US Customs Agent Chris Hastings

https://www.amazon.com/Cocaine-Cowboys-Uncensored-Chris-Hastings/dp/B0D5QSZK67/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Live from the Philippines, I'm retired NYPD detective Vic Ferrari, and welcome to NYPD Through the Looking Glass podcast, where you get unique insight into the New York City Police Department. Today's guest is a former U.S. Customs agent during the Cocaine Cowboys era. He's also the author of a great book, Cocaine Cowboys Uncentered. Chris Hastings, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Thank you, Vic. Thanks for thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Oh, I appreciate I appreciate you coming on. Chris, please tell our listeners a little something about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Well, um, I grew up in Merritt Island, Florida, Cape Canaveral. My dad worked at NASA. And I grew up there. It was like a Tom Sawyer life. You know, I'd take my gun out in the woods. I'd be 12 years old in the woods with a gun. We'd fish and hunt and bring back shrimp and crabs. You know, my mom would cook it up. It was it was a very small town. It was a traditional southern town. My mom was a my dad was a Navy chief, retired Navy chief, and uh so we'd lived all around before. But you know, that my mom had a business and her her partner was black. She had a beauty par beauty color and her partner was black. So, you know, people think of the South as being sort of racist. It's really not, because in a small town like that, you're all working together, you're all coming up together, and nobody misses an opportunity to make a dollar. So, you know, absolutely but anyway, I grew up like that, ended up in Tampa going to college, um, was in ROTC for a couple years, and uh walked by a walked by a job fair, and the guy that was hiring knew my father from the Navy that actually served with him. So he kind of was like, I was kind of like, can you serve Monday? And I, yeah. And uh I'm an intern for I think five or six months, and then I became a patrol officer. So I started out as a patrol officer, GS5, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

And what year did you start with the U.S. Customs?

SPEAKER_01 1:53

1980. 1980.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

As a as a customs patrol agent, what were like your duties and responsibilities like on the front lines?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Well, you're basically you're basically a border patrol agent. The only difference is you you're working the border as you know the this the ports and you know the cargo. We did everything. We did theft from cargo, we did smuggling on the cruise ships and on the freighters. But really, our biggest customer was uh the banana boats, where we had Filipino um crew members usually, and there'd be maybe 20, 25 stowaways sometimes, and they'd all have like a starter pack of a couple of kilos. And you know, it would be like a circus that just opened the deck the hull the ship's uh cargo area up and they'd come out like rats, you know. You had to go go and catch them, just like you were on the border of Mexico. And that's the first time my first time we ever saw cocaine. So you'd see weed occasionally, but when they started bringing bananas in to Tampa on the docks there, that's when we really we first saw cocaine.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

As a border patrol agent on the front line, did you did you come across like exotic snakes and lizards?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

No, we had the we had agricultural people who were really concerned about that, but that wasn't a that wasn't a big issue there. It was mostly it's mostly um small amounts of of marijuana. And we we never arrested anybody for weed. We just do it on the ground or tried to flip them over. No, we didn't care about weed.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

So you weren't like at the airports when people were getting off planes coming into the country or no, those those are the inspectors, those are those are the um the guys in uniform.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

We were in street clothes from day one. We didn't have a uniform. I beg your pardon. We did have an originally have a uniform when I first started, and I put it on for a picture, and I never put it on again. So I think it was just a holdover from the 70s.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

And every cruise and every banana boat that came in would have stowaways?

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Yeah, for the first year or two, they had a real problem um with stowaways. It it sort of slacked off. But it slacked off mainly because they found like five of them dead. It froze to death in the in the car, it's a refrigerator cargo hole. So that kind of discouraged them for a while.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Did you do anything with the cruise ships?

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Only if the inspectors would find somebody, you know, like some girl with a couple of ounces of weed from Jamaica on the cruise ships, then they'd call us. But we didn't do the actual passenger searching or any of that. So we were more interested in the border.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Eventually you become a customs agent. What was that like for you?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

That was a whole new new world. I went from, you know, as a patrol officer, you're doing interdiction. You're you're you're trying to stop it at the point at the nexus with the border. As an agent, you're doing long-term investigations. We have have the child porn unit, we have uh uh a strategic munitions and computers group that just does smuggling of that high-tech stuff. We have an air unit, a marine unit, and then we do we have a general investigations unit that does cargo and fraud and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

So, what was the 1980s Miami like?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

You know, I I was asked this question on in another podcast. Uh yeah, I didn't watch Miami Vice until after I'd retired, really. Just I just I don't know why, I just never watched it. And I've you know, I'd see clips or a little bit of it. Uh then I I got to see it, and it was surprisingly a lot like that. Um you know, we we had arm stealers, it was like Casablanca in the sense that you know, all kinds of goofy characters and and strange people. If you were weird, you ended up in Miami somehow. Of course I said I was gonna say it was you'd see, you know, because South Beach used to be primarily a retiree place for Jewish people. And you'd see the old old folks out there on the tables having their coffee and talking about, you know, this is not the way we do it in New York, you know, or whatever. But there, you know, it was a really a small, sweet little town, and then it became overnight, it became Cocaine Central. Like, I'm sure it go ahead, go ahead, Beck.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

I saw you tell this story on an on another podcast. I was fascinated by it. Can you tell this story about how you drove an undercover taxi cab around Miami?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah. We had a we had an undercover cab that was it was a a vetted cab with like United or whatever it was. And uh it had a meter and a whole bit. So because I speak Spanish, when we would pick up somebody and like my my my partner was doing the undercover, and he'd say, I'll call a cab. Well, he just called me and hang up. I knew I had to cut come pick him up. And survey I'm listening to the the good, you know, the company radio and the taxi radio, but I turned it really far down when they got in. Then I later on I testify to all the bad things they were doing, talking about the deal and you know, et cetera, et cetera.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

You had a fascinating take about just how much shit that was going on in Miami during your time where sometimes you were just too exhausted to make an arrest. You had a great story about what happened in a Burger King one night.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Oh yeah. You know, if I would have arrested that guy, my boss would have chewed my ass out. Because he would have said, What are you doing police work for? But anyway, yeah, it was hilarious. I had been up all night. We've been doing some god-awful Colombian thing, uh, you know, big deal. I'm standing in line at Burger King and I'm like dreaming of this whopper. I mean, I, you know, the I'm just so hungry. And uh I'm two or three guys in front of me, and the guy in front of me turns around and he he looks at me. And back then I had, you know, hair down to here, uh, you know, like a mullet and an earring and uh, you know, a big crucifix, and my shirt was open, you know, typical look. And uh he says, he goes, Hey man, you want to buy an eight ball? And I said, I don't know, let me see if I got any money. And I open up my badge case, because I kept some money in there too. And I open up my badge case and I'm just looking at him and I flash the badge. And he looks at me and he gets this look like, my God. And he fucking he throws that the cocaine against the in the corner of the room and hauls ass out, busts both the doors wide open, almost knocks people over getting out. And uh anyway, so I'm standing, I'm not losing my place in wine. I want that burger. So the guy is looking at me. There's a guy in the line next to me, young kid, and he looks at me and he he keeps looking at the dope, and he's looking at me, and uh finally goes, like, what do I do? And I looked at him and said, I don't know, you know. He runs over, he picks it up and hauls ass right out the door. And I didn't, I got my whopper.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

I got my whopper. That's what you came there for, and that's what you left with.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Yeah, it was it would have been considered, I mean, the locals would even, you know, not be happy to be dealing with an eight-ball. I mean, nobody wanted to roll out at three in the morning for an eight-ball. Yeah. I'll tell you a a real quick funny story. We had a we had a guy in Tampa, when I was working in Tampa, we had a Colombian, and he was a big-time weight dealer. I mean, he was probably moving 80 to 100 keys a month in the black community, and it was going everywhere in New York, everywhere. But his name was Tragar Bala from the word tragar, which means to swallow, and bala, which means bullet. So they called him the bullet swallower. And the reason why is that he had been shot in the neck, and he was a he was he commanded his whole empire from a wheelchair. And uh he'd have all his guys bringing him shit and messages and you know. But the funny thing is they like to hang out in front of their little they had this little social Colombian social club, and they like to hang out, you know, sit out there, and he'd he'd sit out in front, right where he got shot, in fact. He would sit in the same place and we uh we're and we you know, there's only so many restaurants in in Tampa. And we go eat at the at the Colombian restaurant, I can't recall the name, really good food. And one day he was in there with his boys and we were in there eating. And, you know, we we know all know each other. We just we're just waiting for the day that we get to arrest him. And so he waves at me and I wave at him, and I I walk out and I said to him in Spanish, I said, uh, you know, it must be kind of a bummer to be in the wheelchair, you know, because you used to have all I remember you when you used to have all the beautiful women and go to the discos and now you're fucked up like this. Because I'm trying to rattle his cage a little bit, right? And he doesn't, he's so calm and cool, he doesn't get angry or mad. He looks at me, he goes, as long as I got this, I still get the you know, the vulnerable the, you know what? The women. And uh because I got this and I got this. I get everything I need. And then the worst part about it was, and then I I felt kind of embarrassed after that and I walked away. But the worst part about it was all my co-workers started putting up, Chris, you got mail, and they'd send me like love cards from Telegabala, you know. Oh, I love, you know, because I insinuating that he was gay and I was gay, you know. But they were just busting balls. That's what we do.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Whatever happened to him?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

About a year later, he was in an apartment and somebody tried to rip him off. We think it was domestic black guys. And anyway, they tried to rip him off and they had a gun battle and he got killed.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Oh, well, Chris, you work with Miami PD legend Raul Diaz. What was that like?

SPEAKER_01 11:53

See, us, you know, baby agents, us young guys, he was a legend. And I don't say that lightly. He was a true legend. He he was an excellent police officer when he was a patrol officer, and he was an outstanding detective. He had more informants on the street than anybody. And he just had that way about him that people were, you know, had a mag he had like a magnetic personality. And for a guy like me, who really didn't, you know, I'm still trying to learn the game in a lot of ways. And, you know, we had a lot of problem with Miami PD being corrupt. And uh he would help us a lot. He'd tell us who to avoid, you know, who who was good, who was bad. And one time I asked him, I said, or somebody asked him, how many, you know, what what percentage of Miami PD is crooked? And he said, probably 60 percent. And he said, a third, a third are are they directly involved, another third, their relatives are involved, and the other third don't want to talk about it because then they're involved. And and he said, everybody and all the other cops are trying to find a new job. It was bad.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

I first saw him about 20 years ago on that cocaine cowboys documentary. I said, I gotta have this guy on, and he was nice enough to do an interview, and I just, I mean, I thought I did a lot of research about some of the shootings and shootouts he was involved in, and chapter and verse, I mean, I was just fascinated just by the stories he told.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

He's the reason Miami that Syntac got uh full auto, you know, because we were going against guys with MAC tens. We had a couple of shootouts, and I was involved in one of them. But anyway, you know, when they were carrying heavy armor, heavyweight, heavyweight weapons, you know, they were carrying MAC tens and AKs and stuff like that. And he got us, he got us full auto in customs too.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Wasn't the corruption so bad at the Miami Police Department that I think pretty much the entire homicide division was under investigation and retired?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah, well, I think the only one that didn't have to retire was Singleton. I I can't recall his first name, John maybe? But 12 detectives in the homicide squad, and 11 of them are resigned overnight because of ethics. And uh from from what I understand, it wasn't just small stuff. And the reason why they were the reason why the homicide squad was corrupted is because if you know, if you understand the mechanics and the dynamics of police work, you know that if you control the homicide squad, you got carte blanche to do whatever to put out a hit on whoever you want. And and that's the way it was. That's the way it was.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Did you ever have a case involving a dirty cop?

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah. We had we had two or three uh we arrested our group, I say we, you know, there's probably 300 of us in in Greenback. And um we arrested two or three Miami cops, but they had already left the department, so they weren't near the floor.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Did you have anything to do with the Miami River cops case?

SPEAKER_01 15:02

No, that happened right before I I got there. Right. It was literally that and the Daydeland Mall, the famous Daydland Mall shootout, all that happened right before I got there. In fact, that's why I had to go, because my uh our our our uh resources in Miami were really, really low. And and the morale was really bad because we weren't making any progress.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Did you ever suspect that like a dirty cop or agent had compromised one of your cases?

SPEAKER_01 15:33

We had one we had one federal agent that went bad, an IRS 1811 special agent, same as us. And he went bad. His name was Michael Cruz, and and he can fucking rot in hell. He was he went dirty. He he had an IRS case on a I think he had like a net worth case on a Colombian money man. He got paid small potatoes, I thought, like a hundred thousand to burn down the evidence locker. And he did it. He went in and, you know, back then you could short circuit the cameras, an amateur could do it. And he cut the cameras and went in and gassed it up and and torched it. You know how much time he got Yeah, well, it was let me tell you how he was arrested. When when IA took him off, it was Monday morning at like 10 o'clock, and they literally perk walked him all the way through the whole office. And you know, that was meant, and I'm glad they did it. And people people were throwing fucking wadded papers at him, pencils, people were screaming, fuck you, Mike, you dirty son of a bitch. You know, I mean, it was not a pretty sight.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

And uh did any of your cases ever take you to like the famous coke clubs like The Mutiny?

SPEAKER_01 16:44

No, but I went in there out of curiosity. Uh because well, what happened was is we we took off some some player we took off, you know, and I don't know how it happened, but somebody, the card he had a membership card, and the card ended up Yeah, who didn't know where the card ended up? It ended up in our hands. So we we literally we bribed the door guy with a little cash and we just flashed the card and they let us in. And uh it was eye-opening. You know how they used to, you know how they used to communicate they had a load? They used to get these Burger King hats. You know, remember the hats? You know, right, right, right. They used to give take the real Burger King hat and set it on the table if they had a load, and they were and people would walk by and and you know, get a connect that way. And and it was that open, you know. People snorting coke off the uh and two Miami cops, as two Miami cops at the door, never up, but at the door, and they would never go up. So figure that out.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

There's a great book called Hotel Scarface about the mutiny. I encourage anyone out there to pick up a copy. It's really good and eye-opening about some of the shit that was going on in there, and how just like you said, how blatant and open everybody was about it.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

It was insanity. You know, I I personally didn't have anything to do with the the Los Armanos, you know, the the brothers uh but Sal Moguna and uh Willie Falcone? Yeah, Sal and Willie. Um I think you'd asked me before about Grisel de Blanco. You know, her hitman re kept if we get a case and work six months on it, have it ready to go and and and try to go get a grand jury. Fuck Reeby would kill the guy we were after. And for six months of work right down the toilet. So she was responsible. She was whacking wit witnesses so much that it really got to be, you know, you you see you hated to start a case on a on a really hot guy because he probably wouldn't be around in six months. It's funny, it's funny.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Well, after Reavy got after Reavy got arrested, were you in on any of the profit sessions?

SPEAKER_01 19:00

No, mainly because we didn't have any homicide charges on him. DEA, the agents that had the DEA guys that had a case on him, it was almost all of it was domestic. Because she was really not an importer. She was a she was a wholesaler, and so was he. Did have did have a case where he ended up with a murder indictment out in Houston. And uh it was a guy that whacked a woman and her two kids, because she had ripped off uh some money guys. And um they they sent a cicatio out and whacked her and her two kids. It was horrible. Anyway, they happened to arrest the guy that did it, why he had the indictment on for murder, federal murder case. And uh he goes to prison, he's in some kind of I don't know if it was Houston City prison or city jail rather, or what what it was. But he literally gets shanked like six or eight months after he gets popped. And I I got another case down the toilet because my my arrestee is dead. Uh but that's how the Colombians played. They take care of business themselves.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Chris, you were involved in Operation Greenback. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Operation Greenback was the first congressionally certified undercover oper where we could take the proceeds from the when we have the launder mine. We could take the proceeds and funnel them back into our to our uh undercover op. You know, so we'd do all of our backstopping for all the agents undercovers. We'd rent all the lease all the vehicles. We all we had a safe house, we had a house where we did deals, it was wired up. We had a wire house, we had a warehouse. We what we did is we tried to we would launder the money at a like five percent VIP, you know, and uh then we try to get the secondary or the tertiary uh people after that. So we would still keep our connection with the money launderer, but we we would be disconnected, there'd be a cutout between us and and the guys we were arresting. So, you know, and you'll hear people say, and they have a point, they say, well, you're you're helping them, you're laundering money for them, right? But they're they're not really putting the whole picture, the 30,000-foot level picture in you know, in in their face. I mean, I got I turned on probably 10 seizures, and we ended up arresting, I think, 20 people in my little my little greenback money honored case. But you gotta to do those cases, and you know this better than me, you you gotta have quality informants. You know, wiretaps will get you s only so far. Nothing like a good snitch.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

How much money did you guys recover during the course of Operation Greenback?

SPEAKER_01 21:49

You know, I don't know the total, I really don't know the total of of money, but it would be I remember one year they had, you know, management had some dog and pony where they brought

SPEAKER_00 22:00

out a bunch of seized money and uh dope and you know call all the camera sheet anyway they brought they brought that out i think they if i recall that one year we had seized like you know and that again they're counting bank accounts that we seized in panama and we're somewhere around a half of a billion dollars but but that wasn't that was 2000 agents working IRS DEA customs it was a lot of people no I was gonna say that the one of the main players Isaac Catan he um at the time of his arrest he had 20 kilos of cocaine in his car talk about a guy that just can't quit and several hot hotel rooms with 40 million in cash right well as you s uh as you saw in the pictures and the that are on I invite everybody to go to my ex account and uh Twitter and I've got a community where I have all the the pictures from the 80s are up there.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

So you can see all the letters the pictures of grades AKs you know mountains of coke I got a money shot you know as we call it of me laying on a truck with a whole bed is nothing but duffel bags full of kilos. And you know that was those it was that was a common case for us to do we do one of those a month easy. So you know and it wasn't that we were I mean we were good cops don't get me wrong we were great cops but it wasn't that we were that great it was just that it was so much activity. It was just a target rich environment.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Can you remember offhand like the largest rip or seizure that you guys had in one shot?

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah we I did one that was four million and if for it was four million and later on we went to a house and got like 40 keys or 100 keys. I can't remember exactly but the 4 million you know everybody says oh that's so cool you got four million let me tell you that was back in the old days when you had to actually count it and you get the count wrong and IA is breathing down your neck. So it took us two days literally sleeping in the other office and coming back to the count.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

And you have to have three people watching the count you know and uh everybody loves the seizure but nobody you know nobody wants to cook the food after you know chopped it all up my I found 38 grand in the trunk of a car of a stolen car and it took us probably about six or seven hours and it was my sergeant myself the integrity control officer our lieutenant and just like you said if that counter draw on off and it goes to the bank and they have a different number than what you said it's a problem.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

It's a problem. We got to the point where we just waited and then we ended up we we ended and that could be fucked up too you know you screw that up too it ended up where we we made a deal with management because we it was just too much too laborious to do it any other way. We would stick it all in a in a seizure bag and just put undecl undisclosed number of you know hundred dollar bills or whatever. And you know you have to have a chain of custody and the witnesses for that but that was that ended up being the easiest way to do it and the less chance of fall.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Most of our audiences probably watched the documentary Cocaine Cowboys and what I found fascinating was you were at the raid of John Roberts's property in Lakeland where Mickey Monday set the airplane hangar on fire with a flare gun. Can you go into that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Yeah Mickey had a Mickey had a a a big barn on a ranch out by Lakeland the the barn actually had a door so his king air could roll in and he could you know hide the airplane and uh he had done I don't know god only knows hundreds of loads out of that out of that place. And I wasn't the case agent they just needed a body so they they stuck me on the perimeter out in the perimeter and I was out there with the locals who half of them were probably involved too who knows but anyway um they stuck me on the road and all I all I heard on the radio was oh my god and then fire fire fire and it wasn't wasn't people shooting it was Mickey took a a flare gun and popped it off into the avioic fuel that he had he had a bunch of uh tanks of fuel and he just opened the tank and popped a fit flare gun at it and you know he was a real woods gun and he went right out the back.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

This is with like 90 agents we come in on black ox we got the SWAT team I mean it looks like Afghanistan and the sucker went right out the back and we lost he was on the run for about five or six years he got picked up in Richmond Virginia did time got out and then you know he's do he's doing the documentary podcast circuit and then a couple of years ago I was telling you he got picked up in an interstate car theft ring where they were cloning stolen vehicles and bringing them down to Florida for resale and he got hit with another 12 years or so and he's an old man. I'm like what the hell is he doing?

SPEAKER_01 27:17

You know he he was not right he he he could have quit long before he got busted and walked away and he was a he was an adrenaline junkie like we were he loved the game and you know this is what most people civilians really don't understand. Nobody seems to retire you know everybody thinks they're gonna deal drugs and they're gonna end up on a beach and uh walkiki drinking a margarita and never have to worry about a thing. Never happens never they they always end up they they always end up either their girlfriend or wife screws them over and dimes them out to the cops or like what happened to Mickey they can't quit they gotta go out and do another some kind of crime or they end up dead and that happens a lot that happens a lot.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

You know even where I'm where I live here in the Philippines they regularly shoot each other over here we have a meth problem Chris can you tell us about some of the major players during the cocaine cowboys era that you arrested or were involved in a case with the one that comes to mind that I can think of is the case we had with Alpha 66 and Felix Rodriguez was you know to give the viewers a little background I had you know we would do a case like this once a month easy but we ended up getting a 500 kilo load of load of uh coke on an airplane we we actually our pilots went down our our undercover pilots they were actually snitches but they went down and picked up 500 keys and brought it back and we were going to deliver it we had three groups you have 200 to one 100 to one and then 200 to another or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

But one of the groups we arrested was there was uh I think four or five Cubans out of Miami and uh what made these guys special is they were all members of Alpha 66 the Cuban exile group who is a pro-democracy you know free Cuba movement and I I actually as somebody that speaks Spanish I and grew up around Cuban people all my life I actually feel some sympathy for them because they they are trying to right a wrong that was done to their families. However, you know you can't start the revolution unless you have money. Money seems to make revolutionaries happy I don't know why but they they decided that they were going to take a load and so they I think they were getting three out of keys. Me and the rack of DEA Mike Powers were the first guys to take them off. And one of the these guys were gangsters or at least thought they they thought they were gangsters. One of them had a gun one of them reached for a gun and we almost had shots of people that night that day. Anyway long story short one guy wants to flip the other two are tight licked but the one guy's young he's got kids he he wants to flip. So he indicates to us on the proper that Felix Rodriguez was involved in in the front the money and doing some other logistical stuff with him. And uh so I had they had uh Roy Black famous Miami attorney Roy Tuck and uh Roy calls me up one day and he he was actually a really nice guy you know I'm I don't know you don't normally think of a defense attorneys but he was a nice guy. So he says Chris my guy we weren't really happy with the proffer we thought he was kind of holding back he says Chris how about I sweeten the deal how about a hundred hand grenades and 20 AKs whole lot of and so you know I called up the A USA and uh he said yeah bring them on you know we'll take that and you know I mean we're getting them off the street that's good and uh so anyway we got the bomb squad out Miami Bomb Squad they yeah cleared the grenades and they had them fingerprinted Prince and up I get a letter I get what it is I get a letter and hit with a match with Felix Rodriguez. So and I don't and I I'm a you know I'm not I didn't understand who he was I heard of him but I didn't even know who he was and um when I took it to the AUSA he called a couple other a couple of other guys one of them was Cuban one of the AUSAs and they they were literally looking at the paper going Felix Rodriguez Felix Rodriguez oh no Felix Rodriguez because then they told me Felix Rodriguez is a CIA assay and he's he made his bones by killing She Givera I mean he's no small fish and uh he I understand now he's not doing so good. I wish him well God bless him but uh don't come to my house please but uh these guys were these guys were serious about what they were doing you know to the point of carrying guns and all that sort of stuff and which we didn't have a whole lot of problem with the Colombians they didn't really carry guns that much but anyway I took it to the AUSA he freaked out and I go to go I go to Miami PD they're talking and figuring out what they're gonna do I said well I'm gonna go get I'm thinking to myself I'm gonna look at the the fingerprint parts you know the real evidence because all I had was this letter that yeah it's a match I go down there and I go in there's the evidence guy and I I go up to him and he's Cuban and everybody's Cuban said in Spanish Hola como está Turbuscándolos blah blah blah I'm looking for the letter the records and I hand him the letter and he looks at the letter and he goes same thing again Felix Rodriguez Felix Rodriguez he goes I'll be back went call on right then yeah because when he first came in he was real nice but he went stiff at that point and he disappeared for like 20 minutes and he comes back and goes I can't find him I said you know I'm just 20 something years old this guy's like 50 and he's giv he's giving me the stink eye and he I can't find it I said what do you mean you can't find him you got him I got this letter because I don't care what the letter says I can't find him and that's when I realized that this game is not on the level you know that they're gonna do what they're gonna do at Miami PD and they don't care they don't give a shit about your federal badge they don't care it doesn't mean anything to them and I mean I I admire the loyalty I really do but it was very frustrating I I went back to the AUSA and I started talking to him and we're talking we went right to the U.S. attorney and had a meeting with him and he said you know Chris you just got to let this one go. And I said but I I got this letter he goes yeah but you don't got you don't have the car and I I said well you know I they stole it and he goes well too bad.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yeah but the the ASA USA based on that letter could have had him brought in and fingerprinted.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Possibly yeah possibly but those print but you gotta remember the prints were on the grenades and I think they'd already destroyed the grenades you see what I'm saying the prints were taken off the grenades and his prints were a match but we didn't we the prints for the grenades were gone.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

What about the AKs what about the guns?

SPEAKER_01 34:21

His prints were not on the AKs only on the grenades.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

So the AKs had been wiped down you could see that they'd put oil on them and wiped them all down before they get in wasn't a wasn't a member of Alpha 66 an explosive exit that taught GriseldaBlanco's hitman George Riviera how to build a bomb exactly all those guys were former Cuban military intelligence or military special forces everybody knew demolition.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

You could you could literally get any kind of explosive device you wanted from a pipe bomb to a real grenade in Miami if you knew the right people I don't know the guy that did it. I'm familiar with the case but those guys were in general not always but in general they were very very good at their tradecraft you would never know that bomb was on there until it went off.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Chris you were you were involved in Operation Sea Chase. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

Okay Operation Sea Chase was uh it was like the natural ebb and ebb and flow of of our talent and our our skillcraft and we learned how to launder money and identify targets that way. And some of the guys took that I think I'd like to say I was one of them and we brought it to Tampa. But the real credit for Operation Sea Chase goes to my old partner Amir Brew and Bob Major. Bob Major was an IRS agent and he he came over to customs and you know he was a really nice unassuming person. He'd never he'd always have time to help you out if you were a young guy trying to figure something out and he was the go-to guy. You know if you want to know the law or anything to do with IRS violations he was the go-to guy. And Bob took a small money laundering case that they had they had taken from one of our old informants and he took that case and he walked it into the BCC BCCI Bank of Credit and Commerce International or as we called it the Bank of Crooks and Criminals. But anyway he walked in cold at BCCI in Tampa and approached them to launder money and they took the bait and from that and these guys worked for a year to establish credibility with Escobar's money people and they whined and dined them flew them around on the learjet you know I was more doing more of the surveillance at that time and some of the cases but you know every night they could go into the strip bar expensive steakhouses we lived pretty good you know on on the government dime but uh how it all ended and I gotta say this we had a pretty good supervisor she was a woman Bonnie Tischler may she rest in peace she was actually a pretty good boss but anyway I got all the all my bosses and customs were good. I really never had a bad boss but anyway she allowed us to to roam free like you know like feral animals and we literally we made so many seizures from that case before we actually did the fake wedding that ended up in the Hollywood movie The Infiltrator I invite the audience to look that up The Infiltrator Bob Major wrote a book and Bob did an outstanding job on I mean I I can't say enough things about Bob or Amir Amir was more the undercover agent and he was pay he was played by uh John Logazzamo right the Colombian and uh you know I know Amir better than his current wife being rice and beans at this guy every day for years and uh Amir was a great guy at Jokester but this guy had he he could work the street like nobody could work the street he was just a natural undercover and Bob was not so much a natural undercover he developed into an incredible one but he was the brains basically behind it. So I don't know how I think with one of the supervisors Steve Cook I think they had you know they'd always try to get Bob to go with some girl in a strip bar and he'd say I'm married I know I can't do that or I'm gonna get married. I got a fiance. Finally they they called him on it said where's the fiance so he got a girl by the name of Patty Ertz to be his undercover girlfriend. Amazingly enough we didn't think she was qualified at the time but she developed into a great agent too great undercover agent. I mean people just people really shined in that case that case made a lot of a lot of people a lot of promotions and a lot of credit but anyway we actually we had a way and we rented a big hall and we had flowers and lemos we picked up Alcan and all the the major money guys for Escobar we picked them all up drove them to the resort got them in a hotel you know like a a suite really nice place to stay wife and kids and a whole bit and you know Colombians are they love to have family at the wedding then before the wedding the night before everybody the movie is BS there was no shootout at the wedding that's all crap. Before the wedding they got all the crooks together and they said we're gonna we're gonna take you guys out for a bachelor party and and Al Cain who was the main player he was kind of a pain in the ass and he kept asking Amir you know are there going to be any white girls there because he was Moreno and he liked white girls you know kind of like I like brown girls. Anyway he kept bugging Amir are there going to be any white girls are there going to be any white girls and Amir said to him he said listen I promise you you're gonna get fucked tonight like you've never been fucked. And he went really he goes I guarantee it I guarantee it and then we had you know this they took him off and then they brought him in like at 9 30 or 10 o'clock at night and we'd all been up for hours you know days doing this logistics of all this but they brought him in and I'm I'm uh processing the prisoners and I'm doing the interview and I said to him the same guy that was bugging a mirror about white girls and I said to him in Spanish I said you know did you did you get what you were looking for with the white girls and he he looked at me with death in his eyes and said fuck off and you know I said yeah I I figured you'd say that what was the reaction when you guys moved in on him at that bachelor party that's another thing I had forgotten about that. They they thought the whole police thing was part of a skit for the first couple minutes they're like ah ha ha this is really funny those look like real guns you know what what what the handcuffs are going on but where where's the where are the bitches you know so it it took a while for them like it always does you know I've done slow undercover and and when they find out it if you're good it takes them a while to accept it. It really does.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Chris you have a theory of who was behind and ran the BCCI bank can you share that with us? I kind of agree with you.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

Yeah well my theory my theory is uh supported by a lot of factual evidence there's a guy on on X by the name of Mike Benz and he's done an extensive um breakdown of all BCCI's sends uh they they were from what we can tell they were an agency started bank they were started in Pakistan and coincidentally right when we were doing the Afghan war and supplying the not the Contras that was later supplying the Mujahideen with uh SAM missiles so all that money ran through ECCI and later on uh when we had the Iran Contra deal Ali North and all that money ran through uh that bank that bank is who paid from Pakistan that bank is who paid for the weapons the weapons that were sent in Ali North issue they were tow missiles I think or surface air but they were taken from a Saudi stockpile and moved into an Iranian stockpile and that on our behalf and that was paid out through BCCI. So it's pretty documented you know I don't I'm not saying the CIA was had a desk in in the bank but they control the money that goes in and out.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

Chris during your time period there were a lot of murders any stand out to you?

SPEAKER_01 42:45

The one that stood out to me the most was the girl and her two children who were murdered by the Colombians simply because I have a soft spot in my heart like everybody should for kids and uh you know I had kids that age I think at the time. You know that kind of I didn't I wasn't there to see it, thank God, but I saw the autopsy and I saw the crime scene in the autopsy pictures and that was enough. Yeah it was and I I wanted that guy. At that point I went balls to the wall to get that dude and we got on a traffic stop in Houston by Houston PDF.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

Chris can you go in you know I wouldn't I'm sorry. Go ahead. No no you go I was just gonna say I was just gonna say you know that's I think that's every good cop's dream is to give justice to somebody who's been wrong like Chris would you mind going into the traumatic incident that led to the end of your career?

SPEAKER_01 43:39

No. I got I got involved arresting this we were we got called out on some stowaways on a container on the container yard. And it was something I'd done a thousand times. I just came around a container and I came face to face with a guy with a knife and he stuck he stuck me and cut and I cut my hand getting it away from him. And I I went to hospital and I got treated and I uh I'm not sure how you went through him because he was pretty bloody too at the at the end of the thing after my partner got through with it where I I could have got contaminated by medical instruments, you know. But it was in the line of duty was ruled by O OWCP as an in the line of duty injury. And uh and then I went through uh three treatments for hepatitis C and with the last one was 14, 15 years ago and uh I was cured. But you know I'm still living with a lot of issues. I haven't had a drink in four years. No. Yeah I'm 35. I haven't drank any alcohol and I when I first found out I never took another drink after that.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

Um you know I'm I'm I'm blessed that I had uh you know the my agency supported me and uh I'm blessed that I had the they paid for the treatment which was eighty thousand dollars at the time well now that you're retired and you're living in the Philippines tell us about the Airbnb you're building out there.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Well you know how I got the idea was is when I came here I didn't have uh I really didn't have a a task or purpose. I bought a I bought a Harley and I own three of them here. I'd ride around with a bunch of guys. What's funny is I used to ride around with a a well known one percenter group here. I mean one of the top five has a has a club here and you know I was not a member but I I've ride ride with them and they were it's a lot different here. They don't deal drugs here because you know the real drug dealers wouldn't be happy. So the biker clubs here are kind of like a retirement. But anyway I came here road bikes around um had a good time you know but it got to be I got to be lonely. I'm I'm a family guy I I like kids and that sort of thing. And uh you know I wanted a wife and uh my best friend married a a woman and and then her husband died or rather her sister's husband died. She had an older sister close to my age and um her husband died from cancer lung cancer. And uh she came to live with us for a while and we fell in love and uh I married her and uh we had four children and a grandbaby so what I'm trying to say is long story short is I didn't have I couldn't really find peace I couldn't find what I wanted everybody wants something different and I couldn't find what I wanted which was a housewife and a home environment and I found that with her and you know the kids have just been a godsend. I've got a second chance at at life now. Because my kids in America I have an adopted daughter from Guatemala in America and uh too biological in America. You know they they've got their own lives and I'm old news. Now you know I'm in I'm 70 and I've got you know it's like I'm starting all over again. I mean I got an I got a 19 year old with a baby. You know here here everybody wants a baby. All the girls want a baby preferably from a white man. It's weird. It's very strange. But yeah we the Filipinos and I want to be able to pass that on like what I'm thinking is is if I would have if somebody would have had a a duplex like mine this is not where I live there are no dirt girly bars. It's more of a family town. Philippines is very religious very Catholic so you get kind of country women here and what I'm hoping to do is if guys meet a girl online or whatever and they want to come to the Philippines they can stay here and I'll hopefully be able to you know give them a heads up on where to go where to eat um you know things like that. It's my wife's business you know but I guess I'm gonna be kind of like the guru here telling people how to do it. And we get we get you know you you you you've seen the pictures we've got a community of probably 15 or 20 expats that we regularly get together and we have Bible study some of them go bike motorcycle riding you know all kinds of things so do you have a website for this or a Facebook offer that it's just started but my if my X account I have two one for my my book and me and then one for uh her business and it's called Valencia Mountain Retreat and you can find it on X and uh I'm I'm offering half off for first responders policemen and firemen things like that. I'll do a a half off price which is basically cost. To get somebody started um one of the problems that if you're a cop and I assume a lot of police are are watching when you retire you're you think your pension's gonna make it it's not inflation will will eat it alive. And after five or ten years it gets a lot harder. At least for me it was have you experienced the same thing?

SPEAKER_00 49:08

No I mean I keep busy and I'm always working so I I'm good for now.

SPEAKER_01 49:12

But ha has your has your pension kept up with inflation? No. That's why I gotta keep working here you can get by on$2,000 a month you can get by fine. And I'm talking a nice apartment you know decent food and a motorcycle you know you can live really cheap here. And uh I mean I on my little pension I support what five five other people so six other people counting the maid. So but it's a great place to retire. You know my wife is uh is my caretaker. I mean I don't even drive I don't have a driver's license she drives me around whenever whenever I want to go somewhere and I'll just go outlaw if I'm gonna go on the bike because they don't care about us on the bike. There's hardly any police here anyway. You know, for a guy that's retiring or somebody's getting old, you know, I my theory was I didn't want to end up in retirement or old folks home, you know, with Mohammed as my caretaker you know or I just didn't want that. Nothing against Mohammed but you know I want somebody that relates to me. That was my fear. I didn't want that. And here there are no old folks homes you die at home in your house. That's how you die. And they'll, you know, they it's very funny they um every year they have and you're you're familiar with this they have uh Dia de Dia de los Muertos, you know, the All Saints Day, I think in Catholic religion. And they my wife will actually get out pictures of her dead relatives and put food out and you know cigarettes or beer or whatever. And you know they honor them that way. And every year they go to the graves put flowers and take care of the graves and clean them up. And uh you know I've had people say well who cares about that when you're dead well it's part of our culture and if you don't honor the dead you don't honor the living it kind of you know at least that's the way I see it. You know we don't have abortion here they're baby crazy here.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

If a girl gets pregnant, you know, that they don't talk about getting an abortion they talk about where we're gonna have the party older people are treated with respect you know they really they really do treat it's a lot like America was in the 50s including the spam and Chris please tell us the name of your book and where our listeners can pick up a copy.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

Okay yeah the name of it is Cocaine Cowboys Uncensored and it's uh available on Amazon there's an audio track um and then a digital or a uh soft cover and uh it's also on X or Twitter uh and you could pretty much read a lot of it and hear some of the stories there. And you'll also see I've set up an expat group there for Filipinos and you can kind of see some of the pictures of what it's like here.

SPEAKER_00 52:09

Chris I really want to thank you for spending your time with us today. Thank you Vic and if anybody's listening and they haven't maybe this is the first time they've seen your channel I would tell them hey you're not going to find another law enforcement channel that has you have some of the funniest guests the best stories I mean you know real oh real OG cops you know not not the kind of you know the ones we have now it's a lot it was a lot different in my in our time I do a lot of vetting let's just put it that way thank you Chris I appreciate it I don't know how I got on then no I've seen in other interviews thank you thank you so appreciate that for tuning in especially my listeners in Philadelphia Dover New Jersey Seattle Washington Las Vegas Nevada Tom's river New Jersey and Dayton Ohio if you worked in law enforcement had an interesting criminal background please drop me a note on Twitter Instagram at VicFerrari50 if you're watching on YouTube please hit the like subscribe or hype buttons if you enjoy the content check out my Amazon author page just type in my name Vic Ferrari like the car where you can preview all my NY where you can preview all my NY books I'm tired where you can preview all my NYPD books for free. Thanks again everyone and I'll see you next week