Retired agent Geoff Doyle is interviewed about working as the case agent of Operation Whitemare, the international FBI investigation that resulted in the largest heroin bust and seizure in U.S. history and identified and disrupted major international Chinese drug networks. Geoff is the author of Whaitemare, a book (non-fiction) that takes the reader behind the scenes of this unparalleled investigation and heroin bust. Check out episode show notes, photos, and related articles. https://jerriwilli...
Dec 03, 2016•56 min
Podcast host Jerri Williams interviews one of her former subjects, Karl LNU (last name unknown - or in this case unused). Karl was investigated, charged and convicted of bribing corrupt purchasing agents to approve invoices for over-priced and inferior lighting and maintenance supplies. The scam was operated by phone. Karl, his business partner, and their employees made telemarketing calls to unsuspecting businesses throughout the United States and ripped them off with the help of their own gree...
Nov 19, 2016•1 hr 3 min
Former agent Scott Moritz reviews his time on an Asset Forfeiture Squad where he conducted parallel financial investigations alongside agents working organized crime and drug cases. He was responsible for locating the targets' assets, including real estate, bank accounts, investments, and personal property items. Scott is interviewed about an asset forfeiture investigation he worked involving a Long Island waste hauler with ties to New York LCN families. He explains how seized documents revealed...
Nov 12, 2016•48 min
Retired agent Doug Hess reviews a scheme conducted to defraud 150 coin dealers and collectors, known as numismatists, of $1 million in gold coins. During the investigation, Hess discovered a second scheme involving lead filled bars of silver that had the potential to damage the precious metals industry. For his efforts in these matters, Hess received the Sol Kaplan Award from the Professional Numismatists Guild. Check out episode show notes, photos, and related articles. https://jerriwilliams.co...
Nov 05, 2016•50 min
In this special episode, Special Agents Greg Branch and Bill Toland are interviewed about the qualifications and requirements needed to become a special agent with the FBI. Greg joined the FBI in 1995 and has been assigned to squads handling reactive matters, such as drugs and bank robberies and to white collar crime investigations. For the past seven years, he has been tasked with recruiting efforts and is the Applicant Coordinator responsible for managing the special agent hiring program in th...
Oct 29, 2016•1 hr 6 min
Retired agent Bob Cromwell reviews his investigation and capture of two fugitives wanted for Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution (UFAP). One was a rapist and the other the murderer of a well-known New Orleans Catholic Priest. Bob is also interviewed about his fight to correct and prevent wrongful convictions. His new book—Fugitive Man: Hunting Violent Criminals for the FBI and Searching for Justice for the Innocent Convict—covers his FBI career and Innocence Project work. Bob can be contacted v...
Oct 22, 2016•58 min
Retired agent Stan Ragen reviews the important role he played in coordinating the office's extraterritorial response to crisis events overseas. Some notable examples are the El-Khobar Towers (Saudi Arabia); TWA flight 800 (NY); Egypt Air flight 990 (RI); USS Cole (Yemen); US Embassy bombings (Kenya and Tanzania); and the 9/11 attacks. He also assisted in the New York FBI response to Hurricane MARILYN (USVI); USAir flight 1549 (NY); and Hurricane SANDY (NY). Stan is also interviewed about how he ...
Oct 15, 2016•49 min
Retired special agent Toni Chrabot reviews the operation of the FBI's Crisis Negotiation Unit (CIRG) and what the team was responsible for. She is also interviewed about the kidnapped grandma case involving Hedwig, “Heddy” Braun, held for a $3 million ransom on her 88th birthday. As a crisis negotiator, Toni responded to a number of kidnappings and barricade situations and as an instructor at the FBI Academy. Check out episode show notes, photos, and related articles. https://jerriwilliams.com/t...
Oct 08, 2016•57 min
Retired agent Dell Spry was liaison to the CIA Counterintelligence Center, Counterespionage Group, and was the lead investigator for the FBI in the Aldrich Ames case. He reviews the two-year-long investigation where he, as the FBI case agent, along with a team of FBI and CIA personnel, was successful in identifying Ames as a KGB mole. Ames, who was directly responsible for the execution of several Soviet and Russian assets and operatives, was charged and convicted of espionage in 1994 and is ser...
Oct 01, 2016•1 hr 1 min
Retired Agent Vincent McNally became an instructor in Crisis (Hostage) Negotiations and Program Manager for the FBI’s Critical Incident Stress Management teams at the FBI Academy. Vince reviews a hostage negotiation case in Honolulu, Hawaii, involving a workplace violence situation. Vince and I also have an open and honest conversation about the stress and trauma experienced by law enforcement personnel, how that affects their work and home life, and results in a higher incidence of suicide. Che...
Sep 24, 2016•1 hr
Retired agent Keith Kelly, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), reviews his most high-profiled assignment as the case-agent of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, a 21-person inter-agency investigation into the largest securities fraud case in history. This work resulted in the identification, seizure and forfeiture of more than $8 billion in assets along with the conviction of Bernard Madoff who received a 150-year jail sentence. Check out episode show notes, photos, and related articles: https://...
Sep 17, 2016•1 hr 5 min
Retired agent Ed Hino, who has been retired for over 26 years, takes us back in time to the era of the G-Man and reviews two very different kidnapping cases. The first case is about a kidnapped baby, a 24-hours-old newborn snatched from the arms of his mother who was resting in her hospital room. The second case involves a kidnapped motorist ordered by his captors to drive them from Ohio to Alabama. Ed also talks about proudly witnessing the Bureau's transition from investigating primarily crimi...
Sep 10, 2016•40 min
Retired agent Jane Rhodes Wolfe supervised a Joint Terrorism Task Force in Chicago and oversaw the intake and analysis of suspicious activity reports. She reviews a case that resulted from the report of an attempted purchase of a restricted toxin, known as the puffer fish poison case. During the interview, she also provides tips for the public regarding potential threat indicators of suspicious activities that should be reported to law enforcement. Check out episode show notes, photos, and relat...
Sep 03, 2016•56 min
Retired agent Brig Barker, a combat veteran and a highly respected linguist with full fluency in Arabic and a professional working proficiency in German, reviews how he used his fluency in Arabic to investigate international matters such as the illicit trade of blood diamonds to terrorist organizations. During his deployment to Sierra Leone, he was tasked with officially opening the FBI Attaché office there and establishing liaison with local leaders and diamond merchants. He initiated the inves...
Aug 27, 2016•44 min
Retired agent Mike Rochford, as a manager at FBI Headquarters and in the field, oversaw such cases as Aldrich Ames and Earl Pitts and worked to identity six unknown subjects, government spies, the FBI and CIA, had been for years trying to uncover. One of those "unsubs" was eventually identified as FBI agent turned spy, Robert Hanssen. Mike reviews the investigation of Hanssen, who is considered the most damaging spy in FBI history. Mike recruited the source, a Russian agent of the KGB/SVR, who p...
Aug 20, 2016•1 hr 17 min
Retired agent Shawn Henry reviews cybercrime, the global computer intrusion threat and cyber security. During his career, Shawn held multiple positions relating to cybercrime and computer intrusions, including Deputy Assistant Director and Assistant Director of the Cyber Division at FBI Headquarters; Supervisor of the FBI Cyber Crime Squad in Baltimore; and Chief of the Computer Investigations Unit within the FBI-led National Infrastructure Protection Center. He managed computer crime investigat...
Aug 13, 2016•47 min
Retired agent Bea DeFazio is interviewed about working Innocent Images cases, going undercover online to catch child predators trolling in computer chat rooms to sexually exploit children and exchange images of abuse. During the last half of her agent career, she posed online as a child or teen and engaged in conversations with child predators in an attempt to gather the evidence to identify them and arrest them for exchanging child pornography—more appropriately labeled child sexual exploitatio...
Aug 06, 2016•52 min
Retired agent Dana Ridenour is interviewed about working drug investigations on the island of St. Croix, Resident Agency out of the FBI's San Juan Office in Puerto Rico and going deep undercover in California to infiltrate and build relationships with individuals associated with the animal rights extremist groups to gather intelligence about criminal activities and the location of activist fugitives. Dana explains how, in order to be successful, undercover agents accept that their job is to " bu...
Jul 30, 2016•52 min
Retired agent Bill Grace reviews how he conducted two high-profiled investigations involving municipal corruption at the same time, one directed at the corrupt activities of Camden, New Jersey Mayor Milton Milan and the other targeting Washington Township, New Jersey Mayor Jerry Luongo. Electronic and physical surveillance indicated that even before Milan entered municipal politics, he was associating with local drug dealers, as well as members of the Philadelphia mob and that, after being elect...
Jul 23, 2016•55 min
Retired agent Sam Smemo is interviewed about how witnessing the devastation of 9/11, compelled him to transition from fighting the war on drugs to joining the war on terror. After hunting dangerous fugitives during the early part of his career, once onboard with the FBI, Sam worked drug cases while assigned to the Philadelphia Division. He talks about working on a drug case that inadvertently resulted in the exoneration and release from jail of an innocent man wrongly accused of shooting a child...
Jul 16, 2016•59 min
This is the second half of a two-part episode with former FBI agent Terry Hake. Terry continues his account of working undercover as a crooked defense attorney in the largest public corruption investigation in America. When the investigation—code named Operation Greylord—was initiated, Terry was a young Assistant State's Attorney fed up with corruption in the Cook County, Illinois court system. During the investigation, he was hired by the FBI, first as a project development specialist and then ...
Jul 09, 2016•56 min
Former FBI agent Terry Hake is interviewed about working undercover as a crooked defense attorney in the largest public corruption investigation in America. When the investigation—code named Operation Greylord—was initiated, Terry was a young Assistant State's Attorney fed up with corruption in the Cook County, Illinois court system. He wore a wire for three-and-a-half years, fully aware that he could have been jeopardizing his reputation and law career in doing so. At the conclusion of the unde...
Jul 02, 2016•1 hr
Retired agent Cary Thornton reviews an undercover sting and insurance fraud investigation he worked in Detroit for nearly three years where he and two other undercover FBI agents played the roles of owners and operators of an auto wrecking company willing to dispose of cars for cash so the vehicle owners could file fraudulent insurance claims. The Bureau gave the case the code name Operation Steamclean, which incorporated the term, steaming, slang used to describe dumping a vehicle for the insur...
Jun 25, 2016•54 min
Retired agent Bob Bazin reviews his time studying at the Barnes Foundation and investigating and recovering stolen art from all over the world while assigned to the Philadelphia Division. He also reviews the case he worked with the Philadelphia Police Department of an armed robbery at gunpoint from the Rodin museum of the priceless sculpture—Man with a Broken Nose. Bob Bazin spent most of his career working property crimes cases and developed a specialized interest in art crime. Check out episod...
Jun 18, 2016•53 min
Retired special agent John Ligato is interviewed about his eight-year role as a deep undercover agent, wherein he operated strip clubs in Memphis to gather evidence against bikers selling drugs and stolen property and in Cleveland in order to infiltrate the mob. His efforts in Cleveland resulted in one of the largest public corruption cases involving members of law enforcement. Check out episode show notes, photos, and related articles. https://jerriwilliams.com/john-ligato-mob-guys-strip-cubs/ ...
Jun 11, 2016•49 min
Retired Supervisory Special Agent Harry Garcia reviews a multi-agency Southwest Border Taskforce investigation—code named “Port Sweeper” and “Boiling Point”—initiated in the 1990s that resulted in sentences of life imprisonment and 27 years in prison for the main subjects—two corrupt inspectors assigned to the Calexico border patrol station and the seizure of $1.2 million in cash. Check out episode show notes, photos, and related articles. https://jerriwilliams.com/episode-020-harry-garcia-corru...
Jun 04, 2016•41 min
Retired Special Agent Jesse Coleman reviews the two-year period he went undercover as a drug dealer selling cocaine and heroin to made members of the Sicilian mob. During the undercover investigation, he secretly recorded over 200 conversations between him and the subjects. Jesse's efforts resulted in the arrest and conviction of 20 members of the mob family operating in the U.S., in addition to the head of the family who lived in Sicily, Italy. Jesse was awarded the Justice Department’s Organiz...
May 28, 2016•53 min
Retired Supervisory Special Agent Ron Nolan is interviewed about several cases investigated during the time he served as the Legal Attaché in Lagos, Nigeria - the investigation of the death of a teenage girl from New Jersey who dies while on a school trip in Ghana and the frequent kidnapping of American oil and utility workers in Nigeria. During his four years in the LEGAT Lagos position, Ron represented the FBI and the Department of Justice on matters involving eight African countries. He also ...
May 14, 2016•42 min
Retired Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) John Cosenza reviews how extraterritorial jurisdiction authorizes the FBI to investigate crimes against Americans on foreign soil, such as murders and kidnappings, if the crimes were based on an act of terrorism. These extraterritorial jurisdiction and counterterrorism cases took John around the world to numerous countries and international venues. He talks about one case involving a Tunisian operative and a European terrorist cell that he worked ...
May 06, 2016•49 min
Retired agent Mike served in the FBI for 28 years. He spent most of his Bureau career working bank robberies, violent crime and fugitives and was promoted to be the supervisor of the Philadelphia Violent Crimes and Fugitive Task Force. Mike Carbonell reviews two cases, one involving a toddler kidnapped for ransom and another about Mike's efforts to locate fugitive Ira Einhorn in Europe and return him to the United States to stand trial for the murder of his ex-girlfriend. Check out episode show ...
Apr 30, 2016•49 min
