1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two

1112: Jay Dobyns | Undercover with the Hells Angels Part Two

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:00:01] Jay Dobyns: I tried to defend myself. I said, I'm not a light switch. I can't turn this on and off. I have to be on all the time. People that treat what I do for a living, like a hobby, end up dead. And then her response was, I understand that, but when you come to this house, you better install a dimmer switch and dial that attitude down. Because if you can't do that, you're not welcome here.

[00:00:27] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks.

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That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start. Or search for us in your Spotify app to get started today. Part two with Jay Dobbins. If you haven't heard part one, definitely go check that out. We're going undercover In the Hell's Angels a fascinating episode so far.

Alright, let's jump back into it with Jay Dobbins.

You mentioned in the book that a small number of outlaw bikers have a lot of influence over the more restrained guys. There's career criminals that do nothing but drugs and crime. They have a lot of influence over the other guys who maybe have functional lives outside the gang, and that drives a lot of the violence and crime.

In my very limited experience with say, hell's Angels in New York City, there's a headquarters there, and if you go to the convenience store or any of the bars nearby, they're in there and you can say like, oh, hell's Angels. Wow. Are you from New York? No, I actually am from California. I just drove here over the past couple weeks.

Wow. How long does that take? Now we do it in five days, but it's exhausting. You're small talking with them about something they did, but you're not like, so did you bring meth with you? Like you don't say anything like that. And they're perfectly friendly. They don't kick you out of the bar or push you off the bar stool.

It's almost confusing.

[00:02:20] Jay Dobyns: Not

[00:02:20] Jordan Harbinger: every

[00:02:21] Jay Dobyns: Hell's Angels patch that I crossed paths with was a murderer or a rapist, or a gun runner or a drug trafficker. There were plenty of 'em that I crossed paths with that. Weren't actively, at least actively involved in criminal activity. When I crossed paths with those people who weren't actively criminal, like I didn't have much interest in 'em, like why?

Unless that guy could open a door to someone who was involved in that, like I didn't have time to waste on those guys. One of the positions they take in their defense is that we're a club, we're not a gang. There's two different definitions. They actually fit both. We're not an international organized crime syndicate.

Well, they do fit the definitions of that. One of their statements is that we're not a criminal organization. We're organization that may have criminals within it, like the police . Uh, there's some accuracy to that too. But if you're part of an organization and your organization is saturated with criminals, then yes, you are part of a criminal organization.

Yeah.

[00:03:26] Jordan Harbinger: If you don't get to

[00:03:27] Jay Dobyns: split the hair on that one.

[00:03:28] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That's where the lawyers come in and they go, we're gonna argue this way. And the the prosecutor says, and we're gonna argue the other way. Although you mentioned in the book something interesting that I'd never heard before, which is often undercover police or law enforcement, they end up sympathizing with the gangs or they even form their own motorcycle clubs like cops having a motorcycle club or gang or something.

What's that all about? What's going on there?

[00:03:53] Jay Dobyns: I think occasionally there is some Stockholm Syndrome that occurs. I was very aware of that. I worked hard to avoid that. I woke up every day and reminded myself of who I was, what team I was playing for, and that if these guys figure out who I am, I'm not long for this Earth.

I reminded myself of that, but . There is maybe a sexy, glamorous element to that lifestyle, to the freedom of it. You walk into a nightclub with a Hell's Angels vest on your back with a Hell's Angels patch man. In that world, you're a celebrity. People are stepping out of your way. The Red Sea part lets you go to the front of the line.

And people are buying you drinks and giving you drugs, and women are throwing themselves at you not because of who you are, not because you're charming or handsome or whatever those other variables might be. It's because of that patch on your back and the notoriety it brings and the reputation of violence and intimidation it holds,

[00:04:55] Jordan Harbinger: right?

So that appeals to a certain type of person who then is maybe willing to defend that, I guess, with their life. It doesn't seem worth it. To me, but I'm also not the target market for that sort of thing.

[00:05:06] Jay Dobyns: If you take somebody who is an unknown, is invisible in society, when they put that vest on, like I said earlier, they become a celebrity.

And the Hell's Angels, unlike any other motorcycle gang, like through their history, have become beyond mythical. They've become part of Americana. They are part of American history of the history of crime and punishment. And so all those events, all those historical events, events like the Altamont Motor Speedway.

Event where they were bodyguarding and protecting the Rolling Stones at this massive concert, 1969, 300,000 people in attendance, and they killed a concert goer like in front of all these people. Like events like that a. I was crossing paths with guys who weren't even born in 1969 who were riding that

[00:06:01] Jordan Harbinger: reputation.

And then you get the Sons of Anarchy and it's clearly about them slash all motorcycle clubs. There were consultants for them on the show to make it look more realistic and people are obsessed with that. That show ended years ago. People still talk about it.

[00:06:13] Jay Dobyns: I watched it. Like, where are they doing next?

Where are the Sons of Anarchy? Where's Jack's Teller going next? And Hollywood and television, not just in the motorcycle gang world, but . When they're depicting the crime world, be it traditional organized crime or whatever, they portray it in a sexy, glamorous, appealing way. The truth is, when you see behind the scenes, it's not sexy, it's not glamorous.

It's a nasty, dirty, bloody, vomit covered scab of a life. That's the truth of it. But when I realized that very early on before the Hells Angels case, just when I like began to like saturate the crime world as an undercover agent. And when I realized it wasn't glamorous, it wasn't sexy, it was nasty and dirty and bloody and dangerous.

And when I realized Hollywood has lied to me, Hollywood has created this illusion for me that is not true. When I realized the truth, I loved it. I loved every day. I felt like I had a purpose. I felt like I stood for something like my job was to get next to bad people who were doing bad things to good people.

When I became an A TF agent, I considered that my highest honor to be asked to stand up and defend innocent people against the predators

[00:07:40] Jordan Harbinger: if you're infiltrating them. Don't they try to do the same thing? I mean, look, they don't have an undercover program, but you know, like their guy's cousin works for the FBI, are they not?

Hey, you gotta tell us if you see anything about our club. They must be Surely they're doing that.

[00:07:56] Jay Dobyns: Absolutely. And they're very good at infiltrating and saturating all these elements of society, including law enforcement to gain intelligence. Knowledge is power, but knowledge is power on both sides. It's power for them too.

The more they know, the more they know.

[00:08:12] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I got a friend who is Canadian and he was working for the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, doing something like processing wiretap transcripts, and then one day his boss was like, Hey, you are on some of our surveillance because your childhood best friend, his dad is a Hell's Angel or whatever.

And you are fired obviously because you are the one who is processing the wiretaps of your friend's dad and his associates planning crimes. We cannot trust you with this information anymore. But had he actually been a bad actor instead of a kid with a summer job, he could've probably just said, Hey, I can't associate with you guys.

They're gonna catch you on surveillance. I know you're on surveillance 'cause I'm reading the transcripts. Here's what they say. Here's what they know, here's what they don't know. Surely they get lucky like that or deliberately put people in those positions.

[00:09:00] Jay Dobyns: I was not a part of this investigation, but as an example of what we're talking about, the Tupac Shakur, biggie Smalls Murders Death Row Records had hired off-duty LAPD officers to be a part of their security team.

Those LAPD officers were previously Bloods gang members, and so. They had insider information and I can't speak to the details of that. I know in this 30,000 foot view, looking down historical perspective of that investigation, I. That was by design.

[00:09:37] Jordan Harbinger: Yikes. That sounds leaky. It's crazy that cops can come from gangs.

It doesn't make a ton of sense. I assume there's a policy about that now, but who knows?

[00:09:45] Jay Dobyns: Well, because a kid like grows up involved in a gang, does that automatically mean he's not gonna be a good policeman? I think it's the other way around. He's probably gonna be a really

[00:09:55] Jordan Harbinger: good street cop 'cause he knows what's going on.

It does.

[00:09:57] Jay Dobyns: But if you hold on to that gang mentality, and if you hold onto that loyalty now as. A lawman or a law woman or a member of our military, you know what? Now your loyalty is divided.

[00:10:10] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's a question of loyalty. That's a tough thing to test. For a lot of my friends from law school who wanted to join the FBI, they couldn't do it because they'd smoked weed in college and I was just thinking, you're gonna try to catch the biggest criminals in the country or terrorists.

But this guy who's a like certified genius is disqualified because he rolled up a bunch of joints freshman year. Who are you going to hire? Who's going to understand the mindset of a criminal when you can't even get a pothead past the screening? I.

[00:10:36] Jay Dobyns: Well, those standards in today's world have been loosened a little bit just because of culture and society.

Sure. Not entirely, but they've been loosened, at least from when I got hired on the job. But like I was one of those guys, I was one of those guys who got hired who didn't understand the street and had to learn it on the fly to be effective.

[00:10:57] Jordan Harbinger: You said it's important to build trust, or at least the illusion of trust.

Tell me about how you do it, but tell me what you mean by illusion as well.

[00:11:05] Jay Dobyns: I think the illusion of trust comes from our street theater examples of showing them and involving our suspects in crime events and creating an illusion that they ultimately believe to be accurate or true. I think we're talking about two different things to some extent, but when you're dealing with an informant with a confidential source of information, they have all different motivations.

They're human beings as well. The first thing is to figure out like, what is this person's motivation? Have they just found like some integrity and they have knowledge of something that they're uncomfortable with and they wanna do something about it? Maybe, are they looking for revenge? Maybe are they looking for a payment, a reward?

Maybe. There's a lot of different variables, but part of assessing how much trust you place in a confidential source. Is identifying what's their motivation

[00:12:01] Jordan Harbinger: to help me? So some motivations are stronger than others, right? If one guy's like, you're gonna go to prison for life, for trafficking and weapons and violent crime, that's a pretty strong motivation to help you.

But if it's just ego validation, eh, they could maybe get that elsewhere, like by betraying you to the gang.

[00:12:17] Jay Dobyns: Someone's trying to work off charges and they're being leveraged into cooperation. That deserves a certain level of confidence or trust and decided individually versus someone who maybe just morally and ethically is opposed to the world that they live in and wants to do something about it, versus the guy who's like, I'm neither one of those people.

I just wanna get paid. I'm gonna help you in return for a paycheck, for a reward. There's so many different motivations that someone might have. That's part of the equation. That's part of the trick, figuring it out.

[00:12:57] Jordan Harbinger: You mentioned riding the motorcycles with these guys is really hard to do. You're not just learning how to ride a motorcycle.

You're going really fast and you can't, you're in this tight formation. Tell me a little bit about that. 'cause there's rules in the formation too, right? You're not just riding on the highway like a normal cycle.

[00:13:12] Jay Dobyns: Like I was in a motorcycle guy and so now you're dealing with people who are motorcycle guys.

Some of these guys have been riding motorcycles since they could walk. They ride 'em in daring ways and they ride fast and they ride hard. You're riding in formation at times, sometimes 20, 30, 40, 50 people deep. Two by two side by side. You could reach over and touch the handle grip of the motorcycle riding by your side.

You're 18 inches behind the wheel in front of you stacked up. All the way down. If you're a master motorcycle rider, you gotta be on your game. But you might be comfortable in that. I wasn't. I was at a point in the investigation when I felt like I had built some trust and some loyalty and some love. I was telling Joe Lael, I was telling my case agent, these guys aren't gonna hurt me.

They're not going to kill me. They're going to protect me. If we get into a problem, you know how I'm gonna die in this case, . Yeah. I'm gonna die on this case, running my motorcycle into a telephone pole, trying to keep up with these dudes.

[00:14:18] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's terrifying. And you're not allowed to pass. There's a couple rules, right?

You're not allowed to pass someone's front wheel. How does that work?

[00:14:24] Jay Dobyns: These guys ride the equivalent of the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds. They ride in Precision and they're very good at it. One of the first times out, I was riding with the Mesa, Arizona charter and they were very good at it. They rode in a very tight pack and I'm at the back of the pack and the president came up to me and said, keep up what he's saying.

Look, if we blow red lights, you better blow the lights. You better lay off the brakes. Don't embarrass me. Don't be that guy who like hits the brake when the light turns red Blow through. I was white knuckling riding with these guys at least. Probably the first half of the investigation, it was a two year investigation.

Towards the end, I felt pretty confident. I felt like my skills maybe not had caught up to these guys, but I was competitive. But getting to that point, I was like, man, I would get through at the end of the night like bar hopping with these guys going from spot to spot, and I would get back to my undercover house and think only by the grace of God was I not killed on that motorcycle tonight.

Wow.

[00:15:31] Jordan Harbinger: Geez, that would be as scar or scarier than dealing with all these people en engaging in undercover work in the first place.

[00:15:38] Jay Dobyns: And anybody that's seen a motorcycle accident in real time firsthand, oh my gosh,

[00:15:44] Jordan Harbinger: they're terrible. It's messy. Yeah, it's messy. It's just a meat cran, even if you have protective gear on, and that's if you don't smash yourself into something

[00:15:54] Jay Dobyns: terrible.

The aftermath of a bad motorcycle accident is something that. Once something has been seen, it can never be unseen. You don't wanna see it.

[00:16:03] Jordan Harbinger: First impressions. You talk about a lot in the book as well, super important, especially for undercover. How do you make a strong first impression, specifically in the criminal underworld?

You mentioned never take your guns off for anyone, or there's things like that, but tell us about this.

[00:16:17] Jay Dobyns: You know what I think very much in the criminal world applies to real world, applies to society when you treat people respectfully. You can expect or demand to be treated back respectfully, and I tried to do that.

I tried to be very human about it. When I shook hands with someone, when I was being introduced to someone, I would take my sunglasses off or lift my sunglasses up so I could look 'em in the eye. If I had riding gloves on, I would take my glove off and shake hands, fist to fist, skin to skin. Those little elements of displaying respect.

And then knowing your place, like I was a nobody man. I was at the bottom of the barrel. I was the last rung on the ladder. So I wasn't in a place where I could like jump up and go sit down and put my arm around some shot collar. They'd be looking at me like, dude, punk, who are you, man? Like, I don't know who you are.

Get the fuck away from me. I was respectful of that. I had to earn the ability to speak to people like that. I suppose you could just show up and do that. I think you would draw suspicion by doing that. Like this dude's trying too hard. I had to try hard without giving the impression that I was trying too hard.

I.

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Alright, back to Jay Dobbins. You mentioned that real cops don't do drugs unless our lives depend on it. What's up with that rule? It seems like it would be really easy to just do a couple lines of blow here and there, like lawyers do it. It's not exactly an advanced kind of thing. Why the prohibition on this?

[00:20:59] Jay Dobyns: Would it make things easier? 100%. Obviously it goes back to early in our conversation about outrageous government conduct. If ultimately my investigation ends and I am a witness in the witness box and I'm telling a jury and a judge what I experienced, that defense attorney is gonna say, you know what? My client that's sitting next to me here is the defendant in this case and that agent.

Did everything just as bad was just as nasty as my client. You can't just nonchalantly violate the law and then expect to not be held accountable for it, and then hide behind a badge or hide behind an undercover persona as your excuse.

[00:21:49] Jordan Harbinger: I suppose. There's also a world in which you say, and then what happened?

Are you sure about that? Because you were high out of your mind on methamphetamine during that entire evening, and we know that because you're talking 120 words per minute on the tapes and we have you on video doing it. That's probably not a good look either.

[00:22:07] Jay Dobyns: If you were doing that, what kind of credibility would you have as a witness?

Yeah.

[00:22:11] Jordan Harbinger: Depends on the crime, but yeah, it's a tougher argument for sure. Your kid calls at one point while you're in a meeting with a gang. How do you deal with something like that? I'm surprised you answered that. I guess maybe you didn't have caller ID on your cell phone at that time, or you're not sure.

It seems like a call you might wanna put to voicemail.

[00:22:27] Jay Dobyns: My kids were born into their father being an undercover agent. That's all they've ever known. We have rules, like at my house, we had our own protocols. It's not like you can never, ever see your kids again. You're out in public. You're interacting. One of the rules I had with my kids was the equivalent of a traffic light.

If I was with my daughter or my son and we were approached by a suspect in a case, like I would tell them, think like a traffic light. If it's red, just stop what you're doing. Hold tight. I will figure this out If it's yellow. We need to be cautious, we need to be on guard. If it's green, we can just go. And so I would tell 'em like, Hey, you know what?

If I'm holding your hand and we cross paths with someone yellow light, that means, hey, we need to be careful now. We need to pay attention. That did happen to me. I was with my daughter at one point and I crossed paths with one of the suspects in our case, the Hell's Angels case. And it was very matter of fact.

Hey, who's this? Uh, that's my daughter. It was part of my cover story. I built my cover story very close to the truth. But I do remember telling her, I see this guy approaching and said, do you remember the traffic light? She's like, daddy, I'm not sure I remember it right now. And I'm like, it's okay. We got a yellow light right now.

Just be cautious. But then after we separated, I told her, if you ever see that guy again. You run as hard and as fast as you can and don't stop. I will come and find you. That's a scary person. As an undercover agent or officer, you still have a real life. You still have families and you have backgrounds, and you have all those things that any normal real person has.

You don't just completely walk away from that. At least I never did. There may be stories of where people completely left their family, completely left that life behind and never touched it. I think Joe Pistone, I think Donny Brasco like at least touched on that to some extent. That's a guy who's on the Mount Rushmore of undercover work.

You know, he's so legendary, but he still overlapped with his family at times too.

[00:24:40] Jordan Harbinger: You said, when you become a Hell's Angel, everything else about you is now moot. They have a rule book that makes the division one football playbook look like a pamphlet on buying a jacuzzi. I'm so curious what kind rules there are.

We mentioned never passing a full patches front wheel or something when you're driving, but what kind of . R. Other rules are there. I know there's rules about girlfriends and wives and things like that. Maybe you can give us some examples of the rules, and especially if they're weird.

[00:25:05] Jay Dobyns: There's pages and pages and pages of typewritten bylaws, things that you can and can't do.

One of the things that like stunned me in today's world, and now granted we're talking about 20 years ago when this investigation was active, but nonetheless, even 20 years ago. Like written in the bylaws were no, fill in the blank with the most offensive, obscene word you can use to describe a black person.

No, fill in the blank. In the club. It was written down. It was in their bylaws. And I remember reading that and I was like, man. I get that there's this racist element to what we're doing, but like you guys wrote it down and made it part of the bylaws, no blank in the club. I was like, okay, like I'm not making these rules.

And that was for me, to a large extent, that was compromising because I wasn't raised that way. That's not the mentality I had, like I was an athlete. Like I had spent my youth and as a young adult in locker rooms and on sports fields with people of all different colors, all different backgrounds. To say that there's a rule written down that like, I cannot associate or be friends with this person now, it was unsettling to me.

[00:26:26] Jordan Harbinger: What are some of the weirdest rules that, that almost don't make any sense until you think about it or until you explain it?

[00:26:32] Jay Dobyns: One, like a writing rule, and I can't say for certain that this was written down, but it definitely was impressed on me, was that as a prospect at writing with other members, I could not let my front wheel cross.

That member's back wheel. It was a violation of that delineation of status within the gang, at least not without being invited. If you're riding behind someone and you're behind a member and you're being respectful and he waves you up, come on. Okay. Now I've been invited up, but I couldn't do that on my own.

I did one time without knowing the rule, and when we stopped for gas, a member came back and said, next time you do that, when I hit you in the mouth, you'll know why.

[00:27:17] Jordan Harbinger: Yikes. Yeah. You're assuming a higher status that you didn't earn if you do something like that.

[00:27:21] Jay Dobyns: There was a time I wore rings on all my fingers and I had a ring that had the Nazi SS lightning bolts on it.

It was a prop. That wasn't my mindset or my mentality. Yeah. I assume it wasn't part of your police uniform. It was a prop and a member of my charter came up and said, you gotta take that ring off. That type of paraphernalia is illegal in Germany. In Germany, you can't display like the SS lightning bolts or a swastika in Germany.

So in support of our German brothers, we no longer have that on our vests. We no longer wear that type of paraphernalia, so you need to get rid of that ring. And I was like, okay. Lesson learned. A week later, some time passes by, and I still hadn't taken that ring off, and the member came up to me and said.

Remember I told you about that ring? I'm gonna tell you one more time to get rid of that ring. I told you why. If I see you again and you're still wearing that ring, I'm gonna take your finger off with a tree pruner and I'm taking the ring off. And I did not doubt that he was being serious.

[00:28:29] Jordan Harbinger: That's how you deal with Nazis.

Anyway, . But yeah, I supposedly, they seemed like they were a little bit more sympathetic to some of the shadier. I

[00:28:36] Jay Dobyns: thought. I was like, Hey man, they're gonna love this. This is the vibe that I'm trying to create. And it was like a violation of, you know, that bylaw, that protocol, that rule. I had to learn a lot on the fly.

It was not the world that I lived in. Every day was trying to like

[00:28:52] Jordan Harbinger: get better

[00:28:53] Jay Dobyns: at

[00:28:53] Jordan Harbinger: it. Yeah, that makes sense. Are there Jewish Hell's Angels, or is it mostly an atheist kind of organization or Christian organization? You

[00:28:59] Jay Dobyns: know what? Like, I'm gonna say yes. I'm gonna assume that there are, I don't know,

[00:29:03] Jordan Harbinger: probably not coming up a lot in the meetings.

Hey, it's Hanukah, I can't ride this week. Your faith

[00:29:09] Jay Dobyns: level might be what you might believe in with the Hell's Angels. The religion, the true religion. The only religion is the religion of the Hell's Angels, that name that death head center patch. They have historically bled and died in defense and fighting for that.

That is their religion. It's more important than their wives or girlfriends. Then their kids, then their jobs, then their house, their income, their, there's nothing more important to those true believers. Then that Hell's Angels name and that death head logo and they are very much willing to die for it.

[00:29:53] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I don't even know if it's the underbelly. It's right on the front, but as much as there's excitement and danger in ca catching these bad guys, it's the really depressing part In the underbelly of this, you mentioned some of the women that hang around and I'm gonna . Paraphrase, but you say they'd been road hard and put away wet, so to speak, and some of them were attractive and other ones looked like a snowy mud flap in March or something like that.

The life hasn't been kind to them. You said there's little kids around who had the same name as your son and this kid wanted to show you his new toy and it was like a used tire and you just think, damn, this kid's life around all these degenerates just sucks.

[00:30:30] Jay Dobyns: I found that there's every element of society is also within that gang.

There was affluence. There's people that were wealthy, that had money, that had good jobs, that had nice houses, that had nice cars, all the way down to, I had a neighbor that was a Hell's Angel that lived near my undercover house that was living in the equivalent of a homemade tent with dirt floors. He would come to my undercover house and his wife, and they would bring their daughter, who was a little girl, probably six or seven, eight years old at the time.

They'd come to my house specifically like once every couple weeks, so they could take a shower. They'd knock on the door like, Hey bird, can we come in and use your shower? Ben, it was so sad. They were dirty. They didn't have any accommodations and. I'm like, man, of course. What am I gonna do? Say, no, you can't come in my house to take a shower.

[00:31:28] Jordan Harbinger: I'm not gonna let this little girl get cleaned up. It's so depressing that anybody lives like that, especially children. That's

[00:31:35] Jay Dobyns: gotta be tough to see. This was a very well respected Hell's Angel in Arizona, like an old school. Hell's Angel and man, he was struggling to survive. Is he not making money from doing what they do?

Trafficking things and people and guns and drugs. Apparently not, or whatever he was making definitely wasn't going to improving their, their living conditions. I'll tell you that.

[00:31:58] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You mentioned, you said something along the lines of an undercover constantly trades his ethics for the greater good of the case.

And I think the example was you wanted to arrest all these degenerates who were doing drugs around their kids and they weren't feeding their kids. But if I don't arrest them, I can maybe arrest the people who are running these guys in charge of these guys, or arrest all of them or more of them. What other kind of trade-offs do you have to make in this line of work?

[00:32:23] Jay Dobyns: You know what? It's a constant challenge. I'll give you a story unrelated to the Hell's Angels. Let me back up a little bit. The way that that question was characterized, it made it sound like every Hell's Angel and every family and every kid was being abused. That was not the case. I saw families being treated respectfully and women being treated respectfully.

I saw some being treated very much disrespectfully. Typically the, the women that were being disrespected volunteered themselves into that. They were more than willing to be participants in whatever it was that was going on. There was others that were treated with huge dignity and huge respect. And I don't wanna put 'em all from my experience into one lump, but I'll tell you a case from outside the Hells Angels case.

I had bought some bombs from some suspects, and so I meet him at a hotel room. And I go in and mom and dad are the ones selling the bombs, and there's a little girl that's probably five years old, sitting right there on the floor of this hotel, terribly dirty floor. She had like one of those onesie pajamas on that's got like the bottoms and the tops all in one piece with the zipper in front, filthy watching cartoons.

I do this bomb deal with mom and dad and I leave with my bombs. And this little girl was like, obviously not a participant in it, but there was no effort made to remove her from the presence of this explosive transaction. I'm walking back to my car, I've got these bombs and an ice cream truck is coming down the street and I put my bombs in the trunk of my car and I told my partner like, Hey man, hold on a second.

We gotta do something kind here. So I bought an ice cream cone. I went back to the hotel room and the door was slightly ajar and I pushed the door open. Mom and dad likely automatically think I'm coming back to rip 'em back off for my payment for the bombs. Pistols come up like instantly on me and I'm like, man, time out easy, man.

I got an ice cream cone for your kid. I just wanted to bring a little bit of kindness, a little bit of happiness. Like into that kid's life. If it was only for the five minutes it took to eat that ice cream cone, I wanted that kid to be treated like a kid for a minute instead of being present and in essence a victim as part of an explosives transaction.

[00:34:44] Jordan Harbinger: That is horrifying, especially as a parent, you had to just be like, man, that kid was dealt a crappy hand to cards to have those parents.

[00:34:53] Jay Dobyns: When you witness something like that. It's not hard to try to imagine what are this kid's chances? Could this kid end up going to medical school and being a brilliant surgeon?

Maybe the intelligence could maybe be there, but like how can that ever happen? How does this kid ever have a chance to escape this?

[00:35:15] Jordan Harbinger: The best case scenario is they get taken away from the parents when they go to prison or die or something, and they end up in a better home. Even if they are a certified genius with influences like that, they're just gonna misuse that intelligence and end up in prison or something like that.

[00:35:29] Jay Dobyns: The opportunity, if they were some type of savant, the opportunity to ever put it on display is next to nothing.

[00:35:37] Jordan Harbinger: If you're wearing dirty onesie pajamas with your bomb dealing parents, you're probably not in school. Right? No one's paying attention to your education. It's just what a mess. It's just, oh, that is so sad.

[00:35:48] Jay Dobyns: We made pretty quick work of that case, and Child Protective Services came in and intervened. I can't tell you what the result of that was. I can't tell you if the kid was ultimately like taken into protective custody or separated from mom or dad. That was not. Even my objective, any of these cases, from the Hell's Angels case to the hundreds of other I worked, it was never personal for me.

I never set out to ruin anybody's life. I never set out to like destroy a family. I never said to myself, I'm gonna make sure this guy spends the rest of his life in prison. That was not my job. My job was to infiltrate criminals and crime schemes. And then gather evidence, gather intelligence, bring that back out, report that to a case agent who would then take it to a prosecutor and then present it into a courtroom.

My job wasn't to try to ruin people's lives or make sure that anybody paid the price that justice decided be paid was, it was never personal for me. I had a job to do. I did it the best I could. People don't like it. People don't like undercover work. They don't like the use of deception by the police. I get that no one wants to be betrayed any adult.

By the time you reach adulthood, you've been betrayed at some point. Like a boyfriend or a girlfriend has broken your heart or a friend has left you. Whatever. It sucks. It sucks living through that. It's a terrible feeling. I never got any joy from that. I never danced on anybody's grave and said, ha ha, I got you.

I always like post-arrest when people that I had investigated and when I had the opportunity were like in their lowest moment. I always tried to like display some kindness to 'em because I didn't get any satisfaction from seeing them broken.

[00:37:32] Jordan Harbinger: You know what's better than meth smuggled cross country in the sweaty assless chaps of a criminal biker gang.

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Now for the rest of my conversation with Jay Dobbins, I can't remember who. This was on my show at UK Undercover Drug Stop, and he had said something like, one of his most horrific moments of his job was. There was a guy that he busted for drugs and the guy at the end was like, man, I can't believe it was you.

I really thought you were my friend. And this guy was like a loser, right? He wasn't like a drug kingpin. He was just so hurt because he'd never had a real friend in his whole life, you know? Terrible parents, terrible upbringing. This cop had made friends with him and he said he really just kind of regretted that.

[00:40:38] Jay Dobyns: Jordan, I'll tell you a very similar story. I have a very similar experience during the Hells Angels investigation post arrest. People are in handcuffs now. They're being processed, and one of the suspects, the interviewer tells him, Hey, Jay Bird Davis, the gun runner debt collector hitman is actually Jay Dobbins, an A TF agent.

And the guy says like, I don't believe that. I won't believe it until I hear it come out of his own mouth. So they bring me in and I'm standing there and I've got raid gear on now, and I'm like, I'm not getting any satisfaction from this, but I'm an A TF agent. And he looked at me and he said, I've known you for two years.

And that's the first true thing you've ever said to me. Huh? Wow. I didn't feel good about that.

[00:41:22] Jordan Harbinger: No. Even though these people are criminals and scumbags, like you're still actually making friends with them.

[00:41:28] Jay Dobyns: One thing that the people that dislike me, dislike what I do for a living, probably don't want to hear and don't understand, is that you can never undercover out the human factor.

You don't work undercover and then lose your humanity. There's people that you see redeeming qualities in 'em. You're investigating and you see them commit a crime, and it's heartbreaking because you know they're better than that. You've seen them be better than that. I don't get satisfaction. I didn't get satisfaction outta saying, ha ha, I caught you.

There was times when my heart was broken because I was like, man, you're better than this. You're a better person than this. You can do better.

[00:42:05] Jordan Harbinger: Man. It all goes back to those people's parents too, right? And their childhood. And you just think, man, this guy, there's gotta be moments where you go, this guy would've been a really special, high achiever, but his parents were pieces of crap.

And here we are.

[00:42:19] Jay Dobyns: There were times when I'm working undercover and you're saturating an investigation. Events occur that lead to someone being incarcerated sometimes for a long period of time. There was times when I like literally felt like God had lost my phone number. Is this what God wants you doing?

I had this mentality that I was trying to protect people. Sometimes I convinced myself I was trying to save the world, which I never did, but like I let myself to believe that. But then you see people broken by your action and by your hand, and by your interaction. There was times when I felt like, man, God's lost my phone number, man.

I'm not sure that he, this is what he wants me to be doing.

[00:42:57] Jordan Harbinger: I'll, I'll shift gears a little bit. You mentioned buying bombs from that couple with the kid. How do you know when you're buying a stack of bombs that those things aren't just gonna blow up in the trunk of your car?

[00:43:06] Jay Dobyns: I mean, I think that is where maybe the courage element comes in.

like I had probably gotten to a point where my ability to assess risk was not very good. On a separate occasion, like I bought a lot of bombs over the course of my career.

[00:43:23] Jordan Harbinger: Surely they train you to look at the thing and go, maybe I'll pull the detonator outta this thing before I throw it in the backseat.

[00:43:28] Jay Dobyns: Well, you know, without like that very precise training, that in itself could be very dangerous trying to manipulate a device, right? Without being a bomb tech or without being a hurt locker guy. But there was one explosives deal. I bought bombs, put 'em in the trunk of my car, and I delivered 'em to the bomb squad to process to properly handle, and I come out my trunk of my car holding these bombs.

The bomb squad guys are walking towards me with full bomb squad hurt locker suits on, and you're wearing a pair of Oakley and a jacket. And then they take 'em and put 'em in the containment vessel and they're looking at me like, duke, you know what? You shouldn't be doing this.

[00:44:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I was gonna ask how you deliver those.

Surely there's a special. Vehicle. A room, a place. It's like, no, I just parked in the lot and then grabbed 'em all and walked towards the guys. They're like, whoa. Put those things down.

[00:44:20] Jay Dobyns: Well, it's one thing, you know, if you buy a pipe bomb and it's got a fuse glued in the end of it, you don't know what's inside of there, but, okay.

I bought bombs that were pretty technical, that had timers on 'em, and different switches and wires and stuff, and I'm like, man, it's gonna take someone way smarter than me to figure out how this thing works. This is it. I know this is a bomb. You take it apart 'cause I don't know how.

[00:44:44] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I wanted to, when I was younger I thought it would be fun to be a a bomb tech, but then you think you're disarming bombs.

You forget about the fact that those sometimes blow up while you're snooping around.

[00:44:54] Jay Dobyns: Oh, heaven forbid, God.

[00:44:56] Jordan Harbinger: How do you compartmentalize this stuff and keep it away from your home life? There's a spot in the book where I think you're going home and you're playing with your kids in the pool and running the barbecue and talking to your parents and like the next day.

You're hanging out with these murderer guys who are shoveling meth into their noses and they're talking about killing people. How do you keep that toxic sludge of the criminal life out of your family life because it's still in your brain when you go home? How do you wash that off in the shower and just go play Legos?

[00:45:26] Jay Dobyns: That's a good question. It's a fair question. Um, prior to our interview, we had the conversation. I said, there's nothing that's off limit. You can ask me anything you wanna ask. So I agree that that is a fair question. If I don't answer you honestly and transparently, then nothing I've said previous has any credibility to that question.

I failed and I failed miserably. Uh, I put a huge amount of battle damage on my family. I was selfish. I served my own motivations, my own goals. I made decisions for myself, not many times considered how they were gonna impact my wife or my kids. There's one example. I'd been gone for an extended period of time.

I came home and my wife cut me off and she said, you can't be gone and walk in this and talk to me. And the kids like, we're gangsters. We're street people. I tried to defend myself. I said, I'm not a light switch. I can't turn this on and off. I have to be on all the time. People that treat what I do for a living, like a hobby, end up dead.

And then her response was, I understand that, but when you come to this house, you better install a dimmer switch and dial that attitude down. 'cause if you can't do that, you're not welcome here. Don't come home. I had worked undercover for so long. That persona stopped being what I did, and it became who I was.

That's probably my ultimate regret. To answer your question, I was a failure at insulating my wife and my kids from that undercover life. I crashed bad. That's a humiliating statement to make about yourself, your audience out there, like, I don't know who's gonna listen to this, but it's a truthful statement, and if I'm not truthful.

Then, like I said, everything else I say doesn't have any credibility either.

[00:47:14] Jordan Harbinger: I think it's important. I think a lot of people are gonna really appreciate your honesty here. 'cause it would be really easy to say, oh, you know what? I just come home, I take a shower and I remember I've got a wife and kids, and then I flip on Netflix and it's like, well, that's a bunch of bs.

And there's definitely undercover law enforcement listening right now who are thinking, oh, I'm really almost glad to hear this because it means that . I'm not the only one who's screwing up my home life or maybe dancing a little bit too close with the devil.

[00:47:41] Jay Dobyns: My son was, uh, I don't know, he was probably eight or 10 years old at the time.

I would come home from these operations and I would do the bare minimum I had to do to keep my family functioning. I'd pay the bills, mow the grass, pat the kids on the head, have a cup of coffee with my wife. I didn't want to be at home. I didn't want to be with my family. I wanted to be out smoking and joking with gangsters 'cause I felt like I was changing the world.

And so every time I'd leave, my son would run out in the yard and say, I don't go yet. And he'd give me a rock. He'd put a little stone out of the yard. For years, I'd collected these stones and I kept one in my back pocket all the time. I had 'em in my undercover car, my under the saddlebags, my motorcycle, my undercover house.

I was handing them out to my task force partners saying like, I don't know what kind of blessing. Jackie's putting on these rocks, but we're thriving and surviving amidst all this murder and violence. Like these good luck charms are special. So one of the last operations, same routine, I'm getting ready to leave.

Jackie goes through the same routine, God don't leave yet, and he brings me this rock and he's like, I've been saving this one for you. It's special. It's shaped like a heart and hearts mean love. And so I'm a 40-year-old father. I'm trying to comfort my son. And I said, you know what? All those things that I haven't been doing, I'm almost done.

Like we're gonna play catch and we're gonna ride bikes and we're gonna wrestle and go to the movies and swim, and I'm almost done. And it's all because of your rocks. It's all because of these good luck charms. These things work so good. I've been handing 'em out to all my partners and my little boys in the driveway and he starts crying and tears are coming down his cheeks.

And he said, dad, those weren't for good luck and you shouldn't have given them to anybody else. They were just for you. And my, my brain stopped for years. I thought he'd been giving me good luck charms. And he is like, that was for you to put in your pocket and every time someone's gonna hurt you, you could put your hand in there and touch that rock.

And that's like me being there to help you fight back against him. That's what I had done to my family in exchange for trying to be Donny Brasco, part two and some superhero. I completely failed my family, and so I'm ashamed of that. I'm humiliated by that. That's, wow.

[00:49:54] Jordan Harbinger: Even I need to regain a little bit of my composure.

Hearing that. 'cause I, of course, I'm imagining my own kids who are young right now as well.

[00:50:03] Jay Dobyns: When I would leave, that's what he was thinking. That's what was in my boys' mind. I. Like, I never thought about that. I just wanted to go work and go change the world and go be amazing and put my dent in the universe.

I never thought that this little boy was worried that his dad was gonna get hurt and he wasn't gonna be there to help him or do anything about it.

[00:50:22] Jordan Harbinger: Never thought. Yeah. It must have been a, a real sobering realization that your son realized your life was in danger. You probably assumed he didn't really get it, but he did.

[00:50:32] Jay Dobyns: I will say this, of all these stories we told, the best thing that has come to me is like I've become more spiritual and God didn't lose my phone number. I'll say this in relation to that last story. I've made a million mistakes in my life. I've done a million things wrong that I regret that I'm ashamed of, but between God and my wife and my kids, they've given me 1,000,001 second chances to try to recover from it.

That's truly been my blessing,

[00:50:57] Jordan Harbinger: man. I have so many more notes, but I kind of want to, that was such a perfect place. I think to put this down, I would love to have you back on. You're

[00:51:04] Jay Dobyns: doing a really great job. A lot of the questions you asked have been asked and answered, but the way you ask 'em, you ask questions in a way that allow me or your guests to maybe go beyond that standard answer.

So I, I thought you did a great job. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you.

[00:51:21] Jordan Harbinger: I would love to have you back on. We barely talked about the actual Hell's Angels undercover operation. I have a ton of notes. I would love to have you back on at some point at this time.

[00:51:28] Jay Dobyns: Any, any time. It's been an honor to speak to you and to communicate with your audience.

Thank you.

[00:51:33] Jordan Harbinger: Thank you. You are about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with former Mafia Underboss Sammy The Bull Gravano.

[00:51:41] JHS Clip: My mother and father bought me a bike. They were broke. It was a Schwinn. I had to take care of it. Fucking first day out, somebody stole it. My friends come running to me, Sammy the bike.

Your bike is down the block in a fruit vegetable store. I go running down there. The bar is right across the street where the wise guys hung out. So I grabbed the bike. These kids were older than me, bigger than me. And I started fighting. I was fighting the two of them. I was crying. I was getting beat up a little bit, but I was fighting like a bastard.

One of them guys from the cross the street walked over, Hey, come here. Who, what's your name? Sammy? Another guy from across the street yelled him, what's going on? He said, nothing. This kid, Sam, you see him? He was fighting these fucking kids. You see? The way he was fighting, he's like a little fucking bull. A friend of mine, Tommy Sparrow, his uncle, shorty Sparrow, he wanted to see me.

He made an appointment. I wanted to see him, buddy. He was good. He said, listen, Sammy, you gotta hook up. You're a tough kid. You're in fights. You know what's gonna happen someday. You're gonna hit the wrong guy. They're gonna find you in the truck. Whatever I ask you to do. I've done and I will do it with you.

And I know exactly what he was talking about and I shook his hand. At 23. I was an associate in the Colombo family. I think a piece of me died on every one of those runners. It's a scar in my body. I feel it when I talk about it in my podcast. Maybe I'm getting old. I actually become emotional. I'm not a person that normally cries, but it brings me close.

[00:53:14] Jordan Harbinger: To hear more about how Sammy rose in the ranks to become one of the most notorious gangsters of all time. Check out episode 5 87 and 5 88 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Wow. This undercover stuff never ceases to amaze me. I, I, I wonder if I have done something like this when I was younger. I definitely do not have the stones for it.

Now, once you have kids, man, you just can't be doing this stuff. Although he did it with kids. I don't know. He's definitely built different, I'll tell you that. There's definitely a follow-up show happening. I've got him on the books for a round two. There's much more in my notes about biker gangs and the Hell's Angels undercover operation and the other operations that he was on.

More undercover, A TF agents going into biker gangs with Ken Cro. If you haven't heard that episode yet, that's episode 6 7 3. That was one of, and still is one of our most popular episodes of the show and it's one of the ones that you listeners are constantly surfacing to me. Episode 6, 7, 3. Ken Croak similar to this one.

A lot of good stories. Ken's just a great speaker as well, so definitely check that episode out. If you haven't done so yet, all things Jay Dobbins will be in the show notes on the website, advertisers deals, discount codes, and ways to support this show. All at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who make the show possible.

Our newsletter, it's called Wee Bit Wiser. It's out every Wednesday. It's a two minute read. The idea is to give you something specific and practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships, and if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out.

Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Six minute networking over@sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. This show has created an association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi.

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Distance yourself from that person. No. Share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.