Scott Payne

**Scott Payne** (0:00)
Today's guest is a retired FBI special agent who spent 28 years in law enforcement. A lot of that undercover. He infiltrated some of the most dangerous groups in America. Motorcycle gangs, drug traffickers, the cartel.
He has a book out called Code Name Pale Horse, How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis. We go way down the rabbit hole in this one. We want to let people know that some of the stories in this one can be a little bit graphic. I had a nice chat with today's guest, Mr. Scott Payne.
Scott Payne, the author of Code Name Pale Horse. That's your book. And you had some code names too. I saw that big country they called you.

**Theo Von** (1:01)
Yeah, I'm more like medium now. But yeah.

**Scott Payne** (1:03)
Oh, yeah. You coming down, huh? You deescalate.

**Theo Von** (1:07)
I'm aging.

**Scott Payne** (1:08)
Where are you from?

**Theo Von** (1:09)
Born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina.

**Scott Payne** (1:11)
Oh, that's a beautiful city.

**Theo Von** (1:12)
Yeah, but born and raised there. Lived in Charleston, played ball in Charleston, South Carolina, but I'm in East Tennessee now, man.

**Scott Payne** (1:19)
Amen, man. Well, welcome to Tennessee, dude. To catch our listeners up, for those who don't know, you spent 28 years in law enforcement, right? And so that was in police work, SWAT, FBI, undercover. And that was undercover with drug trafficking, cartels, white supremacist groups.
What about your life before law enforcement made you think that that's a direction I want to go in?

**Theo Von** (1:44)
Well, it's not. I mean, it's one of those things you look back and you go, oh, I can see what was happening. I didn't really know what was happening at the time, but I just love connecting with people. I mean, I go into great detail in the book, but like in high school, when I was in high school in the 80s, you had a smoking area. Oh, yeah. You go out there with your cigarettes, and then you had like, I could go, I could hang in almost every crowd. That's all. It's not saying I could be one of them necessarily. I could just be accepted. So potheads, I'm there. Jocks, I'm there. Musicians, I'm there. You look back and you see these things, but something about, I don't know if it started when I became a cop, but like some of my mentors, there's a guy named Gary Ward, who was at the Greenville County Sheriff's Office in South Carolina.
And he was the strongest man in the late 80s. So he came in after like Bill Kazmaier. He was a former Marine, but at that time he was a Marine, and he won the heavyweight class in bench squat and deadlift. So now he's on narcotics and he's this jacked big dude with, yeah, goodness gracious, that's him. Oh my goodness.

**Scott Payne** (2:52)
Gary Ward, baby. Dude, look at him.

**Theo Von** (2:55)
And he got bigger. And then what pours right?

**Scott Payne** (2:56)
Look at the thighs on him. They was damn selling at auction.

**Theo Von** (2:59)
Yeah, when I met him, he had a beard and everything. And yeah, he's good.

**Scott Payne** (3:03)
I bet he damn goes to the toilet and his yard just grows better.

**Theo Von** (3:06)
Dude, you know, I used to ask him, I go, we'd be at the gym. And I'm like, I'm like, man, I never see you doing like this exercise or exercise like this, but man, your neck and your shoulders are, he said, so when you pick that much weight up off the ground, something's going to grow.
I was like, all right, man. Yeah, he used to bust my chops, man. He helped me perfect my squat. Squat was my strongest lift.

**Scott Payne** (3:27)
So you had a role model like that, kind of?

**Theo Von** (3:29)
And he had done undercover and biker stuff, and I was becoming a biker. I mean, I grew up on motorcycles, but I mean like riding like American made, you know, Harley out there going to rallies and all that stuff.
And he had done that. And I don't know if that's what gave me the bug. All I know is that like, it doesn't matter during that timeframe, that 80s, 90s, it doesn't matter if it was the cheesiest undercover movie. I loved them all.

**Scott Payne** (3:53)
Amen.
Things like that have an effect on your life. The people you meet in the gym have an effect on your life. So you get into police work over there in Greenville, South Carolina. Do you remember a day that it just got real? You're like, oh, this is, now it really feels real, kind of.