How A Phony Fed Fooled A Small Town

Fraudulent Law Enforcer Tells Katie Couric Illegal Arrests He Made Gave Him Adrenaline Rush, Sense Of Purpose

(CBS)  This story was first published on Nov. 2, 2008. It was updated on May 21, 2009.

Like many small towns across the country, Gerald, Mo. was struggling with a tiny police force and a big drug problem. Then a man, known as "Sgt. Bill," showed up.

Bill Jakob flashed a badge and announced his credentials: an undercover federal agent sent to clean up the town in a county with one of the highest number of methamphetamine labs in the country.

He quickly helped police round up dozens of suspects and was welcomed like a conquering hero. As Katie Couric first reported last November, it all seemed just a little too good to be true.

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"I didn't just wake up one morning and decide I was Batman or Superman. I found myself in Gerald," Jakob says.

Jakob, driving his own undercover police car, arrived early last year in Gerald, a rural town so small there's only one traffic light for its 1,200 residents.

"I woke up everyday with the intention of, 'Hey, I'm really doin' some great things here.' And I fed off of it and I enjoyed it. And you know, I slept good at night. I really did. I thought, man, 'I'm putting drug dealers out of business,'" he tells Couric.

Jakob says making these arrests gave him an adrenaline rush. "But that isn't really the thing that I focused on, the most, was just every bust it was, it was a good bust."

No one shared that sentiment more than Ryan McCrary, the new police chief who was struggling to control a growing drug problem with only four cops. Now he had a big time agent with the "Multi-Jurisdictional Narcotics Task Force," doing surveillance around the town and rounding up suspects.

"Once everything started unfolding, he was the drug expert, pretty much, from the task force," McCrary recalls.

The police chief says it felt "pretty good" to actually have some back up from what appeared to be the federal government.

In two months, Jakob and Gerald police arrested about 20 people and, more often than not, Jakob says he got them to confess.

Mayor Otis Schulte told 60 Minutes the town was grateful. "A lot o' people in town were. They thought that things are getting done. We got some help. I mean, a small town, we have one police officer on at a shift and that's it," the mayor explains.

"So, in a way, for a period of time, Bill Jakob was like a guy on a white horse comin' in to save the day a bit?" Couric asks.

"To help out, yes," Schulte says.

"I was very effective," Jakob says. "I think part of it was the fact that they were out of their comfort zone. If you're used to dealing with a three-man or four-man police department out in the middle of nowhere in Gerald, Missouri, and all of a sudden you find yourself across the desk from a federal officer, that's intimidating."

But Jakob wasn't a fed, had never been a fed, and wasn't even a certified cop.

Bankrupt and unemployed, the closest he'd ever come to the feds was when he had worked as a security guard in the parking lot of the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis. But he was creative, and concocted an elaborate scheme to con the entire town of Gerald into believing he was an agent working with a federal task force.

Jakob says he told the police chief he worked for the "Multi-Jurisdictional Narcotics Task Force."

Asked how he came up with that, Jakob told Couric, "You know, actually it sounded good. I've heard that it was used in a movie."

That movie was "Beverly Hills Cop 2."

"I've seen that movie. Maybe I had it subconsciously in the back of my head," Jakob says.

He also got an official looking six-point star badge with the task force name on it from the Internet, as well as business cards with the Justice Department logo on them.

Jakob says it isn't hard to make a business card. "I had to have these things. I mean, I was becoming this person."

And soon he'd convinced the police chief to formally request his help from the Department of Justice: Jakob gave him a phony fax number and arranged for a female friend to answer the phone.

Why did he do it, considering he wasn't getting paid?

"I wanted to fit what they wanted me to be. They wanted my help and I wanted to help them. And so I thought, you know, 'Hey, if I can become this other person, and I can help these people, who am I hurting?'" Jakob asks.

"Even if it was against the law?" Couric asks.

"I was more concerned with the fact that it's against the law to be a drug dealer than it was to be against the law to pretend to be a cop," Jakob says.

"Everything just fell together perfectly for his little scheme to work," says Police Chief Ryan McCrary, who says he trusted Jakob.

[Editorial_Response]

Katie Couric is not that good at her job. She is not that great at reading teleprompters or interviewing anyone, she is at best average. If Katie Couric is so great at her job then tell me one other interview where she was as prepared to take someone apart as she was when she interviewed Sarah Palin. Katie Couric was gromed for the takedown and she did the job. Couric of course is average but pulled off one heck of a hit! She took out a Republican candidate running for the second highest office in the United States of America. It was no small feat and moved her up in rank as a serious investigative reporter/interviewer.

For a person who READS a teleprompter, she did a wonderful job in the Palin interview, and people have really placed a lot of expectations on her shoulders given that. At this time however, I am really surprised that she is on 60 Minutes. I did not know that she was promoted to such a show. I work from 2:30 to 11PM CST and really don't watch much TV any more...I watch like 30 minutes a day totally. I gave up when all the shows promoted Obama and did no investigative reporting on Obama and did not push the socialist on his positions. The major networks GAVE Obama the presidency. I will never watch TV that much again in my life and I am 49 years old. I will never again be that manipulated by any media.

In any case 60 Minutes used to carry quite a bit of weight. 60 Minutes is supposed to be about hard hitting investigative reporting and interviewing.

How does meek, liberal, Katie Couric fit into that program? Well, she is a liberal, produced the resuts that NOBODY else could and earned her stripes that is how.

Now kids. If you want to get ahead, then is just one way. You have to stay true to your ideology and work hard. Curic did just that. If there is one other thing you can learn from all of this is that liberals OWN and OPERATE many different TV stations, and programs, including 60 Minutes. I never knew this very fact before today because 60 Minutes was not based on politics. But the evidence is there now given Katie Curic's promotion to the show....and NO I am, not an investigative reporter, but it sure looks like I could do a better job than Katie or those who remain at 60 Minutes.

[AdamDisty]

Seems to me the guy should be made into the POlice Chief of that small town as he clearly did more than all 5 of the cops there put together!

RT
www.useurl.us/126

[linfinster]

I highly doubt all the Couric haters could come close to doing her job. You all need to get a life and shut the heck up. You're a joke, a bad one.

[obamakenobi]

I still like 60 minutes but it should be changed to 45 mintes when ever she is on. I watch the PBS Newshour. I can't watch ABC, NBC or CBS evening news because they are geared to idiots. The woman has no street cred and should go back to NBC where she really fits in with that Matt Lauer schmuck.

[obamakenobi]

Now I get the Green Day song American Idiot. Something about being fed crud by the American Media.

[obamakenobi]

Katie Couric reminds me of Roswell, New Mexico.

[obamakenobi]

Carie Couric reminds me of Roswell, New Mexico.

[FyukYiu]

Katie is not the issue,it's all these small towns that have no clue on anything that goes on outside their little town! Hi i'm Bill and i'm a Fed like the shows on the tube or that their T.V.! Get 'er Done.
Yeeeaaaahhhh...

[chucktosh]

At least this loser will get to eat jail food spit and all. Maybe he will hang himself...

[josephp5]

I'm guessing that a lot of the reason that people on this board dislike Katie Couric is because they are told to dislike her by Republican blowhards like Rush and Sean. After all, Couric did abuse a potential Republican candidate for Vice President with such terribly unfair questions like, "What do you read?" Imagine how unfair it is to expect a relatively unknown candidate to be one 72 year old cancer survivor's heartbeat away from being President to give some insight into what type of material she reads. The candidate was justly stumped by this trick question, unable even to name a single daily newspaper or weekly magazine. Fortunately in a later, more friendly interview on Fox News, the candidate revealed that she was an avid follower of such insightful periodicals as "The Economist".

However, in this interview with Mr. Jakob, I am finding it hard to understand what Ms. Couric said or did that was so off-putting. Obviously the issue is a relevant one---despite some comments that declare that the issue is nonsense since the fraudulent cop "cleaned up the town", Gerald MO now faces 17 lawsuits for false arrest and violations of civil rights and could be bankrupted. And Ms. Couric's questions to Mr. Jakob were nowhere near as confrontational as the "What do you read" question she posed to the Vice Presidental candidate. In fact, Ms. Couric was about as deferential to Mr. Jakob as you can get, merely pointing out that seeing someone with drug paraphernalia may not be enough for a warrantless search, or that Mr. Jakob's self-pity was misplaced as he was going to jail for more than what he claimed was merely locking up drug dealers.

[fhazejv]

I have watched 60 Minutes for years but if Katie Couric is going to be on the program, i will not be watching any longer. She screwed up your CBS Evening News and now is doing the same to 60 Minutes. She is terrible! Her segment was so stupid that I switched to Dateline on NBC. I have not watched the CBS Evening News since a few days after she started there and will not watch 60 Minutes either if she is added to the team.

[josephp5]

What a lot of stupidity there is on this comment board.

How can people say that Bill Jakob is a hero for "getting drug dealers off the streets?" Does no one appreciate the concept of individual rights anymore? Have we abandoned the mottos, "Live free or die" and "Give me liberty or give me death" and replaced them with "do whatever you want as long as you claim it's keeping me safe?" Even accused drug dealers have rights. And Bill Jakob violated those rights---he admitted that he refused people the right to have a lawyer (not merely during questioning). We cannot be a nation of laws, not of men, and allow people like Bill Jakob to run loose, regardless of their claims that they are helping us get bad people off the streets (not that I believe that that was his true motive, rather than feeling important and being able to bully people around).

And please, commenters, stop with the unclever declarations that Bill Jakob is as much of a fraudulent policeman as Katie Couric is a fraudulent reporter---that's irrelevant.

[moultries]

He is not the only one! These men make a living on these lies, while endangering the public. How many women trusted this man based on this lie? How many people let him in their homes; around their families? How many other paying jobs did he obtain with these false credentials? What if someone would have gotten killed under his "protection. Just watching, it is obvious that he still does not understand the scope of his lies and how it endangered so many. Great job Katie!

[lindly-2009]

About the con man who impersonated a federal officer, I think we might cut him a little slack. After all Katie Curic is impersonating a journalist.

[cottagestreetgirl]

As I watched the segment about the impostor cop who fudged his background with a fake business card and a 6 pointed star badge bought on the internet, I thought of the poseur in the white house...how is he any different from this guy?...where are his college records, his birth certificate....who can vouch for him? (besides bill ayers and the reverend wright)

[golfbeen1]

No wonder 60 Minutes sucks. I just wasted 15 minutes of my life watching the stupidest story they have ever produced. News? Human interest? Trash? At least trash has some social value. This was terrible jounalism and a waste of time. Katie sure is increasing her journalistic resume. Put Scott Pelley in her place, heck put Andy Rooney in her place. I''m pretty sure Mike Wallace cried himself to sleep Sunday night.

[rb081857]

I really disliked the way Katie Couric handled the Sargeant Bill interview. She sounded like the scolding mother. It was embarrassing to watch.

[rb081857]

Why was it so easy for this man to catch the drug dealers. The police are forced to spend months building a case and still can''t convict half the time. Something isn''t right here.

[charliecarol]

Hey Katie
I thought the Sgt Bill segment deserved a big WHOGAS
Who gives a ____
charliecarole

[u2playnice]

I think this fat fu(k had the nylons over his face too long...