Interview With Former Mongols Leader "Mooch"

foreign [Music] welcome back to the original gangsters podcast I'm Jimmy buccillato I'm Scott Bernstein here with my partner in crime and co-conspirator Scott Burns hey now uh Ben is in the house and uh we just want to thank everyone for watching us and listening to us and remind people to please follow us on social media uh Twitter Facebook Instagram and please subscribe to us we're on Spotify Apple podcast Google podcast YouTube channel every time you follow us like us comment and help spread the word and so we we really appreciate that and uh we're super excited today we have a really special guest I think our audience is really going to dig this um we have Justin in the house AKA mooch and uh from the Mondays with mooch show some of our audience May recognize um him from his his uh YouTube channel and hopefully they follow that and watch that how are you mooch I'm doing great man thank you guys so much for having me on I've been a fan of the podcast for a little bit so I'm excited to get on thank you yeah we really appreciate your time I think I think just to let the audience know that and we're hoping that this is kind of a tip off a a new era of of OG pod where we're giving you more uh biker content and and mooch was a member of the the vagos and the Mongols and he's going to give us some insight uh into that world and we know that you guys love it and we like bringing it to you we haven't brought it brought as much content as we do with the other stuff but you know I'm I'm making a commitment to uh be giving giving the audience more consistent uh biker content because there's a lot going on right now uh in in the world of of uh of bikers and um I think this is a great segue into bringing Justin on and and having him give us kind of the give us the rundown man because we're uh we're we're still kind of novices I mean we're reporters but we've never been in the [ __ ] like you were right yeah yeah we appreciate and um you know we we um we know our audience enjoy episodes on on Outlaw Biker so we're happy to do that but I agree with Scott I mean Scott's reporter I'm a criminologist um neither one of us I mean I I I you know I don't ride we're not members of clubs and I know sometimes in the comments section people beat us up about that and call us out about that but we find the subculture fascinating we find it important it's iconic we think it's interesting to talk out talk about we don't we don't need to disrespect people or offend people you know that are part of that world uh we just think it's interesting to to discuss so we appreciate it I just love the politics of it I mean forget about whether or not you ride or not forget about the blood and guts like I just love you know analyzing and understanding the politics of groups like this so yeah from a sociological perspective I think pretty interesting so um but anyhow much I mean your life is is fascinating we're going to go into we want to talk about your journey you start off as is this punk rock or hardcore kid hopefully we can get into that a little bit uh um you get into some juvenile delinquency if I may say I think I'm a troublemaker and then uh but your your uh um you know an Enthusiast for motorcycles you you get involved in that subculture to the extent that you actually become a member of a really prominent one percenter clubs and then uh we get to the point now where you are actually a counselor an influencer an author a motivational speaker so just just you really full packed life here um let's start from the beginning I mean let's let's start like um you know like maybe the punk rock stuff before you get attracted to the one percent life yeah man I think um you know the cool thing with with working on this book that I'm doing is I get to kind of relive a lot of stuff from my youth and and remember and really overthink things I guess that that a lot of times I probably forget and you know I was talking to someone the other day about a lot of times when people get involved in games or clubs it's you know they're out there looking for a family or that family connection and and that was never true for me man I've had a really great Italian family very tight-knit like we spend every Sunday together doing dinners and holidays and and so I I think for me I'm an identical twin and I think for me I was really searching for identity really early on uh trying to be different from my brother and kind of coming up with my own my own thing and and so I got into punk rock at a pretty early age I had an aunt um that would take us on the I had my mom was pretty young when she had us so my aunt would keep us on in the Summers and she would play like Madness and the specials and clash and Sex Pistols and Ramones and all this cool stuff for us and so I got into punk rock really early on and and I really started getting influenced by that and I kind of started dressing that way and getting into that culture um and then I started getting into more of like you know Cox bar and some of that oil movement and that stuff and um one day my freshman year high school I was wearing a t-shirt was a dead Kennedy shirt in the back said Nazi punks [ __ ] off and there was a pretty big epidemic at my school at the time of these this Neo-Nazi organization called volts front um and and they were causing a lot of issues and and they pretty much I wouldn't say they beat me up they pushed me around and kind of bullied me and they kept calling me sharp and I didn't know what that was and the internet wasn't a thing back then so I went to the pals bookstore up in Portland and I bought like every book I could about skinheads and a skinhead subculture and I really got immersed in the whole like traditional anti-racist skinhead scene and I spent probably 10 years of my life um doing that and going to concerts and uh fighting with with racists and ended up starting a band and touring the country for about five years and it was really just kind of immersed in that scene for quite a while yeah I mean I'm I'm glad you brought that up just a few weeks ago in my gang's an organized crime class we have a lesson plan on extremist groups and I I always play music before class I played DK's Nazi punks [ __ ] off before class and I don't think my students and they're 18 19 years old like most of them are punk rockers they've never heard anything like that so uh and then I also played a big takeover from Bad Brains so I I'm with you I really enjoyed like the like politicized politically charged punk rock and hardcore from that from that era yeah and I think I mean it was a really violent scene and we were looking back doing probably some things we weren't proud of and some pretty you know uh heinous violent stuff but we were doing it like kind of I know the guys of like social justice right like to us it wasn't necessarily gang on gang like we thought we were essentially we were fighting racism we were fighting these Neo-Nazi skinheads um and going head-to-head with them um so so to us we were doing some Justified Violence right and we thought it was uh we thought we were doing social work early on but doesn't that also kind of color up your eventual membership in in not just outlaw one percent motorcycle groups but specifically vagos and Mongols which kind of not kind of they push back on the notion that bikers are all you know white nationalist uh Neo not you know the vagos and the the Mongols have a lot of diversity in in their ranks for sure and that's really you know once I really got into riding motorcycles I did the similar thing when I went out and read every book there was about motorcycle clubs and all that stuff and he said you guys remember the error with free internet right so you can really deep dive things on the internet so you got to get books and talk to people involved and so I really got into that culture and one of the things that attracted me to the vagos was just that there were a lot of dudes from the punk rock scene a lot of skateboarders um you know they weren't all white guys and the ones that were more kind of like punk rock alternative white guys and so at first that kind of felt like like the home for me um you know I jumped into a head first without knowing a lot about it and was pretty naive and a pretty impulsive kid back then um and after about two years in that club I realized it wasn't a really good fit for me and I ended up moving on to the Mongols and then I spent 15 years in the Mongols but one of the cool things about the Mongols was very similar like you said you know there's obviously are pretty well known for being Hispanic Club but there was even when I joined there's a lot more white guys in it now but even when I joined there was a handful but a lot of them came from uh that anti-racist skinhead scene the punk rock scene like we were talking off air some of those dudes came from suicidal and kind of that crew there was a lot of dudes that I met over the years that came from the anti-racist skin it seemed like the family scans and unity and a lot of these La based skinhead Crews that kind of graduated up and joined the club world too so there was a lot of basic connection there based off what we did before the club yeah I mean that's a it's a I think uh an interesting point that gets lost is because I think that um there is the kind of stereotype that Outlaw Bikers well definitely in the midwest East Coast down south where there's a lot of Outlaws a lot of pagans Hells Angels are kind of peppered in there um and those are the groups that are more nationalistic you got to go out west and into some of the flyover states to kind of be exposed to that so I mean we're going to get into this but like with you know Mongols in the midwest they weren't here until five years ago and you know Justin played a role in that um and I just want to clarify before we jump back in when you join the Mongols you join am I correcting saying that was like the mother club like that was the club that was kind of running the national Mongols I started in Oregon I charted the first chapter in Oregon or pretty much every chapter in the midwest over the couple years I ended up joining the mother chapter Club I think around 2011. so I was in mother chapter for about 10 years but I started out started out in Oregon with some organ chapters and I want to ask her about that too but just I just also want to say for the record again I'm not an expert but I have talked to both Hell's Angels and outlaws off the Record who are not well no no okay yeah yeah I want to be clear I'm not saying that every member of those clubs hate black people or hate Jewish people no I apologize if that's how it came out like I was saying a lot of dudes come from that hardcore and punk rock Scene It was more based off where you live than it was what club so what was the big Club in your area so you know in Sacramento and Northern California there were some big hardcore and punk rocks Crews called obhc most hated and they ended up a couple of them ended up joining the Angels right and these were guys I was friends with before that we just went opposite ways because of who was in our area um Boston and Upstate New York and all that super tied into FSU that FSU click from Hardcore um and so a lot of those dudes ended up joining The Outlaws so there's still a lot of dudes from that that subculture that joined all the major clubs just depending on on geographic region really but I would say to to Scott's point and you correct me if I'm wrong mooch that one of the reasons why the the Mongols Banditos vagos emerged though was to fill a voice there was this sort of uh exclusive uh idea to some especially Hells Angels whereas if if you um were a person of color you could you could have your own biker Club is that was that part of the idea of it emerging or no I don't honestly I think that's more rumor than fact I I think um it was more based on your region so you know Southern California has a lot of Hispanics in it and the Hispanic guys were sticking together um and they were the guys that started the Mongols um were looking at some other clubs first and decided on joining their own but the rumor that they couldn't join because they're Hispanic has proven not to be true and I think when you guys had George Christian he talked about you know there's been other Hispanics in the in the Hell's Angels over the years they've have you know they have other nationalities in their group um so I think that's just like a simple explanation so people buy it pretty quick um you know the Banditos even though I were Texas they have a huge white I mean a lot of those are white guys you know um so I think it's more Geographic in region like where are you from what's the you know what's the bigger demographic in that region and that's you know those are the guys that grow up enjoying money contextually makes sense as I mentioned before I mean Jimmy and I are from the Midwest we're from Detroit and in Detroit you have two major biker groups you got the Outlaws and you got The Highwaymen which is more of a homegrown they're not supernational but right if you look at the uh the the membership indexes all the Hispanics in Detroit that are joining clubs are joining The Highwaymen they're not joining The Outlaws right part of that is The Highwaymen were founded on the southwest side of Detroit even though they were founded by white people Southwest Detroit is where the Hispanic population and that's what goes to my demographic standpoint because I have met a ton of Hispanics and outlaws as well um and it'd be I think it depends on the region like where you grow up because you know all it really takes is one guy from your friend group to join a club and next thing you know you're riding with them you're hanging out and then you start joining so you know if it's a local thing and it's your neighborhood crew and that type of stuff that's generally the guys that stick together and join together yeah that's a great point I appreciate your Insight and clearing that up so let's go back to you know your your history here um you say the vagos that wasn't a good fit for you do you want to expand on that or um you know when I was in the skinhead world we had a pretty uh structured gang that we were in and if our discipline was normally through violence so if you messed up or you made a mistake it wasn't like Club World War to find or you re-prospect or whatever you're getting beat up and so when I when I left that um I really found that that undermined uh Brotherhood you know it was really hard I know there's that old adage that friends can fight and have a beard and shake hands and um but I just didn't see that to be true even though we would still be cool there was always some sort of resentment or underlying issues um and so when I first started hanging out the vagos you know they had said that that boggles weren't allowed to fight each other and put hands on each other and like I said I was more intrigued that I was a bunch of young guys just in a punk rock and it coming from Oregon the biker scene was a lot of older guys listen to classic traditional biker stuff that you would think you know um and when I first started clubs in Oregon I remember kind of sitting in this Clubhouse looking around thinking man if it wasn't for wanting to be in a club I don't have anything in common with any of these guys we don't listen to the same music I wouldn't invite these guys for a barbecue like I liked them but there were more like people are happy to see when you're out and we weren't on that level and the vagos kind of showed me that there was more people that were kind of from my background or at least in a similar interest so so I bought into that um when I say it wasn't really for me there was some leadership issues back then um that I have heard have been uh since been you know sorted out or fixed but it just um there was a leadership stuff there was some stuff with fines that I didn't agree with but honestly what it really came down to is our chapter was having some issues with another chapter and there was a church we were having about our safety and our security and what we were going to do with this meeting with this other chapter and I remember thinking why am I good why am I going to be in a club where we're fighting other clubs and ourselves and it didn't seem like a logical step and and because of that and because I'd already known some Mongols um I was ready to make the move and to be honest with you guys back then the vogels weren't as well known as there now they're on the come up and they were growing but they weren't considered a one percenter Club they were still primarily in Southern California and Southern Oregon um and so the Mongols was almost a step up and I mean that with respect to the vagos but the mom was were a step up at the time they were a bigger Club a more dominant Club so it was almost like starting in a smaller club and then working my way up at the point that you joined the Mongols was uh with Doc already the boss at that point he was I I joined during Doc's big recruitment drive and honestly had I joined after that I probably wouldn't be able to because for a long time we weren't allowed to take members from other major clubs been an agreement with the vagos that we wouldn't take their members um so I kind of came in at the right time for me where it was just really working out doc was really pushing recruiting they were opening up uh similar to what the pagans have been doing over the last few years the Mongols did that early on and they were just really opening up you know small chapters and different states just to kind of establish new areas can you give the the audience maybe at just like a two minute primer on who doc kavazos uh was or is I mean I'll just preface it by saying you know he eventually became one of the most notorious biker bosses in America uh came got busted in the big operation Black Rain and it isn't really in the club anymore and there's a lot of questions about whether or not he cooperated but at one point he cooperates yeah I mean I would never outright call anyone uh an informant or say they cooperate without proof in paperwork and in the discovery is 100. but the point I'm trying to make is that at one point doc was as big as they came in that world so I just kind of want you to tell the audience like who this guy was the first time you met him what you thought of them stuff like that yeah you know I mean I'd only I was only in a club under him for about a year but I will say I mean he was really charismatic guy um he was very likable I mean he had a lot of really strong leadership skills right and regardless of how things played out um I do think he did some good for the club initially you know he kind of at the time when he took over you know the Mongols were uh down to a few you know a few members they were still in that really old school Vibe dudes were doing meth and beating each other up and kind of running people off and um doc really changed that culture and and Doc really started to bring in that new generation of Mongols that I came in under um so he did a lot of positive things and really started help for with growth and stuff like that I say my first impression as I was at a big it was my first big Mongol run and like I said one things I didn't like about the vagus was was um like some fines and stuff and some of the guys the Terry the [ __ ] their National P if he had like jewelry he liked usually he would try and take it or tell you to give it up and I remember so that was my experience with club stuff right so I see Doc going around each t-shirt Booth chapter booths looking at shirts and they would give him a shirt and he would try and pay for it and I remember thinking wow that's cool because that's a polar opposite from what I just saw um so you know he seemed like a brother like that guy that really cared about the members and cared about each other um I didn't know him enough to say much more than that but I I can say although he's single-handedly almost ruined our club by giving away our trademarks and and doing some pretty backhanded stuff um he did bring a lot of guys into this club help us establish a new era and kind of revamp the style of the Mongols can I ask you a back I'm again really interested in just the subculture and understanding the sociology of it um if if you are patched over member of a club and you want to transfer to another you said I mean that the politics of it I mean how well does that go over I mean that obviously you were able to do it and as are there moments where sometimes people don't take that kindly or I mean how does that work it didn't go over well when I did it either um so when I did it I brought um four or five guys with me in Oregon and then a couple guys in Vegas and two in Nevada and eventually I ended up bringing the whole Shasta County BOGO chapter two so I ended up bringing probably close to 20 guys with me when I did it so Not only was it kind of a slap in the face that I'd left and joined another club but then I took a bunch of guys with me um that was the first time in my life where I'd ever been had the FBI show up to my house and tell me there was a contracted hit on my life I never thought that stuff was real I honestly I don't even know how serious I took it then um but that was the first time anything like that's happened is you know they have to they have a duty to protect or to warn you if they know that you're in imminent danger and he showed it to my mom's house and and told us that the vagos had a hit on us so I I can't tell you that's true I'm not going to speak to that but I will say that um that's how it went over you know I mean that's a pretty good sign that it wasn't a smooth transition okay and let's just uh break it down a little bit even more because there's I think there's layers to this because there's the there's the patching over from one either semi-major group or major group to another major group which I guess if you want to make a sports analogy it would be like you know the Chicago Bears trading a quarterback to the New York Giants but there's I think tell me if I'm wrong the more traditional patching over is when smaller clubs that don't have the notoriety or the muscle or whatever are absorbed it would be a way to say it and then the entire Group whatever they're called becomes the Mongols correct yeah that's that's the the common way and like I said um the vagos weren't as big as they were now and they would it wasn't quite that clear-cut but it was a similar where it was going stepping up to a major Club to a bigger club for sure because that's part of and we'll get into this in a second but he referenced the pagans and this expansion that they're um undertaking in the last five six years and some of it is in conjunction at least my report he says it's a conjunction with some of the Mongols and the pagans this expansion is being fueled by uh Conan the Barbarian Richter who's the kind of a head of the snake here going around to smaller lesser known clubs uh at least starting to do that in the east coast and uh um New England and some parts going up towards the Midwest where he's just I know that in in Providence Rhode Island there was a group called the thug Riders and now the thug Riders are just that's the Providence Mongols like the like Derek McGuire who was the president of the thug writers you mean I'm sorry yeah well he was president of the thug writers and then he made an uh agreement with with Conan he traveled from Providence to see Conan in in either New York or New Jersey and they agreed that all of the thug riders that would change I know I think it was just that chapter because there's still a lot of Thug writers okay well just that I'm sorry the pro that one chapter became the Mongols no pagans sorry pagans wow yes pagans right um yeah I mean that that's pretty standard or pretty common and if you look at the history even you know in the 50s and 60s that was really common for the Hell's Angels you know they they're not just grabbing guys off the streets in a new state you're getting people that are already established that already know people that are already kind of running some sort of you know motorcycle club um structure or you know have some inroads there and then you know you see if they're worth it and if they're good guys and how dedicated they are and then you ended up you know either a prospect or patch over however each Club does it but a lot lot of times that's how it works is you're finding another club that was already established and then bringing them into the quote-unquote big leagues yeah it makes sense so uh tell us about you know before you start to expand and go to the Midwest tell us about your life now on the west coast now you're an established Mongol tell us about you know that that part of of your life man the first year was pretty crazy so you know I joined the Mongols I'm still you know just for clarity I joined the motorcycle club because I love motorcycles um and then obviously coming from you know skinhead and gang culture stuff I like the Brotherhood and the aspect with it um but I've never been like an organized crime dude you know there's not a lot of that going on and so I was doing this based off my love for motorcycles and so when we started in Oregon um there wasn't there's a lot of really good clubs in Oregon they're very old they've been there for a long time but they weren't clubs like I said before that really jived with me like clubs that I considered that I would be a good fit for so I decided to start the Mongols there um in the major clubs in Oregon had an agreement with all the other major clubs that there would be no other big clubs in Oregon so they pretty much all banded together to try and keep us out um and within the first couple months of us being there The Oregonian the big newspaper there did a huge story about it pretty much making it look like we were at war with the Gypsy Jokers and these other clubs um it was pretty tense there was it wasn't like we just popped up and got to kick it um things things were pretty hectic um I learned a lot at you know during that era um and then the other hard part was you know we were new to a state so the the cops and the feds were very heavy on us too we had um two informants in our first chapter and at the time you know I was pretty naive honestly I obviously I knew about like undercover cops and stuff but I didn't know about this whole um informant game which is huge now um because these dudes I've always every chapter I've ever had we've had a no math policy and these informants were doing math and we were taking them to rehab and trying to clean them up so I just kept thinking man these guys are more criminal than us so there's no way they're telling on people and so it turned out they were informant so they always had ATL for following us around and then um when that newspaper article came out things were getting pretty heated and I was leaving my my parents live on 150 acres and I was staying out there on their farm and when I was leaving one day there was an all blacked out SUV coming up my driveway and I was in a car or a truck and I followed him off the driveway and followed him for a while trying to see who they were and they drove to the Gypsy Joker Clubhouse so you know you can imagine that I'd assume that this was enemies and this was an issue um and then they left there and they headed south and I followed them for over an hour and what I did is I called some of the other guys from the Eugene chapter and said hey this car will every time I try to get up alongside of him and look in and see who they were they wouldn't let me see them uh I mean they were 100 trying to evade me so I figured maybe if there were some other cars on the road they didn't recognize me they can get a look in so I had a couple other guys meet me on the road and once we got to Eugene someone one of the guys pulled up next to him and they hit their lights and turned out they were ATF agents and undercover uh gang Detective and they busted me for attempted kidnapping a conspiracy with kidnapping so I stayed in jail for uh two or three months on on uh well started out 14 million and then it went down to a 1.4 million dollar bill it's obviously I stayed in there um and I fought that case and I beat it at trial I got found guilty of reckless driving and menacing which were misdemeanors but the because my crime was against law enforcement they were pretty strict on the punishment so I got five years felony gang probation and part of that was non-association with the club so here I had been in the club about eight months and I wasn't allowed to affiliate with them anymore um and since there was informants in the chapter which we didn't know at the time every time I Affiliated I'd get caught and go back to jail for one or two months at a time and I ended up doing about a full year on and off from getting caught by associating going back and forth and that's when I decided to move to San Diego I knew that with a misdemeanor warrant they likely wouldn't extradite me um and then within that first year being a club so I did that and then operation Black Rain hits and you know almost all the Mongols that I knew or came in under or was in chapter with were arrested in Black Rain so that first year was real tumultuous man and there was a lot of up and downs and a really big learning curve that was 2008 just for people to get a timeline here operation black green was one of the d8 atf's uh biggest bus of the last three decades and took down a ton of leadership in the Mongols and it hit no eight yeah I joined I joined in um November of 2007 and then Black Rain was October of 2008. so all of that stuff that happened to me um plus there was an agree when I joined unbinostomy being a white guy from Oregon the club was having a disagreement with another well-known organization so um outside of the motorcycle world so there was a lot going on that first year you know and it said it was a pretty big learning curve pretty quick would you say it's accurate that now that you have you know there's a gap of time in between the thought process that you had in let's say the mid 2000s or late 2000s and then now saying that you know these guys were all drugged out and we were helping them get to rehab so that made me I'm I'm saying what you said that made me think though there's no way they're informants now would you say that if the if this happened to you today you'd have the opposite reaction say these guys are definitely informants yeah definitely man there was a lot of red flags that like to this day I'll say I ignored them but honestly I just didn't recognize them I didn't have that experience with stuff like that all I knew about undercover cops was like what I saw in movies and stuff right like it's not something that the general culture you know deals with um so I was just kind of learning as I go and and these guys were actively pursuing and pushing us to do illegal activity on a regular basis they were trying to get us to steal motorcycles they were trying to instigate issues with the other clubs in the area um and like I said the other clubs didn't want us there but we were doing sit downs and and being fairly cordial our communication was was good and these guys would want to go out and start smacking them around and and they were just trying to instigate a lot of things um and looking back yeah it was pretty obvious for the fact that you know the rest of the guys in the group weren't criminals and these guys were trying to do and get people to do criminal stuff they were like openly saying hey I'm a felon can anyone sell me a firearm and like uh I remember one of them had asked me if uh if he called me over the phone and yes he said like hey for the chapter I have this idea I've got this guy that can change VIN numbers why don't we start stealing bikes switching bins selling bikes and I remember saying dude that's a it sounds like a headache and B it doesn't sound worth it like that we're not going to do that and then when I got my Discovery from the case one which coincidentally was the detective that I supposedly tried to run off the road says yeah I was here with confidence reform at number four and he asked mooch to steal bikes so much said yeah good idea and so it was like there was this back and forth where they were in order to get paid they had a show that there was criminal stuff happening right and I imagine that we were pretty boring to hang out with because you know outside of you know partying and going out in bars and being stupid out of bars I'm sure Frat Boys were doing more criminal stuff than us so I think it got frustrating to them to a point that they really started pushing stuff pretty heavy I think the general public doesn't really have an understanding of the informant game everybody like what mooch is saying like they think of a movie or a television show where somebody gets on a witness stand and points a finger when in reality 90 of the informants are what they call dry snitches where you're just given information in exchange either for leniency or actual you know cash transactions and you're never gonna have to get up on a witness stand yep yeah neither one of these ever had to take a witness stand too many you know a lot of people involved to plea Bargains or some of it was just information right we were new clubs so they were they were feeding information to the gang cops about how many members we had and how often we did church and you know just the simple information but they were they were giving up all this information getting paid four thousand dollars a month to do it um and but I think what the public doesn't understand is that it's a lot of these informants that are instigating the criminal activity that's the frustrating part you know because then then you know they get lost entrapment yeah for sure and you know one of these informants was still around right after Black Rain and then um kind of got outed right after that but during a time where the Mongols weren't allowed to wear their Patches he was making Mongol shirts and giving them to these like tweaked out dudes in his town so that when they got caught they'd say Mongols were busted with meth or this and that so it was you know it was making everyone look bad but they weren't real Mongols and they weren't anything a part of the affiliation and it's it's this uh you know smear campaign and it's you know done by law enforcement in the media and everybody else but it's organized and it's structured and it's by these guys that are getting paid to do this for a living yeah and I think to you guys you know have more knowledge about this than I do but maybe something else that people if they're just getting this knowledge from TV shows or movies when we're talking about informants these aren't undercover cops these aren't guys that went to the police academy or these are criminals that are hedging their bets that agreed to as part of their their deal agreed to to infiltrate uh no uh uh these are active criminals that are trying to like watch their backs by cooperating with the people that are trying to investigate them in some cases getting paid millions of dollars um and then in the in the court documents very rarely does it ever say you know Jim Smith was the cooperator it will say CI yes ci3 or ci4 or whatever the only reason I know who it is obviously like I said I spend time with these guys which makes it pretty obvious but yeah that's exactly what happened and you know the second one I'm not really sure how he got into being an informant but I know the first one was caught doing stealing bikes doing illegal stuff and so for a lenient sentence he decided to start cooperating and he both of them joined the Mongols with the full intent of being informants they weren't like Mongols that got caught doing legal stuff they specifically joined to inform on us I do think speaks volumes to the fact that we weren't doing illegal activity considering we had two informants with us for several years um and we only had one guy got busted and very unfortunate this guy had done 15 years got out was getting clean prospected joined the Mongols and this informant kept asking to borrow money borrow money so we loaned him some money in the informant said man I'm not comfortable just borrowing money without some collateral why don't you hold on to this pistol for me and he got fell in possession of firearms selling a firearm and since he did so much time he did 15 more years after that I mean it's like you said it's entrapment it's you know here a guy is thinking this is a brother I'm trying to help him out loan him some money and now he's doing 15 years you know well I think another thing that people should know is that and this is playing off of the The Narrative that that much just laid out there the biggest targets for law enforcement looking to flip criminals are drug addicts and believe me one of the enticement factors for these drug addicts are druggies they're getting they're getting drugs from the from the law enforcement law enforcement's feeding the Habit so they don't have to pay for the drug they're getting paid money from law enforcement for what they're doing and they're getting free drugs and the part that people don't understand is these guys like we were saying before if you're getting a paycheck or you're getting drugs and that now that's your job or that's your hookup and illegal things aren't happening of course you're going to either say they are if they're not or start instigating them so you're not really uh protecting or you know following the law you're you're instigating and you're getting people to break the law so that you can justify a paycheck and that's where it gets really cloudy and you know these newspaper articles come out we're like yeah all these motorcycle gangs got arrested for this and that and they have no idea how many times those are informants that are just during the Potter creating crimes yeah it seems like from a criminal justice policy perspective the the system is flawed to the extent that you're going to have someone put them in a position where they're going to tell you what you want to hear and if you're Uncle Sam you've got this junkie informant and and they know that you want to hear that mooch or whomever is is up to no good they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna tell them that right and they'll figure out some flimsy Mickey Mouse way to to entrap people they say I mean I've heard cops tell me you know I've hung out with just as many criminals as I have cops law enforcement FBI atfda I've had these guys and these are decorated federal law enforcement it meant to me I mean off the Record admit to me yeah we trumped up that charge yeah we lied but our thinking is we going to court we go we jump on the stand they're gonna believe us over there then they're going to believe the guy on the defense table and that works 99.9 of the time and you know them to them the end justifies the means they they firmly believe in their mind that they're getting rid of criminals so they want to do what it takes to get rid of criminals you know the the frustrating or unfortunate part about these informants is a lot of times what they're reporting is happening is what ended up going into these police trainings and these gang trainings and so on and so there's these this repeated repeated law enforcement narrative that isn't necessarily correct in a lot of different you know a lot of different cases or maybe this is something that happened in the 70s One Cop happened so now you got like I know you guys have done some of those trainings you go to these gang trainings and they're repeating things that aren't are far from fact but it's just because of their source of information so it has a really big impact you know on a national scale it's not like it's just affecting the people in the chapter or whatever yeah and and you know as a social scientist you know I want to collect data and so I I've undergone some of this training and we do you know we'll have similar conversations with with members of law enforcement and so that's why I think it's really important to talk to you guys like you and George and we've had big Pete on it I mean one of the first to get both to get to have to have to have balance because I agree with you when you when you undergo that training I'm just telling you the your your instructors are people from law enforcement whatever I'm not trying to talk [ __ ] I'm just being matter of fact that they will tell you and teach you that biker clubs are the same thing as MS-13 or the Italian mafia or whatever um and they'll use some of these examples that you're talking about you know what's a funny kind of Paradigm for me and and I wonder if they understand this narrative but if you're going to push the narrative that motorcycle clubs or organized crime just like the mafia and they're doing it with a patch on visible for everyone to see you either have to agree that a you're terrible at your job as a police officer because you know there's these thou hundreds of thousands of criminals out here just breaking the line of your nose or you have to admit that they're not breaking the law but there you can't really have it both ways and I think that's the funny the funny thing about their their whole thought process on this is here's this huge organized crime but it's not secretive like the mafia was they know who we are everyone's wearing patches you know everyone's on social media advertising where they're at where they've been so how can they be prolific gang members and then not be getting caught and still be supposedly be organized crime or what's more believable they're just not committing organization organized crime Jimmy you made a great point I don't remember if you made this on the podcast or when we were having a conversation uh you know just us in private but you know you have a situation here where you might have a a club of let's say there are a hundred members in the Detroit West Side Outlaws and there might be 10 20 members that are legitimately doing criminal activity now that doesn't mean that the other 80 or whatever percentage it is are involved in some huge racketeering conspiracy and it's like it's it's difficult to parse and then you have the perception coming from whether it be a small percentage or a median percentage but it's not everybody in the group I mean I know from my study my studying the groups around here I can't speak to what's going on in California or in Portland but in the groups around here yes a lot of these guys are out of Central Casting what you would look and think and act like a biker and are criminals but there are also guys that work nine to five jobs that want to be part of a club they don't see it necessarily as engaging in criminal Behavior and they're not engaging in criminal Behavior other than being a part of a club that where there are some people that engage in criminal Behavior I think the distinction is that even if there's some members that are doing illegal stuff they're not paying a percentage of their profits to the larger organizations so it's not going up the ladder now I agree that club's been plagued with stuff like that for a long time but I would also say 70s and 80s most likely maybe some early 90s but the culture has shifted so much with the popularity of motorcycles and motorcycle clubs that way more middle class nine to fivers are joining motorcycle clubs than the old uh hey I'm gonna be a biker 24 7 and if they have to sell dope so I don't have to have a job I'm going to do that that's not really a thing anymore so I think a lot of what they're training and teaching is very behind the times too because you know I wasn't around then but I can promise you from what I've heard and read and what you guys have heard it's probably true people are doing some shady stuff back then but it's not true now and I know when little Dave took over the Mongols one of the first rules we instituted was everyone has to have a visible mean income for that exact reason everyone had to have either a nine to five or some sort of settlement or some way to show their that they're making legal money because if it takes one guy to get caught doing illegal stuff it makes us all look bad so let's use that as a segue to get into more Modern Times And you mentioned Little Dave uh Little Dave was was he docks direct successor or was there someone in between Doc and Little Dave there was two guys in between him and a little Dave but within a year okay so little Dave was that face of the Mongols he was the national president throughout most of the 2010s I think about 2010 until just this last year and then it's this has been in the news we're not we're not breaking the story uh there was an indictment the trademark it was a big deal about whether or not the Mongols were going to lose their trademark uh lose the copyright and then it it came out from Little Dave's girlfriend or wife uh she had recorded Little Dave uh she was upset with him she like kicked him out of the house because he was sleeping with another woman and he was trying to beg for her to come back and she's recording him and while she's recording him it sounds like he's admitting to her that he is a ATF informant and that his contact in the ATF this guy that he had known for years uh was leaving the ATF at the end of the year and that they would have no long they would no longer have protection she brings this tape to the Mongols he's kicked out of the club eventually they get their trademark back uh but little Dave has done some interviews I think in the last year where he's insisting this was a miscommunication there was that last court date so the the trademark thing that you're talking about it's actually still an extension from 2008 black rain so that initial um thing the first judge ruled that an injunction against the patch and no [ __ ] was allowed to wear the patch have anything that said Mongo's on it um and then it didn't take long before they decided that was unconstitutional ever since then the government's been appealing it or the Mongols are appealing one way or the other so these have been appeals that have been going on since 2008. um where the little Dave thing got relevant in court was the attorney came back and said Hey listen if we can prove Little Dave was an informant then it's going to be pretty likely that we can show that we didn't get a fair trial since he was the main guy on this you know that been fighting the case he was he was the president during the whole trial so he was kind of the face of the organization he made the calls with the attorneys um so they thought that they had a leg to stand on what I think is relevant for little Dave in this case is that you know every every bit of evidence was overturned I mean you know came out of the woodwork they they interviewed every single uh you know LA County Sheriff's Department police department FBI ATF everybody and there's zero record of little Dave ever cooperating ever fighting information and never being an informant and you know the case that that was thrown out um which you know to Dave and a lot of us see that as Vindication and the fact that there was other than a a tape made by a scorned woman that I would agree didn't look good um there's zero proof that he ever cooperated with law enforcement at all but but by then the wheels were spinning he was out of the club and you know politics Changed by then so and there's context we've seen this in the Italian mob as well I can think of a situation in Springfield uh Massachusetts with Big Al Bruno where he just happened to have a conversation with an FBI agent he probably shouldn't have the conversation he wasn't cooperating he just knew this guy as a guy that had been following him around for 20 years they ran into each other at a pizza place they were both picking up pizzas and as they were waiting for their pizzas they started having a conversation I don't think Bruno ever thought what he was saying to this FBI agent is going to make its way in do a a court document and he made a comment to him about somebody that had gotten made or gotten a button and the FBI agent's like I got this from Al Bruno well then it gets into a court document and everybody's taking the document and showing it around and going up to New York and being look Al's cooperating well he wasn't cooperating yes he got loose-lipped with an FBI agent but he wasn't cooperating so with little Dave he obviously knew this ATF agent I think he had known him it was it was the same ATF agent that had been in every National run day I mean he was the one first of all he's with him in the main one to ever be involved in pretty much all motorcycle investigations he's been doing it forever um and and second of all he's he's the main face of of that that organization when it comes to um you know all their investigation stuff so anytime there was a big Mongol party National run he was the one always showing up so everyone was familiar with that guy right um and you know George Christa even said I think on his interview with you guys how you know there's always one cop that's usually assigned to whatever group or that chapter and no one's friends with them but they know each other right you're running into each other all the time uh hey you guys are going to behave this weekend right you know there's that cash that I wouldn't say casual but you know what I'm saying that basic conversation um and I think that's been normal in clubs over the years but when it's used you know could also be used against you pretty quickly I would say that caveat to your story versus Dave's is there's not a shred of paperwork that ever shows Dave ever said anything um which is you know why I would say he he was Vindicated um but he did you know I can't say that that I agree or disagree with the quote-unquote relationship he had um but it wasn't familiar as and they saw each other all the time yeah let me let me pick up on something else I want to ask you about um just from a civil libertarian perspective the idea that the government would try to ban the um you know the logo of being a a Mongol this is something Scott and I talked about months ago just privately I remember he was telling me that that Uncle Sam was trying to do that and I remember texting back well isn't there it called me crazy I'm not a lawyer but isn't there a First Amendment issue here like like freedom of assembly Freedom it's not illegal to be a part of a motorcycle club to do something illegal in furtherance of a conspiracy within that and the government took that leap where they essentially made it look like a corporation like McDonald's or Orcs look at all the hedge fund stuff or whatever that they were able to to use to take the copyright or to take the patch trademark because it was used in further into the organization so you're right they can't do it and and the you know it's been proven in the justice system now that they can't do it but it had to go to the Supreme Court to get there I mean that at this time a judge was willing to try it the the and the government was trying really hard to push it and I think a lot of people don't realize how much World cooperation there is a motorcycle club law enforcement um and a lot of the American ATF has been involved in a lot of these laws that are being passed in Australia and Germany where that are Banning patches so they're kind of trying to see what works where and then you know thankfully we have a constitution and it's harder to do those things here but it's not for lack of trying and they definitely gave it uh they're all I mean they've been this case is still ongoing and it started 2018. and you know if you something else that that is interesting you mentioned is that sorry yeah that's great that the Paradigm is over so like if law enforcement is still using this Paradigm from the 70s and 80s to um you know in terms of what what their policies are now that that's archaic and but I think how that works is how I would explain it to my students who some of them are CJ Majors is you know once it becomes institutionalized like you said there's like one dude who's kind of like in charge of it and I'm not trying to [ __ ] talk this person I don't know that I don't know that agent but like um like um institutions it takes a long time for them to update and reform and change their ways and if it becomes institutionalized like this is the Paradigm we're going to see uh one percenter clubs um it it could take decades for it for it to change um I mean and and we even see this a little bit with like uh was like New York like if this is the way the FBI makes headlines they want to bust Italian Guys they yeah they don't care if they're geriatrics they have one foot in the grave and that all the money they put into building that case is going to be wasted because the guy's gonna be dead in a year which is what happened a couple years ago with the Colombo's they spent all this money to take down the Godfather Andy for uh the recent one they got the guys for running uh some some sports betting which is pretty much legal now anyhow uh but but that becomes the that's for promotion they get promotions right even if it's an outdated Paradigm if you could I think I think the money's an important part that is often overlooked you know there's these gang experts that get paid extra to be experts they get paid extra to teach at these you know to go in front of law enforcement and do these other you know these different trainings um and because either from law enforcement and be their labeled experts they have a position of authority so people are just going to believe what they say you know and especially other law enforcement new recruits you don't even think oh this guy's been in the game a long time he knows what he's talking about um and and so that's how that gets spread and absorbed so easily but the hard part is is these dudes are getting paid to be experts they're often applying for funding you know saying oh this is such bad in our in our area in our city this motorcycle gang's such a big deal we need more officers we need more equipment so there's a lot of money tied in to the narrative that law enforcement or that motorcycle clubs or our criminal gangs because that's you know people are making money off it they're starting units over it there's big investigations over it so you know it would be really hard-pressed for them to come out and say you know what the last several years they haven't really been doing that stuff um because people can be out of jobs and be making less money and and I think people Overlook that yeah when and um one thing that when I I assigned to my classes that to look at the FBI gang report I think the most recent one is 2016. and I say okay let's look at the key findings and all the key findings are gang crime is uh Outlaw motorcycle clubs are more dangerous than ever um and I asked my students before we even get into like the the data and like the methodology which which which mooch knows he's a scholar we haven't even got to that yet but we will um so much you know understands that before we even get into like the methods of collecting the data I asked my students what what would you expect the FBI to say what would you expect the doj to say do you think they're going to release a report that says everything's done we've conquered the problem it's over with no all retirement what would you expect them the War on Drugs is over I guess we can close down the DEA yeah of course we're not going to say it right of course right so and and and and then I ask my students you know what you know you don't you don't have to just be skeptical because I'm asking you to be but sometimes you have to recognize that with any Source there's an agenda right and then you have to break it down and look at the nuances and look at how the data is collected and things like that for sure so it just reminds me of that when you know he said yeah there's an incentive a financial incentive that the resources are tied to these certain narratives that maybe be outdated so and then the guy pushing the narrative as a respected guy in law enforcement so the rest of law enforcement just eat it up no one questions it and then it just keeps getting passed along and passed along there's such I can't overemphasize this in in my now going on 17 17 18 years of doing this um there's such a thin line at the highest level of law enforcement and the criminals that they pursue and and some of them will be honest about it I mean Giovanni Rocco uh who's you know one of the most decorated undercover FBI agency who took down the decalvacante family and you started off as a biker but he said but he also he said to me I have no problem saying this if I didn't become a law enforcement if I hadn't become a member of law enforcement I would have been a really good my boss that would have been a really good biker boss that's what I would have done if I hadn't have gone in this direction um so it's these guys I used to take everything that the government told me as gospel I got bit so many times early in my career uh there they they lie just as much if not more they mold a narrative that they want they tickle the wire I got you I mean I remember early in my reporting I got used by the the FBI in Chicago they kept on telling me that there was a bus coming down I kept on writing about this bus is they were just using it to tickle the wire for the guy that was the target uh and you know it's been 10 years later he's never been arrested but I look bad I like shows like Gangland that came out now that comes out now was funded by the ATF to a get guys to commit you know talk about on TV you can obviously talk about crimes but also coincidentally we're coming out right before big raids to potentially you know influence jury pools I mean they've been doing that that type of stuff influenced in the media for a long time and they're good at it that's a good point so um now back to your experiences so you're in SoCal and but eventually you make your way to the Midwest and that's kind of want to pick up on that like that brings us into modern day and some of the stuff that I've been reporting so I'm interested in this part of our conversation this will probably uh you know wind us down here but you were at the Forefront of the Mongols coming into the Midwest I know I reported something around that time period because I had I had people uh in Detroit telling me that there was a some type of uh rally uh bike rally in in Michigan where there were a bunch of Mongols and they had never seen Mongols before and I remember reporting that and then I didn't really report anything on the Mongols being in the midwest until 2022 so just kind of maybe take us tell us what you know what what part you played in it and what kind of the overall idea behind it okay yeah so I was in I did I finished up my undergrad in LA and went back to Oregon to finish graduate school um so then by then I was trying to kind of get a job in the field and um kind of a funny caveat to that is so you know I'm a mental health therapist I have a master's degree in social work and I was going to do my uh internship at the the or Oregon Youth Authority I was going to be a counselor for the kids in the Youth Authority and they sent me an address to for where this training is and a check in for training and I didn't think anything of it and I nabbed it that morning and I get there all excited for training and I look up and I'm at the I'm at the police academy the Oregon State Police Academy so uh you know I'm walking in thinking I'm just being arrogant no one hears them know who I am I guess I walked back past the state chief of police as I walked in and I'm thinking I made it through half a day before they pulled me out and kicked me out of there um and I got fired from the internship for being a member even though they just asked me or you remember the Mongols and I said I was um and I was I was fired so I sued the state and I won um because I see the state for discrimination but even though I won it was all over the paper right it was all over the news that this [ __ ] was in social work and through the state so finding a job was starting to be pretty difficult at the time I was getting really really heavy into Jiu Jitsu and I met a jiu jitsu team that's out of Mount Vernon Illinois that was really getting along with and really wanted to start training with and then my wife who was just my girlfriend at the time she was starting to go get into grad school for dietetics and nutrition and she was going to go to Oregon State and when we were looking at it SIU Southern Illinois University had a really good program too so things just kind of lined up where we thought about just moving out here and giving it a shot and I think the funny part of that is I was actually so at the time I was overseeing all the Northwest for the Mongols I was overseeing all the out-of-country chapters um at a lot on my plate and so I was honestly trying to move to the Midwest to maybe settle down and possibly retire and you know it didn't really play out that way but um when I got out here there was already so that when you talk about Michigan the Mongols tried to start a Michigan chapter without going through the proper channels um and when I moved out here we found out about it and shut it down so when you there was I think there was one or two guys that lived there um but when you hear that they probably went to something and tried to make a presence and and get this chapter established and it didn't really get off the ground they've had in an Indiana chapter since I think 2005 2006 they had Indiana or maybe it's 2007 was right around time I joined but there was one chapter there at the time um and then Arkansas had had some chapters but outside of that we originally didn't have much we um we had a small chapter in Kansas City but when I moved here there was two members um so when I came out here you know I was mainly doing Jiu Jitsu went to work I was working and um I don't know if this is someone that you guys took a training from or not but so uh I started out here when I was doing my mental health therapy I started out with I was doing both um drug and alcohol counseling and then I was running a group for uh perpetrators of domestic violence called men challenging violence and I was teaching men you know kind of a feminist perspective and not how not to treat how not to hit women and how to treat women um so I was doing this training and there was this big thing called the meth conference um and it was it was at a college campus and what they did is like they had you know these little kind of like Breakaway courses I'm sure you guys have been to trainings like that where there's like everyone gets together for the overall then you can break away and take separate side classes well one of the Breakaway classes was called Outlaw motorcycle gangs and uh you know I was pretty intrigued I was like cool I'm gonna check this out and I just moved out here there's no way that no one out here knows who I am and I get in there and it was a state police detective that I guess is in that Outlaw motorcycle gang investigators unit um and I'm sitting in there and he's just staring at me and I kept thinking I'm just being arrogant there's no way this guy knows who I am we slams his computer and he walks out and another detective comes in and says oh you know a detective I don't want to say his name but detective so-and-so had to leave and uh we're just gonna do one on street gangs instead well just like what happened to me at the state or at the training back in Oregon they pulled me out and they accused me of being like a uh uh they thought I was infiltrating this training so that I could see what this guy's training was what they talk about and he made like this big secrecy thing like you know the bikers can't see those training about bikers it was a big deal so I got kicked out and they they actually tried to get me fired for my for my job which didn't pan out for him tried to get me kicked out of my out of my gym by telling them you know hey the Mongols are infiltrating and they're doing all this stuff they went to the police here in Mount Vernon try to try to say keep ticketing them and get them out of town and so I went from coming out here to retire to things getting pretty hot um and thankfully things things work out but at the time I didn't really have any interest in growing out here I I had been doing all the major sit Downs with the Outlaws for several years I was the main one that talked with them and I knew this was their area you know I'd spoke with them and let them know I was going to live here um when I moved here I was hanging out with them quite a bit as a friend and as a guest um and I was really you know kind of establishing that relationship so there wasn't a huge interest in growing the area right away um when it did happen there was a group that came from the hardcore scene um and we had a lot of mutual friends and kind of younger guys they're all big weightlifting guys a lot of tattoos and they're all riding and I guess they've been hanging out with some of the other local clubs that didn't really fit in and we really hit it off and they they one day they just asked me if if they could start a chapter and if they could join the club um and like I said I didn't really want to do it so I put a lot of thought into it and I was talking back and forth with Little Dave most of these guys lived in Illinois on the like Alton side but out of respect for the Outlaws we didn't want to you know just I told him I wasn't out here to start chapters so I didn't want to just come in here be a liar and step on their toes so we kicked off the St Louis chapter and I think that's when law enforcement started really noticing we were there it's because we were very active was pretty big on social media I was very similar to when we started in Oregon a lot of the St Louis clubs didn't want us there I did a lot of sit Downs a lot of clubs started building some relationships there from there I started rebuilding Kansas City um several years later we kicked off like the Ozarks um Indiana grew to about four chapters Nashville started a chapter um and then things um things The Outlaws kind of started falling apart over different different regions different reasons and some of our agreements fell apart um and so I started a Southern Illinois chapter and at that time I started the Chicago chapter which is probably what you're talking about as far as what's been reported in the media a lot well and I want to throw it some throw something at you that I reported in the last like 48 hours and kind of it plays into what what you're saying so you know the the Chicago Tribune put out a story last fall predicting a war between the Mongols and the Outlaws uh referencing a couple shootouts that had occurred nobody was uh killed but there were people that were wounded uh in 21 and then in 22. yeah I mean uh I would say I I don't I'm not an investigative reporter so you know I I know it's a different research agenda but I just know from talking to some Chicago Outlaws off the record that sometimes how you frame things can shift the meaning so for example like telling me like about the so-called Italian mafia Outlaw Alliance that a guy was telling me do we know some of the Italians sure to some of them that will yeah do we run into each other sometimes and maybe have a drink or something but but but but if you say Alliance then it becomes sort of conspiratorial and he was telling me there's nothing like there's nothing like that in place it's not we sit down like in The Godfather well I'm not trying to push back on your guy Jimmy but I mean in 2000 but I'm just talking about with detail I don't I don't know but I'm talking about the Italians too I mean in 2008 the bus that took down Fat Mike Sarno who was the boss of the Chicago Mafia there were a number of Outlaws that were indicted and convicted with him so I mean I think even in that case they were employed by those guys but that wasn't the organization wasn't employed by those guys individually okay but yeah some of this is splitting here but if you're an you can't tell me if you're an outlaw that no there's nothing going on with the Italian mafia when the boss of the Chicago Mafia and three members of The Outlaws are convicted together of a conspiracy to extort uh video poker machine but you can't have it both ways though you were you were just talking about how you don't trust the government and they're liars and they're they manipulate so but conviction is a conviction I mean as of the the US government considers I will argue that conviction is a conviction thing if you start looking at the plea bargain process and all that and how racketeering the RICO indictment goes I'm just saying I have zero doubt in my mind and in Jimmy's research can say what he says and Justin I'm not trying to Discount what either of you are saying I know for sure that Mike Sarno had a working relationship with the Chicago Outlet you can Define it whatever way you want and I don't know anything about that man it's not you know it's not a club I was in and it was an era before me um but as far as like having firm I mean formal alliances with street gangs is usually not something the Mongols would do but like I don't know what I don't know what formality that Mike Sarno uh made with the Outlaws I just know that they were working together and Sarno was using the Outlaws as muscle in in an attempt to extort yeah I remember that and and uh Shakedown leader poker machine yeah I know from when I was in leadership in this area we didn't we never did anything like that if that's happening now then again that was 2000 to 2000 so I don't know what's happening now well I mean even now with the Chicago thing like you were talking about um that's not something we ever did under my leadership and now there's new leadership so I guess I just can't speak on it because I'm not sure well so let's talk about what what you're doing now mooch uh obviously you know you're you're well educated and um are involved in counseling but you're also involved in a lot more than that as a content creator author uh tell us about what you've got going on now and how our audience can find out more about about what you're up to yeah so after uh you know I spent just about 15 years in the Mongols um and eventually retired and stepped away um I am just to be up front clear at everyone I'm in bad standings due to my relationship with little Dave um but either way so I spent 15 years in that club when I stepped away it really opened some doors um for me to start doing things that we're not allowed to do in the club and a lot of that is doing stuff like this um and so at first my first thing was I started Mondays with mooch which is a podcast uh you know it's the YouTube channel and my my goal with that is really just to kind of tell some of my life story you know I've lived a lot of different lives from between punk rock skinhead life you know Jiu Jitsu and training and then being in a one percenter club and then you know being a a social worker and a mental health therapist and so I really just like telling my story so most of my episodes are a clip or some sort of glimpse of my story and then when I interview people or have people on it it's usually someone that has a different perspective about the same story so I had like the singer to my old band was on um you know I'm gonna have a guy on that was in the old skinhead gang with me um so it's really just focused on kind of me telling my story and and trying to keep things really positive and talk about you know positive cool stuff and fun stuff that we did um and then from that I got ended up offered got offered a book deal um so it's gonna be a book about my life and I will say this I did I used to not really agree with bikers or mob guys or whoever writing you know profiting off of their Club but the one thing I'll say is the Mongols was just a part of my story and as we kind of glossed about or talked about today um you know the Mongols were a big part of my life but it was part of my story and so the book isn't just about the Mongols it's about you know me touring and Me growing up and being in the band and then and then you know me leaving the club and really getting into social work and you know trying to help others um and then since then too we've kind of started this thing called lift train ride movement we're really trying to motivate people to stay in shape and be healthy and and work out you know ride motorcycles and you know just do positive things we just uh linked up with a well-known Jiu Jitsu Guy Tom deblas we're getting on an anti-bullying campaign and helping him out with that so just trying to move forward doing some really positive stuff a lot of the stuff that I learned growing up through Club World um and keeping it positive yeah I mean that sounds awesome and and I know that we don't have a lot of time to get into it now but I've watched some of your videos and talking about mental health and something we share an interest in is is Outreach to at-risk Youth and so I think that it's it's great what you're doing and and it's really important I saw this in one of your other episodes where it's really important that at-risk youth hear this from dudes like you like you know if if I go in there as like the square PhD you know it may not resonate but someone like you that that that's lived the life I think it's really important that what you're doing and it's and I wish you well thank you very much yeah one thing that I think people don't really understand a lot about counseling until you've done it right is that the therapist never shares his story because it's not about me but because of my appearance and how I carry myself you're going to pick that up anyways and I think with teenagers it goes a super long way and that's right now I work with youth that are on parole operation from 12 to 17 years old that have anti-social behaviors um and we really figure out what's driving the behavior and try and create lasting changes so that the parents and the kids can make changes when we're no longer in the home so it's been really rewarding and really cool um and then like I said I did the domestic violence training too where I'm trying to teach people not to hit their women and and you know jump into the into the new century and and be you know be real men so it's it's been really cool and it's it's been it's been a blessing it's been a lot of fun I can't write I can't wait to read the book yeah we appreciate uh uh your time and all your efforts and yeah when when the book comes out um any any uh timeline and we should expect that to drop yeah the publisher the publisher keeps saying that it's going to be out by Spring but um I'm I'm assuming probably early summer um because I'm not sure how it's gonna be done in two months but um but I mean we're getting there we're cranking it out things are going really well so definitely early this year or mid-year yeah well we hope to have you back on when it drops and we could talk about it and then uh any any uh social media or anything you want uh our audience to check out your stuff yeah I'm on uh Instagram it's OG underscore underscore mooch um and honestly I pride myself on the fact that I get back to everybody so you know Reach Out shoot a message ask questions there's something I can help you with I would love to um so follow me on there uh my Facebook I kind of keep just like family and friends so Instagram's the big one and then you know I'm you know it's the mooch on YouTube or Mondays with mooch yeah I hope I hope mooch I I I can't thank you enough for joining us and and being as forthright as you have you're incredibly articulate obviously you're very intelligent based on your you know what you've accomplished um I really hope that this is the the start of a a connection and a relationship between you know muchin and his brand and OG podcast because people like you are just invaluable really uh that can you know break down from a break down an issue from a first-hand perspective make it digestible to you know regular uh people that haven't lived in that subculture make it relatable uh I've I've just been blown away by this interview so thank you so much and I hope we can have you on more than just one more time I hope you come back five or ten more times yeah I would love to man you know it's kind of my goal to push back against this law enforcement narrative like we talked about and you know like I said I've listened to your guys's shows and you know it's funny when I hear things like oh yeah you know law enforcement says oh that you know the [ __ ] started making this big move and this big push in this big presence and me I'm like oh man that was me coming out here to do Jiu Jitsu you know so being able to show the actual facts and Truths Behind it I'm really happy to do and help with anytime yeah well we appreciate your time mooch good luck with everything and I'll stay in touch with you and hopefully uh we'll we'll see you again soon thanks Justin thanks so much guys really appreciate you having me on take care thanks everyone for listening and watching and uh we'll talk to you guys soon OG podcast out

Channel: Original Gangsters Podcast

Views: 88,141

Keywords: mafia, crime, sicilian, cosa nostra, Cosa Nostra, italian mafia, urban crime, Detroit, Michigan, Detroit Mafia, Sicilia, Sicilian, Black Crime, Urban, Gang, Gangsters, New York Mafia, Shooting, News, Investigative Reporting, Crime Reporting, Mafia, Goodfellas, The Godfather, Mafia Movies, Murder, podcast, crime podcast, Detroit News, Original Gangsters Podcast, OG Podcast, actors, musicians, hollywood

Id: 2IR6_v0yA4A

Length: 68min 10sec (4090 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023