Mississippi man arrested for claiming to represent ATF, U.S. Marshals

May 19 - At about 8 p.m. last Thursday, David Pigg, a deputy with the Hardin County Sheriff’s Department was dispatched to Vallarta Nuevo Mexican Restaurant at 10240 Tenn. 57, Counce in response to a disturbance.

Upon arrival, Pigg says he spoke with two white men who showed government credentials and claimed to represent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and U.S. Marshals.

Before Pigg and Joey Pinson, also a deputy with the sheriff’s department arrived, Pigg said the shorter of the two men told everybody at the restaurant he was with the ATF and “they had five minutes to “eat and get out before he shut the place down.”

According Pigg, the shorter  man was wearing an ATF baseball cap, a gray, sleeveless shirt with the words “Black Water” printed on it, blue jeans and boots. The man had a U.S. Marine Corps tattoo on his left arm and a bull tattoo on his right arm.

The taller man was wearing a gray T-shirt, blue jeans and would not say much, Pigg says.

According to Pigg, the shorter of the two men told him they received information from a confidential informant on a woman who they had been pursuing for two years. Based on their information, the two men said they believed the woman was in the restaurant.

Aside from harboring a fugitive, the men also claimed restaurant employees were smuggling guns and drugs into the country, Pigg said.

When Pigg asked one of the employees at the restaurant if he knew about the woman in question, he said he did not.

Shortly thereafter, the shorter of the two men told the restaurant’s employees that if they did not give up the woman in question, they would “come with a bus and check for green cards and lock everybody up,” Pigg said.

After the shorter man answered an incoming call, he told Pigg and Pinson that the fugitive in question had been caught in Mississippi, Pigg said.

The shorter man then told the two deputies “he was never there, he didn’t know us and we didn’t know him.”

Both men left the restaurant in a white, extended cab pickup.

After the incident, one of the men allegedly involved, Billy S. Smith, 35, of Corinth, Miss. was arrested by sheriff’s deputies on a felony charge of filing a false report and a charge of criminal simulation.