A new podcast, Alphabet Boys, reveals that a federal informant with a sex crime conviction was posing as a guerrilla militant during the Denver-area Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. The individual, Mickey Windecker, who drove a silver Hearse to the protests, pushed an activist to buy a firearm for him, leading to the activist’s weapons charges guilty plea.

Denver-area activists also claim that Windecker inflamed peaceful demonstrations, encouraged vandalism, and guided marches into police ambushes. The informant status of Windecker was disclosed for the first time on the podcast, which delves into Windecker’s case and the FBI’s involvement in the Colorado protests.

The Alphabet Boys podcast shared some of its documents, including recordings and an FBI summary report, with The Daily Beast, which corroborated those documents through court records and with other Colorado activists who’d encountered Windecker.

The FBI’s national and Denver offices declined to comment. Windecker did not return The Daily Beast’s requests for comment. He spoke on the phone to the Alphabet Boys podcast, after its host, Trevor Aaronson, left notes at his old apartment.

“If you post something, a story about me saying supposedly I work for the FBI, I will sue the shit out of you,” Windecker told Aaronson in a voicemail. “I will take you to court and I will break you off in court for defamation of character and slander. I have already notified my attorney about this. My previous landlord notified me and sent me these papers that you put on the old door that I used to live at, stating that I work for the FBI. I do not work for the FBI. I’ve never worked for the FBI. You get proof of me working for the FBI, then I’ll say otherwise, but there’s no proof because I didn’t work for them.”

Presented with documents and recordingsthat showed his work for the FBI, Windecker stopped responding to Aaronson.

Windecker made more than $20,000 working for the FBI during the summer of 2020, Aaronson reported, according to payment receipts. It is unclear whether those receipts represent the entirety of FBI payments to Windecker.

Windecker appeared on the Denver protest scene in the summer of 2020, when the nation was reeling from the on-camera murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. In Denver, Floyd’s killing also ignited a simmering anger over the death of Elijah McClain, a young Black man from nearby Aurora. McClain died in 2019 after police violently subdued him and injected him with nearly twice the amount of ketamine recommended for a person his size. The 23-year-old had been stopped by police after a 911 caller complained that he looked “sketchy.”

Colorado activist Azria Arroyo remembers encountering Windecker at one of the first protests she attended that summer.

“He stuck out like a sore thumb,” Arroyo told The Daily Beast. “He was in all camo with a hat, no mask, chuffing an unlit cigar.”

The camo she described were military fatigues with references to the Peshmerga, a Kurdish fighting force. Windecker had made headlines years before when he joined the Peshmerga to fight ISIS. Even then, his reputation was dubious. In 2015, The Daily Beast was the first to report that Windecker’s criminal record from Colorado was causing rifts among his fellow fighters in the Middle East. He’d been arrested 28 times, and convicted on counts ranging from impersonation of a police officer, to third degree sexual assault. Windecker had been 20 years old in the latter case. His victim was 14.

Windecker stood out from the Denver activist crowd in other ways. He drove a silver hearse full of weapons. He was white and in his mid-forties, while many of the protesters were young activists of color. And by mid-summer, he emerged as a voice of action in a local movement that had begun to stagnate.

Zebbodios Hall, a local man who joined the protests, told The Daily Beast he first spoke with Windecker by early July.

“People just talked to him. He was talking to everyone, getting people’s phone numbers,” Hall told The Daily Beast. “All these people think this dude’s alright.”