Montgomery Resident Agency

The FBI has conducted investigations in the Los Santos area since its founding as an organization in 1908. By the start of 1914, the Bureau had opened a permanent office in the city, which is now the second largest FBI Field Office in the entire country.

The rise of violent street gangs like the Crips, the Bloods, and MS-13 began to challenge the Los Santos division in the 1980s. In response, FBI Los Santos increased its cooperative efforts with other law enforcement and criminal justice agencies in the region. Safe Streets Task Forces were created starting the early 1990s, and many other joint task forces and investigations have been launched since, helping to dismantle gangs and reduce violence in area communities.

As this wave of crime gripped the Los Santos area, smaller towns and communities came under increasing strain from criminals and criminal elements whose reach was ever expanding.  Seeing the smaller communities of Red County to the north of Los Santos as safe havens, many influential figures in the Los Santos organized crime scene took refuge from the police and the FBI in these quaint, rural towns.

In response to the increased proliferation of both organized crime, and drug crime, in the Red County area, the FBI established a new local office, known as a Resident Agency, in Montgomery in 1991.  The FBI's enhanced presence in the area would pay dividends almost immediately.

Starting on March 25, 1992, a series of violent armed robberies were committed in each of the four main settlements in the county.   The local gas station in Dillimore was robbed in extremely aggressive fashion by two armed bandits, a Hispanic female and a black male.  Over the next two months, the same man and woman, who would come to be known as a modern day "Bonnie and Clyde" robbed three more businesses and banks across the county, with a total take of over $125,000.  Their luck ran out later the same year when agents and sheriff's deputies from the FBI's Red County Violent Crimes Task Force discovered the identity of the two dangerous bandits.

The FBI's Resident Agency in Montgomery has also investigated some high-profile civil rights investigations over the years, including an attack on a Jewish community center in 1999, and various allegations of police abuse (including assisting with the investigation into a corrupt Los Santos police division in 1992).

The attacks of 9/11 led to significant changes across the FBI, including in the Los Santos Division, with the prevention of terrorist attacks becoming the top priority. Along with the rest of the Bureau, Los Santos deepened its commitment to national security—strengthening its Joint Terrorism Task Forces, bolstering its partnerships, and improving its intelligence capabilities across all investigative programs and offices.

Today, priorities here largely mirror those of every other field office: fraud, public corruption, cyber scams, terrorism and criminal networks.

Oftentimes, the thread extends well beyond the county's expansive borders. In one recent case, an agent in Palomino Creek working with local police peeled back the seedy layers of a child pornography web spanning at least five states. In another case, an agent in Blueberry unraveled a local conman’s ruse to trick investors into pouring millions into a fictitious gold-mining scheme.

These cases illustrate how despite the region’s relative remoteness it is not immune to the prevailing threats of the modern era.