All right, folks, so welcome. And this is a online workshop about getting started with a WordPress.org account. And what we'll be doing today is touring the different parts of a profile on WordPress.org. I'm going to also demonstrate how to create an account on WordPress.org. This will be my first time trying to do it as a demo because I have had my account on WordPress.org for a long time. So it'll be interesting to try to create one new live with y'all. And if we have time and folks are interested, I would love to help anyone interested to create their own account. And you can maybe follow along with my demo. That said, I want to set some expectations about what we won't be covering today. We won't be talking about setting up a WordPress site or any support with WordPress site issues. So if you're looking for some help with working on your site, unfortunately, this is not the workshop for you. And it is OK if you don't find this subject matter relevant to you. You are welcome to come and go as you please. All right, so let's get to the meat of our presentation here. So what is an account on WordPress.org and what can you do with it? So when you start using WordPress, you don't necessarily have an account on WordPress.org. When you create an account on WordPress.org, you can do the following things that are listed here on the slide. So you can post on the WordPress support forum. So if you're looking for help with your WordPress site, you can post on the forums there and ask for help from the community. You can also rate and review themes and plugins that you've downloaded and tried out. You could also join the Making WordPress Slack, which is the chat space where contributors like myself and thousands, maybe millions of people join in order to contribute back to the WordPress Slack. I'm sure it's just thousands, probably not millions. And lastly, with your WordPress.org account, you can track your activity and your contributions back to the WordPress open source project. And I will show you those things in depth shortly. So we're going to take a little tour around a WordPress.org profile. So I'm going to share a different window for a few moments. So here is an example of a profile on WordPress.org. And this is the profile of WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. So I feel like he's a good example because he's been around the project for a long time. You'll see as you go on the right hand side of the screen that he's been a member since April 4, 2003. So that's quite a long time before the official founding of WordPress, which was in 2004. So the WordPress.org profile contains the following information. So you can see your photo and your Slack username, which is underneath your name here. It can include a bio. So Matt chose to share his interests. Some people share their WordPress origin story. They share a little bit about what they do with WordPress. You can list your interests. You can list your general and employment information. Now you can also see here it shares your location if you'd like, your website if you'd like to share that as well. And any social media links that you'd like to share underneath there. So the relevant stuff to WordPress here on your profile is going to be your contribution history. So these are these badges here that you see. There you go. At the bottom of the profile or kind of the middle of the profile. So if you contribute to any of the teams that make WordPress, you'll see those badges here. And I think Matt has most of them here, but I think there's plenty more because we have over 20 teams that make WordPress now. So if you contribute to the Polyblast team, which is the translation team, you'll also see your translations listed. So an example here is my colleague, Ben here, who at the bottom here you'll see that he is a translation contributor. And any translations he's done is here in that translation tab at the bottom. So back to Matt's profile here. The activity shows all the activity you do across the WordPress.org network. So for example, Matt is a speaker at events. So his speaker confirmations are listed there. Any comments he makes on any of the making WordPress or make WordPress sites or blogs, you'll see those comments there. You'll see comments from support forums listed on your activity. You'll also see any core and meta track activity. And we'll be talking about that shortly as well. So this also reveals any plugins you've worked on.  So that's a nice way to see everything at a glance here for plugins, as well as any themes that one has worked on. And even as you're going through plugins and themes, you can favorite them. So then you can access those favorites here on your profile if you click on Favorites on the left. And so that's a quick little tour around a profile. But you might be wondering. And switch back to my slides here. You might be wondering where our profiles used. You want to know where is your profile information used within the WordPress network. And so as I mentioned, you can start posting in the support forums. And any posts that you have on the forums is going to be linked back to your profile. So the support forums are where you can ask the community for help with all sorts of WordPress related topics. And having a profile on WordPress.org gives you the ability to post here. So when you navigate the support forums, you'll be prompted to log in when you review and submit support requests. So just to shoot a little link here in the chat, this is the link to the support forum. There are many different areas for help with WordPress, with development, general topics, et cetera. So clicking on the username in these threads. I don't know if you can see this on the screenshot that I have here. But you'll see last post has how many minutes ago or how many days ago. And then underneath is the username. When you click on that username, you'll see this support profile that's on the left here. So it shows the topics that you've participated in or the person has participated in. And then you replies that you've made in the support forums. And similarly, there's the Reviews Forum, where it looks a lot like the support forums. This is where you can rate and review themes and plugins. So that's pretty self-explanatory. You can also access reviews and ratings from an actual plugin page. So that's what we have here next. Plug-in pages like this one. The authors will be attributed. And you'll see the title of the plugin. So here is Hello Dolly. And it says, by Matt Mullenweg.  And you'll also see at the bottom of the page, it shows the list of the contributors and developers. Those links as well will go back to the profile pages. There we go. And another thing that you can do that where your profile information is used. So your contributions to the WordPress open source project are tracked on your profile. So our activity within wordpress.org is tied to our profiles and visible for other stuff follow. So this includes tracking one's contributions to WordPress. And on your profile, these badges as based on your contributions to the open source project. So there are two kinds of badges. One is the contributor badge and one is the team badge. Contributor badges are generally assigned to anyone who has contributed to a particular team. So for example, the core team. So meanwhile, you see the core contributor badge is what I was referring to. That's in the center there. And meanwhile, the team badges, like the core team badge, which is on the right, those are given to those who are active on the team. So each individual team can set its own criteria for who should get each badge. So just quickly, I can just show you at make.wordpress.org is where we list out all the teams. So here, like I mentioned, we have over 20 teams that work on WordPress. I will be doing another workshop in the future about getting started with contributing to WordPress. But you can take a look at these teams at any time and see if there's anywhere that interests you that you'd like to contribute to. Note that there are plenty of teams that don't require any kind of developer chops or coding to contribute. So for example, I started on the community team organizing like meetups and word camps and helping other folks in the community also create events in their own local communities. There's the marketing team. There's right now I'm contributing to the training team doing these workshops, the TV team, which is a lot of the videos. So there's lots of teams that suit all sorts of talents. So if you'd like to take a look and start contributing to WordPress, this is a good place to start. All right, then I forgot about this page. So contributor team posts like you see here. So each each team has its own blog on WordPress.org. So you can when you click on any of the teams on the previous page I showed at make.wordpress.org, you can find each team's blog and see what they're working on. So when you post on a team blog, you'll see your name at the top and the if you click on the name, of course, it brings you back to your profile. And that also so posts like this will get listed on the activity on your profile. Any comments that you make on team blogs will also be on your profile. And yeah, this is an example of that that I want to share with you. Contributions that folks make on the core meta plug-in and themes team. So these are tracked through the system called track, T-R-A-C. So track will reference profiles as well. So here's an example here. I have these arrows pointing to where the you'll you'll find profile links at the top, you know, when I'm logged in, this link will go back to my profile. The author here of this ticket. It doesn't look like that's a link. It just mentions his name and then any mentions of other folks that have worked on on this contribution are on here as well. And another example of a contribution is if you're a speaker at a word camp, the year wordpress.org profile is linked to the speakers page at a word camp. So, you know, when you are accepted as a speaker at a word camp, they ask for your wordpress.org username and your information, including your profile, your profile photo often will get pulled into a word camp site. And I think this is the last one is the the making WordPress Slack, which I've mentioned many times. This is a if you're not familiar with Slack, it is a chat program, which we use. So the WordPress project uses Slack as its main real-time communication platform. This replaced the previous communication platform like IRC, which is Internet Relay Chat, which was used when WordPress first started out. So when compiling a list of things about previous communication methods, it was obvious that like Slack met all those needs. And even though WordPress historically used IRC for real-time communication, and it's actually still exists. And there's like a WordPress support channel within IRC if you're familiar with using that. But Slack communication is used for contributing to the WordPress project. So that's again, code, design, documentation. All the teams have a Slack channel here. And yeah, myself and the training team, we're on the training channel. If you are curious about like our process in creating the content for the community, or if you have any suggestions, the training team's channel is a great place to hang out. And so we're gonna do a little demo. I am, like I said, I've never done this live before. So, and I haven't done this since I actually created my own account many years ago. So let's see, does anyone have any questions on what I've shared so far? I'll just take a moment to check the chat here. It's pretty quiet so far. Yeah, feel free to type in the chat at any time. So to create your own WordPress.org account, feel free to follow along as I'm doing this by the way and ask any questions as it comes up. So if you don't have an account on WordPress.org yet, go to login.wordpress.org slash register and you'll see a screen here that looks like this. So let's actually go to that link now. Oh, actually it's probably gonna show my own account since I'm logged in and I'm doing this for the first time. So let's, I'm gonna create here and share that video. So I'm doing this in a incognito window, which is not logged in to WordPress. All right, so here is the create an account page. So you'll enter your preferred username and enter an email address. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna just make one up and just put it maybe put a string in numbers, maybe today's date. I'm sure that won't exist. And I actually have a test email that I forget what the address is and you find that. I see you in the chat William. Hi, nice to see you. All right, so I'm going to put in my test email and these two checkboxes at the bottom, you are required to read and accept the privacy policy. So remember to click here to review the privacy policy and click to agree, you cannot continue unless this box is checked. And this is optional here at the bottom. There's in a box to subscribe to the WordPress announcements mailing list. Yeah, it's just a few messages a year. So it's a good way to keep up to date on what's happening in WordPress. I'll go ahead and click it, it's my test account. All right, so I created this account and now it asks me to check my email. Let's go check my email. Okay, this is not letting me share my email screen. Let's try that again. Thank you for bearing with me folks. I think this is because it is in that was incognito window. This is what the email looks like that comes from WordPress.org. And then you can click the link inside to validate your account. So I'm actually gonna copy that, go back to this page. All right, so this is the link to confirm my account. I'm going to create a new password. And so you wanna choose a strong password since it's just my test. It's actually a medium password that was easier for me to remember personally, but we recommend that you create a strong password. So continue typing in here until you get something strong. So for example, if like I added a few more characters, it did work. So next, let's see. You could fill in this information here. It's optional, but I'm gonna just go ahead and create an account. And there we go. It kicks us back to WordPress support once we've created an account. And you'll see in the upper right-hand corner, this is where I can access my new profile. And here it is, it's completely empty. This is where you can add all the information that's linked to your profile. So I'm gonna go back to my slide for just a moment. If we could find it. And it asks if we're going to get a link for the recording. Yes, I will be posting the recording on the comments on meetup.com. And so I need to process the video before posting it. So that should be within the day, maybe the next 24 hours or so. What I wanted to share. So like customizing your profile is can come after you've created it. So you can add a profile photo or unique avatar. So this involves creating an account on Gravatar. That's gravatar.com. So Gravatar is intended to aggregate several of your email addresses and profile photos. Actually, we can show you that right now. So this is what Gravatar looks like. And so this is where you can create the avatar and link it to your email addresses. This is where the photo on your profile will be pulled from. So other things you can do. You can add your GitHub username. You can add your bio, your website URL, your location and your WordPress origin story. Other things that you can add are your company and job title, your interests and how you use WordPress. So you can say you use it for personal or business. And then in contributions, you can add any sponsorship that you have. So that would be, so like myself, I'm sponsored by Automatic. And I list them as my sponsor on my WordPress.org profile. Actually, I can show you that really quickly. I think it's better to show examples than just look at this slide. So here's my profile. So you'll see contributions here that Automatic sponsors me and I contribute to the community, TV and training teams. So what else do we have? In the forum profile, which we went over earlier, that's the support forums, that shows a different view, which I think I showed you earlier. And it just shows like the threads that you've created or contributed to. Let's see. We have someone joining a little late. Welcome. So what else do we have here? Yeah, your profile forum profile is what I was referring to. It's worth a quick peek there to edit any additional information that shows on your forum profile. And lastly, from your primary WordPress.org profile, you can configure notifications that search for your name and any other keywords that you would like. So again, I'm gonna switch my share again so I can show you where that setting is. So here, there's this link on the right that says edit notification settings. And there we go. And you can say like, oh, notify me when my name is mentioned. I probably wouldn't just put my first name because there's plenty of other Courtney's in the community. So that's an example. So you can get a notification anytime someone mentions a certain name. Say like, maybe you work on a certain plugin, you can put the name of that plugin in this notification. So I think that's really handy. Or if you are in a particular community, like in a city, I can say Honolulu in here and get a notification anytime someone mentions that. I see a question from William. Can I list that I sponsor people to attend WordCamp conferences in other nations? Or do the conferences organizers have to do that? That is a very good question. I know that, let's see. Let's check my profile again. Edit profile, contribution. I can say I'm sponsored. So I think what you're referring to, William, might be something that the conferences organizers have to do. I don't think that will show on the regular profile that would show on the conferences, excuse me, speaker page. These contributions that are sponsored, this is self-defined here. So it's like you can say I contribute 40 hours a week to the training team and then how that shows on the profile. It's just in text here. Yeah, you're welcome. I'm sorry that wasn't very helpful to get you where you're trying to get. But yeah, definitely through the actual events organizers, they can add that to the speaker profile. And if your company sponsors anyone to contribute to the WordPress project, there is the Five for the Future program, which is where companies sponsor like 5% of their resources back to the open source project. I can pull that up for you too. So here, Five for the Future. And here is a link to that. So you can contribute as an individual or as an organization. This is where you commit to donating 5% of your resources back to the WordPress open source project. So you can read all about that here. And I believe that here, let's see if we can find the listing. So there's some pledges from organizations here. So here are like listed all the companies that contribute or make donations back to the open source project in terms of like their resources, their like their employees or their time. And you can see like folks have their profiles linked here, which it doesn't look like it's a link, but it shows like their profile pictures. So that's where it's helpful to have your gravitar setup if you're being sponsored, because it will show you, I'll just click on this first one here. It shows the contributors here. And it does link to their profiles here. So perfect, that does work. All right, so what do we have next? Oh yeah, something I wanted to mention again, is that we do have a page for you to join the making WordPress Slack. So that is at chat.wordpress.org. Here is the link to that there. So you go there to sign up for an account which you have created your WordPress.org profile. So be sure to read through all the information on this page before you get started. And one of the most important things to note here when you're setting up is that the email address that they associate with your Slack username is it looks like your username at chat.wordpress.org. So even if like you have a Gmail address linked to your profile, when you're setting up Slack it uses this generated email at chat.wordpress.org. And I'm gonna paste that format in the chat so you see what that looks like. So you should make a note of this special email address because that's what you use to log in to Slack. And it will be important if you forget your password. So you'll receive an email at this special address but it will get forwarded to the email associated with your WordPress.org account. So only Slack can email this address so you don't need to worry about spam or having to check a separate email. So after you accept the invitation to join Slack you can change your email if you want but that email address will be public. So if you do change your email in Slack it will show on your profile. And I think that's it for me for content. So if you have an account at wordpress.org I'd love to for you to share a link to that in the chat. And we do have maybe about 20 minutes. So if anyone wants to create their profile live with me I'd be happy to help you with that. I'll give folks a minute. For those of us that joined late, welcome. I do actually already have a short recording to share with you that walks you through setting up a WordPress.org account and setting up in Slack. So this is, I don't know, I think it's maybe five minute long video. And it's also in many different languages. So you can share that with your colleagues if they want to create their own profiles your friends, family, whoever you would like to get involved with wordpress.org. But yeah, I wanted to offer my help with creating profile if anyone here wanted some help there. We'll be all in a minute. Yeah, please share your profile if you have one. So here's mine. The funny thing is, is I actually created an account back in like 2005 and I completely forgot what email address I used and even what the username is. So I had to create this profile in 2016 when I started contributing full time. It's still a mystery. I haven't really like looked into where my profile is cause I know I posted in the forum as a long time ago. But this is my main profile now and you can see all my information, my contributions. And as I mentioned before, all of my activity here which includes comments on make.wordpress.org blogs and forum posts. Yeah, that's all in here. So it's good when I'm like trying to think of a, maybe a ticket or a forum post, not a ticket that I replied to a long time ago and wanted to follow up on. So that activity is useful. And here's William, it's awesome. Yeah, everyone does it a little bit differently. I love how you have all your qualifications here and on your bio, that's great in your experience. Yeah, this is great to see. Thank you for everything you do, William. Origin story, perfect. We'd love to see it. Anyone here in the chat need help creating a profile? I would love to help out. Well, again, if you have your profile on wordpress.org and you joined the making WordPress Slack, I am happy to answer any questions there. Note that Slack is not used as a support forum. So you have to go to the actual support forums there. The Slack is where the community discusses our contributions and our projects. And yeah, if you have any input on how we can make some of the resources better, we would love to hear it speaking of that. We would love your help to help us improve Learn WordPress. So we are collecting some feedback from the community. We'd like to know how you like to learn.  So we wanna know how to make things better for you on Learn WordPress. So here's a link to that survey. It'll take a few minutes. And yeah, we would love to have your input there. So in 2023, we're going to be analyzing the survey and hopefully make some improvements in the coming year to learn WordPress. So we are currently working towards updating the needs analysis for Learn. So this survey is the first phase of the project and will help us continue to grow and improve the materials that the community produces. Linda says it in the chat. I know I signed up for an account on WordPress.org but I'm not sure if I created a profile. You'll need to go through your user names and passwords. Yeah, if you go to, let's see, if you go to the login page, I think if you want to try, just a moment, I'm going to find that link for you. So I think that's farther back in my presentation. Ah, so if you go to login.wordpress.org slash register, if you think you have already have an account, there's a link at the bottom here. And I think you can just type in your email address. You can try the different email addresses that you think you might have signed up with and send a password reset request. So hopefully that will help you out. So thanks for that question. Any other questions from folks? So I think we'll probably wrap a little early. So, oh, Linda, you said to use local and I was wondering if it uses that login information. I believe not. Julie, yes, I will let you unmute. Let's see, does that work? Yeah, can you hear me? Perfect, yes. Thank you. Yeah, I'm not sure if when I use local to create websites, if it's using the wordpress.org sign up. So if I go in there, so what I'm wondering is if I go in there and I try to change the password, then I'm going to have to go into local and change it again. That's what I'm worried about. Is that the same login as what I used to get a profile? It is not. Okay. So the login on your local site or even on your live site that you, maybe you have a self-hosted site somewhere else, that login is different from wordpress.org profile. Okay, but when you use the program local, I think when you first started, I think I had to get a wordpress.org sign in. And then that is different. And then each website, I create a new sign in login information, but I'm wondering if that one.org sign up is the same as what we're using for these profiles. I strongly believe it is different because I also use local creating test websites. I don't recall having to link my wordpress.org profile to it. Oh, okay. Yeah. I will double check that on my own local instance. And I promise to get back to you on that. Awesome, thank you so much. Yeah, you're welcome. Anyone else have any questions? Once again, thanks for learning along with us. As I mentioned, I will be sharing a recording of this workshop later. And you'll find that through the Meetup event. I actually will be doing this workshop again next month for a different time zone. So it'll be like a few hours later than this. And yeah, I'm hoping to iterate on this workshop, make it a little bit more clear. Now that I've done a kind of a live profile creation, I know what to expect. So yeah, thanks for helping me improve this workshop as well. So I think that's it, that's it for me. You will find the recording for this workshop and others over here, wordpress.tv. So that link is in the chat. And you can join more online workshops and watch more video tutorials over at Learn WordPress. And that link is there too. Thank you everyone for joining me. I hope you have a great end to your year and best wishes for the new year. And we will see you another time. Thank you all.


Hey what's up everybody, welcome to tomorrow. This time I wanted to talk about how Boeing has officially changed the name of their CST-100 capsule to the Starliner, and a Soyuz capsule has docked with the International Space Station for a crew replacement. And that's what we're going to be talking about for this, your space pod for September 9th, 2015. So Boeing has finally come up with a cool name for their CST-100 capsule, and they made this announcement at an event where they opened up the old Orbiter Processing Facility number three at Kennedy Space Center for operations, and with this they're going to be doing a lot of the processing and manufacturing there for the CST-100 Dreamliners, and they're already building a structural test article right now. They've built several test articles before in the past, but this one is going to be going through most of the high performance tests, and will be culminating in a 2017 pad abort test. So for that particular one it's not going to be going into space, but it is going to be doing a lot of the final qualification testing to certify them to be able to fly into space. And later on this year in December they're going to complete construction of some remodeling and bringing in a lot of hardware they need to start actually manufacturing the Starliners that will go to space. Also nearby at Launch Complex 41, Boeing is making a lot of progress on constructing a crew access tower for the Dreamliner when it launches on Atlas V rockets in the future. And with this tower it is umbilical, which means that it will be able to swing out of the way and won't interfere with any future United Launch Alliance flights. Something else that's interesting is that since the Starliners capable of sending up four astronauts at a time to the space station, space station mission planners are already making plans for how to increase the expedition crew sizes to seven crew members. And with that they will actually be able to double their research time because of all the daily tasks just having one more person there to help out with that they'll be able to do a lot more research, which is what the station is for right? So that's pretty cool and the same thing can be said for Dragon too. Speaking of the International Space Station, the new Soyuz capsule docked to the space station on Friday. Specifically this is Soyuz TMA-18M and with it it had three new crew members. Although two of them will not be staying for a full six month expedition and will be returning home on September 11th. The reason that two crew members are only staying for a week is because of the year long mission study which is currently in progress. Scott Kelly and Mikhail Korninyenko are currently part of that mission and it got started when they launched on Soyuz TMA-16M which launched in March of 2015. And on that mission they also had Gennady Padalka which launched with them and it was the commander of the International Space Station until recently when it was handed over to Scott Kelly. Oleg Koninyenko, Kamiya Yui and Chell Lindgren also launched on Soyuz TMA-17M on July 22nd of 2015 and they will return on that same Soyuz it's currently scheduled for December 22nd of this year 2015. The new Soyuz, TMA-18M, brings Sergei Volkov and first timers Andreas Mogensen who just so happens to be the first Danish person in space and also Aidan Ambitov who is a cosmonaut from Kazakhstan and those two will return to Earth on Friday with Gennady Padalka on Soyuz TMA-16M. All these crew changes account for and make up for the whole year long mission and how that kind of throws things off with the only three crew members Soyuz capsule and so this explains how everyone's going to be able to make it back home and after this year long mission is over how things will continue with the old six months types of missions so it's very interesting it was all sorted out before with the whole tourist trip of Sara Brightman who was going to visit the space station but since that got cancelled I'm glad that this whole thing came about where these two crew members are only staying for a week and then coming home with the person who launched with Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kononenko so this is all very well and good and just another case that ISS mission planners definitely know what they're doing. Anyway thank you very much for watching this video and let me know what you think about all of this progress with the Starliner and the International Space Station and also recently I've been getting a lot of requests from you guys about different topics to discuss specifically the Skylon space plane which I can definitely do but something I'm a little bit more excited about talking about really soon is a lot of these really cool payload ideas that are floating around for the space launch system. I have a lot of really good PDFs and information about what those ideas are and all this information is publicly available but you do have to do some digging for it so I'm more than happy to do a rundown of a lot of these different ideas so far but also since last week I did a rundown of a lot of the larger class next generation rockets some of you was asked for me to cover the smaller class next generation rockets and there are quite a few of them that I am very excited about. Probably one of the ones that I'm really excited about is not just their small class rockets but their whole company and all the different cool things they're doing and that's ARCA space they have a lot of really cool stuff going on and I can devote a whole video to that so I guess what I'm asking of you guys is what would you what should I take priority with and what do you really want me to talk about next that's what I'm asking about for you guys so please let me know and also if you are willing and able please consider contributing to our Patreon campaign so that we can continue to make space news videos like this again thank you very much for watching my name is Space Mike and hopefully you know a little bit more today than you did yesterday thanks to tomorrow keep moving onwards and upwards everybody and I will see you in the future


Welcome back into the original gangsters podcast. We are coming to you on a zoom edition straight into your living rooms from our living rooms and kitchens and Studies and whatnot. I am your host Scott Bernstein along with my incomparable co-host co-conspirator partner in crime the doctor Jimmy Bucciolato. Hi everyone Ben behind the glass on the wheels of steel are our extraordinary producer and Today we are going to have a very special guest former member former highly decorated member of federal law enforcement turned prolific author True crime aficionado You know, he's he's gonna be our Sherpa through a crazy journey of organized crime bikers drug cartels You know through his career his name is Ignacio Esteban he worked for the ATF in Miami out of Tampa. He was also Customs out of the Miami airport Just yeah, you lived a movie script A lot of our guests and and we want to talk about it but before I turn it over to you and you kind of introduce yourself to the audience I want to let everyone know that I think Ignacio is going to be able to really give in terms of our Podcast we really haven't had a member of federal law enforcement be able to get with us to deep dive the motorcycle groups The biker gangs the one percenters Which we take a lot of pride in in our coverage of we kind of stick to the to the Midwest and South outlaws Agans Mongols a little bit and You know, this is this is gonna be great because Ignacio Lived it and then he's also written about it wrote a great book About taco woman the former outlaws icon. So thank you for joining us Ignacio No, thanks for having me. It's a great honor and privilege to be there and talk to you guys and your audience here I've uh and I retired from ATF last year, you know with 26 years for law enforcement And I never ever thought I would have written 50 books after my retirement and being doing I think over 40 shows already and counting the list keeps on growing and growing and some other cool things Maybe I don't know if you can see that poster behind me or not. Yeah, but my autobiography ATF undercover It's probably my longest book I've written about my my career my case and everything else So I got something that works possibly I'll be sure to let you guys know of a possible deal To make it into a TV pilot that I've already finished a screenplay with a professional writer. So a lot of things going on Let's say a lot of things going on. It's exciting times. But yeah, let me give me a little background about myself or what do you want to do? Yeah, tell the audience how you got in the federal law enforcement and your journey up through the ranks and you'd be able to work on some of the big cases and then You know kind of maybe segue that into how you fell in love with Writing and yeah, for sure. You've been turning out this content at a epic epic rate Yeah, yeah, it's called being retired and having some time to do it For sure. So I may I was thinking maybe I should have called my books at ATF undercover Which is you know based on my life the accidental agent Because I had started I was really gonna go to law school And I was studying my master's I had a background So I thought I still had a background political science and history had to agree up in Tampa And I was studying at FIU which is South Florida Florida National University Miami international relations And I was going to end up going I had applied law school was accepted actually been Michigan and Thomas Cooley, right? Very cold very different and this is what we're talking about mid 90s and I said, well, you know loss was expensive I would have to pay for myself get some loans right and had openings with customs and I'm a very athletic guy I was always good at shooting. I had a scholarship with tennis or a good runner in sports of the Academy wouldn't give me a hard time I was thinking I said, you know, I can do this. I'm athletic and all that and I need Spanish speakers Because in Miami 90% of the flights coming from Latin America. They need custom officials to be able to talk to the people coming in Right, that's the best way to catch the guys are smuggling if you can't communicate with the people Then it's gonna be hard to catch them and I understood obviously my background the different culture because obviously it's not just you say Latin America But each one has their own unique culture. Obviously, you know, Colombians different Venezuelans and Mexicans Cubans Puerto Ricans Etc. So I had a good understanding obviously being myself my my family being My grandparents Spanish came to Cuba and then because of the cast of the revolution came to Miami We're fortunate. I was born in Los Angeles and I was raised in in South Florida So I got picked up I apply for customs and I was there in Miami in Miami at the time give your Background the Cali and Medellin cartels were flourishing still the 90s, right? so a lot of the drugs are still coming in through Florida through the Caribbean and coming on hard and After about six months I joined one of the elite teams at the airport there the contraband enforcement team and we will make some of the Biggest seizures in the country at the time So I wasn't uncommon to to get a load of 800 pounds of cocaine coming in in this big fish like grouper or what have you So you got the block of ice next to the block of kilo So it's that was not uncommon or in the stems of the flowers They're put all the cocaine there also and that's hard to tackle unless you have good intelligence that that is hard to pick up because The X-rays don't pick it up and sometimes the the dogs won't hit on that either So the columbians really takes our time and create them and smuggling of course I'll all change With the rise of the Mexican cartels and everything we push through the border and that would be a big different push there So and I also did some other weird seizures, too Like with guys who are we're swallowing like pills like pellets Jimmy yeah, okay. Yeah, it'll be one like huge pellets and stuff like that full of cocaine or heroin, right? And that's you know Those guys would have like two or three pounds in their stomach coming in from Columbia And these people will be used like peasants and stuff coming in from from there to be brought over here And if you can't pass us stuff, let's say we didn't catch you but you made it and you can't pass it These guys and cartels you're in a cheesy. They're not gonna wait for you three or four days to pass it They're gonna put a bullet in your head got you and take their product, right? So I mean, there's a kind of thing and you know, I'm in my early 20s so I'm seeing a lot of stuff and you're learning quickly how how prolific how much Cocaine was coming in heroin into our country was unbelievable in the 1980s was crazy, but 90s was also pretty pretty crazy also So working with customs. I was saying Scott I've met a lot of people right because you're making so many seizures, you know, not just drugs You're seizing guns if it's going outbound you're seeing a counterfeit currency You're seizing a lot of things and I met a lot of people from either FBI who are coming in for seizures DEA ATF you name it and I say, you know, this is cool Well, I'm doing but I want to take a different level because at the border you have the border authority, right? You just anybody comes in you can seize and search it but as an agent you have developed probable cause You got to make your investigation and you take it to a different level. I Wanted to do that. I want to be an investigator Unfortunately customs at time they didn't want to hire their inspectors their officials to become agents because they didn't want to lose the manpower On the border even though we had rest of the board and everything else and we had more experience of people they didn't want to do it So I was forced to put in for like other agencies like FBI ATF and DEA and ATF was the fastest Which worked out which worked out pretty well because I ended up working in I got picked up to go to Tampa At least I didn't have to go to like let's say Southwood border. I didn't have to go to Alaska I didn't have to go to some crazy city which worked out because I need a template because I went to college up in that area And that's where it started and I started a group where the guys worked a lot undercover and You see is something where you just can't jump into it, right? You have to study it You have to have a mentor. You get yourself hurt people trying to say I can do I can jump into it just tradecraft This tradecraft you you have to you have to watch people because if you don't you're gonna get hurt and There's no way this guy's me they can do it and they make silly mistakes And that's how you end up getting yourself shot killed or what have you and I had guys who are really good I was able to learn from them.  I spoke Spanish my English was broken I spoke with an accent because in Florida you don't want the guys think you're educated Of course, you you want to think you know you came from Cuba and I've been the country for about 10 years, right?  So I dealt with a lot of people and I dealt with repeat violent offenders gang members armed drug dealers international traffickers domestic traffickers armed home invaders Murder for higher cases. I mean you you name it I was able to do or work those kind of cases and because ATF is like smaller than FBI or DA or some other big ones like HSI We got to wear many hats. So I was also the case agent on top of the undercover I did my own property and I did my own work ups. So let's say my days were busy I wear one hat I face doing the UC to say that by the dope in the guns and come back to office I'm just just doing the reports, you know, some guys, you know, they're undercover to get to travel and yes Here's my recordings. Here's the case agent guy. Hey go go go make the transcripts or whatever now I have to do my own transcripts. If I can get pen tolls, I'm gonna get pen registers. I'm going up on this I'm gonna have to do an affidavit for a search warrant. I did it all. So maybe that's why I translate so well my writing Because I suppose I do holes I do my own editing. I do my own book covers. I do everything All the benefits from Translate nicely being able to multi you get if you want to be successful with ATF I mean, our agency is different. You have to be able to be a good multi-tasker and you have to be organized If you're not you're not going to make the big cases you want to do because it's it's small and on top of that Then you can help other people with their cases, right? So you just finish a big day doing that Hey, so and so say I got surveillance. We're gonna see if we can find this guy over here So your days can be extremely long and that's Too full You obviously benefited from your career, but I was talking about in your Authoring I mean coming from people like jimmy and I who really have to Sell a lot of books to see a nice royalty If you do it all yourself and you eliminate the middleman and get rid of the the book Company you're reaping all of the rewards. You know, you're taking 80 percent of the profits. I did I am that's why I did it That's that's one of the reasons that that's part of it about and that's something people can look into I had a family member. We'll get off topic here a little bit But I had a client member she was in publishing for for many many years And they told me the advantages first the backlog you can say about this is enormous Especially during covid it would save us an hour Or they want you to pay to help publish it, right? You know, they want you to pay out of pocket to help publish these books And I think self-publishing with amazon with kindle worked out well because I paid nothing And you're right. I keep almost 80 percent of it which which is not bad But it's not the reason why I did I did because I really enjoyed it But if you are thinking about it anybody's out there writing That's great advice. I think is to look into self-publishing And especially if you're motivated and you want your own book because a lot of these publishers are looking to make a profit And if they feel like they can't make the money they're looking for but if you want to write as a passion I think that's something I think it's it's maybe an avenue to look into We were you uh when you got to tampa and you got into undercover work Well at what point do the do the outlaws Motorcycle club get become on your radar I mean they were always there. I mean obviously I I knew guys who had done the cases with the the warlocks Right that that was a big rivalry between the outlaws and the warlocks. There's been documentaries written about it Uh, of course the famous case there that takaboha ended up being indicted part of the indictment was with bear chaffin Right where he he's a former outlaw that becomes a president of the edgwood chapter for the warlocks and he is living with this guy And he gives you orders to have a probate from for lardell Go kill him while he brings a chapter president to his house and it gives him a 22 caliber pistol, right? And they put a silencer on it and then he's in the garage and he puts two bullets in this guy's head So out there so that that that was a big thing which we were seeing about But then you know atf took down some of the warlocks there and and what I've studied in red because I was something before my time Was taco bowman He seemed like he was different than you know the sunny barger Dot cabasso's I mean these guys came from you know broken homes abuse of alcohol or amabashore He's another perfect example of canada there Very abusive home alcoholic Uh, there were in drugs and everything else. But you know taco bowman He he was product of a catholic school education What what I was reading and studying so, you know, I went to catholic schools also And and it's kind of rare to see someone turn out to be one of the most infamous brutal ruthless 1%ers in biker history, right? So, yeah, I mean Yeah, let's just give the audience just a quick primer You know taco bowman Harry taco bowman was outside of sunny barger Uh, who was was the kind of the og hells angel until he died in this past couple months Um outside of sunny barger taco bowman was the most infamous most notorious most ruthless iconic biker boss of The last 50 years came from the detroit area Uh, and and really took the Outlaws motorcycle Club brand and Expanded it took it international Really emphasized um You know The bottom line is is the club the club the club And and what's best for the club flying that flag and you know, he Took the outlaws to a whole different level to the point where they were on par With the hell's angels. They control, you know, virtually the entire midwest Uh section of the country as the case was was built out of out of Tampa Um and came down. I need I need the prosecutor. I work case 97 came down in 97 Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was too prosper one of the guys I worked a lot with afterwards in a lot of these cases And I remember he should talk to him about it And uh, yeah, he he's end up, uh, he was a fugitive before they did the case on them He was on the run for two years Yeah, he's picked up and I guess I guess what I was reading in his house the family's home in michigan Yeah, well, so he's being hit. He was one of my neighbors He lived right by where he got uh, where he got caught he was being hidden by not just The outlaws around the country but by the mafia, you know, uh in in detroit in chicago They were helping move him around Uh, I've done quite a bit of research on taco. Um I've talked to dozens of of lieutenants and friends and associates. Uh, I got to You could hit the siren ben. I got to uh, I've talked to him very briefly on the phone about 10 years ago I just talked to taco Just he I was one of my sources. It's it's not a secret Because there's it's been documented, but one of my Big sources was a guy named frank the bomb bomb orito Who was the detroit mafias? longtime liaison to The biker world He was very close to taco bowman and uh would speak to taco On the phone when I hooked up with the bomb it was you know 10 10 plus years after taco got Locked up and uh the bomb and the taco would talk on the phone one time I was at the social club and uh, I got to pay my respects. You know, it was like You know two minutes. I didn't it wasn't a lengthy conversation and then I I actually was The the reporter that broke the news of his death Um, oh Yeah, he did that cancer, right?  I think in old 2000 2001 His predecessor big frank wheeler um Was brought down so in the same In the same um Area well a recall but in in that out of that tamper region Oh, yeah No, they they did a lot of big cases because they were big in florida and maybe that's something he goes talk to what I was Reading about he had ambition That went and when 84 when he became national president, uh, he wanted to make florida now lost state It was kind of an open state And that was his ambition to go to florida And uh make it because obviously he's very lucrative with the drugs also And uh, they make a lot of money with the drugs and they did but um, a lot of people think now There could be some issues in florida now I mean we talked a little bit about what the mongols Showing a little bit more presence now in florida. They had an arrest recently I would say about a few weeks ago a few mongols killing, uh, they think it was they thought was an informant And uh, they that made a big headlines in penniless county sheriff's office Which is near tampa in florida So I was surprised because when I remember in case I never saw the mongols ever in florida And I think you talked to you or somebody else. I think maybe there may be some sort of coalition working together with the pagans and the mongols To possibly go after the uh, the outlaws So that could be interesting something interesting to watch out for for a biker war on florida Uh between those three factions that'll be interesting. I did see briefly some pagans A lot of people were retired, right? So you're in florida. They're supposed to be retired, right? So you see maybe some pagans here there, but they're supposed to be retired Um, a lot of outlaws obviously especially in the tampa area Once once a few times I saw a couple hellos angels, but they were retired out there In cases and you know, some of the cases I worked for a lot smaller some of these massive ricketerian cases That were going out there Like I said, I did a lot of guys who were violent and sometimes They they had they were violent with themselves But some of the people we dealt with were violent against innocent people You know repeat violent offenders and stuff gang members Stuff like that So, you know, I talk about a lot that I just don't see the tally mafia And the one percenters were they used to be But what what I do see is a big threat national security and a threat to our country Are the street gangs and the cartels, right? That there I see them becoming the big problem That's where maybe al capone was back in a hundred years ago where the mafia ran chicago, right? They had corruption just like that is what you see the sinaloa and cgng they're doing in mexico with the corruption and taken over and because You know what I was reading the heyday gambino family in the 80s was maybe making half a billion dollars a year, right? According to the mexican government Just a sinaloa cartel alone is making between 12 to 15 billion dollars a year That's the sinaloa That's not talking about the other guys cgng the golf cartel except I mean all these guys are raking huge amounts of money With that kind of money You buy everybody And if you don't buy them you kill them And that's what these guys do best and if you haven't seen those videos See what these guys do to people who don't play ball with these guys I'd like to ask you something about that if I may uh, I I definitely want to give back to the bikers But since you brought up the cartel Yeah, and maybe you're not comfortable Um commenting on this and if not that's okay, but um El chopo recently made a statement that yeah about us customs agents being On the take and that that's a uh a real issue that the cartels have a significant amount of us customs Officials on the take Um, what do you what do you how would you respond to his yeah? Yeah, I want to be surprised because it's on the border And a lot of these guys who aren't there Uh have families there and they see what's happening and uh that you know every country is rollable tour I mean we just had recently Uh the president of hendera x president hendera's hernandez Be extradited to the united states. I don't know if you guys saw that Being a major major major Trafficker of cocaine to the united states Uh, and and he was using the military to protect the loads that came from venezuela Right they're going to go to the united states. So the corruption. I hate to say it.  Hugs for thugs. They call it the tactics going on there and it's not working These guys are getting involved and the violence still there So his tactics he doesn't want to do what flip celeron did right go to war with these guys Well, if you're not going to go war, they're going to take over and pretty much mexico A lot of people are saying it's a failed state already. It's it's gone to a point where uh, it's bad news That's why I always say i'm a big advocate that we need to finish the wall We need to secure a country because it's just trying to get worse. You guys are gonna move up in here So I see them as a bigger threat. Yeah, the one percentage are prom. They do this with among themselves Yeah, they're they're bad. Uh, same with uh, you know, the cost of nostra I mean, it's not what it used to be. I mean, obviously they've been broken down a lot The difference Ignacio, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, finishing that. I'll make my point. Yeah, it's the uh I think I think you just see the level of money if you're involved in a drug game I mean looking gambling is being legalized, right? Your alcohol has been legalized marijuana is getting legalized a lot of this stuff is getting legalized So the big boy is like cocaine heroin If you're gonna be doing that you're either working directly indirectly for these guys because they control the commodity They control it all.  They were in Juarez And they got lit up, right? And I think going with the Mexican Articles I was reading It was a nine millimeter cake the nine millimeter ammunition they were used now Whether they were in the colors was there something else involved in that thing? possibly But look at the different world you're looking at down south As opposed to here and they don't care these guys they there are no rules over there There are no rules and they just do whatever they want but And you can I know Scott you wanted to make a point. I'm sorry to jump in But can you talk about the the vago's situation in Mexico? I admit I I didn't know about that. Um, you talking about from a few years ago the no a few months ago Oh few because I I know there was something with the vago's in Mexico in 2019, but something just recently Oh, I'm gonna say It's in one of my it's in one of my books that the one percenters the violent biker gangs And they like anything I research a lot. I read a lot, right?  I like to find information and I was reading an article in Mexico about it And uh, yeah, I don't know, you know, it's unclear. Obviously, you know, what triggered this But they're on their bikes. Are they wearing their colors? I'm not sure about that But obviously they pissed somebody off And they got lit up And and that and that was it they they opened up on those guys and the three of them were executed done Wow And so we don't know where they targeted by another A one percenter club or was it was just the card? No, these these are not no, no these guys what I was reading were uh, pissed of them for some reason I don't know what happened in the bar And it got ugly and I guess they took it out on them Now it's a drug related A lot of it is sometimes drug related, right? You're you're and you know, this is south so far as that's a different world That's a different world out there and um, those are the how things operate over there Yeah, I mean this is um What um, we would talk about political science as a non-governed space where uh, really that there is no like centralized authority that has that can intervene and and keep keep order or something like that. So it's really a Hobbesian nightmare down there remember Juarez used to be and I still think is one of the most violent cities per capita in the world because remember Chappell Wanted to take over right he want to expand the Sinaloa and he went after the uh In Juarez the cartels over there. So it is blood is is brutal. It is a bad place You know, I almost ended up before I retired. I was going to want to work in mexico, right? And uh because atf has agents out there also, you know after post, you know, fast to fear is You know trying to also trace the weapons and all that but a lopas over there revoked our divan community For agents federal agents.  I decided we time I think I did a good move me and my family for sure But that that's really intriguing. Uh scott, did you know about that recent development with the Yeah, I had heard about it. I didn't I didn't know um a ton of the specifics, but I mean, I think that Exemplifies some of the the point that we're making That and we've talked about this on on previous podcasts and I think we've emphasized it to our audience that You know the level of violence The level of power the reach the the just all all out ruthless approach life is cheap That the cartels are on a whole other planet In a whole other galaxy Then any organized crime groups That are you know domestic In nature, I don't think that's a question But the the one thing I wanted to Unpack a little bit and differentiate And again, I think that that the vago's situation Shows us that You could be the baddest biker club in the world And you go over across the border To mexico and and get into the crosshairs of the cartel It They'll kill that you your they'll burn your clubhouse down come after your mom and your dad um But I think people need to know that people need to understand that Yes, the point that I want to make though in terms of La Cosa know a traditional La Cosa Nostra and the biker clubs at least Right at this moment. Let's say in the last five years Or less even 10 years The mafia really isn't killing anybody anymore The the biker clubs are still killing people and Violence is is a is a regular thing the italians have By design Cut back on violence Come on Even the idea that murder, you know is last resort sometimes There's no resort when it comes to homicide they the whatever organized crime group will just cut you off um but When we're talking about The pagans right now the mongols the outlaws Hells angels vagos banditos People people are still popping up dead. I mean when it comes to what the pagans are doing right now, which is they're Overlord Conan the barbarian rickter who we've talked about on this podcast before Really, and I don't know. I don't know if this is true or not, but it it appears That he studied what taco bowman did 40 years ago with the outlaws and is trying to implement that same type of expansion blueprint with the pagans and it's causing Violence across the country. There's been you know, I I want to say at least four or five murders tied to this expansion in terms of feuding and shooting between pagans and outlaws and health angel affiliates uh in this expansion the last five years, so it I don't think I think it's And then I'm gonna throw it over to you and get your take on this. I think it's easier for the federal government to at this point tell, you know The people that are worried about the italian organized crime Who who are they really hurting right now?  So I mean, I don't even remember back in 2002 In during the bike wars a turf wars, right?  They thought he was a snitch, right? And that's two guys there Well, you get the order to kill these guys, right? Are they going to start putting this together? Like taco bowman was famous for giving a lot of these big orders to kill a lot of people So are they going to start piecing it together also? I mean the mongols themselves Have had a history of uh, you know being infiltrated, right? I mean back.  I mean the audience there. It wasn't just one guy You know billy queen did it back in the 90s. I don't see under and under alone. That's a great book. By the way, great book Yes, yes, I read that one too. So it's jay dobbers book. I thought that one out there too. I read that one no angel too um And 2000 I wasn't it so it's so with three years. I'm not only one not two not three four ATF agents Made patch members, right and they needed girlfriends So they brought in four atf female agents to act as their girlfriends who had eight people inside the organization I mean it happens here and there the warlock case They had a lot of infiltration because what was going on, but it is unbelievable How many people that got in there and and of course if people don't know why this happened The doc of us has got greedy, right? He he was a sureno, right? He was For people that don't know doc was the International or national president of the mongols. I think international at the time Uh, and he was uh, like an eye doctor, which is how we got the nickname doc radio he was a radio and uh At an unceremonious End to to his ring you can say that again You can say that and the problem what he had he got greedy And he pissed off the establishment within the mongols. He he he did not what I was reading when I saw he didn't respect He thought they were a bunch of drunken old guys And he came from the culture of the surenials, right? The the avenue guys who were pretty much ruthless street gang if he was raised in and he won those guys He he brought guys in whenever he rode bikes before But he owned harleys he had pickup trucks, right?  They they got involved with shootings.  It was it was a big thing back then And it led for the federal government To start this initiative to try to seize their patch Which was unprecedented, right? They went after the mongols patch seize the mongols patch And it's in the court system as we speak It's it's back in the judge unfortunate the jury agreed with it But the original judge back then Said that he said why does the government pick and choose this was his what he said Why does the government pick and choose which organized crime which uh group they want to go after and which symbols and others they don't Because I think that the uh teamsters union they chose not to In the same district and but yet they're choosing now to go after the mongols So he's you know, you're going after the copyright Right. Yeah. Yeah You can't work and uh if you are they can seize it So that's where it's at now. It's back and appeal back and forth So that happens be careful other biker groups. They take the mongols.  That seems to me like i'm not convinced that they're gonna they're gonna win that It's in the appell. I mean, it's already been through a couple decisions. I think it's in the it's at the appeals court now Yes, um It's not looking good. You know if if i'm on the side of the mongols here and and I also want to Get Ignacio's take on The soap opera that is kind of in real time Are playing out within the battle for the copyright And and there's actually some potential appeal grounds Because of this soap opera. So you have uh the former Long time. I mean, I think he he was president for over a decade a president of the mongols a little dave santillan Tatiana and uh He was the president when this trial was going on back in in 2018 and he was advising The attorneys on who they should and should not call to the stand Well, now it's come out Almost four years later Yeah, allegedly allegedly that one of the Witnesses that the attorneys were desperate to call was a former atf agent Who If you if you listen to the a tape that was made of A little dave drunk talking to his girlfriend or his wife life, uh, he says that he has been Working with the atf and giving information and that this Yeah, and this this atf agent was about to retire And that he only had the amount of time until this agent retired To kind of figure out what his next move was The the the wife brings the that tape to mongols leadership little dave is ousted from the group um He's still kind of making a case out in the press That this all that videotape was taken out of context um, and that he was never uh an informant, but what's interesting is these The appeal grounds right now some of them are based on the fact that little dave was telling The attorney that he couldn't call witnesses that these attorneys are saying we should have been allowed to call and oh by the way He's admitting that he was working with them the whole time Yeah, no, no, there's there's a lot of issues issues there Yeah, she she I guess they were having a fallout.  So she's upset with him So she records it and puts him on speakerphone, right? And some of the stuff that he's saying is uh, you know, it's unbelievable He's saying it that he is an exit strategy That yeah the case agent same one from operation black rain from all the way back, you know the mid 2000s To now he's retiring and I need to find a way to uh To get out of it and he said you've been working with them and and he's kind of like saying, you know, obviously, yes Um, and and I guess one of the judges another judge one of the court security officers I guess saw him meeting with them at starbucks Before they met so that there there is that's been collaborative some of the stuff that's been going on there So I guess that's part of the appeal is that you know, was he giving strategy defense strategy when he was the national president To guys who's being tried during 2018 But that this is the second one because doc of ausis was one of the first guys to plead guilty, right And you know these racketeering cases You get like look at taco bowman. He got two life sentences or you get you get hammered He got 14 years 14 years and the bureau prisons you're looking up. He's out there anymore. Yeah So A lot of people believe that uh, the doc uh was a cooperator is a cooperator Well, he said that you know, you look at the court documents He said that the mongrel nation in the sun president to say it was a criminal enterprise And the patch was used and he's even helping seize the patch So I would I mean, I don't have any first-hand knowledge because that was my case But just read what's out there and you know, it's very aware to see a national president plead guilty like that Normally, they're the ones that fight to the end, right? When do you see that and especially he's the first one to get on board? Not only that he's the first one to sign all the plea agreements 14 years I it's this is number two for the month. We got a mongrel nation it's interesting to note that uh little dave And his wife are back together now um and she's claiming that She knew that what she was giving to the club was out of context So she's trying to protect him and then the final thing I'll say about it is the agent Took the stand recently at a motion hearing in the appeal uh and claimed That little dave was never his informant right So it's I mean and again being an informant is somebody who's documented, right? Yeah, you have informants And then you have people who are cooperators, right? Who gave you information here and there So, you know, maybe he was there wasn't but you wouldn't have said I mean he said that not being recorded that he needs an extra strategy plan and that he was I would have to say that there was something going on there But Now I don't have any there's no doubt in my mind and frankly I said this to jimmy off air and I get I want to get your take on it If I'm if I'm little dave I'm spending less time doing media interviews and uh trying to uh Work my way back into the good graces of the club by claiming that I was misunderstood or taken out of context I would get I'll be running for the hills I mean, I wouldn't be it seems like it's very dangerous for him to be out in the open trying to massage A situation you know massaging to be done I think especially in that culture that exists And especially with these kind of guys that were brought in I I think you're absolutely right. It's very dangerous situation. He's in and his wife put him in that dangerous situation He did what he thought was best for himself But I think his situation is very grave and you know, they they see you live and die by the sword, right? You know, these guys lives end up only so many ways and there's nothing glamorous about being in an organized crime It's either you're gonna be You know, shot or killed by within or by arrival or you're gonna do some serious fed time And that's that's always gonna end it's gonna end one of those two ways for him And interesting part would be with the patch Let's see what happens if the feds do it end up getting to be able to seize the patch for for the patch And then that might trickle to other You know one percent of groups open a foggy. Oh, yeah 100% 100% they'll go after hell's angels next and and Yeah, I mean it's interesting, but Ignacio, I wonder what you think about From from my research, there are some Outlaw biker club leaders And maybe they're they're they're losing ground right now who who would rather Uh, take the the approach of the uh, Italian Cosa Nostra groups and and start to be less conspicuous I I think there are some biker leaders out there who who would rather and even talking about Going so far as not wearing your colors or not wearing your your patch and and let's keep this more buttoned up And and let's make money and not make headlines And it's kind of interesting because in a lot of ways that very much goes against the traditional ethos of what you think of outlaws Which are hell raisers very much in your face Uh, you know brawling guys counterculture right counterculture movement precisely right, so something barge you're represented Yeah, so can you imagine that that's ironic that you have more of these like boardroom Of biker leaders and uh, what do you what do you what's your take on that? Do you think any of that? I mean that might be a smarter strategy, but i'm not sure how successful They'll be convincing the rank and file to to go that route That's what they should be doing if they're smart. They are but since a lot of these guys You know, maybe they have a drug problem. They have an addiction. There's something common sense not so common I mean, you're pretty much put a bullseye. Hey, look at me. I'm organized crime I'm an international i'm a crime syndicate here But you know what some of these guys this is what they are and this is what they're going to go down And they say you know what you know that they thumb then you know put the middle finger and say I don't care This is what we're going to be all about so I heard I I thought that didn't taco bowman Sometimes wore suits sometimes Yeah, I was about to throw that in there and say that you know taco a man ahead of his time uh knew how to Finesse that situation and walk that that tightrope where He was just as comfortable jumping in a You know into a three-piece suit and cutting cutting his hair and covering up his tattoos and shaving his Beard and going to meet with other organized crime dignitaries in some cases politicians and and dirty members of law enforcement whatever that he had to be Looking in a different way, but then you know a couple weeks later You'd see him and you know He's got his beard again and his hair is a little bit Grown out and he's showing all his tattoos and he's amongst the rank and file and they're and they're eating it up you know he was he he had a uh, this this mystique around him and uh, you know could really um Just mesmerize his uh The members of the outlaws that were around him and I've just heard how uh taco uh just knew how to weave through all of those The the lanes of the of the underworld highway and and and and People described him as a chameleon and and he could adapt to whatever situation Uh, you know made itself available. He he he molded to that situation to the people that he was interacting with Yeah, that's being smart. That's adjusted. Didn't the wells reading the mafia had a hit on him? And he had to go and talk to him and say he had to work this out with these guys Well, Frank Frank the bomb who we referenced earlier Uh was able to smooth over the situation um That was a scenario it happened in the late 80s early 90s where The mafia in detroit and the outlaws were doing a lot of business together And this was when taco was really Surging as a as a leader He had been uh international president at that point for five six years and he was feeling himself and I think uh, he overstepped um He overstepped some boundaries with the italians and he muscled his way into some uh backdoor casinos and frankly Jackie jackaloni who's the reputed boss of the detroit mafia today back then he was a Either soon to be capo or young capo uh didn't really have the gravitas to Step to someone like taco at that point.  I think Some common sense was was spoken into Tony jackaloni's ear by people that said listen, this is more of a situation of your nephew um Budding off a little bit more that you can chew and and giving taco an inch and he took a mile Uh, it wouldn't be wise to to carry out this contract. Let's just yeah Uh, make nice and and frank the bomb was able to to help smooth that over because he was the right hand man of billy jackaloni Jackie's dad and Tony jack's brother. So, um, yes That was a nasty that that was a nasty war for sure They outlawed them off of it nasty that I don't think at that point in time the Detroit mafia would have won I think the vipers would have won. No, I think so too.   Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I was just gonna say You know, we've talked to some guys with the Italians off the record and about that specific situation And uh, you know, I agree with scott and we're we're talking about someone who was directly involved with that situation and and they said yeah, first of all they they thought of anything that that Leadership in terms of the jackalones were were probably in the wrong on that on that dispute with with taco bowman and that also That it wouldn't be smart to go to war with the bikers because of the the numbers game And also the third part back to you know scott talking about how charismatic taco bowman was that there were a lot of Italian Mafia guys who liked taco and made money with him and felt like this is this is a bad decision from about You know 50 different angles to try to put a you lived in the he lived in the same neighborhood with those guys Right. So what most of the rank and file mafia guys liked him and so that was a very short-sighted um Decision by the jackalones too because even within their own organization There was no support for that For going for going through with something like that for a lot of different reasons. So well that that goes back in history repeats itself You know doc Kovacils made a very unpopular decision Trying to go after m a the mix of mafia where you're outgunned. You're gonna lose I think the mafia realized that this is a battle you don't want you don't want to fight with these guys And if you don't then you know they get out But yeah, I saw the name of mud that's this strip club called feral's come up, right up in state new york Yeah, and it's a strip club that's controlled by the italian mafia In buffalo the Tadaro crime family Yeah, his uh, his nephew Big Joe Tadaro Like we should say has never been convicted of any federal crimes Is an alleged organized crime figure Although he was booted out of the union about 25 years ago for organized crime ties, but has never been convicted in court but he is according to the federal government he's the Boss of the buffalo mafia. His dad was the boss before him and his nephew Owns the premier strip club in western new york called feral's And the head of security at feral's for the last 10 15 years Has been john ermine Uh, who they all call tommy. Oh Who according to some court filings in the last 18 months Is the new international president of the outlaws. So you see this What's old is new again? uh This alliance between the mafia and the outlaws Seemed seems to be alive and well in New york right now.  I mean what I find interesting From someone who studies the outlaws The outlaws the the seat of power in the outlaws has always been chicago Detroit Or down in florida It's never been It's never been a buffalo Looks like it's now Everything looks now. Yeah, because when it was chicago he moved to taco bow and moved it to detroit So right because he's from he's a mission guy So I guess and this guy's a buff so I guess it makes sense these guys want to keep it where they're from Keep it local, you know, so that that that makes sense And while I was reading probably we're in the same court documents and everything else That that there's quite a few outlaws that work for ferrules, right? They had like eight or ten outlaws that work at ferrules. So yeah, that that seems like it's uh And and it seems like he's taking a page from taco where he wants to expand in northeast, right? It seems like he wants to take over Going hard in new england Yeah, I saw that outlaws in the last two years Have responded to what the pagans are doing. It's this it's this chess match that's going on Pagans announced this expansion effort. Well, at least they announced it internally They didn't put out a press release, but they announced it in the end of 2017 18 And then around to the 1920 Tommy oh and the outlaws respond They don't go as uh wide as the pagans the pagans are going like as far west as a washington state in oregon, which is thousands of miles You know away from where there had ever been pagan activity. Yeah as far but uh Tommy oh has decided to to focus his outlaws expansion on new england. So yeah a lot of Parts of massachusetts vermont Rhode island new hampshire And he's going to have his playful try to keep florida It seems like it's it's going to be on now for florida everything you're looking at. I've never seen mongols like that in florida So that that that that is something that's you're going to capture attention. So that I do see a battle If you're going to say where you see a nice battle going on I think the bath of florida unless hurricane e and took care of all the clubhouses Well Just kind of into I want to as we as we wrap up here. I want to double back to something you said earlier in our conversation about how you know sometimes incidents that don't immediately result in indictment will spur activity that shortly thereafter Create set set indictment.  I feel like I think for the last year of a two-year Prison sentence possibly two and a half years. He'll be out by the end of 23 um You know putting my Uh, you know my my prediction had on I and based on what you said about the way that these things kind of The order of operation on some of these things I I don't think Conan is just going to walk out of prison and All of a sudden, you know, uh, the clock starts running again I think the clock's been running They're probably building some type of racketeering case That they'll then drop At in his lap Shortly after he gets out of prison and he'll have a whole new set of legal headaches Yeah, of course. I mean he's probably still been running the pagans, right? you know, like some of these guys officially he's he's passed it off to um A guy a big bob, uh, who was kind of an elder statesman Uh out of Virginia But not the he's not someone that's looked at as a long term It's looked at by people as Conan has someone in there keeping the seat warm and when conan gets out. He's going to slip right back into Yeah, a lot a lot of time they say, you know, maybe sunny bar journey. He was locked up in the 80s, right? Uh, you know, some say that he still ran the show, right because you have to go through them Uh on paper you have somebody but then the real decision to kill somebody or not Still has to go through a certain people. Um, you know, you look at the indictment of taco bowman It goes 80s and 90s, right big case. So everything he's done already. It's just being put together people going to cooperate They got they're gonna say this happened here. This happens and then all of a sudden they put together and here we go The next guy goes down. So the pagans are violent. They're doing problems They're gonna start taking down their leadership And let's look how he got violated So he's at a party He leaves the party on his way back home. He's pulled over I mean do the math Yeah someone at that party or someone in that car with Conan tipped off The police who then pulled him over and and catch him with a gun. So there's someone in in his inner circle That's already cooperating. Yeah. Yeah. No, you see that a lot with these guys. It just I mean, uh Uh, the hell's angels have the same situation happened. Sunny barger did time because you know, you probably know that, you know, they say sunny barger In the in the 70s and 60s. He cooperated law enforcer, right with all complete department That's when the reason why he didn't convict of his murder the sergeant testified on his behalf that he was helping giving guns And and explosives to guys who were of a black panther party or the underground weather You know leftist terrorist organizations type things and he cooperated. Well, somebody did him Tate I guess he wrote a book about it and he was informant I guess I guess the hell's angels that these guys wanted to get payback against the outlaws, you know for killing You know one of their guys outside of bar right in Louisville So and they're crossing state lines and he and he was you know, I guess the president of the anchorage chapter was killed And he was a sergeant of arms And he ends up, you know working against and I think that kind of It's sunny barger the irony of all ironies. He wasn't cooperating from now. They turn on him So it happens with the mongols. It happens with the I mean the outlaws had it also So I think it's I wouldn't be surprised the same thing happened with the pagans open with taco bowman, uh his Right hand man, joe black I think his name was wane hicks, but he went by joe black You know joe black flipped and that's one of the reasons taco was brought down. So, right, right They'll they'll do when they're looking there's there's they're saying The guys that end up doing a lot of time They say they wish to would cooperate because you're going to do a lot of your percentage It's not going to be a gather early You're going to end up doing 95 of the time you're going to do it So if you want to get on board early you cooperate and you take down So you don't have to do that all the time because taco bowman. I think what I'm looking probably did the most Any of these guys sunny barger? mom mature Colossals I think 16 17 years before he died and he was dying. He's miserable.  So I don't feel bad for him That's for that's for sure. He he had some He did some he had some look at the indictment and some of the stuff he's done He showed no mercy to a lot of these guys who died bad deaths last thing i'll say and then jimmy jump in here with some final uh words, but I don't know if you know this but I want to tell the audience How taco bowman ended up getting caught in in 99 was The I don't know if it was uh federal or local law enforcement got their hands on A audio recording Uh when taco was on the run talking to his girlfriend and they leaked it to the Another girlfriend or a wife No, there you go and they knew that by Telling one of taco's girls that he was still talking to this other girl when he was on the run Would get the one girl that was upset Get you know dropping a dime on him and that and that's what that's what happened Right and he got him in uh near his family's house, right? Yeah, and sterling sterling heights, uh michael Sterling heights. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, I read the I read about that jimmy grew up Yeah, that's what I was saying. Yeah, my neighbor. Um, yeah, I'd like to ask you, you know, we talked about some of this relationships between Outlaw biker clubs and the and the mexican mafia outlaw biker clubs and the italian mafia but uh Back to the outlaw bikers and the cartels to see what you think We've had a yoan grillo on our show before shameless self-promotion. You can check out our episode with him He's a great reporter down in mexico city and he just wrote a book about the gun trade the arms arms trafficking And and I know this comes up in scott reporting too not just grillo's reporting that some of the Arms trafficking to the cartels. We know almost all those guns are coming from the united states if it I mean, some of them are internal through like corrupt police and military, but a lot of the the guns are coming from the united states uh In your investigations. Did you did you see any of this like? Nexus between outlaw clubs trafficking weapons to the cartels. Did that come up in your investigation? Well with with those guys, you know a lot of those guys they they need their they need the weapons Um, the what what I saw they they wanted weapons for their own stuff what they're doing. Um, you know, I read about some of the stuff But not personally, but you know, I said most of the guns, you know, we're flora, especially flora Florida is, you know gun source not only internally domestically But internationally So it's it's amazing because you can pretty much buy guns. I wrote books about this Um, and and some of the solutions we need, you know with you know international trafficking Uh with domestic trafficking, uh, you know, there are the people who come in and they'll buy guns for other people, right?  You got has no criminal history They'll buy six seven, you know, identical make models of a weapon And you know those guns are going down down range those kind of people need to have minimum mandatory time If you don't do that they get slapped on the wrist and they get nothing at all for that and it keeps on being A cycle that's just one of many things that has to be tightened up Uh for us to combat that because obviously the drugs coming in if we if we want to consume the drugs, right? We wouldn't have all the violence So we also have to work on that side with addiction We have a major problem with addiction in this country and in europe and all because that's what fuels the cartels We don't have this addiction problem Then things are not what word is so so it's a very complicated things that have to be worked on You have to address it in so many ways, but yeah, I mean us is a You know one of the world's biggest manufacturing weapons in the world Makes on and the europeans that used to be you know the glock and the sigs and h and k's they've come over here So, you know glock is made in georgia, you know six hour in the northeast all these great european companies know Because most of the guns are consumed here purchased here, you know, we lower guns, you know, it's i'm a very People don't know atf agents the ones i know a very pro second amendment You know, there's a concept that we want to take people's guns No, we want people to defend themselves, right? We're a frontier nation independent country, right? Guns are important to protect yourselves Because you know, I always say don't I ever expect the police to come and save you you got someone in your house It'll take about 10 or 15 minutes And and it's and if you never use the gun you try to use it then that'll be a bad time to learn I I assume everybody get the consumer weapons permit do the training do the practices But it's it's that I don't see guns being an evil I think they're they're helping is to what's what's going on with the addictions the criminals and what's between The years with people with mass shootings Because we also have a big problem with that also in this country Mental health issues they have to be dealt with and these guys you see it over and I wrote a book about that Some of the worst mass shootings in the united states and how we can stop them I get some solutions what we need to do also with mass shootings. So Interesting stuff. You like what i'm saying let everyone know where they can find your stuff and where they can consume your art and uh This has been a tremendous interview You've done it all you've said it all. I mean really this is uh, this has been great Yeah, I can go out for hours and hours. I mean when you're right about it a lot It's hard to wire so you can talk a lot as you know, it's it's fun to talk about and I really enjoy this Amazon I'm exclusively on amazon you type in my name there. I think you see it Ignacio Esteban like said 50 books and I've been my autobiography atf undercover Organize if you like our conversation here. I done four books on the one percenters The bottom biker gangs who's digit over if you don't know know much about it I'll talk about the big six and I break down some of the big cases that going on there You know, you have the bandito. We haven't talked about the banditos Then we touched a little bit about the voggles, you know, the mongols You got the hell's angels the outlaws the pagans That those are the big section other ones I talked a little bit some silence That was a great case also back in the uh in 2000s what happened atf infiltrate atf pretty much agents have pretty much infiltrated Every one of these crime syndicates one way one way or the other So if you like you like some of that information, I put in that book there I've talked about sonny barger Full throttle right with the hell's angels left sonny barger, which is good taco bellman infamous outlaw biker And daco valsus the fall of mongol nation So if you like that, that's good in talent mafia stuff. I've done that too Street gangs I've talked I've done I did a lot of street gang cases And that's where I see the biggest problem we have in our country the culture that repeats itself The violence repeats itself and if you don't get these kids out of that culture This will not stop It just keeps on getting bigger and worse and that to me is one of the biggest problems we have in our country What i'm seeing and you know the prison gangs are getting bigger too And I took I took a pretty big big about prison gangs that makes them often they control they have they're inside But they control a lot of street gangs which is interesting So if you like all this stuff there's a lot of stuff out there and if you don't like if you like politics There's politics too and if you like travel books I've done that too That is awesome. You are a true renaissance man like uh, Jimmy and myself, uh, you know, that's where that's where we strive to be you've reached it Uh, thank you so much for for joining us Um, jimmy any final words? Yeah, I'll just say yeah, thank you again agnacio and um I look forward to I teach a course on gangs and organized crime in the winter semester So, uh, don't be surprised if you hear from me Maybe we'll figure out a way for you to communicate with some of my students If you're really good, so kind so kind to do that and uh, we appreciate your time and I'll just remind everyone Uh, not only to check out agnacio's books, but please subscribe to our youtube channel Please follow us on social media instagram facebook twitter And uh, please spread the word about the original gangsters podcast and uh, this was a great episode. Thanks Scott for putting this together and thanks agnacio for spending time with us Well, thank you guys. I appreciate it. If you wanted to go down the road to another one on let's handle Chapo wherever else you guys want to go down the path I'll be more happy if street gangs are very interesting. I can let you guys know also If my book ends up being picked up for tv series. I was gonna say thank you We gotta have you on if that happens and I'll let you know you lived you lived a television script So, you know, it's only natural that we could see a character based on you in a tv show Angle give me and I have have waited in those waters and uh It's it's a it's an experience. It's an education and everyone, you know, everyone's just got to you know, pull for each other and Any type of project Like that that gets off the ground and gets made is is good for everyone else that are trying to get projects like that You know made so I know I never thought I never thought I'll be doing this when I was last year in atf head course Stuff for sure and yeah within a year. It's been a heck of a ride. Yeah. Good luck. Good luck. Thank you guys For jimmy and and benny behind the behind the glass. We will see you next week scott bernstein og podcast