Betrayal on the Bayou | 5. Deal at the DoubleTree 39:07

In our last episode, Chad asked that Boobie start turning over assets as a show of good faith. And Boobie bought Chad that sweet truck. L-150 Limited Edition. It was nice, red inside. Something that I like. Chad picked it up in Houston and fudged the paperwork. From the jump, even Boobie had a bad feeling. I'm just hoping you know what you're doing by seizing this truck.

Chad hoped that Booby was finally ready to cooperate. That he'd start turning over the high-level dealers Chad knew he could provide. Well, even after the truck was handed over, Booby's not given any signs that he's feeling helpful. Remember, he's not paid to be an informant. His source of income is drug dealing. And he's doing a lot more than a little dibbing and dabbing. In the two years since Booby met Chad, he's been moving up in the drug trade. He works a route from Houston to Atlanta.

He found a truck driver and started moving dope in 18-wheelers. They're hauling 30 kilos of cocaine each trip. Boobie's making $300,000 a month. He buys a second Rolls Royce, buys his wife Tigress a GT Bentley convertible, and he builds a half-million-dollar house from the ground up. Boobie's doing well, really well. So, early 2015, Chad lets Boobie know that he's going to be visiting Houston. They make loose plans to meet up.

Booby calls his friends, warns them that Big Dog is coming to town. What Booby doesn't know yet is that Chad is in Houston to bust a guy in Booby's supply chain. This is an episode where two powerhouses, a DEA agent and a drug dealer, go toe-to-toe. Booby's a great liar. You have to be in this line of work. And like so much else in this world, Chad tries to use that to his advantage. But whether he succeeds is another matter.

I'm Thaymond Roberts. And I'm Jim Mustian from Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment. This is Smokescreen, Betrayal on the Bayou. Episode 5, A Deal at the Doubletree. So Chad's visiting Houston in January 2015. Boobie waits around for his call. It finally comes that evening. 10 o'clock at night, he said, hey, come over here by the gallery or to the hotel, such and such. On the second floor, we're going to be there.

The Galleria. It's a mall and shopping area in uptown Houston. It even has a skating rink. Lots of hotels around there. Hyatt's, Marriott's, Hilton's, that kind of thing. Booby gets lost and goes to the wrong hotel. But finally, he makes it to the rendezvous at the Doubletree Hotel bar. Waiting for him is the A-Team. Chad's right-hand man, Carl. And Chad's young protege, Johnny Domey.

The gang's all in town, and partying with them is Chad's super informant, the guy who had convinced Boobie to start working for Chad. So when I get there, it scared me because I see Jabbar Watson and his wife. It's spooking me because now Jabbar Watson, black, telling me, and I just happen to be in the same hotel. And it's ironic to where they're just two coincidence. What's going on?

It just felt too cozy for an informant relationship. They say it's a coincidence that Chad's A-team is there rubbing elbows with Jabbar Watson and his wife. But yeah, of all the gin joints and all the three-star hotels in all of Houston, anyhow, they're chatting, teasing each other. Booby tells Chad that his protege Johnny Domain is the future, that one day he's going to be a better agent than Chad. We're drinking some wine.

rushing bills or something. Jabbar, he eating, him and Chad laughing. And Jabbar was telling him he doing yoga and Chad like, man, you need to stop it. You doing yoga. Jabbar's doing great in his post-informant life. He's married, his wife's pregnant. He's doing yoga. And he supposedly made millions in the global synthetic marijuana business, which was legal at the time. Jabbar didn't just get a second chance either.

Chad helped Jabbar get his life sentence reduced to a few years. And Jabbar says that when Chad caught him dealing while on probation, Chad talked with him and let him go. Much later, Jabbar Watson talked to the feds about Chad too. And let me just ask you a silly question. You like being a free man, right? Indeed, indeed. Asking the questions is prosecutor Antonio Pozos. He seemed particularly interested in the power dynamics in their relationship.

Were you grateful to Special Agent Scott for allowing you to cooperate and get the reduction that you received on your sentence? Yeah, yeah, for the most part. Okay. And can you explain why that was? Freedom. Freedom. I mean, you know, when you're in that position, you know, basically whoever shows up with a hip in hand is like, oh, you know, you taught and raised to not even associate or even talk to the police. Right.

Jabbar and Chad, they're not supposed to be friends, but they get on really well. Chad's right-hand man, Carl, describes them as mirror image of each other. One a DEA agent, the other an informant.

As we've seen before, Chad sometimes bent rules to do his super informants a solid. He went to the mat for Jabbar. But their relationship is also what makes Jabbar such an excellent recruiting tool for the A-Team. Jabbar's freedom is evidence that if you help Chad, he will stick by you. Back at the Doubletree, Chad figures that Boobie's still been dealing. He just knew I was doing something.

I wouldn't say he just let me. He just knew I was still peddling, but he didn't know to what extent. Chad and Carl Newman try to use that as a tool, a last resort, to get Boobie motivated. Remember, Boobie's high level. He's well-connected. If he turned over his worst enemies, it could be a victory. Him and Newman was like, Boobie, you got to step it up. You got to give us some more people. And I ain't talking about your regular people.

You know, like, just give us some people outside your people. And what does that mean? That he knows that the people I'm messing with is probably active to where I don't want to get them up because I exposed myself. So give me somebody outside your people. We all know by now, informants are not supposed to be dealing on the side.

But in order to produce cases for the DEA, informants kind of have to be dealing. It's an impossible bind. A catch-22 that's baked into the DEA. Regardless, Chad is not supposed to let some dealing slide to help him make cases. Chad tells Booby that he's like Jabbar, but Booby doesn't see it that way. According to Booby, Jabbar wants to satisfy Chad, looks up to him, and Booby thinks he's better than that.

When Chad says Booby isn't fully cooperative, he's talking about a lot of things. Booby's dealing on the side, he's not giving over high-level contacts or his other suppliers. But it's this, too. This kind of refusal to give himself over fully to Chad's mercy. At some point, Chad reveals the reason they're paying a visit to Houston. They just came from arresting Booby's supplier's supplier. His grand supplier, if you will. A guy named Jorge Peralta. They ask Booby if he knows him.

We just had to go pick up a Mexican guy in Pasadena. We bussed him this morning. I'm like, okay. And then they're like, who is the Mexican guy? He like hit his phone and showed me like, do you know him? I looked at him and I said, no, I don't know him. Later on, I find out it's Peralta. This is important to remember. Booby tells Chad and his team that he doesn't know Peralta. Never met him.

Booby's concealing a lot in this meeting. The scope of his dibbing and dabbing, his long list of contacts. So is Booby lying about knowing Peralta or not? They're at the hotel for a couple of hours. But I know that the next day Jabar gonna call me and tell me that he got a way for me to walk free and I need to holler at him when I get a chance. He said he talked to Big Dog and he got a pitch or a way to where I could just walk.

I'm like, for real? And he's like, yeah, just get with me when I have time. I said, all right, all right. But I ain't never meet up with him. Did he explain what would get you out of trouble? No. But the only thing that would get me out of trouble is some more buses. Boobie would never learn what it was, that last act that would apparently buy his freedom. A few months later, he'd be behind bars. We're going back to the moment Boobie gets caught, when Chad and his team sees almost a million dollars and put Boobie in handcuffs. But this time...

We're going to peel back some layers. On his final business trip, Boobie goes down to Atlanta with his wife, Tigress, and a friend he's been working with. It's May 2015. You know this part of the story from episode two. The A-Team were all out on the interstate waiting for Boobie to drive by with about a million hidden in a suitcase. That was the biggest suitcase I've ever seen in my life. I didn't know they made them that big. And this thing was chugged full of money, just packed to the gills.

We talked with Chad's right-hand man, Carl, about it. We received information that it was supposed to be a million dollars, okay, was going to be coming through. Did you guys have any intel ahead of time that 30 kilos of cocaine was going to Atlanta? Yes, about a month ahead of time. Chad and his A-team knew that 30 kilos of cocaine were going to be sold in Atlanta a month ahead of time. But they didn't stop the drugs from being sold. Instead,

They waited to seize the money.

This is one of those moments that could slip right by if you don't catch it. The DEA's mission is to enforce our country's drug laws. So shouldn't they be seizing the cocaine rather than letting it hit the streets? We talked with former DEA agent Skip Sewell. He told us that, yeah, the goal of the DEA is to get drugs off the street. So seizing drugs is a priority. But money and assets are a close second.

Yeah, and that might explain to some extent why Chad took the money instead of the drugs. So the mantra for DEA for a long time was follow the money. And the DEA administrator put the money as important as the drugs. I mean, obviously, the root of the drug game is the money. And myself, I mean, me personally, I think I would have seized the drugs.

So why did Chad and the A-team go after the money? Carl laid out the scene. I said, well, what are we going to do, Chad? He's the one that received the information. I said, we're going to stop these 30 keys from going to Atlanta like we're supposed to? He said, well, let me ask you this. You want a new truck, don't you? I said, I need a new truck. Kilos are not going to buy you a new truck unless they're sold and cash is coming back.

I mean, he had me over a barrel at that point when he asked me that question. He said, "Tell me this, what would your boss want?" Carl's boss is Daniel Edwards, the elected sheriff of Tangipahoe Parish, Chad's stomping grounds. Carl's on the task force as a Tangipahoe sheriff's deputy. Would he want the million dollars or would he want the 30 kilos? We can't spend the 30 kilos. So naturally, a sheriff is going to want money over a drug seizure because, especially a million dollars.

Because the drug seizure looks good, you take a picture, you put it in a paper, and after that it's done, over with, the drugs is in evidence, they go to be destroyed. A million dollars is a lot, lot more avenues to do things with. You know, and all sheriffs want more money. It's a serious accusation that drug cops have a financial incentive to let drugs flow on the streets, that Daniel Edwards, Carl's boss and Chad's longtime ally, preferred the money.

We got Sheriff Daniel Edwards to sit down and talk with us about it. So do you remember how much of that $850,000 you guys kept? That one, I think, was split several ways. But I know we were not the only law enforcement agency that got money on that case. What our part for that case was, if I had to guess, I would think it was about $300,000. When he checked, yeah, it was around $300,000.

Daniel says it went into a law enforcement general fund for equipment, trainings, that kind of thing.

No, I don't give bonuses to my employees, and I certainly can't give a bonus to myself. So I'm not worried about those things. What about when drugs are seized? That's not something like a vehicle or a cash that you can split 60-20-20 or 80-20. I don't want to split the drugs. I think you've got the wrong idea of me. I'm not trying to split the narcotics. I'm wondering about the incentive, to be honest. Okay. Because...

It benefits your agency, and I'm not saying this is you, but it benefits your agency to seize the money more than it benefits your agency to seize the drugs.

Well, you tell me from a financial standpoint, certainly. I mean, you don't get anything by seizing the drugs. But from a law enforcement standpoint, when you seize the drugs, you took 30 kilos off the streets. You're asking me which one financially is better? The answer is obvious. It's always financially better to get the cash. Right. But it's not a bad day to get the dope because you've taken dope off the streets and you arrested someone who's responsible for, you know, basically ruining our society and killing people and doing all the bad things that we see happening. So it's a good day.

All right. I'm wondering if you think that creates a sort of a strange incentive situation. I'm not saying for you, but for other law enforcement, there's a lot of parishes and counties along the I-10, I-12 corridor. You know, as the drugs are passing through a lot of people, do you worry that it's tempting at some point to let the drugs go in order to get the money?

Well, let me just say up front, I mean, I don't want to sit there and let drugs go, right, just so you can have a shot at getting the money. I don't believe that's something that you ought to do. But would it be tempting for some agencies? I guess some agencies that's financially strapped, which a lot of us are, but that's not a practice that I would condone. The sheriff denies that it's an issue for his office, but allows that it could be tempting for some departments,

This is an issue in the way the system is set up. It's one of the things that you're always looking for as a reporter, the hole that corruption leaks through. This incentive structure was part of the reason Chad pressured Booby to bring busts to Louisiana. Chad used seizures to funnel money to the departments he favored and snub the ones he didn't. Having that kind of access and discretion with funding is sitting on raw power, and Chad knew how to use it.

A lot of dope made it to the street that way. The DEA and local law enforcement got money. I mean, you had to make that call. You always are trying to stop the drugs before they're going to pass you to get to a destination so they didn't hit the streets. And that's especially with DEA. That was a big no with them. But hey, with how we were flying,

We could make that call between ourselves and we didn't have to worry about it. We had been doing that for years, you know. And this isn't something that's going to come back at Chad, show up in court. It's not something he could be charged with. Because he didn't do anything criminal here. This is just the way it works. If law enforcement decides, for whatever reason, that it'd be advantageous to take money instead of the drugs, they get to make that call.

So Chad and his team bag the drug money, drive to the Tangipahoe Sheriff's Department, and they take that trophy photo with the stacks of cash. Meanwhile, Booby and his wife are locked up and about to get grilled. Booby talked with the feds about what happened after the arrest. He told them he had no idea how much Chad knew about his whole operation. Well, when we got there, they separated me and my wife, Tiger's Brown.

Put me in a little room. Chad interviews him that night, looks at his 10 cell phones, asks for the pins. Chad's finally able to get to work on Booby's other sources, the ones Booby didn't want to hand over. But Booby isn't admitting to anything. This time, he knows not to self-incriminate. So Johnny was like, Booby, just tell him the truth. You know what I'm saying? He already knows. Just tell him the truth.

And I was like, man, I just picked the money up because I know money alone ain't no case. But dealing with him, you know, it's always something extra. So I wouldn't let him know what was going on. And it would just frustrate him. Then he kicked everybody out the room. And Chad starts raising the pressure. He was already just like, Boobie, why are you fucking lying? You know what I'm saying? Like,

I said, man, I ain't lying. I started crying. I'm like, man, I ain't lying. I'm telling you the truth. And I went to talking to him like, man, all this stuff I did for you. He's like, all that don't mean nothing if you don't tell me the truth. He was using some kind of, you know, like the manipulation game. I've been helping you. I've been allowing you to stay out. You know what I'm saying? I ain't been making you call me, checking in like you supposed to.

Chad is acting like they're off the books arrangement as some kind of benefit he gave Boobie. So during the course of the interview, you broke down and was emotional and you were crying. Is that accurate? Yes. And was he yelling at you? Well, he already told me that I was lying and he could have locked me up. I'm going to get like 30 years. And he's like, I don't care about you no more. This goes on for several days. It's a standoff.

Chad uses the information he already has on Booby to get a confession about where the money came from. He shows him a photo of one of the guys Booby dealt to in Atlanta. He's like, who is this? And at first, Booby denies knowing the guy. I'm like, who is what? I don't know that person. It was a picture of the guy from Atlanta. And it spooked me. I'm like, because I ain't never tell him where I was coming from or nothing. But Booby's freaked out. He doesn't know what Chad might know.

Later on, Booby changes his tune. He's like, "Who is this him?" I said, "Oh, I know him." He said, "I know you know him." I'm like, "Man, how you get that picture?" He's like, "You don't know. We been watching you." Booby catches on, figures out that Chad already knows that he was coming back from Atlanta, and he knows who Booby was selling the drugs to. Chad knows too much.

So it already had me with mind game, like he already got me. I'm like, man, goddamn, how he get all this here? He already stepped ahead of me. From that point, I'm like, man, I'm already hit. This man already know I've been in Atlanta, dead and in death. Chad played him. Another informant, his friend, has been feeding information to Chad. Booby is screwed. Everything is over with his high life. He's heading for prison, but he hasn't escaped Chad's thumb.

Chet has yet another piece of leverage. Booby's wife is in jail too. And Booby wants to make sure that Tigress isn't held responsible for this mess. I was like, "What you gonna do with my wife, Will? It depends if you tell the truth or we just gonna let her go." I said, "You sure? Like, you get his man word here, right here?" And I went on here and started telling them what had happened right then and there.

Booby confesses to the drug deal that ended in the bust. He pleads guilty to possession of a controlled substance with conspiracy. That has a mandatory minimum of 10 years, but Booby could get up to the max. Life in prison. They let his wife go. She's never charged with anything. During the bust, the A-team seized the truck Booby was driving. His white Harley Davidson F-150. His baby. The one with over 100,000 miles on it.

The truck had seen too much road for the DEA, but it was just fine for the Sheriff's Department. So Johnny, Chad's protege, gets to drive it as his work vehicle. Yeah, Johnny and Chad drive matching trucks they took from Booby. They get more than just that out of Booby. Tigress turns over a million dollars worth of assets. And in further hopes for a reduction in his sentence, Booby agrees to continue cooperating, be a jailhouse snitch, testify in court.

And Chad has an assignment for him. This is Michael Gannon from DEA's Internal Affairs, the Boston baked bean in the gumbo. He's been interviewing Booby. When we were walking you downstairs last time, you indicated that you were going to have something to tell us about that. Listen closely. This seems to be the moment investigators discover the most serious count of misconduct that Chad would be charged with. Do you recall that? Yes.

What part are we talking about, the thing? That's Boobie's lawyer. Yeah. Yeah, tell them that. Oh, Chad came up there to talk to me. He like, you sure you don't know Parada? I like, man, show me a picture. He showed me the picture. He said, I need, he said, you sure you don't know him? I said, let me see him. So when he went in his phone, he showed me the picture. I like, yeah, that's the dude, B with E.

This was a photo of Edwin's supplier, Booby's grand supplier, Jorge Peralta. This is the guy Chad had showed him a picture of a few months ago at the Doubletree. The guy Booby said he didn't know. Remember, Chad had busted Peralta. Now, that case is going to trial. But Chad wants to make sure the case is ironclad. And for that, he needs Booby.

If anybody asks why they were meeting, Chad tells them to lie. Say that they were talking about Booby's Atlanta case.

But the day before Boobie's supposed to testify, he starts worrying that he won't be able to identify Peralta in court. So I'm getting spooked out. So when I go back to Tangible Hole, I had a phone. I'm debating on calling Chad. I'm like, man, I don't want to call him. Boobie's panicked. He ends up calling Chad from his contraband cell phone. Chad's like, who is this? I said, it's me, it's Boobie. He said, man, how you doing?

He said, you know, we can't really be talking about this case. I said, I know, but man, he said, don't worry about it. And he hung up. Chad dispatches Carl to go talk to Boobie in jail. So about an hour or something later, I get called out. Carl Newman up there. So he's like, Chad sent me up here. I said, man, I'm having second thoughts because they showed me a lineup with more than one picture. I don't want to blow this case and it's big.

Carl says he understands. He calls Chad and gets a photo. So he got the picture on his phone. He came back in and he's like, I'm going to show you how to identify people. He said, don't even just look at his face. He said, just look at features. He said, the guy, he was big at first, but he lost a lot of weight. So look at his cheekbone. They got deep cuts and it's going to be chubby. He got eyebrows raised up. One ear is bigger than the other. And he said, that's what you look for. I said, okay.

And you were able to ID him? Yeah, I'm able to ID him. But had you met with him prior? Did you know him or did you ID him because they wanted you to ID him? Well, what in court?

Like the whole, I just want like the reality of, did you know this guy? Was he part of a deal that you were involved in or did you? Well, Chad hooked him up. I guess Edwin Martinez, like Chad told me, he said he don't have any physical evidence on the guy. He just got hearsay on the guy. They made it seem like it was. You witnessed it. Yeah. No, I came and bought it and he was there. Was that true? No, it wasn't.

All right, so you had to testify that you saw... Can we stop for just a second? The time is 11-5, 5-11, and the tape will be turned off temporarily. You can hear how confusing it is, this whole scene. Every single person is trying to insulate themselves from any wrongdoing. Everyone's passing the buck.

Boobie, who often claims he doesn't know people he regularly does business with. Chad, who needs Boobie to testify to get Peralta behind bars. Carl, who's just showing him how to recognize a face in court. So, does Boobie know Peralta? Two minutes later, they turn on the recorder and try again.

This is Senior Special Agent Bruce. All the participants are still present along with Mr. Brown and his counsel. It is 1107. We're back on the record. So we were discussing right before we took a break that you were asked to testify about identifying an individual. Could you tell us what actually really happened? Yeah, because...

Booby told Chad at first he didn't know Peralta, but it's confusing. When he's pressed, Booby often changes his story.

This is one of the moments that we've been reporting on for six years, and we still don't know exactly what to believe. In any case, Booby didn't know the guy's face. Chad and Carl both showed Booby photos of him. We talked to Carl about it. Did you think at the time that you guys were encouraging Booby to lie on the stand? Um, I didn't know. Really and truly, Chad likes to handle all the informants, and if he...

needed that informant to know someone, he was gonna make sure they knew him, whatever it took to do that. So I didn't want to be a witness to it. You know, I didn't want to have to testify against that to it. So I would let Chad and informants sit over there and do their talking and everything, and I was over here doing something else, you know, keeping my mind occupied, okay? So I wouldn't be witness of what was going on. So

Chad handled the informants, but even then you had an inkling that some of the stuff that went on with the informants was maybe not quite above board. Right. I mean, just like when I had to take the photo up to Boobie to show it to him so he could testify to that being Jorge Peralta. Boobie knew Jorge Peralta. Why do you have to show him a picture? You know, I knew what was going on. I didn't like being a part of it, but it was the nature of the beast of informants.

us being the top-tier, arrest-producing, case-making group in the New Orleans Field Division, which covers four states. Carl convinced an informant to commit perjury. And then he learned that Johnny, he was in hot water. Well, the night it happened, I was on the phone with him. I said, I called him, and I said, hey, man, what you doing? And you could hear in his voice, he was like he was watching something or something had his attention.

And he said, "Let me call you back." I said, "Okay." Carl lay awake, waiting for Johnny to call him back. But that call never came. I went to sleep, and about 12 o'clock that night, I received a phone call that he had been arrested by the state police. And I said, "For what?" And they said, "For selling marijuana." Johnny just got caught doing the last thing a drug cop should ever do.

That's next time on Betrayal on the Bayou.

Unlock your listening now by clicking subscribe at the top of the Smokescreen show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Smokescreen Betrayal in the Bayou is an original production by Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment. It was written and produced by Odelia Rubin. It was reported by me, Jim Mustian, and my co-host, Feynman Roberts. Our editor is Catherine St. Louis.

She is also Neon Hum Media's executive editor. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. Theme and original music composed by Hansdale Shi. We also use music by Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. Our associate producer is Ann Lim. Findle Fulton is our fact checker. Our production manager is Samantha Allison. Alexis Martinez is our podcast coordinator.

Special thanks to Stephanie Serrano, Mia Warren, and Kate Mishkin, and to our DEA consultant, Skip Sewell. We couldn't have made this show without the support of our legal team, including Lauren Pagone, Rachel Goldberg, and Allison Sherry. I'm Jim Mustian. And I'm Feynman Roberts. If you're enjoying the show, be sure to rate and review. It helps more people find it and hear our reporting. Thanks for listening.