Ian Frisch

So that, so that was a pretty interesting one for sure.

Yeah, so as Martin went deeper undercover, you create assets that live within the alter ego world you've created for yourself.

And as Martin got older, he would leverage those assets into new undercover identities.

So he was Manny, quote unquote, for the first six years of his undercover life doing these two cartel-related cases, the smuggling and the money laundering.

But he was undercover for 23 years.

And as he got older too, he would help other agents go undercover using the same assets that he had amassed himself over the years.

Cars, boats, airplanes, bank accounts, apartments, houses, all these sorts of things.

But when he was undercover,

during the late 80s and early 90s in the span that we cover in this book, it was really about having his teammates and his case agents within the FBI make sure that any of the moves that they made within the world of the cartel, especially when it came to arrests and seizures were done

two or three steps removed from where Martin had an influence.

So if the drugs came in and he delivered them, they would wait till the stateside distributor was already on to the next drop off before they did a seizure, before they seized the drugs and arrested everyone.

So then Martin could be like,

I did my job.

I gave it to your guys.

Your guys got arrested.

Maybe they were being sloppy.

You know, there was always an element of deflection baked into how, um, how the FBI conducted the kind of law enforcement public side where they did the seizures and made the arrest, which would keep his cover intact.

I think based on my knowledge and based on exports, I still think that Mexico is way up there.

And I think that in Central America, at least, you're seeing more

Street gangs versus cartels kind of amass power amid economic and political uncertainty that's going on in some of those countries.