A claw-hand cover story and a detailed undercover arrest.
Episode 394 of FBI Case File Review with Jerry Williams finds strong material in retired agent Ed Morales, who looks back on 15-plus years of undercover work as Lalo.

True crime from inside the case file.
FBI Case File Review is a steady archive of former agents explaining how investigations actually moved. Cases range from undercover drug work and polygraph interviews to mob surveillance, overseas legal attache work, and the Gardner Museum heist.
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FBI Case File Review treats true crime as case work, not theater. Its episodes usually begin with a clear premise, then hand the floor to a former agent, examiner, or technical specialist who can explain the job from inside the room. The pace is brisk, but the emphasis is orderly. Undercover stories cover aliases, money laundering, drug-trafficking scenarios, local police coordination, and the small mistakes that can turn an arrest dangerous. Polygraph episodes focus on interviews, charts, behavioral observations, confessions, and the limits of what an examiner can responsibly infer. Organized-crime stories bring in technical operations, court-authorized entries, microphones, hidden cameras, and surveillance work aimed at recording criminal conversations. The art-theft material gives the show a sharper historical hook. In the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist episode, the investigation is framed as two connected problems: identifying who took the art and finding where the paintings are now. Other episodes widen the map, including legal attache work in Thailand involving death investigations, body-part identification, and a bank transaction that began in Memphis and ended overseas. The show is serious without being grandiose. It leaves room for dry humor, but it usually returns fast to sequence, procedure, and consequence. A typical episode explains acronyms, defines investigative techniques, and stops to clarify why a decision mattered. That makes it accessible without sanding off the insider texture. The best moments come when a guest describes the gap between the clean plan and the messy scene: shots fired, unclear identities, a rushed exam, or an informant carrying information back to a corrupt official. It is not built for listeners seeking lurid reenactment. It is better for people who want to understand how federal cases are assembled, challenged, documented, and sometimes left unresolved. Across hundreds of episodes, the show becomes a working oral history of investigations, told through practical recollection rather than polished mythmaking.
Made for: For true-crime listeners who prefer procedure, interviews, and investigative detail over dramatized suspense. It also fits readers of law-enforcement memoirs, organized-crime cases, espionage stories, and unsolved art theft.
What sets it apart: The show’s edge is access to former FBI personnel explaining the mechanics of their own cases. It turns big crimes and obscure investigations into grounded discussions of decisions, methods, constraints, and aftermath.
Have you ever thought how cool it would be to eavesdrop on the FBI? On FBI Case File Review, host Jerri Williams, a retired agent herself, is on a mission to show you who the FBI is and what the FBI does by interviewing her former Bureau colleagues who share personal stories about the Bureau's most intriguing and high-profile cases, as well as many you've never heard of. Listen in on their conversations and experience what it's like to hunt down a serial killer or terrorist, catch a spy during an espionage case, comb through a file cabinet of incriminating documents in a corruption investigation, or sit on a wire and conduct a physical surveillance to gather evidence of drug trafficking or o…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Firsthand case reviews reveal how FBI agents plan operations, test stories, manage risk, and account for decisions when investigations turn volatile.
FBI Case File Review turns casework into an oral history of federal investigation, with Jerri Williams guiding former agents through what they did, what nearly failed, and how decisions were made under pressure.
Jerri Williams asks about the ops plan while you're still picturing the undercover agent's claw hand.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A claw-hand cover story and a detailed undercover arrest.
Episode 394 of FBI Case File Review with Jerry Williams finds strong material in retired agent Ed Morales, who looks back on 15-plus years of undercover work as Lalo.
A polygraph-focused hour that pairs interview craft with two FBI cases, including a sanitized Russian spy matter.
This episode centers on George Olivo's return and his long view of polygraph work as a behavioral assessment tool. He frames the conversation around interview skill and the question of what an examinee genuinely believes, which gives the hour a clear procedural spine.
A plainspoken look at the FBI's undercover playbook and a Texas sheriff's reach.
FBI Case File Review follows Larry Wansley, one of the FBI's first long-term deep cover agents, as he reflects on the early days of the bureau's undercover program. In 1973, Wansley and a small group of agents, including Joe Pistone, began using a technique that J.
A state murder case and a brand new polygrapher make for a careful look at how the test is handled.
Jerry Williams talks with retired FBI agent and polygraph examiner George Olivo about the Karina Flores Sanchez case, a state murder investigation that drew on local, state, and federal resources under the FBI's Safe Streets Initiative.
A replayed Wray interview looks at FBI morale through mission, family pride, recruiting, and continued service.
Episode 342 returns to Jerry Williams's one-on-one with FBI Director Christopher Wray and uses it to explore why people remain with the bureau when public criticism is part of the job's atmosphere.
A careful airport case review that keeps the timeline and case details in focus.
FBI Retired Case File Review follows episode 302 as Steve Lazarus traces a case involving a flight attendant suspected of disrupting the normal operations of two commercial flights.

Thirteen stolen works, one Boston night, theories still arriving.




ABC Audio's Theranos fraud series that also introduces its other true-crime podcasts.

LA Times reporter Christopher Goffard traces con man John Meehan's fraud, abuse, and its Bravo TV adaptation.
A Comair flight from Atlanta to Huntsville diverted to Rome, Georgia, after a lavatory fire in a 52-passenger commuter jet.
Retired FBI agent Kurt McKenzie discusses his investigation into Russian birth tourism and a related illegal export of military-grade optics.
Retired FBI agent Donnie Brasco discusses his career, using the alias Donnie Brasco, and following in the footsteps of his uncle Joe Pistone, who infiltrated the mafia.
Retired FBI agent William Peterson discusses his career cases, including a Kenya kidnapping of two American businessmen and the capture of terrorist Sajid Mir involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Retired FBI agent Thomas Larned discusses two fraud cases he investigated: the Orion Bank failure and the VR Labs wire fraud scheme.
Host Jerri Williams, a retired FBI agent, replays her interview with FBI Director Christopher Wray on the podcast's 300th episode.
Retired FBI agent Shane Buckwald-Nichols describes a case that began when Stanislav "Steven" Yelizarov sold $29,000 of tagged, stolen jewelry to a confidential human source working a contraband cigarette case.
Ellen Glasser says recovered deleted messages—more than 5,000 under John Poindexter—became critical evidence in the Iran-Contra case.
FBI Case File Review 394 centers on retired FBI agent Ed Morales’s undercover years as Lalo and his recollection of the April 11, 1986 Miami shootout with Ben Grogan and Jerry Dove.
Episode 393 of FBI Case File Review features retired FBI polygraph examiner George Olivo explaining how a legitimate polygraph measures whether an examinee genuinely believes what he or she is saying.
Larry Wansley says the FBI's undercover program moved from surveillance to deep cover after Patty Hearst, GYA, and Operation Target.
Retired FBI agent Jerry Bianchi discusses his work as a tech agent installing surveillance devices in mob locations, as featured in the Netflix documentary Mob War.
Retired FBI agent Geoff Kelly discusses his 22-year investigation into the unsolved Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist and his book '13 Perfect Fugitives'.
George Olivo reviews his first high-stakes FBI polygraph case, the 2012 Harbor City murder investigation of Karina Flores-Sanchez and Leonardo Islas.
FBI Case File Review episode 388 features retired FBI agent Jerry Spergers describing the disappearance of federal witness Susan Cooper from Malvern, Arkansas, in September 2016.
Retired FBI agent John Schachnovsky discusses three cases from his time in Bangkok, including the death of actor David Carradine and a frozen body parts discovery.