Life Lesson: Don't Try To Scam An Investigative Journalist

Chris Butler, who ran a private detective agency (emphasis on the past tense, we'll get to that), contacted Diablo Magazine in San Francisco hoping to get some media coverage. Butler was interested in getting a reality TV show made about his agency, hence the desire for publicity. (Read the whole article here)


This did not work out very well.


For one, the journalist, Peter Crooks (yes, his real name), was taken along on a 'sting' operation where the detectives spied on a man suspected of cheating on his fiancee. The problem: it was completely fake, a set up. The journalist had been emailed after the scam by someone who had previously worked for the agency.  Crooks looked into it, and was convinced that he had indeed been hoodwinked. Then he got this email:

“I am hesitant to tell you this. Mr. Butler is involved in some serious criminal activity right now. [Butler] is very well connected in the police community and with the Narcotics Task Force. I am not sure who to contact about this, and I assure you it is serious.”...“[Butler] is selling large amounts of marijuana along with other drugs (prescription Xanax and steroids) that have been confiscated by the Contra Costa County Task Force. The commander of the task force is taking the drugs from raids and giving them to Chris to move. They even have a couple pounds of C-4 plastic explosive.”

And that sound would be the sound of the shit hitting the fan. Long story short, the tipster was completely correct. The man who ran a private detective agency, who had asked a journalist to do a story on him and was in the process of filming a reality TV show, was dealing drugs in cahoots with the head of the county's anti-drug operation. 


Butler, the anti-drug task force chief and a few others were arrested after the police 
investigated, after being tipped off by the journalist Crooks.

There is a lesson in all this, which is to not fuck with journalists.  

Post Script: Butler's trial is currently on-going, but there's another gem. He's told investigators that he had also run a massage parlor that was a front for a brothel. How lovely.