Speaker 1: Joining me now is de Special Agent in charge of
Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountain Division, Special Agent Jonathan Pulland welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. First of all, how does that title fit
Speaker 1: on a business card?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: How big are your business cards? Are they three by five?
Speaker 1: What are we looking at of here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're talking three by five sized business cards, a
Speaker 3: big long title.
Speaker 1: Well, I got to say, the DEA has been in
Speaker 1: the news as of late because you guys have been
Speaker 1: making some really big, high profile busts. Tell me about
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that you guys have and really
Speaker 1: I feel like this is all investigations coming to fruition.
Speaker 1: Is that accurate?
Speaker 2: That's great? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: I mean there was some one offs last week where
Speaker 3: we went after some targets of opportunity, But for pretty
Speaker 3: much what you've seen over the course of the last
Speaker 3: seven or eight days has been cases that we've been
Speaker 3: working for months and targets that we've been tracking for months.
Speaker 1: So when you guys are taking drugs off the streets,
Speaker 1: what are we talking amounts? What are we talking about?
Speaker 1: You know, how much are we taking out of the
Speaker 1: supply chain?
Speaker 3: Well, so last Monday, we seized, we executed a search
Speaker 3: warrant and we seized one hundred and thirty thousand fentanyl
Speaker 3: pills in one hit. So that's an incredible amount of fedel.
Speaker 3: So if you think that five out of ten of
Speaker 3: those pills has a deadly dose for you and me,
Speaker 3: that's you know, I wasn't a math major, but I
Speaker 3: think that's sixty five thousand pills taking off the streets
Speaker 3: of Denver that could have killed regular citizens.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I'm guessing that though that sounds like
Speaker 1: a huge amount of pills, is that just like one
Speaker 1: regular shipment, how many pills are actually making their way
Speaker 1: into Colorado and into our streets now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Unfortunately, seeing one hundred thousand pills at a time
Speaker 3: has become more of the norm for us here in Colorado.
Speaker 3: You may know that last year in twenty twenty or four,
Speaker 3: we broke the record for Colorado for the most amount
Speaker 3: of fennyl ever sees. We had over three million pills seized.
Speaker 3: So that's an absolutely enormous amount of fedel coming into
Speaker 3: our state.
Speaker 1: So where's this coming from? Kind of know the question,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna ask anyway, where is the fentanyl coming from?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a fentanyl is a synthetic opioid. So like
Speaker 3: heroin is an opioid, right, but so is an OxyContin
Speaker 3: pill that your doctor may prescribe you if you had
Speaker 3: back pain or back surgery. But a fencanyl is purely synthetic.
Speaker 3: It's only made from chemicals, right, And so those chemicals
Speaker 3: are sourced in China, they're shipped to Mexican cartels, and
Speaker 3: it's all made within Mexico and Mandy.
Speaker 2: They make it for so cheap.
Speaker 3: They can make one fentinyl pill for two cents in Mexico,
Speaker 3: and by the time it hits the streets of Denver,
Speaker 3: that same pill could sell from between two to four dollars.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, the profit margin.
Speaker 2: You know what.
Speaker 1: The Democrats should go after them for gouging. No, I'm
Speaker 1: sad it was a joke for my audience. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: guys are not working alone though. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: coordination happening between federal authorities. Tell me about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's kind that's kind of unprecedented. Really, I
Speaker 3: mean the Department of Justice, which is you know dea
Speaker 3: at f FBI, US marshals. You know, we've really been
Speaker 3: embedded in the last week or two weeks with the Department,
Speaker 3: Homeland Security Agencies, which is Homeland Security Investigations and ICE
Speaker 3: and really sort of using all of the resources from
Speaker 3: all those agencies at the same time.
Speaker 2: We've always worked together and worked to.
Speaker 3: Join cases, but this is sort of on a whole
Speaker 3: another level, really at the direction of the new administration.
Speaker 3: And I got to be frank with you, it's making
Speaker 3: a huge difference. Right So when my teams are out
Speaker 3: like they're out today, we got an ATF guy on
Speaker 3: board with us, We had ICE agents on board with us.
Speaker 3: We're doing it sort of as a big joint federal
Speaker 3: task force. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I mean most of the time, though, it would seem
Speaker 1: that I'm guessing you don't find many drug dealers without guns,
Speaker 1: and I'm guessing right now you're probably seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of people involved in this trade that are here illegally. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes a lot of sense to put
Speaker 1: you all on the same thing. At the same time,
Speaker 1: it's actually refreshing to hear you say that under this administration,
Speaker 1: this is how things are going. Now, let me ask
Speaker 1: you about it about a local law enforcement because Mayor
Speaker 1: Mike Johnston has caught a world of self imposed crap
Speaker 1: by talking tough about protecting illegal immigrants, and then he said,
Speaker 1: you know, local law enforcement is very involved in all this.
Speaker 1: How much do you work with local law enforcement on
Speaker 1: these large operations quite a bit.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the thing we have to protect
Speaker 3: local law enforcement from is you know, Colorado state law
Speaker 3: prohibits them from being involved in the immigration piece. So
Speaker 3: when we're going out working a drug case, you know,
Speaker 3: we're not asking them to be involved in the in
Speaker 3: the investigation or the movement of potential illegal aliens into
Speaker 3: the hands of ice. We're handling that as the federal agents.
Speaker 3: And then they still but the local, the state and
Speaker 3: local cops who are with us, they work the drug case,
Speaker 3: right or they work the money laundering side of the case.
Speaker 3: So we're being careful to sort of protect, you know,
Speaker 3: protect them in that space. But they're with us and
Speaker 3: they're definitely been a big part of our success lately.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the relationship that you guys have
Speaker 1: with federal prosecutors, because one of of the issues that
Speaker 1: I have been really frustrated with a lot of people
Speaker 1: have been really frustrated with at the local and district
Speaker 1: levels is that some of our prosecutors are not necessarily
Speaker 1: interested in prosecuting, And how are federal prosecutors different, And
Speaker 1: will we expect people to actually pay a price for
Speaker 1: breaking these laws in the United States?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: I mean, listen, everybody has resource constraints, right, I mean
Speaker 3: the United States Attorney's Office here, they need more people,
Speaker 3: they need more money, just like all the agencies do.
Speaker 2: So, I mean that's one factor.
Speaker 3: But the thing for our cases the DEA works is
Speaker 3: that they go out of state really quick, right, or
Speaker 3: they go out of the country really quick. The suppliers
Speaker 3: for a lot of the fedanel that comes in here,
Speaker 3: we deal directly.
Speaker 2: With people in Mexico a lot of times.
Speaker 3: Right, So once we identify that guy, we can charge
Speaker 3: him in federal court here in Denver and then reach
Speaker 3: out and touch him in Mexico. But we really need
Speaker 3: that we're really the support of the US Attorney's Office
Speaker 3: to do that, and largely we've had it.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you saw this, but today
Speaker 1: the Mexican president, in response to Donald Trump's tariffs that
Speaker 1: he levied over the weekend, has already come to the
Speaker 1: table with Donald Trump to say, look, we're going to
Speaker 1: send ten thousand troops to the border to help stem
Speaker 1: the tide of both fentanel and illegal immigrants. Do you
Speaker 1: have confidence in the Mexican government and the Mexican military
Speaker 1: to follow through on those promises, because I've heard a
Speaker 1: lot about corruption. It's hard when you're making no money
Speaker 1: as a Mexican cop to not take the money from
Speaker 1: the cartels. What has your experience been in those relationships.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I've worked in Mexico over the years quite
Speaker 3: a bit, and I can tell you that I think
Speaker 3: there's a distinction between what maybe local Mexican cops that
Speaker 3: were sitting in the state of Sinaloa and they have
Speaker 3: to deal with the Sinaaloa cartel literally as their neighbors,
Speaker 3: the sort of reaction that you'll get from there, or
Speaker 3: maybe the level of corruption from local cops. There's a
Speaker 3: difference between the at and what we see in the
Speaker 3: federal police and the military.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: For many years, we've had really great partnerships in Mexico
Speaker 3: at the higher levels, and I think that that's what's
Speaker 3: going to come through now in this new administration, and
Speaker 3: I'm really encouraged by it. I mean, I think I
Speaker 3: think we have an opportunity really with focus on both
Speaker 3: sides of the border to make a huge difference in
Speaker 3: the amount of drugs that end up on our streets.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who lives in the Sinaloa area
Speaker 1: of Mexico and hearing his stories about like when the
Speaker 1: cartel activity gets geared up, everybody just goes in their
Speaker 1: houses and stays there until it's over. Like people in
Speaker 1: Mexico are living in a terrorist state because of these cartels.
Speaker 1: Is there any hope that you see on the horizon
Speaker 1: to really bring some of these massive cartels to check
Speaker 1: in any significant way in Mexico.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I.
Speaker 3: Think that there's got to be pressure from both sides,
Speaker 3: and you're seeing that now. I mean, we're already sort
Speaker 3: of hearing from sources that the Mexican cartels are pretty
Speaker 3: nervous based off of what's happened just in the last
Speaker 3: seven to ten days. We're hearing that they don't want
Speaker 3: to send stuff across the border because they know that
Speaker 3: the the US.
Speaker 2: Border has been hardened.
Speaker 3: And so to hear that coming from down south is
Speaker 3: pretty incredible after just a week's worth of work. But
Speaker 3: it's also going to take work on the south side, Right,
Speaker 3: the Mexicans are going to have to do their part
Speaker 3: to keep those guys in check. But listen, Manda, you're
Speaker 3: talking about multi billion dollar businesses here in these cartels, right, So,
Speaker 3: I mean they're worth fifty to sixty billion dollars per year,
Speaker 3: So they have the money to fight a Mexican army, right.
Speaker 3: I mean you're talking armored vehicles, and they got all
Speaker 3: the weaponry you can imagine. So it's not like it's
Speaker 3: not like it is in the United States. They're literally
Speaker 3: dealing with an armed insurrection.
Speaker 1: I got one question from the text line that I
Speaker 1: actually think is a really good one. How do you
Speaker 1: guys dispose of all these pills?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: We incinerate them, Okay, So that's really the way we
Speaker 3: do it. And we have a few places around the country.
Speaker 3: Once the cases are adjudicated, and it's not just the
Speaker 3: all it's all of the drugs and evidence that we get,
Speaker 3: they go and they're incinerated.
Speaker 1: All right. Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Mullen from the
Speaker 1: de A, I appreciate your time today. Keep doing what
Speaker 1: you're doing. I mean it's kind of exciting to pick
Speaker 1: up the paper and see one thing after another after another,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm enjoying it. I'm not gonna lie, So
Speaker 1: keep up the good work and we'll check in with
Speaker 1: you when there's more to report in the near future.
Speaker 2: All right, thank you.
Speaker 1: That is Special Agent in Charge of the Rocky Mountain Division,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Mullen of the de A.