The whole thing is intertwined. Podunk cops often get put on 3 letter task forces and work in a mutual arrangement with each other. They often have a really clever scam going on where they kick seizures up to federal agencies, since it is so much harder to block/contest federal forfeitures than local ones, and then the federal agencies kick back a fraction of it.

Maybe their paychecks don't come from the federal government nominally but in practice it's highly intermixed.