Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Undercover ATF Agent Buys Illegal Firearms | The World of Gun Trafficking
Sun, 17 Nov 2024
Ignacio Esteban is a recently retired Special Agent with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) with in the United States Department of Justice. As a Special Agent in the Miami and Tampa Field Divisions, he worked undercover investigating violent street gangs, international firearms traffickers, violent repeat offenders, and other types of federal investigations. Ignacio Books& YouTube Videos https://www.amazon.com/L-GANG-WARS-Ignacio-Esteban-ebook/dp/B09T3SMNGD?ref_=ast_author_dphttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/N9-qBCSwztc DC Snipers https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3IvAm3aEP3k Evil Empire, Communist China https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PN60E30q6Fc Freedom vs. Tyranny the Battle for Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JeOl1BX_0Kw Jimmy Hoffa https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mmVaceOlbgY Prison Gang Killers https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GnrTr85XNZs MS-13 Follow me on all socials! Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/matthewcoxitc Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrime Follow my 2nd channel - Inside The Darkness! https://www.youtube.com/c/InsidetheDarknessAutobiographies Want to be a guest? Send me an email here! [email protected] Want a custom Con man painting shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/insidetruecrime Get a custom painting done by me! Check out my link! https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart Listen to True Crime Podcasts anywhere! https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my prison story books here! https://www.amazon.com/Matthew-Cox/e/B08372LKZG Support me here! Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69 Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: What does an undercover ATF agent do?
hey listen the stuff's inside but these guys don't want to bring it out so i go out here normally what you do is wrap it up you bring the car real quick we're done i get the hell out of here right and he said but he wants to come in you go inside i was like and i know there's more people coming in he doesn't know that i know that already so i'm i'm almost like uh no dude i don't want to meet anybody i said no it's fine i said no and i said okay what do you give me the money and i'll go get i'll get it for you i said uh no i'm not doing
What's going to happen is you're going to walk away with $3,000 and I'm going to have a bigger headache to deal with to chase you and everybody else who just stole my money.
Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm going to be doing an interview with Ignacio Esteban, and he is a former, yeah, retired ATF agent who was undercover. He has had a really interesting life, and yeah, so check it out. Honestly, I just basically start at the beginning, like where you were born,
You know, how you grew up and kind of like, you know, and how you got into, you know, how did you become an ATF? It wasn't something you were always interested in, that sort of thing, you know. Where were you born?
Yeah, yeah. I was born in Los Angeles, in California, but raised in South Florida, in Miami. Okay. And, you know, I've always had some interest in law enforcement, obviously. You know, you grew up in the same times. I was born in the 70s, and I grew up when I was younger in the 80s with Miami Vice, right? And I'm in South Florida, right?
How cool, you're seeing Don Johnson, you know, you're watching the cool cars, the Ferraris, right? You're thinking, man, that is pretty cool. So that always was, you know, always in the back of your head, and you're looking at that, but never thought... I would ever do that kind of work, really. I kind of, you know, that was cool. And I like the guns. I like the training.
I like putting out these bad guys. And the cocaine cowboys were huge back in the 80s. Well. Years later, I go to college. I went actually up not far from where you're at, up to St. Louis University. It's a Catholic university. And I get my degree in political science and history. Then I come back to FIU in Miami. So now we're looking about the mid-90s.
And I'm working my degree in international relations. And I was able to go to law school. I got accepted to a law school in Lansing, Michigan, Thomas Cooley. And, you know, the farthest thing in my head, but, and I'm seeing the prices, how expensive law school is. And this is mid nineties, a lot more now, obviously, but even in the mid nineties, and I didn't have a, I had a scholarship in college.
I played tennis, a number one for my school, but it was going to cost me about like about 30,000 a year.
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Chapter 2: How did Ignacio Esteban become an ATF agent?
And El Chapo is a perfect example of what happened to him when he finally got extradited. And now he is in the Supermax in Florence, Colorado. And he was a very, very powerful guy and not so much so. I'm in kind of that fascinating view, front line, right? I'm meeting a lot of people because we make a lot of seizures. So I'm networking with the FBI.
I'm networking with ATF, especially DEA, Customs. At a time where Department of Treasury and after 9-11, everything changes, right? Yeah, everybody changes. ATF would end up going to Justice. Customs would go to Department of Homeland Security. It would leave Treasury. So a lot of things change. We're making a lot of good seizures.
Ones that were kind of strange were like people who would swallow, like the pellets. Yeah. The swallowers. We would get a ton of that. I mean, it is really, I mean, we got a lot, but a lot also got through. And it's really sad because some of these people were peasants, right? They would get used or they say, if you don't do it, and these are the cartels, they go in these villages, right?
And they pretty much forced these guys to do it or they're going to hurt your family, kill the family. Some got paid. I mean, I found that the guys who went, let's say, if you were from Miami or you were from Puerto Rico and you end up flying to Cali or somewhere like that, you stay there for three or four days. Like, why are you there? What was the purpose of your trip, right?
And the purpose of your trip was to swallow these pellets. And I got really good at it. I mean, you could easily have two or three pounds of cocaine in you or heroin. Heroin really started picking up in the 90s with the Colombians, right? And that's a lot of money, a lot of dope in there. But the problem with that is something, if it leaks, you're going to get a complaint. Right.
It's so pure, you're not going to survive. So we get calls a lot. People are dead on arrival. They're on the planes. We've got to clear them up. It's not easy to pass either. So if you can't pass this stuff fast enough, even when we catch them, we would have to take them to the hospital, MIA, and give them these laxatives, and it still takes a while to pass it.
These cartel members, if you make it and you're in one of these hotels, which happens all the time, you can't pass the stuff fast enough. They'll put a bullet in your head, they'll gut you, and they'll take the stuff out. So a lot of times they were lucky that we caught them because it was not good stuff for them. And even then, sometimes they still need surgery. The stuff wouldn't come out.
I mean, it's risky, it's sad, it's horrible to see these people. And this is something I'm seeing firsthand. You know, a guy homeless, I say, man, this is the war on drugs. This is how it looks like. This is what's going on. It becomes normal and natural. You feel bad because people are being used, right?
It's much sexier from Don Johnson's point of view. From the Don Johnson point of view, it's much sexier. He's got the Ferrari. He's got the Ferrari, which is cool. He folds up. Remember, he would fold up the suit. Do you remember the jacket? Oh, yeah. Yeah, the cool colors, right? Yeah. Yeah. So far, your version of it sucks. Your version is work. Right. Yeah.
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