In a gripping and thrilling interview with Glenn Beck, retired FBI Special Agent Scott Payne pulls back the curtain on the unseen secrets and the personal cost of living undercover. From infiltrating biker gangs and the KKK to witnessing rituals involving demons and pagan sacrifices, Payne’s story is one of danger, moral conflict and ultimately redemption.
Payne spent years immersed in deep undercover work, often forming real bonds with criminals he was working to expose. “The friendships are real,” Payne said. “There are times when one of the guys is crying, saying ‘I love you, man.’ That one hurt.” In one operation, Payne infiltrated the Outlaws motorcycle club for two years, gathering evidence of insurance fraud, car jackings, drug deals and even murder plots.
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Though he was posing as a criminal, Payne never forgot who he truly was. “I’m still me. I’m still Scott,” he emphasized. But the line between acting and reality blurred. “When I’m sitting across the table from a pedophile who’s hiring me to kill the kid he molested… maybe that is acting,” he admitted. “We don’t call it an acting school, but you’ve got to personify something else.”
Working undercover in white supremacist circles added another layer of psychological strain. “Can I really bond with a violent white supremacist? I can try to find something to talk about… but you’re sitting in a room full of what you know is evil.” Still, Payne acknowledged that not every individual he encountered was purely malevolent. “Sometimes I look at them and think, ‘That could have been me.’ They grew up in this environment, they chose that path. I chose this one.”
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Amid the darkness, Payne credits his faith for keeping him grounded. “My faith has carried me through a lot of things,” he said. Raised in a Christian home with two grandfathers who were pastors, Payne’s early years were steeped in faith, though he strayed dramatically during his teenage years. “I ended up going into full-blown Satan worship—wanting to sign a contract in blood and all this crazy stuff.”
Payne even had a face-to-face encounter with a demon, which forever changed his worldview on the spiritual realm.
“…when I rolled over what I saw was all red like a watery image, and it was a demon looking at me, smiling with his crooked finger and nails,” Payne says.
He traced that descent into darkness to unresolved trauma and emotional pain, particularly after his parents’ divorce. “Looking back, I could see that… I was probably saying something else a little more vulgar in my mind like, ‘I don’t care,’ and that went into everything I did.”
That same vulnerability, Payne explained, is often what extremist groups exploit. “Gangs, cults, radical movements—they’re all looking for somebody who has a need to belong.”
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Today, Payne is not only sharing his story, but also offering a warning. Evil is real, he insists, and far closer than most Americans realize. “There’s a lot of people out there that just don’t know how evil the world can be—or is.”
Still, he holds onto hope. “I’m an optimist, a glass-half-full guy,” he said. “And my faith… that’s what pulled me back.”
Abby Trivett is content development editor for Charisma Media.
