ATF BAD BOY, LOU VALOZE: STOREFRONT ATF BAD BOY - LOU VALOZE | Page 9

0K
OPERATION
THUNDERBOLT
$200,000+
245
89
200 45
GRAMS OF HEROIN
ARRESTS
OPERATION
PULASKI
3K+ 9
S DRUGS
OF ILLEGAL DRUGS
CRIME GUNS
COCAINE
STORY TO BUY OVER 1,000 CRIME GUNS
Smokin’ Sal’s II – the type of place where you
can buy supplies “for tobacco use only” (wink,
wink) – with the goal of helping find the crim-
inals responsible for a rash of home invasions,
armed robberies, drug-related shootings, and
other violent crimes that were plaguing the
college town.
Establishing credibility with the local crim-
inal element can take time, but Valoze and his
team made quick progress in Statesboro. They
had already bought guns and cocaine from a man
known as “Petey” when his girlfriend came to
Smokin’ Sal’s and asked about giving him a job in
the smoke shop. Petey was a convicted felon and
needed work to appease his parole officer.
“He had no idea it was a front,” Valoze recalls.
“He helped us negotiate gun deals and dope
deals all day long. He knew all these people. He
enhanced our credibility from day one.”
Petey unknowingly became an essential part
of the operation, but more than that, he became
a friend. Valoze describes him as a “country
thug” – a good guy who was forced into a life of
crime due to bad circumstances and a perfect ex-
ample of the emotional conflict that sometimes
accompanies undercover work.
“We spent 8 hours a day with this guy every
day and we all grew very fond of him,” Valoze
says. “We dreaded it. We knew the day was going
to come and we dreaded what was going to
happen to him.”
When Petey’s day in court came, Valoze
went to bat for him, arguing that the operation
wouldn’t have been nearly as successful without
him. The judge pointed out that Petey had no
intention of doing good – he thought he was
helping fellow criminals break the law – and sen-
tenced him to two decades in federal prison.
“It still haunts me to this day,” Valoze says. “It
was the first time in my career I couldn’t look
someone in the eye. Every other time it was bad
guys doing bad things, but this was different.”
The conflicted feelings were common among
the undercover agents, Valoze says, because
they developed relationships with many of the
suspects and got to know otherwise good people
who were drawn into criminal activity due to
their circumstances.
The mixed feelings weren’t reserved for the
agents, either.
“We were going into these communities to
make them safer and a lot of the time the com-
munity itself often felt betrayed because there
were good people who were getting caught in it,”
Valoze says. “They felt relieved on one end, but
we tricked people. We deceived people. There
was a lot of betrayal.” •
SOUTH
April | May 2018
109