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Mr. Follis serves as the Chief of Operations and Director of Special Projects for 5 Stones. He previously served for 27 years within the U.S. Government, as the Associate Special Agent in Charge, for the DEA Los Angles Field Division, the DEA Country Attache – Assistant Regional Director for DEA Operations in Kabul, Afghanistan, DEA Headquarters Section Chief for International Operations – Far East Section, and as a DEA Special Agent in Thailand and Los Angeles, California. Mr. Follis has led highly successful U.S. Government investigative and intelligence operations throughout the world.
Mr. Follis has a Top Secret-Special Compartmented Information (TS-SCI) Security Clearance and has been designated by the U.S. District Court as a Certified Expert Witness on Narco-Terrorism, International Drug Trafficking, Mexican Federation and Heroin Investigations and Global Terrorist Networks. Mr. Follis is a recognized Subject Matter Expert regarding Radical Islamic Terrorist Groups, Predictive, Strategic, and Tactical Intelligence, electronic interception technologies and related enforcement and intelligence operations. Mr. Follis is fluent in Thai and has renowned operational expertise throughout the Middle-East, Eurasia, Africa and Israel.
As the SES Associate Special Agent-in-Charge of the Los Angeles Field Division, Mr. Follis led in excess of 850 agents, analysts, and support employees throughout southern California, Nevada, and the Pacific basin. His cardinal leadership responsibilities included enforcement operations, money laundering and financial investigations, asset removal and forfeiture, intelligence, diversion and pharmaceutical drug regulatory control, administration, finance, national security/terrorism initiatives, and the whole scale management of the largest judicial electronic surveillance and intercept center currently operational within the Department of Justice. During his tenure from 2007 to 2011, the Los Angeles Field Division of the DEA produced no less than one-third of the aggregate annual DEA electronic intercept investigations conducted by the DEA. These eavesdropping and wiretap investigations. Drug Trafficking Organizations, and Money Laundering networks. Mr. Follis's experience in investigative and intelligence collection operations has served as an instructive portal into the operational intimacy of the Mexican Drug Federation and Global Terrorist Networks. All of which has contributed to his leadership within the US Department of Justice and the U.S. Intelligence community.
Prior to his assignment to Los Angeles, Mr. Follis was the Country Attaché and lead advisor to the US Ambassador for counterdrug policy and operations while assigned to the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. Notable contributions include serving as the primary undercover and case agent for the investigation and operation that consummated with the 2008 arrest of Taliban/Al Qaeda financial supporter and global drug trafficking Kingpin Haji Juma Khan. At the time of his arrest, Haji Juma Khan managed the largest extant opium and heroin global trafficking enterprise in the world. Hundreds of millions of narco-dollars have been conclusively tracked to the war chests of Taliban and other Pashtun and Baluch insurgent groups, as a result of the Haji Juma Khan's trafficking empire. HJK was a confidant of Usama Bin Laden, Mullah Omar of the Quetta Shura, and virtually every insurgent warlord in Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan prior to and in the post-Taliban milieu of Central Asia. HJK has been charged in the United States with channeling over 100 million narco-dollars to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
In May of 2008, Mr. Follis appeared as the sole US District Court certified expert witness on narco-terrorism during the trial of Taliban Commander Khan Mohammad, which consequently yielded the first successful conviction of a narco-terrorist pursuant to the highly acclaimed U.S. congressionally enacted 2005 Narco-Terrorism Sub-Statute of the US Controlled Substances Act. Mr. Follis remains the singular U.S. District Court recognized court certified expert in the arcane subject matter of narco-terrorism within the US judicial system. In 2006, Mr. Follis served as the catalyst for the creation of the Counter Narcotics Police-Afghanistan strategic plan that centered on building an effective Afghan counter-narcotics police agency, as well as the comprehensive development of the highly vaunted technical/wiretap and investigative vetted units.
Mr. Follis has been recognized for his authorship of the 2002 US Senate Global Heroin Strategy, and for his associative salient role in the assembly of Operation Containment, which was DEA's strategic and operational stratagem that was assembled in response to the post-Taliban Central Asian drug and terrorist financing threat. Several Taliban and AQ figures were judicially rendered to the United States to face charges of terrorism and drug trafficking upon the strength of Operation Containment.
In 2002, while leveraging deep operational and cultural experience, Mr. Follis conceptualized and implemented the WA State Army Campaign Strategy that targeted and systematically isolated the Burmese WA State Army drug trafficking insurgency. This strategy brought the leadership, intellectual design, and political courage to advance U.S. and regional resolve that reduced the WA State Army from Southeast Asian drug trafficking dominance into a mass of international fugitives. Notable of those fugitives is operational chief and trafficking architect Wei She Khan.
Subsequent to reassignment from Thailand in 1996 to El Paso Texas and Juarez, Mexico, Mr. Follis was one of two lead special agents who investigated and indicted Mexican Federation Kingpins Amado Carrillo Fuentes and Vincente Carrillo Fuentes. In 1997, Amado Carrillo Fuentes died during massive facial and aesthetic reconstruction, yet brother Vincente Carrillo Fuentes remains the leader of the poly-drug trafficking Juarez Cartel; as well, he also remains an international fugitive.
Mr. Follis maintains an extraordinary network of global contacts. He currently represents 5Si by providing guidance and leadership to U.S. Government efforts in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) and specially vetted 5Si Clients.
Mr. Follis maintains standing as an established leader in the fields of electronic surveillance and intercept operations, transnational crime, BSA-AML and Patriot Act compliance, as well as forensic financial investigations. Mr. Follis has been the recipient of several awards and commendations from U.S. Government law enforcement agencies, prosecutorial authorities, intelligence community members, and foreign counterparts to include the Medal of Valor from the Attorney General. He holds a B.S. from the University of Missouri at St. Louis and an M.S. from Chaminade University of Honolulu. A former United States Marine, he remains involved in various USMC support activities, and is a sponsor of the DEA Educational Foundation.
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