ATF BAD BOY, LOU VALOZE: STOREFRONT ATF BAD BOY - LOU VALOZE | Page 4

T
ty Sheriff’s Office, which asked the ATF for help
cracking down on a rash of violent crime.
Enter Sal Nunziato.
Valoze and his team set up a tattoo shop in Au-
gusta in 2007 and began infiltrating the criminal
community. It started with a free chicken cook-
out, and over the course of about a year federal
agents were able to buy more than 400 guns that
were either illegal, illegally obtained, or owned
by people who were prohibited from possessing
a firearm.
The success of Operation Augusta Ink even-
tually led to three more phony storefronts in
Georgia – Operation Statesboro Blues, Opera-
tion Thunderbolt in Brunswick, and Operation
Pulaski in Savannah – and their bounties spurred
an explosion of similar operations across the
country.
The strategy eventually fell out of favor due to
a number of controversial practices and flawed
execution – three guns were stolen from an ATF
agent’s truck in Milwaukee, some storefronts il-
legally were set up across the street from schools
or churches, and a brain-damaged man with a low
IQ was hired to operate one phony pawn shop and
was later arrested.
But Valoze says they were by far the most
productive operations of his career. Whereas a
typical undercover operation might take a year
and net just a handful of arrests, the storefronts
could round up hundreds of guns, hundreds of
thousands of dollars worth of drugs, and scores of
defendants over the same time span.
“They’re very controversial, but the success of
these operations is just phenomenal and nobody
knows about it,” Valoze says. “I don’t think there
will ever be another one because of the controver-
sy of it, so I don’t think I’m letting out any trade
secrets. Thousands of guns, as much drugs as we
could afford. And never once during all four of
these operations did I ever take my gun out.”