Joining us now is lou Belosa. He's a retired ATF special agent and he is a co author of a book about a guy that he worked with on many very dangerous situations as an informant against drug cartels, biker gangs, even the Gambino family. The name of the book is Ray Kahn, The Betrayal of an Informant, and so we talked to him about what life was like inside the ATF and some of these cases, what that was like. So thank you for joining us, Loue.
Thank you. It's an honor to be here.
Well, thank you. I just want to be upfront about it where I'm coming from, and of course my audience knows that I don't think there's any constitutional authority for the ATF to start with. But having said that, I wanted to know what it was like on the inside,
and it sounds like you've got an amazing story. They came after the informant that you used for quite some time, and they came after you as well, but you were exonerated, and we're interested to hear the story about what happened to the informant and what the two of you were doing in terms of the investigations of these crime families. So tell us a little bit about your history there at the ATF. You were there for twenty five years, I.
Think, yeah, twenty six, you know, And I'd just like to start out by saying, my whole life very pro Second Amendment. All the guys I worked with at ATF very pro Second Amendment, you know, and we enforce the federal gun laws, and there is a need for federal gun laws. Every law abiding citizen in this country should have a gun, know how to use it and protect themselves. But let's just be honest, let's face facts. There is a small percentage of people here in this country who
should not possess firemms. And that is the reason why ATF exists. Previously convicted felons, okay, people who've been adjudicated mentally deficient illegal aliens, right, it's all the eighteen United States Code nine twenty two G that whole list of people who should not possess flight rooms. And that's you know, that's basically why ATF exists, right, because they make everyone else look bad because they're trigger pollyers and they're out
there doing bad things. So you know, basically our job is to enforce the federal farms and explosives laws, and that puts you in front of some bad people when you live in that world, those are the ones who are out there on the streets, victimizing all the good people and doing bad things with guns. And you know, we found, I found personally that the best way to not only identify, but to stop that very small percentage
those people was through undercover infiltration. What better way, you know, to gather real time intelligence and real time evidence than being able to insert your own asset right into the middle of these gangs, these cartels, right these criminal organizations, and that was that was the path that I chose. Working undercover, I was and that's one of the.
Things that when I looked at the story, the general description of ray Kan, that was what really kind of startled me, because usually you see informants or somebody who already exists in that world. Uh, they've been a criminal in that world for a long time. But you got a guy who is basically a gas station owner or employee, and he had never had a criminal record, never been involved in any of that stuff. That's the interesting thing, I think is how he could get involved in that world.
This was a guy who had never you know, never shot a gun and didn't know what in the bullet came out of a gun. He had never never done any drugs, never been in that world. Not a gangster like you said, basically a seven to eleven owner who made a silly mistake. He walked into one of my undercover operations and he bought a bunch of untaxed cigarettes, which is a federal violation, not a violation that you know, we go after that. The United States Attorney's Office really
goes after vehemently or cares about. But he loaded these all these untaxed cigarettes into a brand new Cadillac Escalade that we wanted because we when we see as a conveyance that's used in smuggling, we're allowed to use it for our own purposes. And you know, as awful as that sounds, we found out that he was also in the country illegally, so he was arrested, charged, We seized his vehicle, and he was just set up for deportation.
And his lawyer came to me and said, man, if you can do anything to keep Ray in this country, you know he has children here, he'll be the best informat you've ever had. And you know, I was so skeptical. I said, you know, what is this. This guy's not in my world. How's he going to help? And the lawyer, who I knew he was convincing, he said, just trust me.
So I did. I took a leap of faith, and we did all the necessary paperwork and aldy to get his prosecution deferred, which no one cared about anyway with untaxed cigarettes, and we got his deportation stayed, and we parole essentially parolled him into this country. And I didn't know what to expect. I brought him into my next undercover operation, and let me tell you, he just hit the ground running and he absolutely made He pretty much made the second half of my career.
Wow.
His uncanny ability to get in with these gangsters who were putting guns and dangerous drugs on the street and bring them to me, it was unbelievable.
So what was it about him? I mean, did you just have a way that he could read people and have a conversation with him? What was it?
Yeah? If you know, even his English is not that great, Yes, he has a way about him. You know when you walk in his store, he just has a way, a little bit pushy, and he knows how to connect with people. That's his gift. And he could he could connect with these gangsters and he could weave his way in and out and find out, you know, who was doing what and who would be the best targets to bring to me.
And he, you know, he could get these guys. And that's basically undercover work, right to make people want to be a part of your hustle. That's the essence of undercover work. If I can, you know, it's not trying to become someone else's it's trying to sell yourself and get the bad guys to want it, to want to be a part of what you're doing, your hustle. And that's exactly what he did. And he would tell them about us, bring them to us, and then we would
take over from there. And we're talking about high level cartel members, high level street gang members.
And what was his hustle that they were thinking they were going to join into.
I mean, so at this yeah, at this point, the operations he was helping us with were storefront operations. These were operations where we would set up pony businesses in parts of America where there was super high gun crime violence, and we would use these stats to kind of justify setting up a business that was owned and operated by the government, staffed by undercover agents, and Ray would bring
these people to us. You know, we would kind of put out that spider web and we would end up these are the people who are putting illegal guns on the streets. These are the people who were putting dangerous drugs on the streets.
Now what do they think they were going to get from these businesses that you set up? I mean what type of businesses would you set up? And what were they thinking they were going to get a part of part of.
I mean, we covered the whole spectrum, from tattoo parlors to headshops, to military surplus stores with attached shooting ranges, to international freight forwarding businesses on the court. And you know, we would you would never walk into these places and think that, you know, it was a law enforcement setup. They were so well done and well stocked, and when these bad guys would see, you know, our model was ninety percent of our business is one hundred percent legitimate.
I mean, we were actually running these businesses. But when they saw what our side hustle was in my side. Hustle was always that I bought the illegal guns off the street and I trafficked them up to New York and sold them for incredible profits. Which really happens, right, you know, down down here in the South liam in Georgia. You know, you can buy a one hundred dollars loss nine millimeter and you can sell it on the streets of Brooklyn for twenty five hundred, three thousand dollars.
Wowow.
And it's a business, you know, it's a criminal enterprise, and it happens. And we were proporting ourselves to be gun traffics.
Wow. I guess that's prohibition markup. That's that's there. Yeah, eminated ago sky high, you know, And we've always said.
That's what these that's what these strict state young laws, that's what they do. They create a black market for weapons.
And for tobacco as well. They sell. Uh, they've got such high tobacco price taxes in New York that people are selling individual cigarettes. I think they call them Lucy's or something like that.
Right, let me tell you, the state of New York has created an entire black market tobacco. Absolutely.
Wow. Wow, that's amazing. So talk a little bit about some of the gangs that you guys are involved in. You had biker gangs, you had cartels, you had traditional mafia family that were there.
Yeah, you know, yea, by far, the cartels were the main ones. I don't know if people realize that the cartels for several decades now, the cartels are embedded in every state in this country. Even when you go into these rural towns up in the mountains, the cartels are there. They are now they totally control the drug trade in America, from pharmaceutical from the illegal pharmaceuticals, the fentanyl, you know,
to the traditional heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine. The cartels are controlling everything, and you know that's who we really you know, we were there for guns, but we ended up dealing with so many cartels because you know, when we did deal with the narcotics, we were dealing with large amounts. You know, we weren't buying a balls.
Was the d A a part of this as well? Or did you eventually bring them? Okay, so you guys are just doing this for the guns only.
Yeah, for the guns, but you know the gun and drug world, you know, does DEA buy a lot of guns as well, Yes they do. Do they make gun cases as well, Yes they do. It's and you know, we have kind of a it's an unspoken agreement between HF and de A because those worlds coexist where you have a lot of drugs, you have a lot of
guns and vice versa. You know, guns are are the tools of the trade for the for the drug world, and so it's impossible that there's not you know, kind of a cross, kind of a mixing when when you're working those So they would bring in cartel guys to me, uh, we would buy some drugs from them, and when they saw our hustle with the guns, they would they would say, well, listen, if you're into guns, you know, we shipments of AR fifteen's we're sending to South America. We'll just we'll sell
them to you here. And next thing we know, we're buying guns off these cartel guys as well.
Wow. So this sounds like everything is working fine according to what the ATF one side of this. But then something happened and they came after you as well, didn't they tell us little bit about that. They investigated you and you were cleared of all charges, But what was the reason that they gave and what do you think was the real reason behind it?
Well, that's a long one, but I'll give you a reader's digest version. I worked on the cover probably for too long. It's one of those one of those aspects you know less than one percent of law enforcement actually works under cover, and when you do it, it's probably best, I would say, now looking back on my career, to maybe do it for seven or eight years and get out. I did it for twenty and I was doing these deep, deeply embedded, long term cover operations, and you know, it's
a gray area. After a while, you start believing it in your own in your own bull and it's hard to turn it on and off, and you know you're surrounded by bad behavior. You're living, you live in that gray area, and you know eventually it gets to you and that it's a blurred line between who you really are and you're you know, who you're portraying yourself to be. I went years and years and years without ever carrying
a badge. You're kind of you even distance yourself from from the whole law enforcement community when you're deep undercover, and you know, for me that led to that led to some personal bad behavior that led to excessive drinking, and it led to infidelity. And you know, unfortunately, you know, for me, it was with a federal prosecutor and she was working on some of these cases. And you know, obviously that's that's where my trouble started and when they
they came after me for that. But the real reason was the United States Attorney's Office at the time was not liking the trying to word this carefully, they weren't liking the racial makeup of the defendants in this operation I was working on, which to me was utterly ridiculous because you know, if you tell me to work on an outlaw biker gang, right, if they're committing violations of federal fire laws, and I go after the Hell's Angels, if I'm successful, I'm going to have fifty white defendants
and nobody complains about.
That, all right.
This was the case was being worked in an urban environment, right, so the victims of this community are going to be black, right, the perpetrators are black. And it would would have been the same if it was a Hispanic community.
Yea.
So, because you know that was and this was a US attorney at the time, who had been appointed under the Obama administration, who seemed to care more about instead of fighting crime, you know, the racial inequities. And again I've locked up more white guys than any other agent probably, but this particular case, he didn't like the racial makeup of the defendants. He had even asked me about it. And you know that that, in my opinion, is the
real reason that they came after us. And and you know, eventually, as you said, you know, the OIG did a two year investigation, they put more, they put more effort into this than they do a homicide and came up with absolutely nothing and you know, no findings against me. But it essentially ruined my undercovered career, which probably was a blessing because it was time to stop.
So because they're coming after you, that that kind of exposed what was happening. Is is that why it?
Yeah, you know, I was invisible for my whole career, and all of a sudden, now it's it's on the internet in the newspapers.
So now you're a victim of the de I police exactly. And so then uh that you got cleared with all this, and so then your book is about the betrayal of your informant, Ray Khan. What happened with that? What happened with Ray?
All right? So uh yeah, and I don't I don't portray Ray as an angel, right, we don't find our informants in church. Uh. But you know, as as a law enforcement officer, you have to look at what what's the greater good for the community you're trying to protect. And you know Ray and his entire crew there that that that culture of the seven eleven owners and all that. You know, they're always looking for ways to get around the taxes and all that. That's that's their culture.
Okay, I mean everybody is looking for around absolutely. Yeah, there's tax avoidance, which is part of the game, but there's tax evasion, which is again, you know, the thing they come after you for. But when you look at that, your case kind of reminds me of Joe Banister. I've interviewed many times. He was a criminal investigator for the I R. S. And he asked some questions about some of the tax code and he got on their bad side.
They came after him and he was exonerated. But still, you know, it's that type of thing when you look at the institution. It can be something that's kind of a side issue or a minor issue, as it was with you. Yeah.
Well, so they had come after Ray unbeknownst to me while we were working, you know, they just and it was actually the Department of Revenue here in Georgia that that just you know, Ray was for whatever reason, they were actually helping us with these operations and behind our backs, they were working cases on Ray again for silly, silly you know, things that really this guy's bringing in danger drugs. He's bringing in cartel members, machine guns, sought off shotguns.
You know, as a law enforcement officer, I don't care if he's not paying taxes on the honey buns he's selling at his seven to eleven, Right, you have to look at what's important. And so he was actually arrested a few times during these operations and I had to, you know, get him out. And but once I got jammed up and I could no longer protect him, they really went after and I mean, it's a crazy story, but as soon as I got jammed up, he went
and became an informant for Homeland Security. And when they indicted him on state rico charges for these tax charges, yes, state Rico charges. He was advised to run while his lawyers worked on it. He was advised by law enforcement officers who knew, you know, his value. Hey man, you know, if I was you, I would get out of town for a while. And he did. He became a fugitive up in New York City.
Wow.
And now it's a lot easier to be a fugitive when you have a lot of money, which Ray did.
It.
It's tough to be a fugitive these days when if you have to live under a bridge and you don't have any money. But you know, Ray had cash. And he survived for a long time up in New York even he even had to run around in New York when they went up looking for him a little bit. But his lawyers, and this is the craziest part of
this whole story. It eventually came out through the hard work of his lawyers that the main revenue guys who are law enforcement officers you know here in Georgia who were coming after him, were taking bribes from Ray's competition. Oh wow, the Indians who was he was in competition with down here. We're giving these guys bribes to go after him. I'm talking about ten twelve thousand dollars watches,
plane tickets, round trip plane tickets to Europe. And it all came out and these guys were arrested in Purp, walked down here in Georgia, and Ray was able to after six or seven months of being a fugitive up in New York, he was able to triumphantly return to the state of Georgia.
Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, it is. You know, we see that so often, not usually to that criminal extent, but so often businesses will use government to take out their competition. It might just be something that's pretty mundane, like extra regulation or extra barriers to competition or people getting into the business. So the usually it's competitors who are pushing the kind of regulations that we all complain about being excessive.
But yeah, to basically stick the revenuers on him because he's their competition, that's pretty amazing.
So that's interesting you say that. I learned that early on in my career. You know, I actually started in Los Angeles as an ice agent, but back then it was called Iron and all of our greatest tips in the employer Sanctions unit, you know, when we would we would get a tip that you know, this company was hiring you know, five hundred illegal aliens and all these violations. Those tips always came from another company that was their competition.
What better way you know, and free get rid of your competition?
Wow? Wow, Yeah, it is a a rough world, isn't it. That truly is amazing. So so tell us little bit about your book. I mean, do you go into the details of the different cases that you guys were looking at with, whether there's a cartels or you mentioned one of the first ones he did was the Gambino crime family. On day two of a Cleveland operation, he got involved in the Gambino crime family. Do you go into detail with what is happening in each of these individual cases or do some do it? Yeah? I do.
You know, all these cases have been adjudicated, so you know, I can talk about them, and you know that that was just one example. If we brought brought ray up to Cleveland on in this getting operation and kind of we would just set the informants free and tell them to you know, bring us, you know, go go find out who's doing what and bring it to us. Who's putting guns on the street, who's you know who's selling fentanyl,
who's doing the bad things. And the first day Ray came back to me and said, sir, have you ever heard of the Gambinos? I said, are you talking about like the Italian crime family? He goes, I believe that's him. I go, yeah, of course, I've heard of them, like everybody has. He goes, well, I have a meeting set up with them tonight. And this was the first This
was the first day we cut them loose. And these guys wanted to get into you know, trafficking untaxed cigarettes, and it was unbelievable and that that was just what he would do. And I do I go into these cases? And I talked about how he would. He would find these low level cartel guys who would come in and then we would kind of just climb up the ladder and you know, we would go to their supplier, and once we would ask for higher amounts that they couldn't handle,
they would bring us the next level guy. And you know, Ray would help all along the way. And before you know it, maybe we started out buy an announce. Now we're buying you know, ten kilos from a high level member. And it was all facilitated by Ray. You know, in my career, people don't realize how valuable informants are. Are
they a headache and can they be a lot of trouble? Yes, But as an undercover, I would say throughout my twenty year career, ninety five percent of the time that I that I was able to get into a criminal organization, it was because a confidential informant was able to you know, to make the introduction and walk me in. So they're super valuable to us. It's just you have to know how to handle them.
Well, that's interesting. Now, your experience at the ATF was really licking investigating organized crime, and of course your your hook into that is the gun side of things. But when the rest of us look at the ATF, what we typically think of is somebody who is auditing and looking at the little minutia of you know, how long is your barrel, do you have a pistol brace on it? That type of thing, or what we saw with the
Biden administration. I don't know if you were still there at the time where they started going after gun stores and basically shutting down down completely if they had a paperwork violation. So that's a different group inside of the ATF that I guess, how did you guys view that? I'm sure that was two very different cultures inside that institution.
Yeah, yeah, you know, we were the criminal investigators of special agents. Those are the those are the regulatory that's a regulatory side. You know, they're not gun carrieres. But here's the problem with ATF and with every federal agency. They've become political. Right, So every time a new president, a new administration comes in, they put their guy in charge. Okay, their man or woman in charge. Right. So if you look at who we got under Biden, right, we got
this guy. His name was ded O Beck. I believe his last name was. He was Obama's roommate in college. I guarantee you he had never shot a gun in his life.
Yeah. I can't imagine he and Obama going out to the shooting range together, right.
Yeah, no, I don't think. I don't think that happened. And he had no business being the director, but he had never held a law enforcement position. Uh So when you get I'll just say it probably an anti gun guy, and put him in charge ATF. You know, he made the decision, he decided we're not going to go after the bad guys. You know, we're not going to go after the trigger pullers on the street, horse sticking guns in people's faces downtown at night. We're going to go
after the gun dealers. It's their full right. So so that's what happens when you get these activists placed in charge of a federal agency. You know, everything changes and and our mission changes, you know, and and we saw you see it with the US Attorney's Office because they kind of direct you know, you you have to sell them on your case. They have to accept it. So when you get these certain US Attorney's office, you know, US attorneys who are placed by these more liberal administrations,
they don't want to prosecute the hardcore criminals. They want to go after gun dealers. They want to go after federal firearms licensees. You know, it must be their fault that all these guns are on the street, you know, involved in all these shootings. Can't be the bad guy's fault. Yeah, So I don't think people understand that that and those are the ones who are making these decisions and these
really bad ruings. You know that that ATF has come out with, but it's not the ATF agent the man or a woman who's on the street going after the trigger pullars. You know, it's not us now.
I don't know how long you've been out of the ATF, and this possibly wasn't even on their radar at that point in time. But we've heard a lot about ghost guns, and so there's a lot of regulations going down the pike about three D printers just in general. Now because of that, they're using that as the wedge to basically for other purposes, I believe, to get rid of three D printers. Did you ever with a Gambino crime family creating ghost guns with three D printers?
No? I mean the crazy thing about the ghost guns, and I was kind of at the end of my career when when they started popping up, is that, you know, we weren't seeing that with the big organized crime, and we weren't seeing that with with these not even the cartels or the American street gangs you know that are pretty well established and organized, you know, the gangster Disciples, the Latin Kings and all that.
It was.
It was these nerds, you know, in their apartment who were who were making these guns and selling them, you know, who were making some good money. Selling them on the dark web, you know, on the black market, more of an individual thing than any kind of organ organized movement.
Uh.
You know, of course the government doesn't like these guns because they're untraceable, right, we don't know their origin, you know, and part of you know, part of our gun laws is that a gun has to be stamped with the serial number, you know, and traceable. And yeah, even as a second amendmic, I don't think that's unreasonable. I don't think it's a bad thing. I think, you know, and again the problem is now it's created a black market for guns as well, an even bigger black market.
Yeah, that's what prohibition always does. We kind of joke about it, and my family always say, you know, you look at what has happened with drugs, for example. We saw it back even in alcohol prohibition, how it went from people drinking mostly beer to and wine to people
drinking hard liquor and other things like that. And it seems like that's always the case when you've got something that's prohibited, you wind up getting a much more intensified form of it because it's more profitable for the black market to deal with that. And so we've talked about it. We said, if they prohibit guns like the Democrats want to do, you're going to see some pretty wild technology coming out there.
I think, well, look at look at every city, you know, every Look at Chicago with the strictest gun loss. You know, there's guns falling out of the trees in Chicago. You know, it's just it doesn't work.
That's right. It's got a lot of adverse effects to it. I think all prohibition does. As a matter of fact. It's amazing story. And uh, it's where can people find the book? Is it available everywhere books are sold? I know you've got your own website.
Yep. Amazon is is definitely the best place, the easiest place. If you just you know, you type in my name lou Velosi or Raycon you'll find my first book, which is Storefront Saying, which has just been purchased by a major network.
And I think I'll make a movie out of it.
They're going to make a series of Yah.
I'm going to say it sounds like a movie when you start talking about this stuff.
Yeah, they're going to go through every every every storefront I did being a different season, like the Tattoo Parlor, the shooting range, with the military surplus store, the freight floating business, all the different ones I did, you know, with different undercover crews, and all the crazy things that happened in their shootouts and wow fights, and just it was really wild.
And so it was about this is this Netflix, you said, that's gonna do this.
I can't say yet it's one of the major ones. But you know, I knew Raycon was was a good follow up because he was such a big part of the second half of these storefront operations. So I just I wanted to get his story out there to let, you know, kind of let the public give him a little information about inform it's how important informants are, and and just tell a story of how sometimes the government just
gets it wrong. You know this, We have so many illegal aliens in this country who are who are abusing our system and committing crimes. And here we get this guy who who is literally is a hero, who is respond for making this country safer, and our government can't even give him a green car.
He still doesn't have a green car.
Still doesn't wow.
But well, you know, Trump's got those golden platinum cars that he's got one to five million dollars.
If he listen to this. We need one, you know. You know again, you know, the last prior administration let tens of millions of these people in and all they're doing is abusing the system. We have one here who actually helped the country. I mean, can we can we get this guy green car?
Yeah? Yeah. As I look at it, I see the big problem as being the welfare magnet, right, you know, paying people to come in. And of course, you know, we see the fraud networks of fraud that were up in Minnesota with the somalies and everything. But you know, at the same time, I support them, you know, cutting off the welfare magnet. I'm also very concerned about the way that law enforcement is being conducted, and I think there was a deliberate extremism to it that was put
in there. So that's my concern. It's not so much even with what they're doing, is the way that they're doing it, I think is always something had to be very very careful about. I think law enforcement needs to be held to a higher standard than in general, and so that's my concern with it. But what was something give us an idea since they're going to be doing probably filming some of this give us an idea some
of your exciting stories that happened. You said, there's a lot of stuff happened in these storefronts.
Yeah, it was. You know, we would have these. I'll just tell you my first one was a tattoo shop and that was kind of We were learning as we went along on this, didn't know what to expect. But after twelve months running this tattoo shop in the inner City, we had purchased four hundred and thirty crime guns off the street, so we knew we were on the HF had never seen results like that. No one had ever seen those kind of results during you know, the story,
we had all different gangs. We just catered to gangs. Our informant was a tattoo artist who had recently gotten out of prison and had gotten jammed up. He didn't want to go back. He agreed to do this. You know, he had he had inked all these guys in prison. They all knew him, and so he was able to get them all to come in and he was no he was nothing but trouble.
You know.
He ended up doing a bunch of things he wasn't supposed to do, getting sexual favors out back for the tattoos he was giving some young ladies. I mean, just NonStop trouble like it was like, you know, not only was I was I the manager supposedly of this place, but you know I had to keep him on a leash. And we have all these different gangs coming in. You know, we had told them all this and this is a neutral place. You know, we don't want any trouble in here.
You can tag all the walls, you know, we left them blank and all that, but no hating. You know, we don't want any of that in here. That didn't last twenty four hours and their threatening. You know, we actually cut all the drywall out and kept it as evidence because of all the threats you know, they were
putting on there to each other. And uh, you know, they would come in when different factions would come in, and next thing, you know, there'd be all out brawls, like like a riot inside and we'd have to come out from behind the counter with with baseball bats and and uh you know, and this is all while we're trying to buy guns and drugs and and you know, gather evidence. Uh, you know, we're dealing with that and
and uh, they started bringing us stolen cars. You know, once they found out, you know what our side hustle was with their gun trafficking and they're buying the drugs and all that. You know, that opens up They're like, hey, they must be in anything. We had guys bring us Uh. Had a guy come in with a box of puppies once and turned out he was a He was a security guard at the mall and that this was back when there was still pet shops at the mall. He stole a whole box of puppies and brought him in.
Had a guy come in with uh, prosthetic limbs. He had worked. He worked at a at the Georgia Regional Medical College in Augusta, and he had stolen a box of prosthetic limbs. And I remember he you know, I remember picking up one of the fake arms and looked at him. I said, listen, man, you know this. I said, we're not a paunch out. I said, you know who am I going to sell this to? And he looked at me and he goes to somebody with one arm. Man like you know, they didn't they didn't, they didn't
get it. Uh So so, you know, some of it was comical. Some was fun. Some of it was not comical, you know, it was deadly serious.
Uh.
The same guys who were coming in and dealing with us, uh, selling US drugs and selling US guns would come back at night with sche masks on and rob us.
Wow.
You know, there's no one arming thieves. And it wasn't like we didn't know who they were. They were in the same you know, these weren't rocket scientists, you know, they just uh, you know, we were burglarized, and every single one we were burglarized. We were in several ones, but by our own customers. Uh. It just I mean
it was such an eye opener. And you know, we would embed ourselves in the whole community, not just the criminal community, but sometimes the whole community because we had you know, there was regular people coming into and when we would take these operation downs, we would have massive takedowns.
Say we had you know, one hundred defendants. We would have swat teams, you know, uh d A at f US marshall you know, state and local police kicking doors and you know, because we had to get everyone quick because once once the word got out there, they you know, they leave and uh, we would you know, these these massive takedowns would result in car chases and foot chases and shootouts and and uh, you know, the community would
actually be disappointed in us. We would find out later that, you know, because we had developed relationships and all, and and you know, they they would feel betrayed. But you know I always felt, hey, listen, we just made your community a lot safer because the hundred people we took out in this operation, those are the hundred worst people in this community. Those are the ones putting dangerous drugs on your streets, pointing guns in your faces.
Wow, that's an amazing story. I can't wait to see I can't wait to read the book, but I can't wait to see the the movie either. That ought to be a great film. I mean, that's exactly the kind of story that they're looking for, I guess, and we've seen variations of it, but you actually lived through it. That's pretty amazing story. So thank you so much for joining us. And again you you've got a website of your own, lou Velosi. It's l o u V a l o ze dot com and we've got that under
your name there. So what do you have there that people can see? Do you sell the books there.
Yeah, we are selling the books on the website and some of a lot of you know, my appearances, I kind of, you know, post retirement, I entered this entertainment world and I found out that it's Uh. I didn't think you could get dirtier or grimier than the federal government, but I think Hollywood, Hollywood has showed me that it
actually is. And you know, I've Yeah, I do a lot of podcasts, I do a lot of public speak, and I travel the country speak to you law enforcement conferences and and uh, you know, I enjoy doing it. I enjoy warning young officers about what happened to me and not not allowing that to happen to them. And uh, you know, talking about how important our pension is and how you don't want to just work a whole career
and retire and die. Yeah, you know you've earned that pension, So live a long life and you know, stay healthy.
And what's your message to everybody about Hollywood?
Let me tell you, like I told you before, I didn't think you could get much worse than the corruption of the federal government. But but boy, I said, you know, and listen, I've dealt with some really good people but just organizationally, just as a whole people. You know their word, their word doesn't mean much. I found that. I found out, never take anyone serious until they've actually written you a check. In hollywood'll really anything, but don't believe them until they
cut you that check. It's it's just a man. And I've never seen a business an industry that takes off more time. You know, in October they'll tell me listen, well, don't expect anything. We have the holidays coming up. No one's going to do anything, probably till mid January. And I'm thinking to myself, we're talking three months here, they're taking off three months. Just wow. I never could have made a career in it. I can tell you.
That that's better than Congress even.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Yeah, that's pretty amazing.
Yeah, an eye opener.
You've had some amazing life experiences and I'm sure these are very interesting books. Thank you so much again. The book that we were talking about here is Raycon The Betrayal of an Informant, And of course you've got the other one. Was that already out or is that coming out? About the storefronts?
Yes, storefront sting an atf agent's life Undercover. That that one's been out now for about that's the one that was purchased. It's been out now for about four years. And I would like to leave you with a parting thought about ATF if you'll allow.
Me, sure, go ahead.
So, and I just want to put put this out to your audience. You know, answer you. If you are an advocate of the Second Amendment, and you you know, you're a proponent of gun rights, you should really love ATF. And I told are you familiar with Coleon Noir no Big Second Amendmic guy was an NRA guide, a black Eye lawyer.
Uh no, I don't know. I don't know him, but go ahead.
Yeah, yeah, I told him this recently on his podcast. You should be a fan of ATF if you are a proponent of gun rights, because ATF is a small, very controllable agency. We have about two thousand agents for the whole country, right you're the likeliness of running into an ATF agent is pretty slim right out there. The gun laws are never going away, all right. So if you abolish ATF, the gun laws are going to go to one or two agencies. They're going to go to
the FBI or Department of Homeland Security. We don't want the gun laws going to those two behemoths. Those you know, you think the FBI was bad under the last administration, with you know, the authority they have. Now give them the gun laws and see what they do. So you know, ahf again is easily controlled, it's underfunded. And that's exactly who you want enforcing our gun laws. You don't want the You don't want the FBI or Homeland Security enforcing our gun so you know.
Yeah, that's what we would always say when people say, well, you know, the problem is just going to make government more efficient, It's like, no, actually, I don't want to make government more efficient. I don't like what they're doing to start with.
Yeah, don't use I don't use the term government and efficient together in a cent.
Yeah, only in doge do we get that? That's headchach. So yeah, I'm afraid government isn't going to get a lot more efficient with artificial intelligence. That's my real concern. And I think that's where this is going. Uh. And that's that's something you know, not necessarily your agency, but all the different government agencies are going to be able to audit everything that everybody does. And find the simplest process crimes and it's like bringing the man, I'll find
the crime type of attitude. And so I think that's really going to happen. We've already had a situation, as Harvey Silverglate said in his book Three Phoneies a Day. He said, we've got so many laws on the books that people are typically creating three phonies a day and they don't even know it. Well, you're going to know it when you get a call from the people who are representing the artificial intelligence that's gone through and audited your life in so many different areas. That's what I'm
concerned about. It is the over regulation.
You are absolutely right, And to me, it all started with traffic cameras and these license plate readers. That's where it's starting. Yeah, it's just going to get worse.
Oh, it's getting worse rapidly through Flock. We got the Flock cameras out there and they you know, you create this this mechanism where you have these private companies that are basically doing the surveillance and the law enforcement work, and they're just passing it along to the official law enforcement which is just collating and doing the process work. Of this stuff, and they do things because they say, well,
we're private, we can do whatever we want. We're not governed by the restrictions that would govern us if we are the government. And yet in reality they really are. They're just not deputized, they're not official, but they have all these police state powers of surveillance and other things. That's what really is my concern. And we have seen the money.
The money they're making is ridiculous, Yeah, and so it gives them more incentive to do more. And if you look at one of these tickets, because my wife and I have gotten them from these traffic cameras, you're absolutely right. There's just one police officer who signs it. Everything else is done by this private company.
Yeah, and frequently it's not even in America. It's another company that's running these automated toll things. And after we move from Texas, we got several tickets and we were not even in the city that purported to have been a violation of a toll or something. And you waste a lot of time fighting this stuff. You win, obviously if you fight it, but you waste a lot of time doing it. And if you don't respond right away, they start rapidly multiplying the fees that are on it.
There's a lot of issues that are there, and none of that stuff is being addressed by people in government. They're really late to the game. If they're ever going to do anything about it, I'm skeptical, but they ever want to do anything about it because I think it is the kind of structure that they really want that
is out there. But you know, the part of it that in terms of the ATF and things like that, I guess really when you look at it from our perspective, it's really the people who are pushing through the regulations that are there. And how as you point out, it's very political and depending on who is in charge of it, they can really weaponize those regulations against people. And they've got an agenda where they want to see all of the guns disappear. So I think that's the real concern
about it. Yeah, well, thank you so much.
Politics. Yeah, politics has seeped has seeped into law enforcement. Yeah, and that's not a good thing. That's right for the people. That's the reason that's right.
Yeah. I was just talking to Sheriff Mac who is about the constitutional Sheriffs and peace Officers Association, Big guy on pushing for local control of law enforcement, having sheriffs that are elected by the community. I think that's important. And I think the more distant and more bureaucratic everything gets from us, the more dangerous it is. And it's getting rapidly distant and dangerous from us, I think all the time as we look at it.
Just just take a look at the police chiefs that we currently have in the big cities here in America, and I can tell you it's a bunch of clients and they're not elected by the people.
That's right, That's right, Yeah, that's right. So yeah, that's a real warning for everybody. But your story is truly amazing and a very interesting story, I'm sure, and I'm sure it'll be very entertaining. I can't believe they would not make it into a movie. It's exactly the kind of story they're looking for. Thank you so much for joining us, Lou, I appreciate it, Lou Velosi, And again you can see his website there under his name. He
has website where you can find the book. Of course, you can find it on amaz Honor where books are sold. Thank you so much for joining us.
It was an honor. You have a great show, and it's an honor to be a part of it.
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