're doing is what I get to investigate. You know, with gangs, you can have a variety of. You can have your guns, you can have your drugs. You can even have some prostitution. You might have some extortion. Who knows? Whatever their imagination gives them to make money, right? You get to investigate that. If I'm just working bank robberies, it's just bank robberies. It's just a guy sticking a gun and a teller's face. So on the organized crime squad, it could be extortion, it could be credit card fraud, it could be white collar, it could be violent, it could be murder for hire. It could be any of those things. And what we were finding at the club, it was. It was about eight or 10 different things that they were making money off of. And so it's like, pick your poison. If you will. [00:19:47] Speaker A: It was kind of a typical mob organization then with. [00:19:51] Speaker B: It was varied. It was very. It had a lot of. A lot of hands in the cookie jar. A lot of. It was varied. And what we ultimately ended up doing is dividing it among the agents because it was too much for any one guy. And the way we divided it was John Simmons took all crimes related to New York. They had a New York nexus. Excuse me, John A. Did. John Simmons took Miami. I took Atlanta. Okay, so in Atlanta would mean that it was going to be the prostitution which got the most publicity, which meant it was going to be the credit card fraud. It was going to be the public corruption with the police officers. Those were the big three. We had some other miscellaneous. We had, obviously we had taxes, skimming cash. Remember? And I remember in 97, the world's still not fully digital and credit cards. [00:20:42] Speaker A: Right. [00:20:42] Speaker B: And, and frankly, there was a lot of customers that didn't want their wife, their boss and etc. To see that credit card charge, so they purposely dealt with cash. [00:20:53] Speaker A: That was my question too, is how did you find the credit card fraud? Was it easier back then than it is now? I know we have more sophisticated investigatory tools, but also it's a more sophisticated system to look into. Or did you end up just chasing cash? And how, how did you end up doing that? [00:21:12] Speaker B: Well, the cash would have been under the tax fraud. And we brought. And what we did, frankly, is we wisened up and said, look, let's bring in an IRS agent. And he was gold, right? [00:21:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:23] Speaker B: So you take the cash, the money, the skim, and it's all yours. And we helped him on it, but it was his baby. [00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:30] Speaker B: The credit card fraud, we worked it with him as well. And how we found that was kind of twofold. Was those same guys you mentioned earlier, the customers that were wisened up that something's going on here and these guys are mobbed up. They were wise enough to pick up the phone and call. Who would be interested in this club if it's mobbed up? Probably the FBI. So over a 12, 18 month period and 96, 97 after the Olympics, we started to see an increase in just random calls to the switchboard where a guy says, hey, I was in your city last night. My credit Card receipt said $2,000. This morning it says $20,000. It happened at the Gold Club. And I think those guys are mobbed up. And I bet you have somebody in your office that would be interested in this. And we started accumulating those reports and complaints and we. And those guys were easy to find. They said, hey, here's my phone number. Have somebody call me. [00:22:28] Speaker A: Yeah, because they're in out that much money. [00:22:30] Speaker B: And they would tell their story, and their story was compelling. And then the second way was when we started developing sources and informants in the club. They were telling us that here. Here's what the girls are doing and here's how they're crushing the credit cards. And they're doing it with the management's permission and authority. It's a team effort. [00:22:50] Speaker A: So how was that working? What was the. What was the ruse, the scam, rather. [00:22:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a couple ways, and some of them were old and not surprising, and some of them were kind of ingenious. The old one was, hey, we'll just get the guy drunk and ring up his credit card. I mean, how many times does that happen in a strip club, Right? [00:23:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:08] Speaker B: Forever. [00:23:09] Speaker A: You don't have to try half the time. [00:23:10] Speaker B: To the point where we had girls that testified at trial that they had to put the pen in the man's hand, take his wrist and sign his signature because he was so drunk he couldn't do it. And somehow they thought that was more. More legitimate than them signing it for him. [00:23:27] Speaker A: Right. But Ouija board him. [00:23:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's exactly what they. I mean, that's how drunk some of the customers were. And with that, if they're working with the girl that's running the credit cards and running the cash register, if they're working and they were working with her, they can take a $200 tip and make it a $2,000 tip. And he's too drunk to question it. He's just going to sign it and [00:23:50] Speaker A: wake up and think, what the hell did I do? But not question it most. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Well, they're hoping that because of the social taboo of strip clubs, maybe he's married, maybe it's his company credit card. He's not. He's going to let it die. He's not going to say anything. [00:24:04] Speaker A: Right. [00:24:05] Speaker B: And they. They were right about half of the time, but that other half of the time, those guys were loud and they were. Yeah. And they said, hey, look, this is not right. You know, I want. I want some justice. The other part of the scam was pretty ingenious. And it went like this is on a. When the guy wasn't looking, they would add a zero. Or at the cash register, they'd punch in a different number. [00:24:32] Speaker A: And. [00:24:33] Speaker B: And when he. Or even after he had signed and the receipt they gave him said, 2000. When they ran it through the system, it was 20,000. He doesn't find out about it till the next morning when American Express calls him and says, hey, just to let you know, your card got hit for 20,000 last night. Are you aware of that? And he says, no, I'm not. He goes back to the club and says, hey, I was here last night. Here's my receipt. But that's not jiving with what American Express is saying. I need some help here. And the club management would say, yeah, hey, look, we've got these girls. They're out of control. Here's what we'll do. We'll do an internal investigation. We're going to take all their money from them that supposedly you gave them in tips. We're going to put it in an escrow. We'll hold it here at the. At the club. We'll do our own internal investigation. And then once we find out that it really is like you said, and I'm sure it is, we'll call you and we'll get you a reaction refund. And he would leave there believing that that's what's going to happen. What they were doing is Atlanta Falls for American Express, specifically falls under the Southeast office based in Miami, these. Com. Then that customer would pick up the phone and call customer Complaint System center in Miami. And he'd say, look, I'm not getting any satisfaction with the club management. About a month ago, they told me they were going to do an investigation, and I haven't heard from them. What can you do about this? You know, maybe you need to suspend services to this club. And they had bribed that guy at American Express in Miami, knowing he was going to take those complaints. What they had bribed him to say, look, we'll try and help you, but there's no guarantee. So now they were. The customer was going to get two stiff arms. He was going to get one from American Express, and he was going to get one from the club. It was a concerted effort. It started with the girls, it went through the management, and then it went all the way to American Express. [00:26:36] Speaker A: Unbelievable. [00:26:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:37] Speaker A: And it was one dude, or they find just one. So there's still. There's still a few that are sneaking through. Obviously, when they call you and are saying help. And that. Was that the primary reason why it took an investigation? A lot of times, I know it takes quite a bit of prodding because people want the FBI to investigate all kinds of stuff. Was it these financial crimes in combination with the fact that people Were claiming, I think it's mobbed up. Is that the reason why you. [00:27:06] Speaker B: Yes, it was the primary reason it was the loudest person with the biggest bullhorn was the financial crimes. And then when you start investigating those, naturally, you're just going to start peeling the onion and you're going to see miscellaneous drug use, you're going to see prostitution. And oh, by the way, there's a cop car always at the front door on Friday and Saturday nights. And, oh, by the way, you start to hear stories about cops being in the gold rooms. [00:27:30] Speaker A: And. [00:27:31] Speaker B: And look, it's not a crime for a cop to go to a strip club, but it certainly makes you wonder if that. If I know that club is mobbed up and everybody else in Atlanta knows that clubs mobbed up, why is that cop not know that clubs mobbed up? [00:27:45] Speaker A: Were these on duty guys both? [00:27:48] Speaker B: Jeez. Yeah. Yeah. We had testimony at trial that the two officers that we indicted, one of them was having sex in the club on duty. And he was also working permits and inspections and was responsible for protecting or inspecting that club, which turned out to be protecting that, obviously. [00:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:28:05] Speaker B: And then the other officer that we indicted, his connection to the club was his wife, used to be a dancer there, and then she became a house mom there. And he had a long relationship with the previous owners that went with the new owners, our new mob owners. And our guy always. Our. Our main bad guy always had an MO to include in his Miami clubs. Down in Boca, he had traditional nightclubs, not strip clubs. But his. One of his MO's was, I'm going to get a cop and get him close to me because he can run interference on everything that happens. If I have a fight in the parking lot, instead of having 20 squad cars show up and make a scene where I could potentially lose my license because of repeat behavior, he's going to run interference for me. [00:28:52] Speaker A: And that could be a responsible answer if the cop were honest. I mean, that's what you do. You hire a cop and you say, look, we don't want problems. I want to protect my license. And you're right. TABC or whoever else is going to have issues. They know that you got somebody standing unless they're a crook. [00:29:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And so while we were investigating credit card fraud, we find out that that same cop has taken trips with girls to Vegas. He's getting the limo to his house for his birthday party, for his bachelor birthday party for guys night out. And then we find out what was most egregious, is there was a Rape that happened in the back seat of the limo. It was a he said, she said. Hmm. So it was charged as a rape and it was indicted as a rape. And he was egregious in his interference in that. We had some testimony that he told the limo driver how to get rid of the record books, how to clean up the limo, what, what to say when interviewed by the sex crimes investigator. And the. In these things that he told the limo driver told. He told them from his living room dinner table because he brought these guys to his house, the police officer's house. They sat around the table and said, here's how we're going to cover up this rape. So pretty egregious. So those were the Atlanta crimes that I was responsible for while my colleagues were working. Extortion, murder for hire, and some murder, obstruction stuff that was coming out of Miami and New York. [00:30:21] Speaker A: And then you got. Eventually you started getting people inside to flip. Was that a key moment in getting this thing to turn over? [00:30:29] Speaker B: It was. It was huge. Now when you say flip, we. I look at that two ways. One, we were just developing sources and they're cooperating for. Either because we're paying them or because they're working off a beef. And that's generally the way it works. Right. And mostly those were girls. And they were. Because remember, if Club employment is 150 employees, 120of those are girls. Right. So go after the girls. They know what's going on, so they start cooperating with us and telling us what's happening on a nightly day to day basis. Yes. When we took, when we executed the search warrant and the case became public, we actually had two guys immediately flip that were going to be indicted and they came over and became cooperating witnesses. [00:31:18] Speaker A: Get first in line. Hurry up. [00:31:19] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. But they were not informants during the investigation part of the case. Right. Those were almost predominantly girls. [00:31:28] Speaker A: So, I mean, these girls purportedly make quite a bit of money at the high end clubs, which this was. Right. This was. [00:31:35] Speaker B: I mean, this was the number one grossing strip club in America for three years running. [00:31:39] Speaker A: Right. So they have to make good bank there, even on the low end. [00:31:44] Speaker B: That's right. [00:31:45] Speaker A: And then they come to you and narc out their comrades and what's going on? What is the motivation? And are. Are you possibly able to match what they're being paid in order for that to be even part of their decision? [00:31:59] Speaker B: There's a torn allegiance, right? [00:32:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:32:01] Speaker B: You got to find that one thing that makes it worthwhile to them, their motivation as we like to say we found a variety of motivations and some were almost comical, but. And some were pretty legit. There were girls that were on probation for other crimes. They had written bad checks, maybe they had absconded on something financial. It was. Had a lot of financial fraud, some of these girls, and now they're on probation with the state of Georgia. We would go, I would go to their probation officer and say, I'd like to talk to your parolee, your probationer, and. But I'd like you to read them the riot act first and tell them that as terms of their conditions of probation, they have to cooperate with law enforcement or potentially they could get revoked on their probation. Especially if they're knowing that they know criminal activity is happening and they're not reporting. [00:32:58] Speaker A: Not to mention, when this thing goes down, they're going to get revoked anyway. [00:33:02] Speaker B: Could be if they're involved. [00:33:04] Speaker A: Right. [00:33:04] Speaker B: If they're actively involved. So it was a self preservation for some of them. I don't want to get in trouble with my probate. They were more scared of their probation officer than they were of me. Right. [00:33:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:15] Speaker B: Because they knew, hey, at the club, I'm not really doing anything. I'm seeing it, but I'm not doing anything. So I'm not worried about the FBI as long as I can make my probation officer happy. [00:33:23] Speaker A: And a lot of people in that kind of business, so to speak, aren't really. I mean, you're not an admirable person anyway. You come in at the FBI, right. I mean, so you also have to be pretty slick. And, and from my understanding is you had a knack for getting through to people. I don't know if that meant flipping people after or getting people to cooperate during. Was there some kind of tactic or is it a natural point of your personality that you were able to leverage in order to have success there? [00:33:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it'd be easy for me to say that, you know, I had all these great skills and I'm the best at this and I'm the best at that. But half of it would be a lie, right? Yeah. I think we all have certain talents and my ability to relate and talk to people is, is one of my better talents, if you will. Throughout my career, I had great informants, and I don't think that's coincidence. You know, I learned early in my career. As a side note, someone once said, mark, the agents with the best cases have the best informants. And that's not a coincidence. Right, Right. Your sources are going to take you as, you know, are going to take you where the action is. So yeah, I could sit down with the girls and some guys and convince them this is why they need to cooperate. For what? For a variety of these different reasons. Another one of the reasons that was, you know, I mentioned kind of comical was there were girls that looked at the club and looked at the business as a legitimate business. Look, I go and I dance and I don't sleep with anybody and I don't hook and I don't take drugs. But this club is forcing or encouraging drug use and prostitution and it's actually making my job harder because now the customers are expecting me to participate in that same type of behavior. And frankly, if you could help me clean this up, then I win. And all the other girls that are trying to do this legitimately, we win as well. They kind of looked at it like that. It's like these guys are giving us a bad, bad name. Right, right. I mean, you see the, that it's kind of comical, but at the same time it's kind of serious. [00:35:33] Speaker A: Right. And there's a parallel in the trafficking world too there. Right. I mean that we see now where a lot of those girls are actually being controlled obviously by somebody else outside that club too. Or working in concert with the club. [00:35:47] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, and that's something that really wasn't on the radar 25 years ago. The trafficking issue with, especially in the high end clubs. [00:35:54] Speaker A: Right. [00:35:55] Speaker B: There were no drug addictions and there were no, you know, we're, we're tying your employment to the drug addiction. We're tying your employment to the prostitution. It was all the lure of the money. If you don't want to sleep with the guy, that's fine, I'm not going to force you to sleep with him. But you're not going to get the best positions in the club and the best rooms when the high rollers come in. [00:36:17] Speaker A: Right? [00:36:17] Speaker B: Right. You're going to have to work the floor, which means you're going to have to work harder and longer to make even a fraction of the money that you could go and sit on a couch in a VIP room and make big money. Right. Because you've chosen not to have sex with the guy, with the basketball player or whoever it is. And you've chosen not to take a line of snort of cocaine or what have you. So it's, it wasn't an overt type of threat. But you know, the girls just felt like, hey, you're ruining this business. And I was able to find girls that said, look, I'll tell you anything you want to know about these bastards, you know, they're killing the business and they're rude to me and rude to my friends and so on. [00:36:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's excellent. And I appreciate knowing. I wanted that clarification on the trafficking thing too, because I know that was something that has come out recently as part of the process of the track trafficking stuff. And it starts with a mild manipulation with I'm your boyfriend now, all of a sudden we're kind of sharing this and there's some money opportunity here and all before you know it. [00:37:18] Speaker B: Yeah. You know where we were seeing that in that era was in the black community on the streets. So we had a girl in our office, you know, one of my FBI heroes named Barbara Brown. We had a, a state congressman. I remember he walked through our floor under escort. He came up to the office, somebody escorted him straight to my supervisor's office. And we're like, what's he doing here? And the long of it was he came to us to say that the state is not able to solve this problem that I have in my district. And he had an inner city district. And we this for to pimp a 16 and 17 year old girl was still a misdemeanor in Georgia at that time. 15 and below was a felony. 16 and 17 was a misdemeanor. [00:38:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Aside from the actual pimping itself, I mean, you're already exacerbating. [00:38:14] Speaker B: They were arresting the pimps. [00:38:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:16] Speaker B: On misdemeanor charges. So when I say it was a misdemeanor, I mean to the pimp it was a misdemeanor. Not to the girl, to the pimp. So they couldn't get any traction. And what Barbara did is she created a man act case where a law that had been on the books for 100 years and you move them across state lines, it's a felony federally, regardless of the age. And you don't even have to move them across state lines if you use the credit card. You just move them. Them across state lines. Right? [00:38:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:46] Speaker B: So we rolled up about 12 to 15 pimps in the greater Georgia, Alabama area that took, took them off the streets on a federal case. And that's when trafficking was starting to happen in the greater Atlanta area. Now it's, it's more digital. Right. And it's more sophisticated, but we were seeing it in the black community on the streets. [00:39:07] Speaker A: Okay. But none. But obviously during that era, you're talking 19, late 90s, eight. [00:39:12] Speaker B: Yeah, late 90s. Yeah. [00:39:14] Speaker A: So that wasn't in There and, and [00:39:16] Speaker B: I continued, you know, work in the clubs for another five years and it still really wasn't there then either. It's, it's, it's, it's certainly in the, in the last 20 years. Yeah. [00:39:29] Speaker A: When this thing wrapped up, how long, how many years did it go on? First of all, you know, a little while. [00:39:35] Speaker B: Yeah. We, I got there in 97. We did the search in 99. We went to trial in oh, one. So you're looking at a four year lifespan. [00:39:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:43] Speaker B: Until we got a jury. Yeah. Until they pled guilty. [00:39:45] Speaker A: How were the sentences coming down? Were they reasonably hammered or was this that. [00:39:54] Speaker B: No, there wasn't. That was the black eye of the case, if you will. Was the sentence yet? We, we looked at it. I say we. You know, in warm ups, you and I were talking about the U.S. attorney's office. One of the things that I learned from these two guys that I've already told you about is, Mark, if you get wrapped up in the sentencing part of this, you're only going to be frustrated and remember, there's nothing you can do about it. Right? [00:40:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:20] Speaker B: That belongs to the prosecutors and the judge. Right. So whatever deals they cut, you mumble under your breath and you move on because there's nothing you can do about it. You can jump up and down on the table all day long and it's not going to change anybody's mind. Now a good prosecutor will come to you and say, hey, Mark, this is the deal I'm thinking about making. You got any thoughts on it? He'll get your opinion. But at the end of the day, it's his decision and his boss's decision. And you know that. [00:40:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And ultimately even the judge could. And the judge tell him to pound [00:40:50] Speaker B: sand, even take it or not take it. [00:40:51] Speaker A: Right. [00:40:52] Speaker B: That deal. So while we were in trial, we, we. This case was, you know, a national sensational case. CNN was broadcasting it daily. Fox News didn't exist then. Greta Van Susteren was set up out front doing her daily podcasts. We were on direct for four months, putting up our witnesses for four months before the bad guys had, even before we had rested and the bad guys had even started their part of the case. [00:41:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:19] Speaker B: Finally at the four month part, they pled guilty, the majority of them. And the deal that forced them to plead guilty is what you're asking about. Only the number one bad guy did prison time and he did three years. So that's the, that's the black eye. Everybody else pled to a felony and they got Probation. But the win in the case was the financial win, and we got the club. Okay? So the club immediately gets shut down, and it can never be a strip club again. And remember what I said earlier, it was the number one grossing strip club in America. Right. That's Vegas, that's Miami, that's California. We're talking $9 million in cash in 1997 money. [00:42:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is 10x. [00:42:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:07] Speaker A: Now. Yeah. [00:42:08] Speaker B: That's crazy money. Right. So we now remember this money is being skimmed to the Gambinos in New York. So the win for us is we've now cut the number one money making opportunity for the Gambinos in the late 90s. It was coming from that strip club in Atlanta. We. We knew that. Our heart knew that. Our gut told us that. Our informants told us that. Later in the early 2000s, when Michael D. Leonardo flipped and became the last great capo, became an informant for the government, he confirmed that was our number one moneymaker for the Gambino family in New York was that strip club in Atlanta. So by seizing that and cutting off that cash revenue, that was a huge win. [00:42:54] Speaker A: And at the same time, do you think it was, or did you already pursue this? Do you think it was also an opportunity that ended for you to actually follow that money up there? Was there ever a consideration of either putting an undercover in or following the money for some period of time? I know you had one agent already working that connect to where you could actually prosecute some of the people in New York. Because that's also, you know, something where, hey, this is all their money. But, you know, following the money can lead you. [00:43:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good question. It's a great question, because you know what you're talking about. So this is when the interagency fighting happens. [00:43:32] Speaker A: Oh, geez. [00:43:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So New York FBI politely said, no, thanks. And we didn't understand at the time why, other than they're just being territorial. They don't like us hillbillies in Atlanta doing this mob case. And we're actually having enormous success on guys that they haven't been able to pinch yet. So maybe there's some, you know, bad feelings there. But what we found out later, what they. They were not willing to reveal their cards, is they had murder conspiracy charges on a guy that we are. That we had in our case that they weren't quite ready to charge yet. And if we got involved and they started cooperating, it could somehow mess up that murder case. And they just weren't willing to take that Chance. And they said no. [00:44:20] Speaker A: So you. You had already stepped on him or not? [00:44:23] Speaker B: We indicted their guy, and they fought us on that. [00:44:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:44:29] Speaker B: I mean, when I say fought us, there was a joint meeting at DOJ, Washington D.C. on who's going to get this guy first. [00:44:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:44:37] Speaker B: And Atlanta one. And we were able to charge him with the. You may remember the Famous Scores case. The strip club that Howard Stern made famous in New York. [00:44:46] Speaker A: Sure. [00:44:47] Speaker B: Where the Gambinos were extorting that club as well. But they weren't kicking the money that we were. That our guy was kicking. Our guy was kicking millions. They were extorting that. That club for about half a million a year. And we charged one of those guys with that extortion based on rico. We could reach up to New York and grab that and make it part of our case. And they didn't like that. They. They said, look, we. What we found out later is we've got this guy for murder. We're just not ready to do it yet. You need to leave him alone or you're going to screw it up. And that was the reason that we couldn't follow the money to New York. [00:45:22] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's interesting, too, that there's that much infighting and territorialism and, you know, [00:45:28] Speaker B: to be fair, New York turned out to be right on their part. They pinched him, and he flipped, and he became what's generally recognized as the greatest mob turncoat in history. [00:45:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's. That's. That's fantastic. It just kind of sucks that you can't. I understand also having invested a lot of time into something, and then somebody else coming from the outside reaching in and saying, hey, by the way, you know, I know you spent the last six months on this cat, but you need to let them go, and I promise to take care of them. I mean, you call bullsh right away. Right. But if it's inner agency, you'd think that you guys could figure that out, but it's still human nature, huh. [00:46:07] Speaker B: My training agent had this great analogy. He called it, and he accused me of being it. But I think we all. And he said it in good and good humor. He said, we're all. He said, mark, you more than anybody, You're. You're a deer hunter. And. Okay, what does that mean? Says you go out and you slay your deer, and then you say, nobody touch my deer. It's mine. I'll cut it up. I'll decide who gets any of it. But it's my deer. I killed it right he said, and generally that's not the best way to do it. The best way is you kill your deer and you let everybody know that you've killed it and you say, who needs some? You don't make the decision. You open it up and say, who needs some? And of course, he was being humorous at the same time, but there's a little bit of truth to that. [00:46:48] Speaker A: A little bit. I think also, you need to also come out and say, I killed this deer, but I'm not telling anybody that I'm going to give that guy credit for killing the deer and share it. Yeah. Well, so that keeps pushing it on and on and on. Right. So I understand. I sympathize greatly with that. I just find it amazing every time I hear it, because, I mean, God forbid the criminal world even get together and cooperate well enough, or we'd never be able to control them, you know, but law enforcement can't even do it. That's so frustrating. [00:47:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:17] Speaker A: And I noticed in this story, too, that they attacked you personally, which I think is telling. Does that say anything? First of all, how's it feel when you're putting this case together and then you get nothing but defense attorneys jumping up there and trying to beat you up over your integrity or ethics or whether you're crossing lines and everything? And what does that actually say about the case? [00:47:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't know what it said about the case until my, you know, my mentors educated me and said, mark, the reason they're going after you. Because they have nothing else. Right, Right. You've done a great job. We've done a great job. That you are. They see you as the wink link for whatever reason. You know, Remember, we talked a lot about girls and dancers and informants. Right. Their philosophy was. I mean, we were turning over when. When the curtain was pulled back and they saw our informants, they were like, wow, this is impressive. Right. How can that be? We thought these guys were loyal to us. You know what it is? I bet Mark Sowell, this young guy, 30 years old, right out of the Marines, I bet he's sleeping with these girls. I bet that's what it is. And that was the accusation more than once that I was having romance with the girls to get them to cooperate. [00:48:33] Speaker A: Did they get any of the girls to corroborate? No. Even. [00:48:36] Speaker B: Never ever. [00:48:37] Speaker A: Yeah, they just threw it out there in the middle of trial. [00:48:40] Speaker B: They threw it out to the media, and the media ran with it. And then when they tried to introduce it at trial, the judge says, okay, show Me. What even remote probable cause you have that before I let the jury even remotely hear this story. [00:48:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:53] Speaker B: And they had none. And. And conversations that were had in chambers with these attorneys. He said, you may not bring this up in front of the jury until you give me some more evidence than what you've got right now. [00:49:05] Speaker A: Makes sense. Yeah. [00:49:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:07] Speaker A: And then you. Somebody ended up leaking a bunch of stuff about other people that were witnesses besides the. Yeah. The celebrities and all that kind of stuff. How did that. How did they get out? I mean, I know you put this in the book, how it got out, and what was the sentiment afterwards? I know, I know everybody comes in as a reluctant witness in lieu of getting wrapped up in it, but did it cause any real animosity or any issues? [00:49:35] Speaker B: Yeah, we had some very reluctant witnesses. It was almost like, you know, when you get a new puppy and you put a collar around them and you put a leash and you have to drag them. You've seen these dogs that put their heels down and you just drag the dog. Right. It's almost like that. Getting them into the courthouse. Yeah. They did not want to go, but they had cut a deal with full immunity. You know, as we got. As we got into the case and we. And I started looking at prostitution, not because I wanted to pursue prostitution, but it was a crime that was happening that I couldn't ignore. Right. I looked at all crimes, state, federal, what have you, and we couldn't ignore it. It was. It was pretty egregious. And. And when we looked at it, the. The athletes and the celebrities were paying sometimes for the prostitution. I mean, there was a cash or credit card transaction, or at least to cover the room cost, which included sex. So technically, that's prostitution. So technically, they had committed a crime. But we made it very clear we're not after making a prostitution case on Patrick Ewing, the center for the New York Knicks. [00:50:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:50:38] Speaker B: We're not interested in making a prostitution case on the girl who slept with Patrick Ewing of the New York Knicks. We want the club and the bad guys who put all of this together. Okay? So it was either ingenious on the defense attorney's part, or it was just they stumbled into something accidentally. But you ask about the leaks. The leaks was through the defense attorneys leaking to the media who was putting it in the newspaper that Terrell Owens or Andrew Jones or what have you were going to be government witnesses on the prostitution side. Now, they did that probably because it gets the name out there and takes away the shock factor before the jury sees the testimony or hears the testimony. That's a common technique in the defense world. If they did what I'm going to say next, and it was ingenious. If they did it so that the narrative in this case could turn from public corruption, dirty cops and murder, obstruction in New York to just a prostitution case, and then the celebrity and then the media gets involved and all they want to talk about is prostitution, prostitution, prostitution, and not credit card fraud and not rape in the back seat of the limousine. Then the narrative has changed. [00:51:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:51:56] Speaker B: And now this case isn't as important. In fact, now this case is just a moral witch hunt by the government. [00:52:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:03] Speaker B: And that was the narrative that put out. And, and it was effective. There's no doubt about it was effective. [00:52:10] Speaker A: It hurt the case somewhat. [00:52:11] Speaker B: It was effective because there was 20 defense attorneys parroting the same narrative and there was only two government prosecutors given the real narrative. And of course, the government prosecutors can't go out and do press conferences every day like the defense attorneys can on the courthouse steps and parrot, you know, their, their, their story. So when you get 20 high profile attorneys say, prostitution, prostitution, prostitution, the government's on a witch hunt, the government's just in your bedroom, you know, so on and so on, then that's the narrative that the case takes. [00:52:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Which would, which would bode differently today for our earlier conversation too, that, you know, it's connected to the trafficking. I think people would be a little bit more. [00:52:56] Speaker B: And not unlike the, the P. Diddy case that just recently happened. You know, nobody looked at P. Diddy with sympathy, but now. Right, but 20 years ago, people were looking at the Gold Club and Andrew Jones with sympathy because of the narrative that was being put out there. [00:53:11] Speaker A: And he was, I mean, Andrew Jones beloved too. So people will tend to want them to not be terribly guilty, so they default to leave him alone. [00:53:21] Speaker B: He's my favorite center fielder. Yeah. [00:53:24] Speaker A: Please don't take him off the field. [00:53:25] Speaker B: That's right. [00:53:26] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. So ultimately, that wraps up. It's a massive success and you end up becoming a stolen valor expert. [00:53:37] Speaker B: And, and this laugh at the expert part. [00:53:39] Speaker A: Well, yeah, hey, if you're not an expert, I don't know who is. Right. But what is, what was the infatuation with it? I, I know it makes sense on the surface, but let's consider Joe Public, who doesn't quite understand the depth of the offense here in stolen Valor, and, and how you ended up kind of taking that on what it means to you to actually take those cases. [00:54:04] Speaker B: Yeah. I stumbled into it by dumb luck, and it was the due to 9 11. We have other veterans in the office. The Marine Corps has a great representation of Marine veterans in the FBI, percentage wise, more than the other services. You know, army has the most people, the Navy has the most people, but the Marine Corps has the most FBI agents that were prior Marines. It's just, it's. It's a unique phenomena. We like to say there's a mafia in the FBI and it's the Marine mafia, because there's a lot of us, you know, and so there are other guys that could take these cases that were just as passionate about it as I was. One of my best friends is a Beirut veteran. He was there when the Beirut barracks were blown up, you know, and his comrades were killed and so on. So very passionate about it. But I kind of stumbled into it in the beginning, and then I kind of became the stolen valor guy for the office. And so anytime somebody picked up the phone and called the switchboard and said, hey, I want to report something, hey, Mark Sowell knows how to do that. He recently did this case because we didn't have. We have a bank robbery squad. We don't have a stolen valor squad. Right, right. Who works Stolen Valor? I mean, it's such a unique niche thing. [00:55:15] Speaker A: Right. [00:55:16] Speaker B: And. And until the gentleman that wrote the book called Stolen Valor in the year 1999 created that term, it didn't exist in the lexicon of america Right. Until 1999. And you guys, they were just called frauds. Yeah. And you guys are posers. [00:55:32] Speaker A: Right. And that's what I mean, that's what I think the perception is with most people. They're thinking, okay, well, you're moving away from working a terrorism case in order to take this on. It seems nominal, but it, it does mean something. So. [00:55:44] Speaker B: So after 9 11, the geographical area that I lived in in Atlanta is next to Dobbins Air Force Base. And because, you know, if everybody was on high alert after 9 11, just like I'd said earlier about the Olympic bombing in the Olympics, how the. Everything went on hold during the Olympics after 9 11, all major cases went on hold. For the most part, we're all working terrorism until. Until the boss says otherwise. [00:56:12] Speaker A: Right. [00:56:13] Speaker B: So me and the others who lived in this geographical area got assigned to Dobbins Air Force Base to go partner up with Air Force OSI and help them maintain security, cover any leads that affected that base. That base is famous because it produces the F22, you know, as one of the stealth fighters and so on. So we're working with OSI on a daily basis. This. So 911 is in September. This is probably November. So maybe two months later, three months later, where OSI comes to me and says, hey, here's what we got. They had an informant who was a female, that was an enlisted airman that claimed she got hit on at a church service, romantically hit on by a Marine Corps captain in uniform. And she said it just didn't feel right and something weird about this guy. And Air Force had done a little investigation through a phone number, and they turned, determined that this guy has no affiliation with the Marine Corps, yet he's on the base and he's wearing a uniform. How can that be? So what we found out. So they now remember Air Force OSI is kind of limited to the base, you know, unlike what we saw with what Mark Harmon and ncis. [00:57:30] Speaker A: Right. [00:57:30] Speaker B: He can't pack up and go wherever he wants to go. [00:57:32] Speaker A: Right, Right. [00:57:33] Speaker B: So this guy, bad guy, lives in Atlanta. Air Force OSI can't go to downtown Atlanta and rouse this guy. So we do it. Long story short, before 9 11, all you had to do is show up at the gate of the base in uniform and you would just get waved through. [00:57:53] Speaker A: And that's how he got. [00:57:54] Speaker B: And he was. He had gone out to an army surplus store, bought the entire uniform, knew how to wear it perfectly, was getting waved on base. And he told us. And I think there's some truth to this because we confirmed it with receipts and things we found in his house. Look, I just wanted to go and buy cheap goods at the exchange and the Air Force commissary and stuff, tax free. And I just. I did it to save money. It was basically his excuse. You said, if that's true, then you say, okay, all right, I get it, you know, bad decision on your part, but you're not really this bad, bad guy that we think you are. But you're still guilty of impersonating a Marine Corps captain and sneaking on the base. So the crime has been committed. But what I found out in the investigation is he was out on bond for a rape. Oh, okay. So which makes me. Makes us think was this girl that he hit on at church next. [00:58:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:53] Speaker B: Okay. And when he was in the. In jail on. On that rape case, before he made bond, he'd begin. He became a jailhouse Muslim convert, and now he's sneaking onto a military base two months after 9 11. Yeah. [00:59:09] Speaker A: Bad time for that to be part of this. [00:59:12] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, Right, So it doesn't take A stretch of the imagination to see how bad this could have gone. [00:59:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:59:19] Speaker B: Whether it be the rape or whether it be an act of terrorism. So we jam him as hard as we can. He at the time there was no stolen valor law on the books. It was just impersonation of a government employee and he gets a one year offense. But when I searched his home in a dog food bag rolled up that I had learned from the girl I told you earlier about. Barbara Brown. [00:59:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:59:43] Speaker B: Because she had me do it in an Asian house. She had an informant tell her that in a five gallon bucket of powdered laundry detergent there was a pistol hidden in the bottom that had been used in a homicide. She said, hey Mark. Young Agent Mark, come over here and stick your hand in that bag in that bucket. I go down in the bucket, I pull out a pistol. I never forgot that. [01:00:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:05] Speaker B: I see this dog food bag in our Marine impersonators laundry room. He doesn't have a dog. Why is the dog food bag there? [01:00:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:15] Speaker B: Hey Rich, come over here. Just entertain me. Stick your hand down in the bag. I'll hold the bag open. He sticks his hand out. What's he pull out? A pistol. Turns out to be a BB gun. But it looked like a pistol. [01:00:27] Speaker A: Right. [01:00:27] Speaker B: I contact the sex crimes unit that's handling the rape. And the girl had identified that pistol earlier, make, model and everything that he held to her head when he raped. Right? [01:00:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:39] Speaker B: So he's obviously he's a bad guy. [01:00:41] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean you would. [01:00:42] Speaker B: And because I found that pistol, he pleads guilty to that rape. So now he's doing the one year for the stolen valor and now he's doing the 10 years for the rape. Because we found that pistol because of the stolen. Because because of the stolen valor. If he had we had not found that pistol, it would have been a. He said, she said. Right. So I be. That case kind of became known through the office because we brought all his uniforms in and laid them out and, and you know, did photographic array of it. And you know, people saw it and they heard and you know, and they heard this story that I'm telling you that this could have been a terrorist act. This could have been a raper. You know, this could have gone bad. It's a cool story. Right. So as things would go along in the office where people were accused of stolen valor, it always got funneled to me and. And then it culminated with the big case that you know about. And, and I had some others. Yeah. [01:01:38] Speaker A: Did it, did it ever hit you on an Emotional level, being military. I mean, I know some people just find it super insulting, but some of these guys go to such a degree. [01:01:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:50] Speaker A: That it is just. [01:01:52] Speaker B: It did. And, you know, it did for. It did with some of the guys. Some of the guys were comical. And you think, all right, he's either got a mental problem or he's just an old man who wants attention. And you kind of. You don't get fired up about it, you know, to use my term. But there were some guys, especially in the biker community when I was working, outlaw bikers, that were just egregious liars about what they had did. And now we're in the middle. And I just gotten back from Afghanistan, so it was a little sensitive to me. Right. And now I'm hearing on wiretaps these guys talk about their phony military career. Yeah. That got personal, and that fired me up. Yeah. [01:02:30] Speaker A: And. And so. And a lot of that stolen valor is. Was originated with Vietnam vets, too. [01:02:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Most of it. Who. Although it's. There's documented cases. Excuse me for interrupting. It's existed since World War II. There's some famous World War II cases of guys that were phonies. [01:02:48] Speaker A: Oh, I'm sure. [01:02:49] Speaker B: All right. [01:02:50] Speaker A: But those guys came home heroes. The Vietnam vets came home and got spit on. [01:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:55] Speaker A: And then as. As the resurgence of appreciation arose and people started. [01:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:03:01] Speaker A: Taking some of that. [01:03:02] Speaker B: Let me tell you, the word stolen valor originally wasn't meant entirely the way we mean it today. What. His name is Burkett, and he wrote the book called Stolen Valor. But the subtitles of that book is how the Vietnam generation was robbed of its true heroes. And what. The point he makes is that if you remember growing up, the Vietnam guys were kind of the crazy guys. Right. They're the ones that went into the VA hospital with a pistol and took everybody hostage. Right. Because they were. You know, the media and the movies portrayed the Vietnam guys as crazy. [01:03:38] Speaker A: Perpetuated the whole story. [01:03:40] Speaker B: And so he's claiming that's stealing the valor of these true heroes by saying that all Vietnam vets are crazy. And that's not the case. And he said it was. His point was it's disparaging the true heroes, not that they were claiming to be war heroes and they weren't. They're not crazy like the media is. [01:03:59] Speaker A: Yeah. You're lumping these people into a category. [01:04:01] Speaker B: That's what he really meant by stolen valor. But he also went on to say that there's also another definition, and that's people claiming awards that they didn't receive, like, he was the first guy to out Brian Dennehy. You know who the actor Brian Dennehy is? From Rambo. Yeah, yeah. In that book, he outed Brian Dennehy as being a stolen valor fraud. And. Really? And Denny, he admitted it and. And confessed and apologized. He claimed to have served in Vietnam and he never did. [01:04:29] Speaker A: So what is. What are some. I mean, even if he. I don't know if it's a short story, anecdote, or anything that would explain again, to somebody who, you know, you explaining, this sounds great. That happens. Dance. You saved, you know, somebody else from being potentially raped or somebody blowing up something in a terroristic act. And that's not typically how people envision. And you would even admit. I mean, most of these guys are trying to get attention, so why is it a big deal? And how could you explain to the layman that it's a lot deeper than that and deserves to be investigated? [01:05:02] Speaker B: That's a good question. You know, Supreme Court argued with that. When the Supreme Court issued their decision on the first stolen valor law, and they ruled it unconstitutional, they said, you have a right to lie. Okay. It's your First Amendment. You have a right. [01:05:18] Speaker A: It's not just a lie, but you [01:05:20] Speaker B: can't benefit financially from your lie. That's what the Supreme Court said. And they were saying, hey, Congress, you need to rewrite this law and make sure they don't benefit financially. Okay. And where I'm going with this is Supreme Court uses an example. They said, if you went into a bar and you arrested everybody that lied about their military service, every bar in America would be empty. [01:05:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Even the legit ones. [01:05:43] Speaker B: Right. So the point is, where do you draw the line between the guys who's just. He's drunk and he's trying to impress his buddy, or maybe he's trying to get laid at the bar. And, you know. You know, the old joke is 1,000 seals served in Vietnam, and I've met all 10,000 of them. Okay. [01:06:01] Speaker A: Right, Right. Yep. [01:06:02] Speaker B: So where do you draw the line between the legitimate bad guy and someone who's just exaggerating? And normally it's financial. Is he benefiting financially from his lies and how egregious is it? Or is his lies causing harm to other people or other people to take acts on his behalf that they wouldn't normally take because of lies such as putting him in a parade or giving him a television interview or something to that effect? So that's the difference between the guy sitting at the bar telling Lies and being harmless than the guy who's taking VA money and faking something that he served. And he. And he doctored a DD214 to get medical benefits. So there's. You got both ends of the spectrum. [01:06:47] Speaker A: Has social media affected any of these cases? [01:06:49] Speaker B: Enormously. Yeah, enormously. It doesn't necessarily make. Sure. I'm answering your question. It doesn't necessarily affect the case, but it certainly makes guys more willing to commit stolen valor so they can get the attention that social media will give them. [01:07:06] Speaker A: Right. [01:07:06] Speaker B: So that's what you're asking. [01:07:08] Speaker A: Yeah. It either used to be rampant and we didn't know so much about it, and it just now manifests because now everything gets. [01:07:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:15] Speaker A: Broadcast in real time or it's. It's a growing phenomenon. Do you think it's actually growing? [01:07:22] Speaker B: It was. I think it's hit a plateau now because people are calling it out more than they ever were before. You know, the. If you get on. You get on the Internet and you look at the podcast with these military guys, they're calling each other out left and right. Even Rob o' Neill shot bin Laden. You know, supposedly being called out that, hey, you didn't really shoot bin Laden. [01:07:43] Speaker A: Turned into a big old deal. [01:07:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal. So people are starting to police at the highest levels now within the communities of where the real gunfighters are. But the phony guy that nobody knows about, he can still slide below the radar. And that's how I ended up with my case, is because nobody knew this guy. Nobody knew. And it happened. It happened so long ago that nobody. So you could. You could hide in the cracks. The pre social media era, the pre Internet era, he's a loner. He doesn't have a lot of friends. He's been out 20 years. So that community of people, you know, I don't even know who that guy is anymore. Is that the guy I served with? I don't even recognize him. Right. [01:08:26] Speaker A: As opposed to it being real fresh, plausible deniability. Made it a little easier. [01:08:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:08:31] Speaker A: Because it's from way back, which was your case, that your next book is about. [01:08:35] Speaker B: Stolen. [01:08:36] Speaker A: The higher priority. [01:08:37] Speaker B: Yeah. I walk the reader through the case that we just talked about with Dobbins Air Force Base, an outlaw biker case. A guy claimed to be a Vietnam vet, and we impeached him at trial and we ended up convicting him on a drug case. But we used his stolen valor testimony to impeach him and make him make sure the jury didn't believe anything about this guy, you know, when he testified and then, yeah, then we had this guy that was here in Midland, Texas on a parade float honoring veterans. And the parade float was hit by a train. And four veterans died on that parade float. Made national news. This is in 2012. And the story started to fall apart at that point. There was 25ish veterans on this parade float. 12 on one parade float, 12 on the other. I think something to that effect. So maybe 24, it gets hit by a train, people die, families get upset, they start pointing fingers. My bad guy was on the parade float with his wife and she loses her leg. [01:09:55] Speaker A: Yeah, she was wounded badly. [01:09:58] Speaker B: She loses her leg and becomes a national story. They fly her back to Atlanta. When she lands, they get police escorts to the hospital. He is kind of a pseudo celebrity. We feel sorry for him because his wife, look, he served his country. He gets hit by a train, now his wife's losing her leg and may die and so on. Well, her in laws said, look, enough is enough. We always felt like Shane was a liar about his military history, but we're not veterans and we couldn't and prove it. And we kind of just really rolled our eyes and said no big deal. You know, we love, we love his wife, we love Meg. So we're just going to tolerate her asshole husband who lies about his career. No, no harm, no foul. But now his lies are almost getting her killed because he should have never been on that parade float because he's not the veteran he claimed to be. He did serve in the army, but he claimed that he was in a secret narco mission down in South America and he got a purple Heart. Right, which we proved at trial that there were no records anywhere in the history of the U.S. army and nor could he produce any that showed he ever got a purple Heart to include the testimonies of the people that served with him. [01:11:12] Speaker A: And those in laws ended up being kind of stand in complainants. Right, because the wife who was gravely injured was also still on his side. She was non compliant to this very day. [01:11:25] Speaker B: She believes that he is who he says he was. But the in laws said, look, it's not true. We, we, our gut tells us this guy is lying some way. Somehow. The complaint made it to me, made it through the local prosecutors. Local prosecutors actually went and arrested him first because he had, he had forged the document and gotten a Georgia Purple heart license plate issued by the state. Okay, you've probably, you may have seen them here in Texas purple heart license plates. And when you get that license plate in Georgia, you're exempt from the vehicle tax on, on your truck, on your car. So technically it was a tax case. Okay. You add up all the numbers and it was in excess of a thousand dollars, which I think 500 is a felony in Georgia. So it's a felony tax case. That's what you're seeing now, Teagan, is prosecutors are not using the true stolen valor statute written by Congress to charge people because it's only a misdemeanor. They're using felony other charges and calling it a stolen valor case. Right. Which is still in the, it's in the true nature of the stolen valor, but we're just not charging him with that misdemeanor. We're charging him with a tax fraud because he is a stolen valor fraud. [01:12:39] Speaker A: Right. [01:12:39] Speaker B: And that's what we did in Georgia. [01:12:41] Speaker A: Yeah, and that's brings up an interesting thing too, because I've talked with, with different people who get criticized heavily, and I'm not criticizing you about leveraging different crimes in order to accomplish something that was once this, now you're calling it this, and they think it's some kind of cop out or whatever. What are you, what is your sentiment on that? Or is it just because of the. I mean, if you're going to prosecute it at all, it's a slap on the wrist and no jail time. They pay a few bucks and whatever, and it's not even worth it. Do you, obviously you feel like you can justify it. I've, I've been in similar circumstances where I feel like, yes, I'm going to leverage this in order to take down somebody that's committing violent crime. If I can't prove the violent crime, I'm going to use this in order to get them out of there in the first place. [01:13:25] Speaker B: We do it every day in law enforcement. And you've had guests on your podcast for your listeners who have short memories or maybe didn't hear this particular episode where, you know, you've got a drug dealer on the street, you've got a bad guy on the street, you'll do whatever it takes to get him off the street. And my example earlier, if he's spitting on the sidewalk, I'm investigating spitting on the sidewalk. If my stolen valor guy. Now, granted, there's no crime of violence, intentional violence, he's not out pulling the trigger, I get that. But if he's committing a tax fraud, and that's the way I can get him off of the street as a stolen ballot or at least get him exposed so that he can no longer carry that patriotic war hero banner that he's been carrying. Then I'll use a tax violation to do it all day long. Just like I'll use a stolen car case to get a drug dealer off the. Off the streets. Right. It's no different. [01:14:18] Speaker A: Some people would think that's cheating, but they don't appreciate how many rules that you have to follow. [01:14:24] Speaker B: And you can't be any sleep at night over that. [01:14:28] Speaker A: Yeah, well, good for you. [01:14:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:30] Speaker A: And you can't go to the level of the criminal and, And. And fight mano a mano. You've got to go through all these rules and everything. It's hard enough as it is. [01:14:38] Speaker B: And look, we could charge him with stolen valor, but it's only a misdemeanor. [01:14:41] Speaker A: Right. [01:14:41] Speaker B: So if we want to hit him with as big a punch as we can, and we knew we could prove the tax fraud and the jury would convict him. And. And we were right. The jury deliberated two hours, and they convicted him. [01:14:55] Speaker A: Man, that's great. And that's great that you have that reputation. If. If for no other reason than to bring more attention to it. [01:15:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:15:02] Speaker A: Because it is important. And so. And when did you retire? How long has it been since you've [01:15:06] Speaker B: been from the FBI retired? In 2017. In December of 2017. So we're nine years now almost. [01:15:12] Speaker A: And you're still an instructor. [01:15:14] Speaker B: Yeah, so I still teach for the FBI at their. What we call the human intelligence school, which is the informant school for the FBI. [01:15:22] Speaker A: So. An informant school. So again, I'm curious what your thoughts are on. In my limited experience, in comparison, I saw 95% mishandling of informants. I mean, I see guys try to get them to say something, and then they'll out the informant as fast as they'll. [01:15:43] Speaker B: Whatever. [01:15:44] Speaker A: I was like, this kid's gonna end up in a ditch. I don't understand. And to your point, you say having a pool of informants whom you trust and they trust you, that has to be a legitimate relationship in order to maintain that stuff. Am I off base? [01:15:59] Speaker B: And you're right on. [01:16:00] Speaker A: So is that. How do you. How does that get taught? What types of things do you. [01:16:04] Speaker B: Well, to be fair, the. The curriculum has a classification level on it as far as the nuts and the bolts. [01:16:11] Speaker A: Sure, sure. [01:16:12] Speaker B: And et cetera. But you're building relationships with people. It's what you're doing. You're finding somebody that. That believes in something that you believe in, or at least you're convincing him that you believe in something that he believes in. And you're in your forming a relationship to accomplish a goal. And, and there's. Everybody's got a motivation. You know, we see it in the movies when spies and informants and those type of people are portrayed. What's the motivation? Is it money? Which is what 90, as you well know of informants deal with is. Is money. You know, am I going to get. I'm willing to. To exchange the element of danger that I might get made within my click for the money that I'm going to make from law enforcement. They're willing to take that gamble. [01:16:55] Speaker A: Right. [01:16:56] Speaker B: Is it revenge? They did me dirty. Like my biker informant was a combination of both. It was money and revenge. They had done him dirty. And he's like, these guys, I'll. Whatever you want to know, I'll do it. You know, pardon my language, but that's what he said to me the day that I recruited him. So I'll give you whatever you want. You know, these guys did my old man dirty and they did me dirty and so on. So you got to find that motivation. We would like to think it's always patriotism, you know, it's doing the right thing. Mom and apple pie and I want to clean up my neighborhood, you know, that type of thing. But that's the, that's the minority. [01:17:35] Speaker A: And those people are usually not connected enough to be a valuable informant. Right. So that's, that's the catch is that these people are usually coming from a bad spot. They're trying to work off a case or whatever, but they're usually. They're fickle. They're never on time. They're trying to get away with whatever they can. And at the same time, you're. You're trying to leverage them in an honest way. [01:18:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:18:00] Speaker A: If they were the people in the neighborhood that wanted to do good, then that'd be super great. [01:18:06] Speaker B: We'll. [01:18:06] Speaker A: We'll like run your neighborhood patrol program. But yeah, they're not going to be able to give you any inside information on who's got keys or who shot who. Right. [01:18:13] Speaker B: I think a clinic Eastwood on his front porch, as you know. The Gran Torino. [01:18:18] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [01:18:19] Speaker B: How much are you going to learn from your front porch? Yeah, those are bad guys running up and down my street. But I can't tell you much more than that other than those are bad. I need somebody in that clique. Right. And how you get to them is your imagination or using what you learned from their history, doing your research, and maybe use somebody else to introduce you to them. You know, we use that in our career. I can't help you, but I know somebody that can, you know, and maybe someone middles an introduction for you. Yeah. [01:18:51] Speaker A: So have you ever run into any of those folks that. I mean, it's. It's a really contrived process, but it's contrived from both ends, right? Some. You kind of both are wanting something. You find the middle ground where it's an agreement, but then you develop a relationship because you have to in order to really start earnest trust. [01:19:11] Speaker B: Yep. [01:19:12] Speaker A: Have you had any that you've developed, like, really true relationships that have carried on through the years? [01:19:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I think of one in particular. He's dead now. He died of cancer. Yeah. His name's Howard Thrower, and he and I put a ton of guys in jail together because he was. Somebody once asked me, they said, who has the best informant in Atlanta? And I said, I do. Yeah. His name's Bit. His street name is Bit. He was a monster of a man. He was 64350. He was a doorman on a strip club. He was a general manager of a strip club, multiple black clubs, white clubs. He knew everything that was happening years to the ground. And people trusted him, brought their crimes to him, brought their conspiracies, their ideas to him. Unfortunately, he played both sides, Right. Big shock, right? [01:20:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:07] Speaker B: And I confronted him about it, and he admitted it, and I had to send him to prison. But we ended up taking the other guys to prison with him as well. And then he was released early because he got cancer, and then he died. But I ran him for about 10 years, and we made. We put a sheriff in jail, we put a captain in jail. These were guys he was paying through his strip club. And we put drug dealers in jail. We put gang members, certainly gang members in jail. We put a lot of people in jail. [01:20:39] Speaker A: You see any of the. The police officers or sheriffs that are. Got caught up in some of these cases, do you see them getting any more higher level of accountability? I've heard you explain that The. The system where they're going into the work camps or the Lowe's or whatever, that's fine, but that's everybody. Do you find anywhere in state of Georgia or anywhere else through the FBI that there's any kind of enhancement for somebody that would have the expectation to hold a higher standard. [01:21:08] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So when. When the judge gives sentencing in the federal system, there are guidelines that he can follow, and you can get enhancements. You know, if it's a tax case and the dollar value increase. The dollar value is more than a million dollars, for example, then you get additional time for every million dollars of the tax fraud. Okay, Right. Rank is the same way in the judicial, in the law enforcement. You know, if you're a street cop, you're going to get a certain sentence. If you're a captain, you're going to get an enhancement. If that's what you're asking, the answer is yes. The high and, and our guys were, they all carried rank. One was a captain and the other. And to be fair, he wasn't a sheriff, he was a candidate for sheriff. [01:21:50] Speaker A: Okay. [01:21:51] Speaker B: He was a police officer who was running for sheriff. And what he was doing was he was taking bribes from the guy that I told you about. And what he was saying that if you pay me this money disguised as campaign contributions to my candidacy for sheriff when I get elected, I'll give you the towing contract, I'll give you the DI DUI school contract, I'll give you all these contracts that I as the sheriff have the ability to, to award. So he's, he was leveraging campaign funds for payout for. [01:22:21] Speaker A: Sounds like a Texas attorney General. [01:22:24] Speaker B: So I've heard. [01:22:25] Speaker A: So I've heard too. I don't know. [01:22:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I've seen the commercials. Yeah. Yeah. [01:22:30] Speaker A: That was so great. So you've, since you've left the FBI and you're still instructing. What types of things have you seen change? I mean, I had a guy on here, Jimmy Ciano, who, I mean, he's just turned 93 or 94, so, you know, all the J. Edgar Hoover days are all covered and flying by the seat of your pants and everything's progressed. Have you seen over the course of your career a major type of change with AI and the way that terrorism is being affected and how wartime is changing? What are the, the training differences between. [01:23:09] Speaker B: It comes and goes in cycles. I have seen changes. You know, I came in at the beginning of the technology era. So my training agent and I shared a computer and his goal was, he says, mark, only have four more years to I retire. I'm not turning that computer on. You have to turn it on and check my email and tell me what's being said. So I saw that kind of, you know, introduction of technology where you what's this laptop doing on my desk? I don't even know how to use it. So now everything is automated. Right. [01:23:41] Speaker A: And even back then it was, I mean in the early aughts was word perfect. Still, I remember the FBI and even then it's so dated. It was like, dude, yeah, nobody remembers how to use this. Which I think this was the trick. But that's what's kind of spawned the question is that government's kind of slow to keep up. Have you seen any kind of leak? [01:24:00] Speaker B: Yes, but there's a reason for that. And I have to come to the defense because you have to put so many safeguards into the system that you don't have to put for the civilian. [01:24:08] Speaker A: Right. [01:24:08] Speaker B: You know, so we ran around with blackberries forever and people made fun of us. But did you know a BlackBerry has never been hacked? That's the reason we ran around with blackberries. [01:24:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:24:18] Speaker B: Until the Android or the iPhone could promise us and give us a version that couldn't be hacked. We're going to run around with blackberries. [01:24:26] Speaker A: Right. [01:24:26] Speaker B: So yeah, we're slow to the game sometimes, but it's because of security and when it comes to technology. Yeah, for sure. You know, you mentioned terrorism after 9 11, the whole Bureau changed for sure. And you know, Bob Mueller, who was our director at the time, some people love him, some people hate him, but he, he made it very clear that terrorism was going to be the focus. If you read George Bush's book that he wrote about his presidency, George Bush Jr. He talks about having a round table and when the, when the meeting was over with, he went over and talked to Bob Mueller and he said this was just weeks after 9 11. And he said, bob, you can't let this happen again. And Bob said, thank you Mr. President. You just gave the FBI its new mission. [01:25:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:13] Speaker B: And sure enough, for the next 10 years we, you know, half the bank robbery squads, bank robbery squads were cut in half, drug squads were cut in half and everybody's going to terrorism. Yeah. Jim Comey comes in and he, people are complaining to him and he, and he gets it because Comey came from a criminal background. Comey was doing mob stuff in New York and white collar stuff and so on. So he got it and he said, all right, we're going to shift back towards criminal. We're going to try and balance this as far as manpower and resources and so on. And when I left and when I talked to the guys today, it's now a pretty good 50, 50 type of, of mix, if you will. So yeah, we can live with that. [01:25:55] Speaker A: That's understandable too after 911 and when the CIA completely flipped on its head too and just became a, you know, a military type style operation too after that. So. And having lived through that, I'm an Old guy, too. So it's. It's a different. It's an important context to read for younger people who are watching this. 911 was a game changer in the United States of. It was like nothing we've ever experienced. [01:26:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Age does have a lot to do with it, you know, and when I, When I generalize and say terrorism side, what I should also say is that counter espionage goes into that terrorism side as well. Yeah. We may not be under the threat of Al Qaeda bombing America like we were 20 years ago, but we are under a more increased threat of China stealing all of our secrets. Right. So when I mentioned terrorism, what I really should be saying is all the external enemies of the US as opposed to the criminal bad guys of the US and that includes counter espionage, foreign counterintelligence, and then traditional terrorism. We're at that. 50, 50 right now. [01:27:02] Speaker A: And how. Just one last thing. And I. And this is not a political show at all. In fact, purposefully not political. I'm. I'm apolitical. How do you think? And, and I'm making an assumption here. So I don't mean to frame this in that way. I'm not trying to be tricky. But the FBI has been politicized. I said we see it now. It's blowing up again. But it's been politicized ever since its inception. [01:27:31] Speaker B: It has. [01:27:32] Speaker A: Are there any ways that you can see, first of all, your experience on the inside, seeing how much that actually influences the work that you do when you're getting directives that seem like they're politically based. And two, is there a way that you think that it could reorganize in order to shield itself from even people being suspicious of it? [01:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So as you're asking the question, what comes to mind is I remember being able to go out and just knock on a door about something as generic as a bank robbery. See, you know, maybe. Maybe there was a witness that was inside the bank rob when it happened. I'm following up on a lead. What did you see? You know, for whatever reason. And that person would open the door, and in the past, they'd say, sure, I'll tell you anything you want to know. But now they open the door and they say, oh, it's the FBI, you know, what are you doing about, you know, my boy Trump getting harassed? Or they would say, before they ever answer my question, or they would say, what are you doing about people squashing antifa? Those people have a right to speak as well. [01:28:40] Speaker A: Right. Where are the Epstein files? [01:28:41] Speaker B: Yeah, whatever. Yeah, you know, I wouldn't have got that response 20 years ago. I just would have got. Yeah, I'll answer your questions now. It's. They want to ask me questions right before I ever even get to the bank robbery. [01:28:55] Speaker A: And that's a problem. [01:28:56] Speaker B: That's a big problem. [01:28:57] Speaker A: It is. So, I mean, that's. It seems like there, there needs to be some kind of. I don't know. I mean. [01:29:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So how do you write that ship, I think was the back half of your question. It's all going to come from leadership. There's no other way to do it. And you got to put a guy in the leadership position that can project the image of neutrality, whether he's, you know, like you said, you're not apolitical, you've got a political opinion, and that's fine, but you don't express it. The guy that runs the show for the Bureau and the guy that appoints him to run the show and so on have to be projecting an image of neutrality. [01:29:34] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, that's the same with your, Your wartime stuff. Hey, we're war fighters. This is what we do. We're not trying to nitpick the, the purpose behind it or the motivation behind why we're going. Yeah, that's just been kind of a frustrating point because I know from the people that I've seen, too, they're just, they're hard work, and they get into a case, they're just really focused on a case. And when I start thinking, wow, there sure is a lot of evidence that points toward they're trying to do this or that, it just, it frustrates me. But I don't have. I don't have access to people with those answers. I thought you might have. [01:30:07] Speaker B: So my, my training agent, who was a Hoover ear agent, came in and postone told you he came in 69. My, my training agent came in in 70. So they were still Hoover agents. [01:30:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:30:18] Speaker B: He told me a story about going and knocking on somebody's door one time. For whatever reason, he thinks it was a stolen car case. Back when we worked stolen cars. And the lady was so excited to have an FBI agent in her house that she called the neighbors to come over and meet him, and he ended up doing the interview with a bunch of ladies who were home, you know, because they don't work in 69 and 70. They're at home. He did the interview around the table with a bunch of ladies, and they just thought this was the great. Well, I can't wait till my husband gets home and I can tell him I met an FBI agent. [01:30:49] Speaker A: That's awesome. [01:30:50] Speaker B: Yeah. And he said, you know, now, today it would be almost just the opposite. Yeah. Come on in. And let me tell you my opinion of what I think of you and your organization. [01:30:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And cops, too. I mean, it's. It's kind of a rampant thing, but. [01:31:02] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:31:03] Speaker A: But cops are a less political issue and more of a perception issue. [01:31:07] Speaker B: You make a fantastic point. Here's something that I've always thought is just a phenomena of the job, and there's nothing that I can do about it. I've mentioned to you during the course of our conversation about I've arrested half a dozen police officers in my career. And I could tell people that. I could tell you that. And you don't think any less of police officers. But if I told you I arrested half a dozen FBI agents, you would immediately think, man, FBI is full of a bunch of bombs. You know, Right. Guys are getting caught all the time. So here's my point is that CNN Fox put something on about a dirty cop. It doesn't affect the men in blue overall. They put up something about a dirty agent and then everybody hates the FBI. [01:31:53] Speaker A: That's interesting. And I. [01:31:55] Speaker B: We are not bulletproof. Like law enforcement is bulletproof. [01:31:58] Speaker A: Man, I haven't seen it that way at all. I mean, I haven't been in law enforcement in 19 years. I've been out, too. And I still get, you know, people lashing out or whatever. I would never want to go into cop work these days. Nobody. Nobody. [01:32:11] Speaker B: I think that's the. I think that's the exception, you know, most people, hey, it's almost like, thank you for your service. Thank you for what you do, you know, the police, the firefighters. [01:32:19] Speaker A: Firefighters, for sure. [01:32:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Firefighters, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I had a buddy one time say, man, you firefighters have been riding that 911 train forever, you know, and we get it. We get it. But, man, give a look. Give us a little bit of the love. Give the. Give the law enforcement a little bit of that love, too. But, yeah, that's been my entire. Could bring pressure. I could take a police officer out with me on an interview and no one ever looked at that police officer, which shaded sunglasses, but they'll look at me with shaded sunglasses. Yeah. [01:32:50] Speaker A: Interesting. And I think that's the political. [01:32:52] Speaker B: It is, it is. But some reason the blue is. Is bulletproof, I have found. [01:32:57] Speaker A: Yeah, interesting. Yeah, interesting. Well, it's been an honor having you here. You have a new book coming out. I definitely. [01:33:03] Speaker B: We're hoping to have it out by the end of the year. [01:33:05] Speaker A: Okay, so. And where can people learn more about. You have a site or. [01:33:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not a social media guy, just LinkedIn under my. My name, Mark. So you'll find my mug on there. Okay. Yeah. [01:33:16] Speaker A: Well, I know you're a Texas guy, but I have a Fort Worth, Fort Worth specific gift for you. [01:33:22] Speaker B: All right. That is. [01:33:23] Speaker A: Blackland Distillery is right here around the corner. [01:33:26] Speaker B: So I've seen it. [01:33:27] Speaker A: If. If I could give you this to take with you. That's one of the. [01:33:32] Speaker B: Fantastic gift. [01:33:33] Speaker A: It's one of this. [01:33:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:33:35] Speaker A: One of the few whiskeys. [01:33:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:33:37] Speaker A: It's one of the few whiskeys made from exclusively Texas grasses and stuff like that. You know, usually you have all these combination blends and stuff because the climate here is crap, obviously. [01:33:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:33:50] Speaker A: And then here's your. Here's your reading for that. For the airplane. [01:33:54] Speaker B: Life in the Fishbowl. [01:33:56] Speaker A: Yeah. That's a man. Yeah. That's the story that we discussed briefly. But that's my experience doing the. [01:34:04] Speaker B: I look forward to reading it, and I will get back in touch with you and give you my thoughts, for sure. I always encourage people to give me their thoughts on my book, and here is my book, and I put answers in it for you on the Gold Club hardcover. [01:34:18] Speaker A: See, now you're making me look bad. [01:34:20] Speaker B: I was lucky enough to get a publisher who believed in my. In the. In the story, and they're going to publish the Stolen Valor book for me, too, and. [01:34:29] Speaker A: And love it. [01:34:30] Speaker B: I'm working with a major studio, and we're looking to bring that to film here in the next year or two. [01:34:36] Speaker A: Absolutely. [01:34:36] Speaker B: So, yeah, that's exciting. But I will give you feedback on that because I always ask people, tell me what you think. Not about me, but the story. Did I write it? In a way that's engrossing, but really, tell me about the story. What'd you think? I think it's a great story. Did you think it's a great story, or am I just fooling myself? [01:34:55] Speaker A: I know the feeling. Being an authority, it's like, yeah, you can think it's great all you want, but if it doesn't translate, it doesn't translate. You know, not everybody can write a book. [01:35:04] Speaker B: The best thing, the hardest thing, is to find somebody that, you know that can be honest with you. Now, your. Your viewers and your critics that go on Amazon and leave the reviews, they'll be honest with you. [01:35:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:35:15] Speaker B: But it's hard to get a family member. [01:35:17] Speaker A: I would more than appreciate an honest take. I look forward to it, obviously, and, you know, because everything else I'm writing now is fictional, but looping in all the experiences I've had to where it's easy to speak with some authority based on what's happening in them. Yeah, yeah, but that is. That is the legit story there, so. Okay. Nothing like what you brought today, my brother. I really. I appreciate your time and tracking all the way up here, so I hope you're very welcome. If you never need anything, any, ever again, just give me a shout. [01:35:45] Speaker B: I know where you're at. [01:35:46] Speaker A: All right. [01:35:47] Speaker B: Okay.