ATF BAD BOY, LOU VALOZE: STOREFRONT ATF BAD BOY - LOU VALOZE | Page 7

There were so many violent guys we had
dealt with and it was time for them to be
off the streets,” Valoze said. “You always
knew when it was time.”
Sal Nunziato’s story sometimes varied from one operation to the next, but the core of the cover
remained the same – he was an Italian hustler from New York, where everybody knows you can get
five times as much money for guns or drugs than their street value in the South. He had moving trucks
parked out back, purportedly for hauling guns and drugs to New York to flip for a profit, and would tell
criminals his fool-proof plan – if they got pulled over and found out, they were just movers and it wasn’t
their stuff.
“You have to build a believable story,” Valoze says, “or after a while these
Left: Miami, FL, where
guys would start wondering why we were buying so much drugs and guns.”
Lou and his crew
If they ever felt their credibility was in question, they would put on a
helped replicate the
little “street theater,” arranging for another group of undercover agents to
successful storefront
operation conducted
show up for a staged deal – kind of like paying a fake Santa Claus to swing by
in Southeast GA.
the house on Christmas Eve to preserve the secret for another year or two.
Middle: Lou pictured
Valoze and his team would often set up a video game system or pool table
with a .50 cal.
to keep unsavory characters around longer and more often, leading to more
gold-plated pistol
deals to take guns and drugs off the street and allowing them to find out
purchased at the
more about the criminals they would later round up.
storefront operation
When a law-breaker left the premises, cover teams camped outside and
in Savannah, GA.
would get their plate numbers and tail them home, learning as much about
their habits as possible. On the rare occasion when they couldn’t get enough
information on a criminal, they would set up a giveaway and ask people to put their name and number
in a fishbowl for a chance to win – then tell the mysterious law-breaker to bend the corner so they could
make sure he won.
“They usually didn’t give you a real name,” Valoze says, “but they’d put down a phone number if
they thought they were getting something for free, and we could use that to figure out everything we
needed.”
When the operation had run its course – usually after about a year – it was time to make arrests. In
Augusta, Statesboro and Brunswick, the arrests came in the form of mass roundups, with teams of U.S.
Marshals and local SWAT teams swooping in to arrest as many suspects as possible in one day. Anyone
they couldn’t arrest that day would be turned over to the U.S. Marshals as fugitives for apprehension.
Chris Bayless, Lou’s undercover mentor,
participated in the storefronts as a character
in “street theater,” a term used to decribe
the dramatics of a deal. “He wrote the
book on how to carry yourself during an
undercover transaction and I always felt more
comfortable when Chris came to help out,”
Valoys says. He was in the enhanced ATF
undercover program for over 30 years and is
considered a subject matter expert in home
invasion investigations.Amongst his peers
he’s known as an icon. In the late ‘80s Bayless
did the unthinkable and infiltrated the Hell’s
Angels in Illinois. He now teaches advanced
undercover at the ATF National Academy.
SOUTH
April | May 2018
107