Stupid Criminals in Uniform: Marines Stealing Weapons and a Cop Selling His Service Pistol

Macky Outlaw and Jus are back with another raw episode, kicking it off with some wild Marine Corps stories from the old days — the good, the bad, and the straight-up dumb decisions that happen when young guys with too much testosterone and not enough supervision get their hands on serious firepower.

They dive into real cases of Marines doing incredibly stupid shit: stealing weapons from the armory, trying to smuggle gear off base, and the predictable (and often hilarious in hindsight) ways they got caught. From court-martials to ruined careers, they break down why these boneheaded moves happen and what the Marine Corps taught them about accountability, chain of command, and the long-term cost of short-term stupidity.

Then they shift to the civilian side: a cop who thought it was a good idea to sell his own service pistol on the side. They unpack how that kind of dumb move unravels fast — the paper trail, the internal affairs investigation, and the brutal reality that even people who carry badges can torpedo their lives with one greedy or reckless decision.

No glorifying crime, just straight talk about how even trained professionals make rookie mistakes, why “it seemed like a good idea at the time” is never a defense, and the lessons that apply whether you’re in uniform or out.

If you’ve ever wondered how people with access to guns manage to screw up so spectacularly, this one’s for you.

Tune in — it’s equal parts cautionary tale and dark comedy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, Juice, we're back with another episode, and we were talking about a Marine. What do you do?

SPEAKER_01 0:06

He's an ammunition technician, a 2311. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

You were an ammo tech for a while.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Yeah, my primary. He he worked for the School of Infantry as an ammo tech. Okay. And out at Camp Pendleton, California. Right. And the young, fine, outstanding Marine that he is, he took a javelin missile system, all kind of ammunition when he got out and took it home with him to Arizona and then decided he was going to sell it.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Those are about 40k every time you press the trigger, right? Yeah. Or more. Yeah. They're probably a little bit more right now. Now, back when I was in the School of Infantry, we had the anti-tank missile men, they call them. Oh yeah. My nephew is that. They had the they had the tow missile and the dragon. What is it? Yeah, yeah. Now I guess the javelin came. The javelin came later, definitely. But they were working on that when I was getting out. They had some testing going on and all that. But it's a pretty nasty weapon, I reckon. Oh, yeah. Like it can lock on and all those things. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

That's it's no joke.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Pinpoint. Shoot and forget kind of thing. Yeah. It's it's a pinpoint weapon. Now, me being an O311, I only had the AT4. Right. You had to basically fight your way to within 300 yards of a tank. Yeah. Shoot it. Yeah. They were good though when you hit them. They worked. You know. Yeah, when you hit them. Yeah. If you could get there. Yeah. You know, human flesh and tanks usually wins. But yeah. So that's pretty resourceful though. He took the javelin Arizona. And then what do you put it on Craigslist? I guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

I mean, how do you I mean it's it's easy to get the ammunition. I'm not even gonna lie to you. It's real easy. Is it? Yeah, you go to the ASP, you do your ammo draw, and when you do your at back then, when you do your 1348 on your return, which is the form that shows your account, right? You just put the wrong number on and say the rest were expended. Okay. So you're the ammo tech. You're you're the specialist of all the ordnance, the munitions, the explos, everything. So nobody's gonna question it. You take it back, give them it, you give them what's on your trucks, put it back in the ASP magazines, Bob's your uncle, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Is there not a so nowadays, so later in the army, in my army life, we would shoot, and then we had to take the shellcase, the empty brass, back and they would weigh it and kind of had to kind of match here how much you expended.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

You know how much you uh it's so easy to cheat that weight.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

It really is. And if we really liked the guy, or if he liked you, we'd bring him some Gatorade and some dip. Yeah, he would kind of let us rush through. Yeah. You know what I mean? So yeah. Or whatever, or whatever you like, Budweiser, you name it.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

You know, yeah, it's it's crazy, man. You you can get away with a lot before you get caught, but you're gonna get caught because you're gonna do something stupid.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Now there's one girl, E7, at McClellan. We didn't like, she was particular. Oh, yeah. She wouldn't, you couldn't bribe her for nothing. Yeah. But uh to get out of there early. There's like that. We weren't trying to steal ammo, we're just trying to get home, you know, after a decent time. But but the big fat sergeants, man, they you could get them with honey buns and hampered.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

We had so many contacts in the Marine Corps when I was in. Yeah. It it was funny. MPs, division schools. I had contacts everywhere. I'm just wondering, so was a javelin missile system or a rocket? It it was the javelin missile system.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

So the system It was all of it. So the weapon, I don't know what, I don't know the name of this, I'm not an expert, but I would call it the frame or the carrier, whatever you call it. Yeah, that would be in your armory.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

How did it get out of the armory? Now that's one that was that'd be like missing an M4. It's almost impossible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

I wasn't there.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

But you can get away with just about anything. Till you get caught.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Somebody's gonna notice it. It's hard to get them weapons out of an armory, though, especially a high profile one, an expensive one like that. Oh, yeah. It'd be like getting a 240 out of that, and like it's missing.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Yeah. Or, and this really happened on the island of Okinawa, you are an idiot and you put your little knit cap over your face, and you go beat up the officer of the day and tie him up and take his weapon, and you go out in town and try and sell it on the black market. To the Japanese? Yeah. Yeah, we had some guys in the Marine Corps when I was in did that. That was pretty stupid. Really?

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Beat up the o beat up the lieutenant or captain or yeah, it was a lieutenant.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Beat up the officer of the day, it took his weapon.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

It's typically a lieutenant or a captain. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

No, don't get me wrong. I I did a lot of stupid things when I was in. You know, I was kind of a bad apple for a few years. Right. But even that was far beyond me.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Japan, you remember that guy that raped that little girl? Yeah. He's still in prison now, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

And he should be. She was only 13 years old. And it it just I was in when that happened, man. And it was the people over there are so nice. They're very humble. They're very generous people. I I wish I could retire and move back there. That was my dream.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Okinawans are more of a friendly oriented person than the regular mainland Japanese people. Yes. Because that's all cities over there. Yes. Okinawa's kind of countryside, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Well, not all of it. You get what you got. You got your markets now. Yeah, but it's it's like a city. It's like I've never been there, man. Yeah, it's it's like going it it's like going to Huntsville's in some areas. I just see the jungle on the World War II movies, you know. Yeah, well, that's down south. That suicide cliffs and stuff. That's that's all changed. But you can still visit the cliffs. But Okinawa, Okinawa, they're some of the the best people I've ever met in my life. I wish I could go back there and retire and and live there. Do they still have the flag on Mount Storibachi? Is that like a memorial there? I think so. Okay. It was there. I got to visit there in 89. No, 90. I got to visit in 90. I was in the tenth grade, by the way. So thanks.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Thanks for making me feel old again. And the flag was there. Okay. Like a memorial type. Yeah. Okay. Was it a steep hill? Yeah. Okay. Imagine fighting your way up there. No. Because we you can stand down there and look. They're rolling grenades and shooting machine guns at you.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Dude, I'm I'm telling you, I I'm so thankful for the Marines have passed for the legacy they left. I couldn't have done that. Right. I I really I no, I was a wimp compared to those guys.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

So back to this, I'm back to the Camp Pillington Marine, the California guy. Oh, yeah, yeah. So you get the javelin weapon system off the base after you got out of the Marines, went to Arizona. And a a bunch of ammo. He had the missiles. Now these aren't bullets. These are missiles. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're about 40, are they they're about 60? They're about the size of a 60 mortar, I believe, which is decent. You're not putting it in your pocket.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

No. You can throw it in your trunk and go out with it. Still in a backpack or whatever. But he had a stack of ammo cans. Ball ammo. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

He had ball-oh, he had ball ammo.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Oh yeah. Okay. It wasn't just the the the javelin. He had a bunch of ammo.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Right. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

And I just want to know where he tried to sell it. It was online. Facebook marketplace? Yeah. And I guess a sheriff's deputy seen it and was like, I'm going to have to check into that. Next thing you know, NCIS had operation. Yeah. Yeah, we'll buy it. Yeah, busted. What an idiot.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

No, I got office hours for having 762 belted ammo hanging up. Where? In my room.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Wasn't off base though.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

It doesn't matter. I had it hanging in my room. I got in trouble for it.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

So we had flashbangs. You remember the Dweebs? Oh yeah. Those things were nice. They were nice, but they would they'd knock a finger off. Oh yeah. But they were good. They were fun to play with. Oh yeah. And we had about 60 of them left over. And the ammo supply guy said, just take them.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

He said, I don't want to deal with them. Turn back in is awful.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Well, there's a difference in in who they let do that. You're not going to just let it to the admin guys and say, here, go play with these. You guys were a little bit different.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Well, we played with them. Exactly. So we were out at my place, off base, yeah, on the 4th of July, drunk as skunks. Yeah. Throwing them at each other. And a Jacksonville police shows up at the front and gets out and comes over there and goes, hey guys, you're scaring all the kids. Those are way louder than a firecracker. Oh yeah. He didn't he just said cool he just said cut it out. We gave him a hamburger and he went on his way. So we were cooling out and stuff, you know. But uh anyway, most Jacksonville cops are pretty cool. Yeah. Now if you wanted to fight them, they're gonna fight you back. So I've seen some Marines want to fight with them and trap their stuff. Yeah, yeah. And they got the brakes beat off of them. Yeah. It happens. They'd show up with you know, two or three more would show up and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

And then the polyester pig pile will continue. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Which those things are great. Right. You know, we did wasn't fun on Monday morning when the first sergeant would say he would go through the role. Such and such got a DUI, this guy got beat up by the cops, this guy's missing, you know. That hit the base blotter, you were done. Yeah. We were pretty good though. We didn't hit the blotter as much as the grunts. They were well, they had 25 times more people than we did. So you know, I had more chances of screwing up. Level level of professionalism a little different from unit to yours. When we got in trouble was when we came off the appointment that first week. Yeah. Dude, because you didn't go on you didn't go and block leave right away. You spent a week there, got your all your gear put up, everything in order, then you went on block leave. Yeah. But you would stay out drinking until about six in the morning. Well, you have to decompress before you showed up in the motor pool or the comm house or whatever, they get everything put away. You know what I mean? So we had dudes get in trouble then. To the point where we had one cap, one of the platoon platoon commanders, they were all captains, said, Hey boys, we're gonna be in lockdown here, but he bought them all the beer they wanted. So anyway, of course we're not going anywhere. He kind of said, Let's get all the way up. That's a good guy right there because we had some issues before. Yeah. Anyway, man, we got off track.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Yeah, yeah, we did. It's funny talking about Marine Corps stuff though.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah. Well, let's talk about it some more. Yeah. What about we had guys that we when I was there, hey we still had M sixteens in the in the Marines, the long ones, right? Yeah, yeah, the A2s. We'd move to the M4, but an M sixteen showed up out on the streets in in a murder down the road in Wilmington. Right. Right. And they traced it back to a sergeant that it was assigned to on base that had gotten out and sold it on the street, and he'd moved off to Oklahoma, but that thing turned back up in a murder on Wilmington in a drug deal. Imagine that. And they you know they followed the serial number. Hey, Cent Lejeune, check your serial numbers. Oh, that was assigned to Sergeant Snuffy. Or Sergeant Snuffy. Well, he got out and he lives in 1224 Lovely Lane in Slaughton, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, you know. And they tracked him down. Sure enough, he'd sold it. He admitted to it.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

But sure he did. It says U.S. government on it. What's he gonna say? No, they're the oh, the Marine Corps is gonna say, Oh, that's not ours.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Well, they you know, they told the feds he this is the guy that had it last kind of thing. So he got put in prison, obviously. But then there were some ARM arms well, I'm I'm armied up now, I'm saying arms room. Yeah. Some armorers that went to jail over that too.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Oh, yeah, they knew it had they there's no way they didn't know it was gone.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Well, here's the thing. They were going to the transition from the A2 to the M4. So they were kind of DX and a lot of M M16 A2s. So it was kind of I wouldn't say it was easy, but they slid through the cracks kind of deal. They knew how to budget the paperwork before they went to Quantico. You know what I mean? Oh, of course. That's where all the DX stuff went at the time. I don't know where they go now, but yeah, who knows? Yeah, I'm so far removed from the Marines. Then in the Army Reserve. This was a training unit. We had a bunch of uh m colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors, and a few I was one of the few captains at the time, so I was like a private. Okay, right. It was awesome. I didn't I didn't have any responsibility. I just showed up and did my little analysis and I left, right? You we were observer controllers, right? Right. So, anyways, I was a private, I had to clean the bathrooms, I didn't care. I was a cat now, we had janitors and stuff. We had 30 pistols. That's all we had. All right, and then we had a tiny little arms room with 30 pistols in it. The only thing they were there for is so we could all go do our yearly weapons call. As an officer, you had you could do it on the M4 or a pistol, didn't matter. You had to have an annual weapons qualification. Right. That's all they were there for. No berettas. We had a knucklehead. All right, so we had a force protection officer there every week and you get a sign. You didn't have to stand post, but you cared, you were you drew out a magazine a beretta in a magazine and you walked around armed that day. Right. All right, you were like the uh uh not the officer today we caught the force protection officer, which wasn't really that, but the guy got in his car and leave.

unknown 13:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

A lieutenant colonel and sold that pistol. Now I was there we were there till about Tuesday till we figured out what happened. Drill ended on Sunday. I know that the general was like, no, we're not leaving till we figure this out. And finally the guy raised his hand and said what he did. And they arrested him right there.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

You're gonna get caught. You can't get away with something like that. What an idiot. I know somebody we were all mad too, because we were there, they wouldn't let us leave. You know, I know somebody made it through the state police academy, gets out, gets on patrol, and two weeks later, one of the guys that was in the academy with him sold his on-duty service weapon for crack.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Krakoina. Yeah. There was a recent one in Texas, I think, where a guy he was a cop at a small town police force. All right. He was under investigation by his own police force for selling a police firearm. All right. Oh yeah, I believe it. He sh applied for a federal agent position. Ice. He applied to that. And they were doing local interviews. Right. He shows up to interview in his cop uniform and they arrest him. They use that as a employee to get you know to get him in a safe space to get him arrested. So that's awesome. Anyway, I thought that was Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

That's cool. I hate dirty cops. I don't know if he even know if he is dirty, he's just dumb. So no, he's dirty. Yeah. Selling a if you're if you're selling police weaponry, you're you're you're you're a criminal.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

There's so many ways to make side money now. Yeah. Go do carpentry.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Especially as a cop, though, do security.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Carpentry, wash cars, mow yards. I don't care. We used to mow yards in the Marines. Yeah. Make extra money. You know, we me and my neighbor, he had a ride mower and had a push mower and a weed eater. And we said, hey, let's put it out. We went mowed yards on Saturdays sometimes just to make some extra cash.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

I work part-time in the machine shops under the table. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

I worked as a barbacker in Jacksonville for a while. I hated that. Yeah, well, where? Um I name it. Yeah. Driftwood. Oh. Oh. But dirtwood. What got so old? Well, you didn't get out of there like five in the morning. Oh, yeah. Because you had to get ready, you had to load everything up for the next day. And it was exhausting. You were hardcore, man. They put out a thing. Hey, we want some people working the back, you know, toting the kegs. Yeah. And I said, I'll come do it. It was like six dollars an hour.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

You know, yeah, but back then six bucks an hour was six bucks an hour. That's a lot of cases of beer.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

That was a lot of Milwaukee's best. Yeah, yeah. But I'm saying there's an easy way to make extra money instead of selling yourself. Selling a pistol. You know, that's like 20 years. Yeah. He's done forever. Good. He's gonna be working, you know, at Dollar General after he gets out. So I hope he doesn't get a job anywhere when he's gonna be. Nothing working for nothing against Dollar General workers. I'm just saying he's not gonna get a high-level job at Bell Computer. I bet you he won't be back in law enforcement again. No, he won't do that. So he's done, man. I just don't know what people are thinking. No, neither do I. It's crazy. Any other good stories about the Marines? Uh huh. Yeah, I don't know if we're gonna be able to tell them all. All right, then we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come back with what we're really gonna talk about. All right. All right. Let's take a break, we'll be right back.