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Mariana van Zeller is the host and executive producer of National Geographic's "Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller." Check out her new podcast "The Hidden Third" and also more content on her new YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/marianavanzeller
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Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
This is really not good for you.
That glass of wine is so nice to be.
One glass of wine I do not think is bad for you.
Yeah, that's all I have.
It's not great for you.
Right.
But a glass of wine relaxes you and there's probably benefit in being relaxed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I agree.
But the problem was I own a nightclub and I'm there all the time.
And I'm out with the fellas and then I'd maybe have a couple glasses of whiskey
on a podcast with some guys.
Right.
And then when I stopped, I was like, oh, my God, I feel so much better.
Like, why was I poisoning myself?
Really?
You did feel much better?
Immediately you felt it?
Yeah, because when you think about it, we rolling?
Yeah, I know.
So when I stopped drinking, I was probably having like two or three glasses of
some kind of alcohol a night, two or three nights a week.
And then I'd go out to dinner with my wife and have like a glass or two of wine.
That's a lot of drinks over the week.
And you don't think it's much because you're not drunk.
But the next day I'd be like, oh, like a little draggy, like when I go to the
gym.
And that's gone.
That's great.
Yeah.
I wish I had that ass front.
It's not even strength.
It was easy to do.
Was it?
Yeah, I don't even miss it.
You know, I haven't had a glass of anything for a week.
Now, I had surgery exactly a week ago.
What did you have done?
An appendectomy.
Yeah, I was it was exactly last Thursday, which is why I have these marks on my
arms.
Yeah, I thought I had to go to the bathroom all day.
And then my husband forced me because I had stomach pain.
And I just thought I had food poisoning or something.
So I kept on going to the toilet.
Those are scary.
Nothing was happening.
Yeah, I didn't burst.
But my husband forced me to go to the hospital and I got there.
And yeah, there was an appendicitis when I had emergency appendectomy the next
morning.
But so which recovery has been totally fine.
But I haven't wanted to drink because I want to make sure I was going to be
able to come here today.
And I wanted to recover faster.
So, yeah.
So I think it's the longest I've ever been drinking.
Well, you have a very, very stressful job.
It's insanely stressful.
You are one of the most boots on the ground journalists I've ever met.
You go to some really dangerous and terrifying places.
Like I still get nightmares from that video where you showed me where you went
to the jungle where they process cocaine.
And then walked out with them, hiked out with them through.
I mean, that was just nuts.
Yeah, don't mean to cause you nightmares, but I love doing what I do.
You know, we've done five seasons of Trafficked.
The last season just premiered a couple of months ago.
It's available now on Hulu.
And unfortunately, it's the last season of Trafficked.
Why is that?
I think a few reasons.
I think it's, you know, it's a risky show to put together, right?
It's a costly show.
It's Disney decided that Nat Geo should be doing more natural history and
animal programming.
And yeah, I think Trafficked is just a difficult, it is a really challenging
show to put together.
But I'm incredibly proud of the work we've done.
And this last season, the fifth season, has some of my favorite stories we've
done.
And I'm now starting a podcast.
Oh, you know, I launched it yesterday.
So now I'm your competition.
It's about time.
Someone will do your show again somewhere else, though.
It's too good.
This is what I'm hoping is with the podcast.
It's on YouTube and I'm growing it into something bigger.
So it starts with interviews.
The podcast is called The Hidden Third.
Because an estimated 35% of the global economy are these black and gray markets,
which is what I've reported on.
Whoa, wait a minute.
It's a crazy number, right?
35% of the economy?
An estimated 35%, which is what economists call The Hidden Third.
So we're not just talking about illegal activities and goods, like drugs and scams
and whatnot and guns.
We're also talking about, so the gray, that's the black market.
And then there's the gray market, which is the unregulated part of the economy.
So untaxed work, untaxed goods, everything from, like, the man selling fruit on
the corner, you know, to other jobs and goods that are untaxed.
But this actually has an effect on all of us because it's less money that comes
in for schools and infrastructure and hospitals and all the stuff we need.
And then apart from all that we know, which is the black market and how that
affects us all, which is, you know, whether you talk about guns or drugs or
immigration, I mean, it all has a direct impact on our lives.
So with this podcast, what I really wanted to do is, after reporting on these
black markets for 20 years, is I wanted to have a place like this where I can
have intimate, raw, you know, sometimes difficult conversations with people who
have lived or are living on the other side of the law and who, you know, I
wanted to figure out why somebody decides to become a smuggler, a trafficker, a
scammer, a bookie, you know, all these crazy lives that people lead.
And see how it affects us all, understand why, what they do affects us all.
And also, I think the most important part for me, which has always been, and I've
talked about this with you, which is trying to understand if the circumstances
were different, if it could have been you and me doing that, you know.
I think most certainly that's the case.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Most certainly is the case geographically.
Oh, 100% geographically.
If you have no options and you're stuck in a third world country, guess what?
Yeah.
You know, you do what you got to do.
Yeah.
It was that story that we did in the same episode you mentioned, the cocaine
trafficking, which I will never forget, which was the kid who was carrying in
his backpack, right?
He was 16, 17-year-old kid carrying cocaine, 20 kilos of cocaine on his back
for days on end in the jungles.
He had seen so many of his friends being killed in front of him by rebel gangs,
rival gangs.
And when he, you know, when I asked him, why are you doing what you do?
He says, because I've always wanted to be a dentist.
I want to go to school and be a dentist, but my family is too poor and they can't
afford my education.
And the only job that I have available for me now is doing this cocaine
trafficking or, you know, carrying cocaine on my back.
And these are stories I hear all the time.
So the idea of being able to place ourselves in people's shoes and understand
that, yes, even the people that we consider the bad guys could be me and you,
as you know, has always been very important for me.
So the podcast allows me to do that.
Well, that's great.
When you say that, like, it's one third, how much of it is stuff that's not
dangerous, like selling fruit on the side of the road and on tax labor?
Well, it's difficult to have exact numbers, but the estimate is that about 15%,
15 to 20% are black markets and the rest are gray markets.
So the totality is around 35%, an estimate.
Okay.
But I mean.
So it's kind of half.
Yeah, more or less.
Half dangerous stuff.
Yeah.
Half people that are just.
Untaxed, unregulated stuff.
But I mean, they also mix, right?
Because, you know, a lot of times what happens in one side affects the other,
you know, one of the really interesting, the things that I think we've talked
about a lot is, I think this number shocks a lot of people.
But if you think of the drug trade alone, $600 billion, that's the estimate,
anywhere between $300 and $600 billion every year just from the drug trade
alone.
You know, these are crazy numbers.
And so it's not so out of the box to think that, yeah, this is a large
percentage of our economy.
Is it difficult to get people to come and sit with you on a podcast and talk
about illegal activities?
Yes, but it was also on the show.
I think the harder part is that on the show, we figured out a way of how to
make them comfortable because I would go to them, right?
On the podcast, it's harder to convince an active trafficker or smuggler to
come and sit down in my office.
Right.
I would think it's a setup.
So, yeah.
So, you know, a lot of times the meetings that we had on the show happened in
undisclosed locations in vans, for example, or in places that they felt
comfortable with.
They're, you know, drug labs or their drug houses or their homes sometimes.
So this has been a little bit harder, but we're making it work.
We're hoping that it grows so then we actually have money to start traveling
more and going to some of these places.
Is this something that you always wanted to do, like do a podcast or is it
something that was a necessity when the show was canceled or did you just think
maybe I should branch out?
Well, I've always wanted to do it and I tried, we had done an iteration of it a
couple of years ago, but I just didn't have the time because I was traveling,
you know, half the year or more for traffic.
So it was really hard to do a weekly podcast.
It was almost impossible.
But I spent so much time talking to people who have really interesting
backgrounds.
And then we use only five minutes of their interview, if that.
And these are fascinating people that, again.
Do you have access to that footage?
The footage.
The footage that you edited out?
Yes.
I mean, yes.
But do you have access to it?
Like, are you allowed to use it?
Or is it, if it's owned by National Geographic, it's owned by National Geographic.
I wonder if they would sign off on letting you put that on your podcast because
that would be fascinating as well.
Because I bet there's a lot that was missed on the editing floor.
Oh, you have no idea.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
But the good news is that I have still all these.
Come on, Nat Geo.
I know.
Let her have the footage.
It would only help.
But I have all the contacts.
So as soon as I start, as this starts building up, the podcast, the hope is
that I'll build it myself from the ground up.
Because all the contacts are mine, you know, all the expertise is mine.
You have contacts with like assassins and drug dealers.
You text each other.
Hey, what's up?
Send emojis.
I mean, yeah.
I mean, these are people.
I mean, the assassins less so, but the traffickers and the smugglers and the scammers,
absolutely, I'm still in touch with a lot of them.
Wow.
Yeah.
Do you have like a file?
Or you're like...
You want to see my secret file?
Do you have them like labeled, like super shady, less than just unfortunate
circumstances, cold-blooded killers?
It's all under my encrypted messaging apps.
Um, no, uh, no, you know, it's really crazy because of the success of traffic,
the amount of messages I still get on Instagram and social media on a weekly
basis from people who want to be on the show.
So now with the podcast as well, I'm hoping that it will grow into that, but
people just showing
me their drugs and their guns, they show me photos of the stuff that they're
doing and they, they...
Is it because these people feel like they're going to die anyway?
Like they're going to probably get killed?
A lot of them are, you know, afraid.
One of the most interesting people we filmed for this last season of Trafficked
was a guy that we called El Gringo.
So it was a premiere episode of this season.
It was about cartel.
It was called Cartel USA.
It's about the cartel presence in the United States.
I've reported extensively on cartels in Mexico, right, and in Colombian and
other parts, but I haven't actually spent a lot of time with the cartel here or
seen what kind of influence they have in the U.S.
And so I had this idea, okay, let's try to figure out how massive their
presence is here, how they make the money, how do they distribute the drugs,
and what impact is it having in America?
And what I found was several very surprising facts.
The story actually starts in Sinaloa because I had to go there to get access to
the people in the U.S.
So I had to go to the top bosses to be able to get the green light to then film
their operations here in the U.S.
Sinaloa, I mean, it's the place in the world that I've reported most more from,
apart from the United States.
I've reported more from Sinaloa than anywhere else.
I have good contacts there.
I have an incredible local journalist called Miguel Angel Vega who's called, he's
El Fixer.
He's the guy that any journalist in the world who wants to get access to the
cartel will contact him.
And then he has his own contacts.
He's just an incredibly brave journalist with his own contacts.
And then he basically contacts his people and then they decide if they want to
talk or not.
And a lot of times they don't.
And sometimes I've done this so many times that by now they trust me.
They know that I'm not law enforcement.
And so they allow me to film their operations.
So I filmed super meth labs, super labs of meth there.
I filmed fentanyl lab.
I filmed a guy cooking fentanyl.
We were all full, you know, masked up and I filmed the whole operation.
I mean, I filmed Sicarios.
I've, yeah, I filmed more from Sinaloa than anywhere else in the world.
But it's got to be very scary to go there and hang out with those people.
Did they put boundaries on topics?
Not on top.
Yes.
For example, I'm not, even though I'm in Sinaloa, I'm not supposed to ask which
cartel people
work for.
It's obvious that when you're in Sinaloa, everyone works for the Sinaloa cartel.
I mean, everybody that's involved in the cartel works for the Sinaloa cartel.
There are other cartels trying to make headway in that region, but usually it's
all Sinaloa.
So you're not supposed to ask who exactly they work for.
And, yeah, there are some questions about money, for example, how much money
they make.
People don't like to ask that.
But I always ask all those questions anyway.
And, you know, you get a sense whether you're pushing it too far or not.
Have you ever had a moment when you're doing that where, like, I think I
crossed the line?
So we had a moment where we stayed too long.
So it was a day we were doing a story.
It was for season one.
It was about guns and how about American guns, the flow of American guns to
Mexico.
That was when you got the police people that were selling drugs illegally.
So for people who didn't see that episode, it's quite fascinating.
Police in Los Angeles, dirty cops, were loading up their trunks with guns that
they've confiscated
and then selling them across the border in Mexico.
Oh, they were selling it to gang members or affiliate of cartel members in L.A.
who would then ship it.
They would cross the border.
Yeah, they would cross the border and ship it to L.A.
Yeah, we visited.
Crazy.
It was a scene.
Yeah, it started with a scene.
And that episode started with a scene in L.A.
where we interviewed a guy who goes by the name of T.
And he had a room packed with rifles.
And when I started asking him where they were from, he was like, oh, this one
was confiscated.
We have an L.A.
P.D. contact that, you know, sells us a lot of our drugs.
I just don't understand what benefit to them.
To the police?
Yeah, for them.
No, but for them to talk to you.
Which one?
Any of them, like, especially the cops.
So it's the question that I get.
The cops didn't talk.
We didn't get the talks to talk to us.
So you got it from the people that sold the guns to?
We got it from the gang member who sold the guns to.
So I've spoken to cops who are doing amazing work here in the U.S.
in combating drug trafficking and gun trafficking.
And in Mexico as well.
But these were talking about corrupt cops.
So, yeah, that was not the case.
This was a gang member telling me how he had acquired those guns from LAPD,
confiscated guns that he had acquired from LAPD.
But even that, like, what would be the benefit to him to talk to you?
So in that case, it went back to my contacts in Sinaloa.
And I think it's three reasons why people talk to us.
I think the first one is ego.
People want to boast.
And if you're part of the Sinaloa cartel or even if you're a boss in the Sinaloa
cartel
and there's an ongoing war between you, a turf war between you and another gang
like the JNG,
which is a cartel Jalisco, they're fighting for power, right?
So here's an opportunity to show how powerful you are.
So it's ego, right?
And a lot of these people that talk to me, I don't, you know, very often or
more often than not,
it's not the bosses or the kingpins that I'm talking to, right?
It's the sicarios.
It's the middle and low-level people.
It's the traffickers.
It's the chemists.
It's the smugglers.
It's not the kingpins.
And for them, they spend their whole lives doing something that sometimes their
own families don't know they do.
Like, I remember an episode we did about counterfeit money, people who make
fake U.S. dollars and euros in Peru, in Lima.
And this guy, like a shiny eye, so excited, showing me how he finishes these
bills to make it look and feel and smell exactly like a $100 bill.
And when I asked him, and he's a taxi driver by day and he does this by night,
and I was asking him, so why did you accept talking to us?
He says, look, my wife doesn't even know how good I am.
I am the best of the best of doing this.
Like, nobody in the whole world can make this as well as I do.
And I always wanted to be able to talk to somebody and show off how good my
skills are.
And you're giving me an opportunity to do this.
That's crazy.
So I think ego plays a huge role.
And then impunity, like in places like Mexico, so much corruption.
Like, what's the downside to talking to this woman who comes and asks funny
questions, right?
And then I think it's the wanting to be understood.
I think everybody wants to be understood.
And they know they're considered the bad guys.
They know that, you know, there's so much stigma around what they do.
And I tell everybody, I'm here to try to understand what you do.
I'm not here to judge you because I think it's much more important to
understand why you do what you do.
The guy who makes counterfeit bills, what's his process?
Oh, it's freaking fascinating.
Because does he replicate a dollar bill with all, like, the little things
inside of it?
It was incredible.
So there's different – there's the graphics person, there's the printer, and
then he does the finishing job.
He's the finisher.
And he said he was the best finisher in the job.
And I said he's – I started calling him Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese
football player, because he's the finisher in soccer.
So I called him Ronaldo.
Okay, you're Ronaldo.
And he uses – he uses a – it's kind of like a porridge that I used to eat
when I was a kid in Portugal.
It's called like a – it's a type of like a serellac.
You don't – you guys don't have it here.
But it's like a meal – what do you call that?
Like a cornmeal.
Like a cornmeal.
Cornmeal.
And he uses that.
And I saw him using it.
It's not serellac.
Actually, it's Maizena, which is another brand.
But he uses this sort of cornmeal to finish these bills, to make it – the
consistency, when you touch it, feel exactly like the real stuff.
Is it made with the same paper?
No, it's a different paper.
The paper is the hardest part to get, because the paper you can only get in the
U.S. Federal Reserves or wherever the paper comes from.
But that seems like an easy thing to duplicate.
Yeah, it's not very hard.
And particularly if you put the – you know, all the little creases and curves
and what –
What about those little things that you can only see with like a flashlight and
stuff like that?
They have ways around that, too.
It was incredible.
We brought some home.
Haven't used it.
It's at my office.
But it is –
Isn't it illegal to possess that stuff?
Okay.
So we actually didn't bring the actual – we brought the cutouts, so we wouldn't
be able to use it.
But it's in the background of my podcast.
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You can see the cutout.
And it's really phenomenal.
It's crazy.
How many bills that are counterfeit make their way into our currency?
Is this it right here?
Yeah, this is it.
This is the finisher.
Here he is.
And you see he's teaching me.
He's showing me.
And there's a glue, too.
Yeah.
And so he's making it seem more weathered, more worn?
Yeah, and they make it seem weathered and worn.
Wow.
Yeah.
It's so crazy.
And how many...
Cricut's porridge, you see?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he scrubs it down a little bit?
Yeah.
With a toothbrush.
All stuff that he bought at the store, like next door.
How much currency goes through this guy's production?
I cannot remember.
This was five years ago, season one, but it was a lot.
And it's the U.S. secret services that are in charge of going after these guys.
So we actually saw the real money being made when we came back to the U.S.
But I can't remember.
But it was millions of dollars.
I mean, it was like five or six families in Peru, in Lima.
They're the center of all this that were in charge, that were the best of the
best at making these.
And we got inside one of these.
And how does that stuff get into U.S. distribution?
Usually in bags.
Commercial airlines, just like drugs.
A lot of drugs make it in commercial airlines.
Same thing.
Commercial airlines, bags, people would carry.
The money mules would carry it.
Actual carrying money.
And then when it gets to America, what do they do with it?
They distribute it.
So it's funny.
It's interesting.
They actually start, they go to small towns and they distribute it in grocery
stores.
And they don't go to like a Walmart or a big superstore.
They go to small first.
And that's how it gets in the general.
That's how it starts getting used.
So they just buy things with it?
They buy things and, oh, I wish I remember this was five years ago.
They buy things, but they also have people that exchange that for less cash.
Yeah, that's what it was.
I think they end up getting people.
So people that know.
Yeah, that know.
And they end up getting like 70% of what, I think it was something like 70% of
the actual cost for real bills.
So they get real money in exchange for getting people.
They get 70% of what a real bill is?
I mean, the whole operation, I think, was.
So if you have a $20 bill, you get 70% of that back in profit?
Like a fake $20 bill?
Back in profit, yeah.
The head of the group that then sells the bills when they're made.
I would have thought it would be way less than that for someone to be willing
to exchange you real money for fake money.
Yeah, I have to verify.
Again, this was five years ago.
We've done 50 episodes, but I think it was something like that, if I remember
right.
That's crazy, though, that it just gets distributed by small businesses.
Yeah.
And so one of the things we started was we reported on a lot of these small
businesses that found out that they were having massive amounts of loss every
year from fake bills.
And I remember it was in Oregon.
We did a few stories there where a lot of people were complaining about this,
small business owners were complaining about it.
How do they get discovered that they have fake bills?
I think they go to the bank and try to—
Oh, the bank knows.
They try to deposit it.
So does the bank—do they, like, look at every number on the bills?
Like, how do they find out that they're fake?
I think the bank is able to find out just by looking at it.
Oh, okay.
Because I think it, you know, would fool us, but it doesn't fool somebody who's
trained to look at these bills.
So the bank, when you bring money to the bank, they look at every bill?
They're supposed to, yeah.
I know that that's how they figured out that they had been given calculus.
Crazy bank.
Go to a bank where people are just phoning it in.
Partying all night.
Yeah, they just assume that it's real.
They don't care.
Yeah.
That's crazy, though.
So what is, like, for the overall United States, like, how much money comes in
every year that's fake?
Oh, it was—I cannot remember at all the statistics, but it was a lot.
It was, like, in the millions of dollars that people were making down there.
Wow.
It was crazy.
Yeah.
But this all—back to the story of why I talked about this guy, about why
people talk to us.
And, oh, and back to the Cartel USA story, which started in Sinaloa.
There was a point to this.
You were asking me about how it ended up in the U.S.
Oh, what I discovered with cartels' operations in the United States.
So one of the people we interviewed, which was really fascinating,
and it was somebody who had this—carried this load on his back and why he
decided to talk to us,
was this guy called El Gringo, or we called him El Gringo.
And El Gringo is an American citizen who doesn't speak a word of Spanish and
who is sort of a wholesale buyer of drugs from the cartel,
and then is in charge of distributing the drugs here in the U.S.
He distributes most of his drugs through commercial airlines, usually Delta,
because they have really good baggage fees.
They have 70 pounds, two bags, 70 pounds if you fly business.
And so a lot of times it was strippers who would carry the drugs from the West
Coast to the East Coast.
And one of the things I'll never forget, he says, if you're taking a Delta
flight from the West Coast to the East Coast,
I guarantee that there's a very high chance that somebody is carrying drugs on
one of those flights.
Wow.
You said strippers?
Strippers, yeah.
Why do they use strippers?
Because they are—because people don't suspect.
It's a woman, so people are less suspicious of women.
And there's a higher chance that they'll make it.
And they are more likely to take the money to do this in this case, to do this
job.
Or they—I mean, at least those are the people that he found would agree to do
this.
Boy, you—
I mean, I don't want to say anything bad about strippers.
You get busted doing that, though.
Yeah.
That is a big penalty.
Yeah.
You're going to jail for a long time.
It's obviously a terrible idea.
Such a risk.
Yeah.
So this guy, Il Gringo, decided to talk to me.
And he was the one who contacted me.
He contacted me initially.
And when—telling me that he had a story he wanted to share, that he was
involved with the cartel.
And then when we started doing the story about the cartel, I reached back out
to him and said,
actually, I'm doing a story about cartel presence here.
Would you want to, you know, be on the show?
And he agreed.
And he traveled out to me.
And we met.
And he said, look, I've been dying to tell this story because if I get whacked,
which he thought he might,
he wanted his story to be out there.
He wanted somebody to have heard his whole story.
Wow.
Yeah.
And he'd been threatened by the cartel.
They'd been—send him photos of his house.
And they knew exactly where he lived and where his family was.
So, yeah.
Crazy stuff.
Jeez.
Mm-hmm.
So—
That was a crazy story.
So when you go over and you have these conversations with the cartels, like,
what is that like?
Do they blindfold you and drive you out there?
Do they take your phone away?
Yeah.
They ask for our phones to be off.
Turned off.
But that's not good enough.
Don't they know that's not good enough?
Where we go in Sinaloa is areas that are operated and controlled by the cartel.
It's not as if law enforcement doesn't know exactly where they are.
They do.
Oh.
You know.
Okay.
They just don't want you recording.
They just don't want us recording.
And they are afraid that if we, by any chance, are being followed by American
law enforcement,
they're way more scared of American law enforcement than they are of Mexican
law enforcement.
Because Mexican law enforcement's probably paid off.
Because there's a lot of corruption.
Yeah.
A lot of corruption.
I mean, I've been in situations where, you know, there were police officers in
the room.
So—
Whoa.
Yeah.
Corrupt cops.
Corrupt cops.
Yeah.
Wow.
Just in uniform?
Sometimes in uniform.
Just hanging out.
Just hanging out.
Yeah.
They're corrupt cops who work many times for the cartel, right?
And that happens all over.
I mean, that's not just in Mexico.
That's happened.
I've seen it in Colombia.
I've seen it in Brazil.
We did a story about militias where I filmed a militia in Brazil with cops
around.
So, yeah, that happens, unfortunately, everywhere.
But so when—it's not as if they don't know where these people are.
They are just afraid that maybe the DEA, knowing that I'm a journalist and I go
and do this stuff,
that they might be following me.
So sometimes they ask for our phones to stay behind.
But a lot of times they just want our phones off so that we don't transmit any
signals.
But once we're in their territory, it takes months to get them to say yes.
And there's all these ground rules, right?
We can't disclose locations or people.
We have to make sure we always bring masks and T-shirts, long-sleeve T-shirts
and hoodies and everything with us.
Because if they have tattoos and we want to make sure that they—we don't show
who they are.
Because that can create a problem for them, but it can also create a problem
for us.
And it can create a problem to the local journalists that help us because they're
going to be the first targets.
If I was this finisher guy, I would say, you've got to put sunglasses on me
because I have very recognizable eyes.
You know, it's interesting.
Most people don't want to wear sunglasses.
We always travel with sunglasses and we ask people to put on sunglasses.
And people sometimes don't.
They say we don't care.
That guy needed sunglasses.
Yeah.
His eyes are very recognizable.
Very unusual coloring under the eyes.
I have not met or I haven't heard of a single person yet who has been caught
from our show.
And I'm in touch with a lot of them.
Well, that's great.
It's been good.
It might just be because they're not trying.
I really realistically don't think it's not because they don't know who they
are or where they are.
It's not that law enforcement is blind to this.
I think it's unwillingness sometimes to go after this.
It's realizing that actually these are the low-level guys and what they really
want is to get at the big guys, the kingpins, which is a better strategy anyway.
But isn't that sometimes how they do it?
They get a low-level guy and get them to turn?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
What a terrifying world that only exists because of an illegal market that the
United States fuels.
Yeah, the biggest drug consumers in the world.
We're number one.
The largest, number one.
We're number one.
Number one.
I mean, number one in incarcerations.
Number one, it's $150 billion in drugs that we spend every year.
That's so crazy.
It is crazy.
And, you know, we share this border with Mexico, which is fortunate and very
unfortunate for them.
Right.
They blame us for creating the consumer market.
We blame them for creating the drugs that feed this consumer market.
Is there anyone that has a realistic solution to how to at least mitigate some
of that?
We've talked about this.
We had a little bit of a debate about this last time because I keep giving the
example of Portugal, and you said, which has decriminalized drugs, right?
Yeah.
And I know Portugal is not the United States.
We're 10 million people.
We're a small country.
But whatever, it worked there.
Yeah.
Drug abuse went down.
Incarceration went down.
HIV went down.
Levels of HIV went down.
So it worked there.
They tried it in Oregon, right?
It went terribly.
Yeah, but Oregon's a bad place to try it.
Yeah.
Because Oregon was already so lawless that going to Oregon, it, like, allowed
people to, like, ramp it up.
And so because you could get anything and everything was decriminalized, they
just went ham.
Yeah, and also they didn't have the system in place for people who actually
wanted rehab.
Right.
And so when you don't, what are people going to do?
They're going to go back to drugs.
Even then, rehab is very ineffective, like, percentage-wise.
It is.
That was another episode we did this season that you should watch.
It's called The Rehab Scam.
It's The Great American Rehab Scam.
Yes.
And it's about how in California, we filmed in Arizona and California.
In California alone, we had an insurance, the head of the insurance
investigations in California, an insurance fraud investigator in California,
told us that, in his estimates, that he said they're probably very low, 10% of
the thousands of rehab facilities out there are probably a fraud and a scam.
10%?
10%, which is a crazy number.
But he thinks it's a low number.
That's probably much higher than that.
So our story was all about body brokering and rehab scams.
Body brokering?
Body brokering, yeah.
What is that?
It's a term that applies to rehab scams.
So rehab scams is basically the buying and selling of addicts in this billion-dollar
market, right?
So they create these fake rehab centers that bill insurance for treatments that
they are not actually giving people.
So, for example, it's a huge problem in Arizona and in California, but we
started in Arizona.
Native Americans have really easy access to health insurance through the Indian-American
health plan that they created.
And it started as a good thing because it was difficult.
A lot of people lived in reservations far away.
A lot of people, you know, because of generational trauma and alcohol abuse and
drug abuse, there's a real need for health insurance and for them to have
access to health insurance.
So you have these huge communities that when COVID happened, the state made it
even easier for them to get the help that they needed through health insurance.
But all these bad actors realized, oh, this is great.
We're just going to build these fake rehab centers, go around in white vans,
literally.
There's like thousands of people still missing in Arizona, most of them Native
Americans.
And they go out in white vans to these reservations in Arizona, New Mexico, and
they bring people, people who, you know, have problems with drug and alcohol,
and they bring people to these centers.
And then they start billing insurance.
They get you on an insurance plan, and they start billing insurance, crazy
amounts of money.
Like we spoke, we were investigating this one facility, that they were making $800
and something million, sorry, $800 and something thousand, $870,000 a week, a
week from, you know, dozens of people that they were housing.
And not actually providing them the treatment that they so desperately needed.
So just house them.
So, which is also illegal.
You can't house some, you can't offer somebody free housing and then tell them
that you will only get the free housing if you go and do our treatment.
That's illegal.
It's an illegal kickback.
But so they were doing this out in the open.
And some of these business operators were actually not even Americans.
They were Nigerians.
I found out that there were some Nigerians that owned some of these rehab
facilities.
Nigerians are so good at scamming.
Oh, my God.
It is.
Ingenious.
Yeah.
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But Americans, too.
I mean, there were a lot of them that were Americans.
So these guys are like driving around in Ferraris and, you know, people are
living in these fake centers.
I spoke to people who the therapy that they were billing like $2,500 for a
therapy session, one-hour therapy session.
That was a Zoom meeting, a Zoom call with 600 people on the call.
And that's the therapy session.
It's bananas.
Or people who weren't even there and they billed for insurance and the people
wasn't even there.
So 600 people were collecting $2,000 from 600 people for one hour.
Wow.
It is insane.
Well, I could see why they would do that.
Yeah.
If that's a possibility to make money.
Yeah.
If you open the door to criminals, and the thing about rehabilitation centers
is a lot of people that go to rehab or get involved in rehab,
they've also had shady pasts, right?
They've been involved with criminals.
And then they go, listen, man, I think there's money to be made here.
Like, this ain't fixing nobody.
This is court-ordered rehabilitation.
I had to go in here.
Right.
Let's make some money.
Right.
Start our own place.
What's the, like, what's the steps that one has to take if one was to open up?
Not that I'm thinking about doing it.
Are you thinking of it?
Not that I'm thinking about doing it.
If someone was a scumbag, someone was a terrible person, not me, but if someone
was a terrible person,
what would someone do?
What are the parameters?
What do you have to do to open up a rehab?
You need a license, probably a state license, but in some cases, it was just
really easy to get a state license.
In Florida, it became a huge problem.
It was called the Florida shuffle, which was this.
You were going back and forth between, you know, detox and rehabs and outpatient
treatment centers,
and they were all owned by the same sort of, you know, well-known fraudsters,
so you have to get a license.
But there's not much more, and that was the problem, is that anyone could get a
license and anyone could operate one of these.
I was reading about a judge that recently got busted because this judge was
sentencing people to the rehab that they owned.
And so taking, like, dangerous, violent criminals and not incarcerating them,
but instead sending them to these rehabilitation centers that they owned.
Wow.
Yeah.
And just collecting.
Yeah.
It is.
It's so sad.
It's really, you know, as somebody who's reported on the opiate crisis for so
long, just that is the only hope, right?
Let's figure out a way.
This is, we have been trying to arrest ourselves and militarize ourselves out
of this problem.
Yeah, it doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
It's a public health crisis.
100%.
One of the other stories we did this season was about Trank Dope.
Do you know what Trank Dope is?
Trank Dope?
Yeah.
No.
It's fentanyl now is being mixed with a thing called xylazine, which is an
animal tranquilizer.
Oh, fun.
So fun.
It's horrible.
And 90% of the fentanyl that is now being, that's coming out of Philadelphia,
you know, Kensington, you've seen the zombies.
Oh, I have seen Trank, where those people, like, fall over.
Yeah, like, zombies, they're walking down.
They look like they're doing crazy yoga.
Yeah, in Kensington, it's the saddest thing.
So we spent time in Kensington filming.
What is it about that stuff?
Is it the tranquilizer that makes them just fall over like that, standing up?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's part of it.
So it's a really interesting, you know, as we all know, it all started with oxycontin.
And then it went to heroin.
And heroin was a great high for people who are addicted to opiates because it
was a powerful high and it would keep you high for a long time.
And then came fentanyl.
And fentanyl gives you an even more powerful high, but it's fast acting.
So you get out of it fast.
So somebody realized if we mix Trank, animal tranquilizer with this, you will
still have the big high, but it will extend the time that you have that high.
And what is happening to, you know, thousands of people across the U.S. is that
they are taking these drugs, getting the high that they want.
You're just doing it like this?
So is it IV?
Oh, my God.
It's horrible.
No, they're shooting it off.
And this is what we shot in Kensington.
Intravenously.
Yeah, they shoot it up.
And what we shot in Kensington.
Oh, this is it?
And where is this?
This is Philly.
Philly, outside of Philly.
It's in Kensington.
It's a big problem in Philadelphia for some reason.
But this is, if you find, and this might be too disturbing, Jamie.
I was just trying to find something just to show what you were asking for.
What's too disturbing?
It's what we filmed in our show, which was the wounds that come.
Gangrene.
It looks like leprosy.
Yeah.
And it's people being amputated because.
The title of this is Losing Arms and Legs from Shame.
There you go.
Oh, my God.
That guy's got no light because of it.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
That guy is missing an arm.
But the gangrene and the open wounds.
And we filmed somebody being treated.
And this woman's arm was, like, all gone.
It was just one of the most painful things to watch.
And, you know, you can imagine the smell.
I know a comedian who went to the hospital for gangrene because of heroin.
Almost lost his leg.
He wound up dying eventually.
But, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, and now with Trank, it's just gotten.
And, yeah.
I don't think any of these people want to be doing this, right?
Nobody wants to be living out on the look.
Oh, boy.
And this is not.
I mean, the one we filmed is even worse than this.
I'm just clicking around.
There's a ton of videos about it.
So, if anyone's curious, just go on YouTube and look.
This one looks good comparatively.
Yeah, there's some people in this country that have no hope.
Yeah.
And they're just, the addiction just has got them.
And there's no help for them.
And if you get sent to a phony rehab while you're in that state, that is really
evil.
That's really evil.
Isn't it?
I think it's really evil, too.
But I think, yeah, in many ways, people sometimes think, oh, they're junkies.
They're out there.
They just want this life.
And they have failed society.
I, quite frankly, think we have failed them.
Well, not you and me, but, yeah, the structure of society.
Our government, yeah, has failed them.
Are you aware of Ibogaine?
Yes.
I listened to the interview you did with Rick Perry, the former governor of
Texas.
Yeah, that was fascinating.
Yeah, that is insanely effective and readily available in Mexico.
And now, fortunately, because of former governor Rick Perry, it's available in
Texas.
So they're doing it now in Texas with soldiers, with PTSD, people coming back
from the war with great efficacy and people that have also been hooked on
substances because of some of the things they've seen.
So I think that's a great doorway into the right because the right has always
viewed these things, like particularly a psychedelic, which Ibogaine is, I
guess, it's category one, right?
It's schedule one.
I don't know.
I think it's schedule one.
Is Ibogaine schedule one?
But it's certainly illegal in America.
And it's thought of as, I don't know how you could ever consider it
recreational because it's apparently a very brutal experience and very introspective.
And most people say, I did not enjoy that at all.
I hated it.
I had Dakota Meyer on the podcast and he talked about it.
And he's like, I wanted to punch the guy who gave it to me.
He's like, it's fucking terrible.
For like one whole day, you're going over every horrible aspect of your life.
And it finds like the pathways in your brain that created behavior afterwards.
And it like gives you this like insanely introspective slideshow of your life
and sort of lays out, this is why you're an addict.
This is why you're a gambling addict.
This is why you're addicted to ruining your life.
Like these are the things that happened to you when you were young.
And these are the things that you did when you were an adult that you had shame
over and all these different things.
These are the things that you've seen that are horrific, that have scarred you.
And it has like an 80% effective rate for people getting off drugs with one
session.
And it's in the 90s with two sessions.
Wow.
That is crazy high.
Exactly.
And it's illegal here.
Well, it is now legal in Texas.
Well, I don't know what the regulations are, how they're doing it, but at least
they're giving it to some people in Texas.
And like I was saying, this is a doorway for the right to understand.
And I think this is a lot of the case with a lot of these Special Forces guys,
a lot of SEALs and Green Berets.
They come back from combat and they're all fucked up and some of their friends
take them on ayahuasca journeys.
And that helps them a lot.
So that's another like doorway into the right because people on the right have
always thought of psychedelics as being for losers and hippies and people just
trying to escape life.
But just the sheer horror of combat experience has forced a lot of people to
reconsider this position.
And then they've had so many family members that are veterans and that are, you
know, especially guys that are like in the heart of combat.
And then they come back and they're just fucked up and no one wants to help
them.
Nobody can just talk you through it.
And the one thing that I don't want to say universally, but a high percentage
have had great success with is psychedelics.
So I think it's another massive disservice that those are lumped in in the same
illegal category as fentanyl.
Fentanyl, I know, or meth, I know.
Or meth.
Yeah, I agree.
But do you think that the pathway is legalization?
Because like even decriminalization, where are you going to get it?
You're going to get, see, here's the problem with decriminalization.
In California, my friend John Norris, he was a game warden.
And do you know the story?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So John, for people who don't know.
He's coming on my podcast, by the way.
Oh, he's great.
So John was a game warden, right?
Loved the outdoors, became a game warden.
He really wanted to like check people's fishing licenses and hunting licenses
and making sure the land was taken care of and making sure people aren't littering
or doing anything stupid.
So he gets this call that the stream is blocked up.
It's like the stream stopped running and they can't figure out why.
Maybe a farmer diverted water.
They follow the stream.
They find these PVC pipes that are rerouting it to this massive marijuana farm
that the cartel owns.
So when California made marijuana legal in the state, what they also did is
make it a misdemeanor to grow marijuana illegally.
So the cartels are like, fucking great.
Let's just start growing.
This is the best business.
So they're bringing AKs and assault rifles out into the woods, setting up camps,
super toxic pesticides, super toxic, like shit that's totally illegal in modern
farming in America, like way worse than glyphosate.
And that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 plus percent of all the
marijuana that gets sold in the places where marijuana is illegal.
It's all getting sold from these grow ops in California by the cartels.
I filmed some of them.
I've been there.
I've been in those mountains in California.
It's so crazy.
It is insane.
It's so crazy.
But it's also a side effect of like what Colorado did.
Colorado made it legal.
Great.
But then they also taxed it like 39 percent.
And so most people are like, look, it's still cheap.
I'll pay 39 percent.
The state gets the money.
It's a net benefit for everybody.
But there's a lot of people that are like, I'll just grow weed illegally and
sell that since it's legal in the state.
Right.
And because it's impossible to get a license in California when they legalized
it initially.
They made it so hard for people to actually get their licenses and do it
legally that the actual black market increased when they legalized it.
California is brilliant with that.
That's why they still haven't rebuilt a single house in the Pacific Palisades
that burnt down.
Not a single house nine months later with some of the richest people in
California.
Yeah.
Because nobody can get a nobody can get permits.
They're trying to make it easier to build.
Allegedly.
If you would have done it.
Have you had Gavin Newsom on your phone?
No.
He's been he's been taunting me trying to get me to have him on.
You should.
Why?
I don't know.
Because he's interesting.
People.
You think he's interesting?
He's interesting is like a sociology experiment.
Like if you're a psychologist.
I mean you talk to everyone I think.
Do you know who I really love that you interviewed recently?
Who?
James Tallarico.
He's great.
Yeah.
He's fantastic.
He's great.
He had great insight as to what's going on in Texas too where these Christian
fundamentalists
who are very very wealthy are trying to turn Texas into a theocracy.
These guys sound like full-on nutters.
And this is something that people have to be really careful of when you become
aligned
with one party or another party.
Right?
If you become aligned with the left like Jimmy Kimmel was like ignoring.
He was like mocking the president for saying that Antifa.
Like Antifa is not real.
Antifa is not.
That's so crazy to say.
I know it's a Democrat talking point currently but it's dangerous for you and
for everybody
else to say because they are real.
They're real and they're anarchists who are committed to overthrowing
capitalism.
They want to destroy the Western government.
Like it's and a lot of them are retards.
A lot of them are just like goofy kids that got lost in the system and then
they found like
a gang like a lot of gang members like that's the same kind of thing.
They get you find a community and all of a sudden these people are yours and
they're real
and and also they're willing to fight for something and there's like a lot of
passion involved
in it so it's kind of exciting.
And then you also realize like yeah corporate society is fucked up.
Yeah United Health Care that is kind of crazy that you spend all that money on
health care
and you get fucking nothing and then when you do have something they deny your
claim like
what is going on and is this fuck and so they don't know where to turn and so
they they get
involved with a bunch of people that are doing stupid shit and they light
Starbucks on fire
right or they you know and but a lot of it's funded too that's the other thing
the reality
is a lot of these uh you know I don't know about the funding part of it so I've
I've
organized and funded I've spoken to Antifa we did I've done stories on uh on
militias was
one of the stories we did this last season and it was important for me when we
did that
story I've been wanting to do there's rising militias rising threat of militias
everywhere
in the world but particularly here in the United States and we also filmed in
Brazil because
it's a real problem there and we I knew from the start that I didn't want to
just do right
wing militias that it was important to also do left wing militias so we spent
time with
a group that operates on the border right wing militia that operates on the
border and was
basically trying to catch uh illegal immigrants and then we also spend time you
know just a
few miles away from that group there was another group called the black cat
rifle group um that
is a left wing militia and it is to me what was so scary was that they existed
because of the other
side they existed because the other side exists right yes and none of them
understood that that
you know that that one would become stronger the stronger the other become and
that this was all
going to end not well for any of us and when I was asking the black cat rifle
group you know when I
was asking why they have a militia and why are they training I mean they were
training with with guns and
and you know they look if you look at these guys they actually look I mean
especially the guys at the
border which were the right wing militia groups if if I was an immigrant
crossing the country illegally and
I saw one of these guys a hundred percent would think that this is the u.s army
or border patrol
and and I'd be terrified or I'd hand myself in and then but it's it's there
which by the way is
not what that's the part that's not legal you're not you you can train with
your buddies you can do all
that but you can't pretend to be right and you can't look like you're part of
the right the military or
law enforcement when you're not and and these guys a hundred percent look like
they were um I know I'm
going to get a lot of flack for this because every time we talk about I talk
about militias
um I get flack for it but why because because we are we're living in the most
divided uh era
of our time and there's a lot of people who you know believe that militias are
important and think
that it's important that they exist I I find them incredibly dangerous the
existence of militias
outside or on the periphery of the of the law I find it incredibly dangerous
and so when I was talking
to the right-wing group they said something when I started talking to left-wing
group
they were giving me the exact same reasons yeah I mean it was the exact same
conversation but seen
from the other side right yeah so I said like do you not this is exactly the
same thing the other guy
said and they were like yeah we're here we think in their their point was that
and they don't call
themselves malicious by the way the left-wing group but they and they didn't
like the fact that
I called them militias but they were saying was that but this is basically a
group who trains
for what they think is going to be an incoming possible civil war we talked
about civil war with
them I know and they said look minorities in this country are under attack a
lot of times by these
right-wing militias uh whether they are part of the lgbtq community or they're
um you know um
black or hispanic they're under attack and it's our job to train to make sure
that we protect these people
vulnerable in our society and we have to arm up and train and be ready to fight
and go after the
other people um if we have to they said they only protect themselves um they
only defend themselves
right but that's the exact same thing that it is exact same thing that was my
point was that um
like people like jimmy kimmel talking about antifa not existing like that's not
good for anybody
no they are they are real and they are violent and then people on the right
that want to ignore
these people that are trying to turn texas into theocracy and put the ten
commandments in every
school the great thing about talarico is that he went to seminary school he's
in seminary right now
so he's a very religious person and he does not want them to have the ten
commandments in schools
he's like you should not this is going to create less christians it's going to
have more resistance
to christianity and really religion has no place in government well and also
why would you have that
up but you don't have something from hinduism something from buddhism something
from islam
something from judaism like you should it should be all religions if you're
going to have a religious
class that's a different thing but if you're going to have a thing on the wall
that everybody pays
attention to that you have to look at every day because it's through your
commandments and it's
christianity well then you're forcing christianity on people that's very un-american
and i think he's
really right and i think that's the thing about being on a fucking team is that
you feel like you have
to defend your team and ignore the horrible thing that your team does and then
only pay attention to
the bad things the other team does and that's crazy now you're doing the man's
work for the man
and you get no benefit right not only do you get no benefit you actually help
society erode and
become more fractured yeah and get to the place yeah yeah it's horrible it's
horrible we need another
martin luther king you know we need someone who's like an adamant expresser of
non-violence as the
only option and then we all need to embrace that because there's too many punch
a nazi people out there
there's too many people out there that think you could just go out and do
violence and i get it that
sounds exciting i'm a revolutionary yeah i get it it's exciting it's the wrong
way for human beings
we're this is supposed to be 2025 right we are supposed to have evolved to a
point where we recognize
that violence is one of the worst things that we ever have in our community in
any way shape or form
whether it's police violence or whether it's gang violence any kind of violence
is the worst thing
that we can do to each other we're supposed to be living together in harmony
there's a way at least
to minimize that violence by never having violent rhetoric by never encouraging
violence and we
seem to have lost that somewhere along the line i agree i mean violence and
hate you know and hate
so much hate yeah talk about hate and hating the other side and hating anyone
that doesn't stand
by what i stand or what i believe in well look what happened when charlie kirk
got murdered people were
literally cheering and we found out about it i was doing a podcast with charlie
sheen
and we went to the restroom and when we're going to the restroom jamie told us
that charlie kirk got
shot and he's dead and we came back and did the podcast and i was like people
are going to celebrate
this and this is what's terrifying to me and i got a message from a friend of
mine who was like man
i think you're wrong i think it's a bunch of bot counts that are gonna it's
just to rile people up
but it wasn't i i watched it i watched a lot of it online i watched it through
famous people and
prominent people that were just condoning his assassination if not celebrating
it by saying
you know that he put hateful rhetoric out there in the world but the way they'll
counter hateful rhetoric
is love you like you have to you you have to recognize that these people are
wrong they're
coming from a wrong position and eloquently state the right position which is
what martin luther king
jr did which is not what president trump said at the memorial of charlie kirk
what did he say
oh i hate my enemies he loved his enemies yeah yeah i don't agree with any of
that i don't agree with
anything i mean particularly if you're the president of the united states you're
not you're not well he's
you know he's a nut but it's also the only way that that guy survived what he
did what he went
through what they tried to put him through you have to be a kind of a nut they
tried to put him in jail
they tried to make a fake russia collusion thing they did for three years a
concerted effort that was
paid for by the hillary clinton campaign that funded the steel dossier it was
like nutty stuff
like tried to put him he got convicted for 34 counts of felony that none of
them were a felony
it was misdemeanor booking bookkeeping errors because he was paying off a lady
he had sex with
like you got to be a nut to get through that and not have any feeling about it
at all and just brush
it off your shoulder so yeah he's he's crazy i don't think that's because he's
great that's not why he's
crazy i think he's no no no no no no no no i'm saying he is crazy period and
that's how he got
through all that that's the only kind of person that gets through that and gets
to where he is
today you have to be kind of crazy i don't agree with any of that like hating
my enemies and going
after my enemies i know you don't agree with the immigration raids either which
i've heard you talk about
on this podcast listen i think i'm so happy happy that you do talk about it
because i do think it's
an incredibly important issue i mean it is an important and it's one of those
right left things
too right where people on the right are like focus on them all back you have no
idea every time i
posted about this and i get so much hate also like i get immediately people
saying horrible things
about immigrants and saying horrible things about me and i get unfollowed
immediately like people
don't think is they like do it the right way they like do it the right way here's
the problem with
that you can't do it the right way if you live in mexico or you live in guatemala
and you're walking
here and you're getting across the rio grande river and here's the other thing
for the last four years
during the biden administration it was well known throughout the world that the
borders were wide
open so an estimated who knows what is the total number put this into perplexity
that's our sponsor
perplexity um what does it say how many people do they estimate came in
illegally over the past
four years during the biden administration but it's millions and millions of
people right so people
knew that they can come across now they're here because somebody invited them
right and then they
were bused to these places and flown to these places and they were given ebd
cards and some of them
were given cell phones and now you're gonna arrest them now you're gonna like
swoop in and handcuff them
and fuck like this is crazy you asked me to be here they don't know it's the
same goddamn country okay
i have spent time on uh the trail of immigrants i was in the dare in the
southern darien gap where
a lot of the immigrants were coming and i spoke to dozens of people who were
doing the journey
and um maybe i just got lucky or unlucky that i spoke to the majority of the
people that i spoke to
had you know a lot of them were from haiti from venezuela places that are
completely torn yes no economic
opportunities whatever whatsoever violence extreme violence these are the
stories that i know are
happening and i have a good friend his name is jacob soberoff he's a reporter
for msnbc and he's been
covering immigration raids from the beginning and one of the stories he did and
it was like i love that i'm
talking about this because this has become really important for me um because i
live in l.a and i i'm
affected by this um on on many levels also you have an accent you're from portugal
exactly i'm an immigrant
you might get green card yeah they might pull you over ask for your papers i
might actually take away
my citizenship um but uh this the one of the stories he covered and i think
exemplifies what's happening
to me right now is estella and nori this is a mother and a daughter from guatemala
the daughter was
born in guatemala with her mother and her mother was gang raped in the small
town she's from a small
impoverished town town in rural guatemala she was gang raped and the next day
and her daughter watched
her being gang raped and she was fuel violently beaten up she had blood all
over her face they broke
her bones it was horrible with her daughter who was young at the time watching
and the next day she
decided she had family members in us and she decided this is it i can't live
here and i have to take my
daughter to a place that's safer her daughter was traumatized by the way by now
took brought the king
they came to the us um they immediately went and asked for asylum which by the
way most people don't
know this but it is completely legal to become to come to the united states
whatever way you enter
even if you enter illegally it is legal to come to the u.s and ask for asylum
that is not coming to the
u.s entering without papers and then asking for asylum is legal so even when
people say yes but do
at least you can't do it illegally you're wrong it is legal to do so coming in
with no papers what are
the requirements to uh to request persecution you have to you have to be a
victim of persecution whether
it's you know uh uh cartels yeah violence uh rape uh uh political what what are
the five things it's like
jamie can you look this up it's political uh religious um political religious
there's like five
reasons why people can be um persecuted and um so they came to the west they
immediately started applying
for asylum and there's 11 million cases backlogged right now of people asking
for asylum race religion
nationality nationality political opinion membership in a particular social
group
yeah so just those five things yeah interesting so political persecution also
involves imprisonment
torture or threats of violence huh yeah what's the numbers uh 10.8 million this
is encounter it says
encounters though where they crossed and were stopped it also goes according to
the trump administration's
well let me say this according to someone i spoke to at the trump
administration they said they
they believe it's 20 million over four years oh i don't think that's not i
think that number is highly
exaggerated well this says um in addition to these uh apprehends apprehensions
and encounters officials
reported an estimated 2 million gotaways individuals who are detected crossing
the border illegally but evaded
capture combining these figures suggests roughly 12.8 million total unauthorized
border crossings
or attempts during the biden administration so not 20 but 12.8 that's still
quite a bit here's another
thing that people keep talking about is how many people um obama deported but i
think that's not
i think they're saying it incorrectly because i think when they say that obama
deported three million
people they always use this like as an as an aha against trump deportations i
believe obama's deportation
numbers count turnaways like when someone makes it to the border and then you
send them back
very different yeah and he was running into home depot right right and grabbing
people like with a mask
over your face like what we're seeing with ice or worse than that even worse
than going to the home
depot is the case of estella nori where they were going to check in on their
procedures at the courthouse
and when they went to check on how their asylum case was going they were
detained they had been living
here for several years the daughter is now is a star athlete uh amazing student
but wait even worse
so they are deported back to guatemala taken like their family didn't even know
they were where they
were they were taken they took away her medication she had high blood pressure
the mother high blood
pressure they got to guatemala they don't know they haven't lived there in
decades they have no idea
what to do they have no money in their pocket they can't they don't have access
to the medication
so the mother dies and the daughter stays in guatemala and there's footage of
her holding the coffin
until it's buried and her wanting to be with her mother and these are the
stories i mean if even if
this just happened with one person we should be asking if this is the right
thing to do but this
is happening to you know hundreds if not thousands of people all across the
country and this is not
all right i mean this is not all right we should not be doing this yo
especially if someone's already
been granted asylum like there should be so their their asylum procedure was
ongoing they hadn't been
granted yet but that is but still you can't do you can't remove somebody who's
ongoing procedure
asylum procedure and plus that's not meaning meaning she was trying to do it
the right way yes absolutely
and and that's not what we were sold right right a lot of people voted for
trump because they thought
that he was going to go after the criminals well i think very unfortunately a
lot of this stuff is
political and um and the the fear is the both sides fear right so i don't know
if you know this but
minnesota governor tim waltz who was running for vice president he just passed
uh you also had him
on right no no i did not uh i he they just passed something in minnesota where
illegal immigrants are
allowed to have driver's licenses and vote which is kind of crazy um because
are you sure yes yes just
yesterday illegal immigrants as an as in they don't even have a green card exam
not supposed to be here
and they're not drivers licenses and can vote let's find out though this is the
story that i read
jamie find out i read this story and he was like probably talking about i know
sounds crazy right it
sounds crazy yeah because i became a citizen so i could vote and it took me a
long time to get
oh yeah no i know a lot of friends who became american citizens and it was a
long grueling process and
they had to prove that they were exceptional that there was a reason for them
to be here a lot of
them were comedians and entertainers and i didn't have to prove it what is it i
don't know what are
the facts of the case i typed in tim waltz passed a legal immigrant vote and it
was all over twitter
a couple of days twitter tim waltz has not passed a bill okay um driver's
licenses that was something that
happened in 2023 it said yeah but there was something that just happened a
couple of days ago
i find it find it yeah i'll find it
i'll check on twitter
illegal i have to say i find it very hard to believe me too but no but not
because i think that what i was
getting at is a lot of the reason for wanting an open border is congressional
seats because
one of the things about when you do a census it doesn't count how many people
are citizens it counts
how many people and so you can get extra congressional seats if you have more
illegal immigrants in your
city and you have much more political power that way but why do you get more
seats if you can't vote
it's just how it works it's just how the setup it's the the way our census is
set up
so the way a census is set up it's just counting people it's not counting
people that are legally
the census okay so the census is how they dictate the amount of congressional
seats here's what was
going around twitter okay minnesota elections confirms non-citizens can vote
with driver's licenses
october 14 25 this is it uh state hearing minnesota director elections paul linnell
testify that
non-citizens holding driver's licenses under the 2023 driver's licenses for all
law can register to vote
and cast ballots by affirming eligibility as the id verifies identity but not
citizenship secretary of
state steve simone steve simon noted that such voting is illegal and rare with
post-election
adults identifying discrepancies for prosecution including 59 just 59 potential
cases in 2024 that they
can't wait um the testimony has prompted republican demands for voter roll audits
and reforms concise
coinciding with federal lawsuit against minnesota for incomplete registration
data so at the very
least this is opening up the door for people that are non-citizens to vote and
it seems like they're
confirming that non-citizens with this driver's license can vote um that it can
be that it can be consequence
of it it's not that's not the goal of it but but it's also it's a consequence
that can happen it is a
consequence of it but i don't think it's purposely done i mean i think that it's
trying to make it
easier for people to vote and unfortunately it's a little bit like the rehab
scam right you're trying
to make it easier for native americans to get health insurance but guess guess
what then there's people
who are going to abuse that that that that opportunity or that that most
certainly and that's what's
happened that seems like what's happening that's a very charitable way of
looking at maybe but
it says that they they can register to vote but the next line says that the
voting is illegal yeah
it's illegal but they can register but they they could do it if they wanted to
either way i i think
what is happening is that immigrants are being used as political pawns right as
we know from both sides
that's true both sides 100 we both agree with that and these are human beings
like the mother and like
so many of these stories like the father of the three military american so guys
went and served for
our country and the father was deported these are you know horrible stories of
human beings and a lot
of times the people that are traumatized are american citizens they are the
kids they're pulling away
their family members their mothers their fathers and it's american kids who are
being traumatized
it's also heartless and you're showing to the world that you don't care that
you just want to
achieve a result and you want to achieve a result result that is going to leave
a terrible feeling
for anybody with a heart that looks at that story in that case and then they're
going to associate
the united states government more and more with tyranny more and more with fascism
more and more with
you know what you're you think you're just enforcing a law because these people
broke a law but that
there's there's still human beings that have been a part of these communities
the law is just some
shit people wrote down it should make sense and there should be exemptions or
at least some sort of
amnesty which someone has been here oh that too but there is a pathway yeah in
a pathway and right now
there isn't there's right because these people are probably not paying taxes
and if you could make
them citizens you're much more money you would make right but they do pay taxes
you know
sure for buying things no not only for buying taxes or for income tax for
income they actually
pay income taxes right do they file for income taxes they get income taxes
removed from their
paycheck can you check that out jamie i read about this recently because it's
something that so many
people it's often used by the right how these people are here and they don't
pay taxes that is
actually not it's millions of dollars a year that undocumented immigrants oh i'm
most i'm sure
not only in sales but also in income taxes and all both with the fake social
security numbers that you
get but also i think there's something that i see we probably have to have that
for certain jobs right
yeah social security numbers but i think there's a way also that they figured
out that people are here
while they're going through asylum procedures or trying to get their green card
but there's still a
lot of people that are from 2016 says 11.6 billion dollars in state of access
collectively undocumented
so i i would imagine though that that's like at the very least less than there
would be if everybody
was totally above board you know what i mean oh yeah i'm 100 we could be making
so much more money
exactly i mean they're the bad let's not who are we kidding or so i mean they
are the backbone of our
economy particularly in california where i live there would be no construction
there would be no
agriculture there would be no you know uh kitchens and and restaurants and
hospitality services without
these immigrants undocumented immigrants paid nearly 97 billion in federal
state and local taxes in 2022.
so the idea that they don't pay taxes is a it's a lot of money um and that's
money that now you
have to account for because those people are going to get kicked out yeah right
yeah and and
but meanwhile if they'd figured out a pathway to citizenship i bet that number
would increase
you know and also they could get different jobs yeah you know they wouldn't be
stuck economically
because that's the the weird thing about people that sneak about like when
these farms get raided and
they bust all these people and the farm doesn't get busted like hey i know what
are you doing
and how much will you pay in them like should you go to jail for paying them
less than you're
supposed to pay people yeah because that's the reason why you hire people that
don't have any
paperwork yeah because you want to pay them less one guy is a horrible person i
heard the he did a job
and then when the job was over he called ice on the people so he didn't have to
pay them it might
not be real though it might be a tick tock might be a little they want to they
want to got me it might
be china's trying to set us up to yell at each other because that's a lot that's
going on too but yeah it's
it's it's heartless and that's heart that's uh and if you're supposed to be a
christian nation right
which is like with the hard line right people want well that's not a very
christian ideal yeah well
they broke the law right i get it they're families right you would you would
have broke the law too
but i'm by the way most of those people are deeply religious a lot of those
people that are coming from
south america deeply religious from central america deeply religious people
deeply like they're they'd be on
your side if they had a chance you know those are like hard-working family
people they'd be the kind
of people you want in your community for the most part but there have to be a
way to sift out you have
to figure out okay who's the cartel members who's who's a terrorist and 100 i
don't believe in an open
border but i do believe that once people are here and they've completely
integrated into society it seems
pretty foolish to just snatch them up and send them to countries that they don't
even know anymore
how about this guy in maryland that this abrigo garcia guy that they keep they're
trying to send
them to africa oh my god it's insane three countries in africa said no but one
said yes right oh i don't
know have they are they gonna are they gonna send them to africa who said yes
it just got it oh they
failed okay good why are they sending him to africa he's not from africa it's
like guys that's crazy yeah i'm
happy you use your platform to talk about this because i i rarely do i get an
issue that i'm like
this passionate about and that i see so much injustice that i feel like i need
i need to talk
about this there's no heart to it you have to have a heart you have to like you
have to like the law
should be to serve and protect right this is this is the whole reason why we
should have law enforcement
right so in this situation what are you protecting are you protecting american
jobs you want to go pick
strawberries like these people are like coming here because this is a way
better option than where
they live wouldn't it be better if those people were doing that work and making
a livable wage and
wouldn't it be better if these greedy corporations weren't just able to hire
illegal people and pay them
under the table a tiny amount of what they really should be getting as a normal
human being absolutely
for all of them so you better for all this is just you're taking advantage of
these people and once they're
here look if you're here and you've been robbing people and say yeah that guy
get rid of them like
get rid of all the parasites and all the criminals and all the predators that
are destroying people's
lives all the people robbing people everybody wants that but after that you
gotta figure out a way
to like otherwise we're just gonna have this stupid divided country with left
and right
and these people will never vote republican again any which is really
interesting because a lot of hispanics
and a lot of like latino people are religious and there's a lot of the things
that the republicans
talk about that they would align with like cubans for example cubans are hardliner
right-wing people
they don't around they're very disciplined they know what communism looks like
you they they're not
they don't tolerate no nonsense in miami you know it's like and that could have
been the republicans
could have captured a lot of those people that are deeper religious like that's
one of your core values
is you think it's a christian nation right it's just you got to figure out how
to do it with a heart
i know you can't just snatch a hard-working father away from his children that
he brought over here
from another country just because he wants them to be able to live and not get
killed in the streets
he wants to be able to make a living and this guy probably works 14 hours a day
sees them kisses them on the head before he goes to sleep crashes yeah gets up
in the morning and does
it again that's right that's what you want in this country of course it's like
you gotta you gotta find
the pathway for good people and like you can't tell me don't we don't have
enough resources for
that because you see about the amount of money that goes through usa or went
through usa the amount
of money that goes to fucking weapons manufacturers you you know we don't have
enough money to sort out
who's a good person and who's a bad person and find some sort of a pathway i'm
not saying keep the
border open but the people that are here let's root out the fucking terrorists
let's figure out who's
the bad people that some definitely bad people got through after that let's you
know it's
let's break bread let's break bread 100 i agree with you 100 let's we're
supposed to be a community
yeah if you come over here and you bust ass for 25 years and you're a part of a
the american community
and then all of a sudden you don't have the right paperwork so they're going to
send you a country
that you don't even remember because you know you came over here when you're 15
like you barely know
how to speak spanish anymore like what yeah i know it's absolutely i mean it's
yeah it's i've been
reporting on these issues for so long it's it's truly i mean it's why i came to
america why so many
people come to america it's because this is what this country stands for it's
like it's welcoming to
immigrants and that's immigrants make america great ed calderon was telling us
a story about
a young man who came over here when he was a baby his family brought him over
here when he was a baby
so he doesn't have any paperwork and uh he was in his 20s they snatched him up
and sent him to mexico
and he doesn't even speak spanish and yeah and he's like you you're not
american and you're over
there just and was it during these raids right during some sort of an ice raid
they grabbed him and
sent him to tijuana right right right he doesn't even speak spanish it's insane
he's a full-on
american just with bad paperwork yeah it's crazy it's and the only difference
between him and me is
that i you know my parents were born here yeah i happen to be born here i got
lucky it's like i'm
not saying you should have the border open because you shouldn't every country
should be checked because
there's threats in the world and also there's a lot of people mad at us because
we've done some
fucked up things all over the world and that's the the dark part of all this
mass migration in both europe
and in america it's like why are these people fleeing where they were well
because we fucked up
their country the out of it we destabilize their government yeah absolutely i
mean not not all it's
not all of it but like libya there's a lot of them the money that we're using
in trying in these
raids like let's figure out how to stem the the immigration let's try to figure
out how to you know
stop the consumption of drugs so that there's less violence in those countries
stop the flow of guns so
there's less killings and gangs you know it's it's like it's a a cycle of
destruction that we're
enabling them and and then we go and catch them and we all really started with
moving manufacturing
overseas as well once we took all the manufacturing out of america and then we
moved manufacturing
overseas or over to other countries across national lines now all of a sudden
you can get things made way
cheaper but then you create all this poverty and then what happens with poverty
people fall into drugs
because they have massive despair you know and then somebody well you brilliantly
documented with that
with the oxycontin express that that piece was how i found out about you but
also how i found out about
that problem which is so insane where you could tell people if they they're not
aware of how it all started
yeah it's interesting because i just had the fbi agent that investigated that
case on my podcast
wow fascinating okay so i found out that uh reading the newspaper my husband
and i were working together
at the time and we found out that there were all these people who were going to
florida just to buy
pills so there was these pain clinics these pill mills as they were called um
and they were distributing
the numbers were crazy 90 of the top 100 uh doctors prescribed prescribing oxycontin
were in florida
90 of the 100. it's insane what are the odds that's statistically 50 states i
know it's insane
and and this is the sad part is it's not as if like these pharmaceutical
companies or the
distribution companies didn't know this was happening they did they just
pretended that they
didn't because it was it was huge business and it was great and why florida
because they had really
lax regulation so you could go doctor shopping you could go i went undercover
so that was part of the
story that we did oxycontin express where i went undercover into one of these
pain clinics
and i asked the receptionist um i said i have a little bit of a back pain uh
what do i need to
do if i want to get some pills and she said oh what would you like and we can
give you oxycontin we
can give you some benzos we can give you what's called the south florida
cocktail which was essentially
muscle relaxants benzos and oxycontin that's how she was describing it she didn't
say it but that's
what it became known as this is the south florida cocktail but she said we can
give you this this
and this it's the holy trinity trinity right and all you need to do is you go
to the
back of the clinic and there's a place there where you can get an mri and then
you come back to us
and an mri is a ridiculous thing because you can read anything into an mri like
any all of us have
backs have a spine and whatever comes out results in the memory that you the
doctor can pretend to
look at it and say oh yeah yeah i can see why you're having back pain or neck
pain and i'm going
to give you this but the problem is that the doctors weren't even looking at
the mris that was just
fake there was just you know in case somebody ever came after them they could
say
that they had mris they were seeing people in less than three minutes and
saying they were doing
all these less than three minutes so you'd have a patient come in and then
these amazing
entrepreneurial twin brothers called the george brothers uh built this business
it was called
american pain they basically built a business out of two or three things it
sounds like a movie american
pain so my husband did a documentary about it about the rise and fall of these
twin brothers
they started by selling steroids and then somebody told them like dude why are
you doing what are you
doing selling selling steroids or you could make making so much more money it's
called american pain
you should watch it it's on hbo it's so good i think actually i've heard of it
now yeah that you
mentioned it's really good so we reported oxycontin together and because we
were chased down i-95 by
these goons by these two brothers by these twins um darren became obsessed with
them and then
contacted them in prison okay so it's a really funny story i'm gonna tell the
story so we find out that
these were the biggest operators five of the top 20 prescribers in the whole
country were doctors
working for the george brothers they were it was millions of pills they were
not only prescribing but
selling out of their pain clinics they were making millions of dollars i mean
so much so that they
were stashing it in bags and putting in the attic their mother's house's attic
and stuff there was like
insane amounts of money and people would come in from all over the country
mainly from appalachia
and they would come in drive down and they would get to these clinics and they
would say i want you
know see a doctor for less than three minutes the doctor had a rubber stamp to
stamp the prescription to
make it fast so they'd see you three minutes okay next one and stamp it there
were people passing out
in these pain clinics in the lobby people passing out outside so when i went
inside the talk to the
receptionist and then i went outside and i bummed a cigarette out of somebody
and i explained hey i
pretended i had secret cameras they didn't know i was filming and i started
saying what are you what are
you doing here he's like oh yeah i came from kentucky and i this is one of the
best clinics i can get
all my pills here and then i go back and you know we sell them and we can still
use the pills we
want it's feeding our addiction and we go out and we sell them for 10 times
what we're paying here
and so it was a big business and and so and the no database right so no
database yeah so you could
go to several different doctors doctor shopping so we're outside this this
american pain pain clinic
which we knew at the time they had security guards outside surveillance cameras
so we knew they were
like shady and but we also knew that they were the biggest operators in town so
we wanted to film outside
and it was our last day in florida we kept it to the last day for safety
reasons and we're outside
and it's me and my husband he's filming it and suddenly within minutes a car
comes across and these
two got big guys start yelling at us and threatening us so we get back in the
car and we're saying no
we're just filming this is public property we can film it's like get the out of
here were you guys filming
we get in the car we leave they start chasing us down 985 and i am running out
of gas and i stop at a
gas station and the night before i'd watch the sopranos which is the wrong
thing to do so the whole
time i'm imagining it straight a scene out of the sopranos right they stop
right behind us as we stop
for gas and they come out of the car again i was like holy shit get back in the
car drive out they continue
chasing us and then we run out of gas right out on the highway and we stop the
car in the side i'm
calling 911 by the way and uh i called an f a sheriff's department person i
interviewed the day before
and i told her what was happening she said call 911 immediately these are not
people you want to be
messing with so i call 911 and not eventually i stop on the side of the road
they stop next to us because
they're dumbfounded they're like what the why did they stop they have no idea
that we ran out of gas
and then the police comes up and they ask them some questions and they came up
with a silly excuse and
they let them go and a few months later they were taken down by this massive fbi
investigation that was
happening at the same time so i interviewed the guy kurt mckenzie who was the
investigator that knew
of us at the time they he realized oh my god there's like these crazy
journalists that are doing this story
at the same time as they were and we were actively trying to get them to talk
to us the fbi and they
couldn't because they had an active investigation um but they actually tapped
in and american pain my
husband's film is all about that they tapped they did taps wire taps on all of
these guys so they know
everything how they were how they how they knew there were people dying people
od-ing just outside their
clinic and how they were just kept going and the doctors themselves as well
they were dirty dirty horrible
doctors that knew there were people dying and they couldn't give a shit because
they were making
millions of dollars they also i think something happens when you see a bunch of
people die there's a
lot of doctors that are i think they get very calloused to the idea of death
and especially if the idea not
not good doctors there's great doctors out there obviously but there's sociopaths
that become doctors
and become even more sociopathic once they realize they can make money off of
it and that that whole
florida pain pill scene was a classic example of that because there's only one
way you would have
a system like this you'd have a system like this if you want it to be corrupt i
mean it's just designed
to be corrupt designed to be corrupt i mean how is it possible that you can go
i remember i'll never
forget interviewing the mother of a kid who had just died and then a few months
later her other kid died so
she had two sons and she lost both of them to this and it was all because of
the pain clinics and she
was showing me the pain but the painkiller bottles the prescription bottles
that the kid got it was
it was like hundreds and hundreds of pain pills that the kid got from just they
were just selling them
and the fact that you could doctor shop the only reason why you would have that
like it's not
difficult to have a database i mean this was like 2000 and what when this was
going on what year 2008 2009
that's when we did our story plenty of computers the internet was around like
this could all be
prevented everybody was just making so much money the doctors the pain clinics
the distributors the
pharmaceutical companies i mean and the sackler family the sackler family now i
know that after
peter berg's netflix series painkiller came out that they put a halt on because
they were supposed to
pay an enormous settlement like six billion not really enormous compared to
their problem exactly i was
about but it was going to supposedly keep them out of jail and i think there
was a judge that put a
halt on that and they started another investigation what happened was that they
the settlement uh they
agreed to to to settle as long as they were never found the family itself was
never found liable
again right which is crazy yeah you can't do that you're literally buying your
way out of jail when
you might be responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people and
and and i mean it's been
it's been a million people who have died in the past uh 20 something years from
the opiate crisis
it's crazy okay i don't think people realize and this family thinks they're
going to be able to buy
their way out of being responsible for maybe a million people dead with a drop
in the bucket
i mean they're not directly you know guilty of all those deaths but they
created the problem of the
opiate crisis the biggest drug epidemic in america's history and they're paying
buying their way out
with a you know a profit of the drop in the bucket of the profit compared to
what they have yeah they're
not even going to feel it yeah six billion dollars oh it's so evil yeah it's
just so evil yeah they
tracked down the guy who approved it for the fda do you know that no he was
living in a small town in
new hampshire and apparently they'd taken this guy would not approve it and
then they got him in a hotel for
a weekend and the pharmaceutical drug companies and no one knows what happened
in the hotel no one knows
what they did what kind of deal they made or what happened but when they got
out he approved it he
approved what he approved oxycontin from just the original the original proving
of oxy do you think he
was bribed to do that i don't think he did it because he's a nice guy i mean i
don't know what
but oxycontin has its place like for germally ill cancer patients for people
dealing with a lot of
pain there's a reason why people that it should be available for those in need
right but that's not
how they were selling no they were not in fact the ads at the time from purdue
pharma was that less
than one percent of people would become addicted from this yes that literally
that was the number they gave
less than one percent of addiction rates from do you know what we found out the
other day heroin was
created uh to help people who had morphine addiction huh to try to wean them
that's there was it was
offered as a safe alternative huh to morphine huh wow i didn't know that yeah i
didn't know that either
isn't that kooky so it's like we've been doing that forever well i've got
something better for you it's called
oxycontin by the way only one percent of the people get addicted to it and then
it was fentanyl too
yeah you know we when we investigated fentanyl they started it started as a
drug for terminal cancer
patients and we went after this one company called subsys where the guy the the
head of that company
called john kapoor was the first and i believe only until this day head of a
pharmaceutical company
to be charged and go to jail and we had a whistleblower in our investigation
this was before
he was arrested and found out and charged we had a whistleblower telling us
that the company
insys pharmaceuticals subsys was the thing insys pharmaceuticals was the name
of the company
that they were doing exactly the same that purdue pharma did back in the day
which was they in their case they were actually bribing doctors they were
taking these doctors all
to like travel experiences around the world and paying them to prescribe their
medication
so you'd call and you'd go to the doctor and say i have a headache oh you
should be taking subsys it's
a great fentanyl it's a fentanyl it's going to cure your your your headache
imagine and then the people
at the company hired by insys they had their insurance department would call
insurance and say oh
this person um you need to approve this medication for this person because they
have cancer they were
lying to insurance because it was only approved insurance would only pay and
these were very
expensive drugs if it was for cancer patients so they would lie and this so
this whistleblower basically
opened up the pandora's box and told us all about this and then there was a big
investigation into it
and it was the first and only i believe pharmaceutical company owner that ever
went to the prism for it
wow but it was the same playbook it's crazy so it's like it keeps repeating
itself well it's just evil
right it's just evil finds a way to manifest itself through any business if you
got people that are
incentivized by money rather than doing the right thing and evil finds a way to
go listen we could
just fudge the books listen we can form a study and make this study seem as if
it's effective by the
time they get it right by the time they figured out we made a lot of money
right and that's the playbook
i mean that's how they got vioxx through it was like clear email evidence that
they knew it was going
to cause serious health problems with people that took it but the the i believe
the exact quote was
but we believe we will do very well with this it's crazy it's evil it's evil it's
evil and they're
detached from it because they're not like seeing the people purple person die
in front of them they're
not seeing some child trying to wake their father up and realizing their father
is cold and dead because
he had an overdose the middle of the night and no one's taking them to school
because their dad's dead
you know like they don't they don't see that they're they're you know sipping
scotch in some
country club somewhere and driving around in a mercedes and they're just
looking at the amount of
numbers that they made from that yeah it's evil it's evil i remember
interviewing a woman we did a
story about fake pharmaceuticals and why i think it's 20 million americans that
can't afford their
pharmaceuticals so they go to places like mexico and online to indian
pharmaceutical companies or fake
and buy medication that sometimes works but a lot of times is counterfeit and
is bad and actually can
kill you and i remember interviewing the sort of the head of this big lobby one
of the biggest dc lobby
groups for pharmaceutical companies and asking her and she was very happy to be
on the show because we
were talking about counterfeit right and she thought she was going to be able
to just talk about how bad
counterfeit medications are and how important it is to buy the real medications
from real pharmacies
and i was asking her but what does it say about the pharmaceutical companies
and the healthcare system in this
country when 20 million americans can't afford their life-saving medications
what do you think that says and she says oh i don't you know and
uh the medications that these they are too expensive we have to figure out a
way to bring prices down and
you know they always say that it's not for profit it's for research and
development which is
bullshit because a lot of it there is used for marketing and a lot of it is is
used for its profit
right it's they're making a ton of money out of it they make so much money and
and i and i asked you
have you ever actually spent time with anyone who's struggling to buy their
medications as the head of
this pharmaceutical lobby have you spent time with any of these people she's
like no like straight
out no it's like how can you how can you represent the pharmaceutical companies
know that one of the
biggest problems we have in this country is that people cannot afford these
medications and not have
spent one single minute with a person who has a hard time affording these
medications right that seems
able to it's that but it's that disconnect that you're talking about right it's
not actually
understanding the problem or wanting to know the people that are being affected
by these problems yeah and
they're the medications are so expensive some medications are so ridiculously
expensive and you
realize like they're not they don't have to be that expensive this is just a
company making massive
amounts of profit paying their ceos millions of dollars and they could stop a
lot of that if they
cut that revolving door out if they made it so that if you work for the fda you
can't just hop over
to eli lily like right away after you leave like you have to wait 10 years yeah
say that like okay you
want a career some way yeah you cannot profit at all from the pharmaceutical
drug industry
for 10 years after you're done being a regulator i i agree with you and i know
that it's a huge
conflict of interest and we've seen how bad that can be and prejudice how bad
it could be but i also
i try to put myself if i've spent my whole entire career um you know with
ambition and trying to do
good and then i end up at the fda and i have a chance to do something good and
then i yeah whatever
happens i lose my job or i you're in the vampire machine then what and you
realize like oh this
whole system's let me just hop on over to galaxy smith yeah i'm just trying to
figure out what i want
to get a house in the suburbs i know i know but i try to see with it see look
at it through other eyes
and see like okay we have to figure out what these people are going to do
because what do you do after
if you can't work for 10 years this is what they've lived all their lives
working in right and sort of
but i think it's incentivized i think they're they are making laws and pushing
things specifically at
the behest of the pharmaceutical drug industry knowing that there's a golden
parachute awaiting
them right but i don't think all of them i think a lot of people and i've
interviewed the head of the
the the uh cdc it was a while back we did a story about um anyway i've
interviewed some of these
government officials uh that work at the fda and and um i don't think all of
them no work are there
with bad no no no no but a lot of the ones that do know it's available and the
shocking number of
people that leave those positions of being a regulator and go over to work for
the pharmaceutical
drug i mean that's a kind of crazy conflict of interest yeah it is you've been
passing laws and
and winking at people and shaking hands and playing golf with them and then you
make it easy
for them and then all of a sudden you work for them and you're making a million
and a half a year
yeah of course it is a lot of people like that yeah and that's why it's a dirty
ass business
and then you got a dirty ass business because they sponsor all the news like
brought to you by
pfizer anderson cooper brought to you by pfizer bananas in this country it's so
crazy it only exists
in america you know cali means was talking about this and said the issue is not
that this way more
people will buy their drugs the issue is now the media won't criticize their
drugs
no because they need it oh my god yeah because they they financially invested
in these companies
they're partners basically right without the pharmaceutical drug companies i
think cable news
would be in deep well as a member of the media i've never had that problem i
have never had and i've
investigated as you know from well you're legit before but i've never had my
boss tell me i can't
of course but you look at the kind of stuff you do you know you're you're you're
doing the real stuff
like your boots on the ground in the scariest parts of the world you're doing a
different thing you're a
real journalist and i really appreciate that thank you and um that's you know
you're not getting that
on tv for the most part you know it's only has to be on a show like yours but
like on tv news you're
you're not getting that kind of i mean not that kind of investigative
journalism that you do as applied
to everything but there's a lot of conflicts of interest yeah it's a lot of
people that don't want
you investigating certain things you know don't want you investigate waste and
fraud and government and
and that's the role of journalism yeah i mean people in power have a hard time
with the truth
exactly and their job is to go out yeah exactly which i know but which is why
you know it's so
troublesome that we live at a time where people don't believe in journalists
and right and think
that all journalists are either fake or they're lying and that's a real problem
because it's a real problem
for all of us i think it is but the one solution to that um i think is a
mainstream journalism has to
change its way they you can't just be working as a propaganda arm for the
republican or the democratic
party which is what fox news does and which is what you know msnbc does they
they were there they stick
within the lines right and you also it opens the door for independent
journalists which i think is the
most promising part of it the people that come through that you know you can
count on because
they always tell the truth about stuff and then they develop a reputation like
guys like glenn
glenn greenwald matt taibbi those type michael schellenberger those type of
people that work for
mainstream organizations and then realize these are this i'm being constrained
and this is not real
journalism this is not what i signed up for like matt taibbi i trust that guy
just with everything
he doesn't lie and he's going to tell you what he knows about this and why he
thinks it's this way and
what's going on regardless of party lines regardless have you ever read hate
inc his book really good
he makes the case that rachel maddow is bill o'reilly on the left it's like
basically the same thing
and he's just talking about this this whole industry that's sort of set up with
media to keep everybody
at each other's throats and that's what they're selling they're selling hate
and outrage every day
and your dad gets home all these motherfuckers and he's yelling at the tv like
that's what that is
it's like everybody's being played but in your real life what how are you
encountering most of this
most of this you're not encountering like you you don't need to be this
elevated and agitated
but then you're online or your twitter feed arguing with people and it's like i
know everybody's going
crazy yeah it's the attention economy right that's what we need a martin luther
king we need someone
who has a very compelling voice that preaches non-violence and someone who
resonates with
people because he's a powerful speaker or she's a powerful speaker who has this
message yeah maybe
it's james talarico maybe yeah look he's he's a good man like he's a genuinely
good man and
but that was the point was like if you're a right winger and you go fuck those
antifa people you got
to realize like stop stop being on a team because these kooky theocrats they're
on this side too they
want to turn this entire state into theocracy like there's a lot of nutty
people on the right too the
right-wing militias they're insane too don't ignore them and on the left hey
don't ignore antifa don't
like the capital building on fire hey don't take over giant chunks of seattle
and and change the
name of it remember that when they did that do you remember like what did they
call it chas remember
that where they took over and the the mayor said maybe it's the summer of love
they took over blocks
of seattle wait this was we're talking about antifa yeah yeah well i mean what
is antifa right
it's just but that's the thing i think maybe that's what jimmy kimmel meant
when when he was
i didn't they have a handbook they have a flag like antifa has yeah but it's
several different
groups right it's not there's not one group it's not like you know some of
these right-wing groups
that are actually you can say islamic terrorism are you talking about hamas are
you talking about
hezbollah there's a lot of different factions but the reality is there is islamic
terrorism
and there is antifa absolutely i mean like i said yeah i've reported on them i'm
not denying
that they exist the thing is the people on the left don't want to centralize is
what i mean they
want to ignore it because they're the tough guys of the left they're the people
that are going to go
out and do the dirty work that needs to be done the same way that people would
look at like some
right-wing militias if they're a right-wing a few extremists but hey they keep
those left-wing
people on their toes like right right yeah we need we need more independent
journalists i think you're
right going back to the independent journalists it's it's partly why i've uh
now started this
podcast on youtube is because i know it's a place that i can keep doing if it
grows and i hope it will
doing the kind of reporting that i do that i don't have to depend on a disney
or as much as i thank
disney national geographic for having me all these years it is really important
to be able to do
independent journalism and not be uh limited and stop and and and be told what
you can and cannot do
of course it is crucial for the health and and survival of our democracy so
youtube is actually an
amazing platform for that it really is unfortunately because of social media
you can kind of suss out who's
legit and who's just a propagandist you know it's a really i agree yeah because
now like if you're a
person who's uh an independent journalist but it seems fishy that you'll talk
about one issue all the
time and then all of a sudden someone finds out oh look this guy gets funding
from this organization
and this organization is run by this guy and this guy supports you know he's
from russia or whatever it
is or just by perpetuating perpetuating these lies i will keep my fan base even
if i know that is a lie
it's not i don't even think it's like they're being paid to say this i think
that they get
they get their audience and their followers and pay that way they're also
probably not the most nuanced
thinkers oh they're definitely not the most nuanced or willing but yeah but it
makes them money to not be
i had a friend who briefly worked on a right-wing show and one of the things
that the host told him
was hey man you gotta stay and defend the party like whatever the party says
like whatever you
gotta go with that and get them on your side that's how you build an audience
and he was like right
but that's exactly it my friend was like i'm out i'm done no i'm not doing that
like i'm gonna tell
you my opinions on things and some of my opinions are very left-wing so i'm not
doing that so he left
kudos to him but this is the world that we're living in now where it's like
people decide that
they're gonna only adhere to one ideology and you don't realize how malleable
humans are it's so
easy to form a group and have everybody like get a part of it and have an
ideology and it could be
positive or it could be negative and if it's negative and everybody's on board
with it then you got hamas
or then you've got you know whatever you know whatever organization it is you've
got the
you know absolutely yeah fill it out i think it's a comfortable it's a much
more comfortable way
of living to believe that there's bad people and then you're the good person
right and there's that
other side and you're on this side you're on the good side right you just gotta
never be willing to
do evil because you think you're doing it against evil people right you can't
do that because then
you're evil like you're the thing that you're trying yeah which is interesting
we did a story about
assassins and we interviewed an assassin in america and an assassin in south africa
which has the
highest rates of assassins and that is exactly what they said when they
justified what they do which
is the worst of the worst crime right you're taking away somebody's life but
that is their justification
was that they were killing bad people yeah and so they're you know god was on
their side and they
were killing bad people but it's it's it's a little bit not on assassin level
but it's a little bit that
that idea like i'm that's a crazy rationalization right you know that's what
genghis khan used to
say that he was killing there was a famous quote of getting his cotton you must
have done something
horrible for god to bring me oh my god yeah that's amazing that's that i'm your
punishment punishment of
god that was his quote is the craziest quote from a guy that killed 50 million
people in his lifetime
or responsible wow at least indirectly to 50 plus million people dying yeah
that's insane but imagine that
i'm on you know god must have sent me you must be terrible if god sent me right
yeah i mean when
you bring god to the equation right but the thing but that's how crazy people
could rationalize evil
that like i'm working for god to just destroy this whole village i'm gonna kill
a million people in
this village and stack their bodies up in the center yeah that's what genghis khan
did and he said well
god must have uh really hated you right if you sent me right yeah well people
could do that with
anything and this is the problem with tribalism this is the problem with being
on a team because if
you're on the left you hate the people on the right if you're on the right you
hate the people on the
left yeah and you know you you wear your outfits like maybe you have blue hair
you got an american flag
t-shirt you know and everybody hates everybody it's like for what right and
then they're on social media
talking about stuff with so many opinions but with no actual knowledge like not
once having spent time
actually on the ground looking at any of these issues right right they talk
about these immigrant raid
immigration raids or drugs coming across but not one not one single one of
these people that have
all these opinions have actually spent a fucking day reporting on it i saw one
of the um conversations with
tom holman where they were saying that 70 of the people that they catch coming
across which was
bullshit you know but let me say this 70 of the people that they catch and send
back are criminals
um even if it was true why don't you get that down to a hundred percent like
why don't you like
figure out who's not a criminal and then you'll have everybody on your side
like if you're only
deporting gang members no one would be complaining if you're only going after
known gang members
and getting them only going after known scammers criminals
whatever anybody's doing then you'd have everybody on your side like 30 percent
it's
crazy imagine if that applied to most things like if most people who are
accused of a crime
30 percent of them seven percent were guilty the 30 30 percent were innocent
three out of ten and
everyone's getting fucking snatched up and mass but you know that that number
is not correct it's
actually 40 percent that have some sort of uh criminal history criminal history
but a lot of time is
non-violent it can be a misdemeanor it can be actually a parking ticket and
only seven percent of the
people being deported have been have criminal uh have have been charged with
criminal violence
so the numbers are insane i wonder if they could mitigate some of this if they
just change the
way the census works but i don't think they can i think it's a constitutional
thing i think it's the
way the constitution is written i think it has something to do with just the
way it says it it doesn't say
lawful citizens i think it says people living people people living which is you
know kind of
you know they're people they're just people like people with paperwork and
people not paperwork
we just got to figure out who's a fucking criminal yeah that's it yeah that
should be
the only thing that everybody agrees on which take money which takes money and
resources right it's
a lot harder to do it well they think that they were moving people into this
country
politically to get these people eventually a pathway to citizenship and then
they would have
lifelong voters and this is what this is the allegations of why they were
moving people to
luxury hotels in new york city and paying them and in doing it in chicago as
well where the people
that were poor that were living in chicago were like hey we're not getting
these resources like why
are you giving these resources to people that just came here from another
country this is obviously
before all the ice raids which have completely changed public opinion so that's
where it gets really
fucked up because there's people that probably would have been willing to vote
republican again
because they didn't like what the democrats were doing because essentially they
had a dead man who
was pretending to be president and then they just had some people running the
government from
behind the scenes we're not really sure who that was and that doesn't seem
right so i voted republican
there's a lot of people that feel that way but then they see this and they're
like i can't
support that i can't support this heartless shit exactly i agree 100 and i'm
sure i catch
shit for it online but lucky i don't read it you never read it right you don't
read your online stories
you got it if you have to if you're in a position like i'm in you have to stay
sane right and the
only way to stay sane is to say as conflict free as possible so even though i
talk a lot of shit i don't
read anything anybody says back like say it all you're allowed to you should be
i mean i don't
read what people are posting that but i read all the messages i get sent and
everything and i reply
and everything that's very nice of you it's just it's not tenable at my oh of
course not but it it
would be nice if i knew they were going to be nice you know like people that i
meet are almost all nice
yeah i mean it's like universally nice people so much easier to be mean online
than it is face to
face right even people that i know don't like me like you know certain people
like i could sell say
what i mean i say hi and they like hi and like they don't like me because i
represent them but they're
not mean to me you know whereas in the privacy of their own home or sitting on
the toilet they could
say the most awful on twitter i don't need to read that and i would probably
say it if i was them too
that's the thing if you're you feel powerless and voiceless and you see someone
doing something that
you don't agree with and then you have this twitter account and you just like
that guy and
right you said i get it i understand it but i can't read it right no i don't
think you should
it's not you you'd have to start drinking again if you did well i never drank
for that reason i always
drank for fun uh i just you know i think uh social media for the most part is
uh net positive
i think um you think so yes i do i mean i i love it and i use it and i use it
as a tool from the
work that i do 100 but uh but i i i i was you i'm a very optimistic person and
i always thought you
know there's there's a reason you know there's great ways of using social media
like you do but
with with young people nowadays and yeah young people it's very challenging but
this is what i think
information is almost always good and then the understanding that some of the
information is bad
is good because then you realize like oh don't trust everything like figure out
what's right and
what's wrong and then finding verifiable like accurate sources of information
is good yeah that's
what i think is harder and harder to do yeah but you can do it but the point is
at least more information
is available now than ever before which makes it very difficult for governments
to pull off stuff
that they were trying to pull off before it makes it very difficult for people
to get get scammed like
they were getting scammed in the past it's just it's it's just there's going to
be a bunch of people
that get duped no matter what and there's going to be a bunch of people that
get kidnapped by social media
meaning that their attention span and their focus their life becomes a part of
that thing
but i think this is a new and emerging aspect of society that we will navigate
and that we will
learn from the failures and it will cost a lot of people their happiness and
prosperity a lot of people
will get wrapped up in that and it will them up and that's net negative right
but i think we'll learn
from it like you don't want to get bit by the rattlesnake you hear that rattle
get the out of
there well we'll realize through all these other people's mistakes where the
pitfalls are so we'll
have to develop more robust ways of thinking about thing and more resilience
more resiliency and i think
that's the net positive and then this communication with people all over the
world net positive i think
ultimately yeah the real problem is the real the challenging aspect of is a lot
of people you're
communicating with aren't real and that's that's a giant problem now china was
busted using
chat gpt to promulgate they were they were using it to um they were going into
reddit forums and
uh they're using it on social media and they they were pretending to be people
and they were
arguing about stuff and you know you could just give it a prompt like from the
position of a white
supremacist say why all mexicans should create division uh-huh to create
division i know in this
country yeah and so that's a giant percentage of all social media discourse so
i don't necessarily think
you should be going back and forth with people but i think as a source of
information and news
and alternative perspectives and boots on the ground people like hey i'm
reporting live from gaza
look what they just did to this party and it was what we thought was going to
happen when the arab
spring happened you know because everybody has a phone and finally we were able
to film these amazing
man yes um you know revolutions but i think that promise has sort of waited a
little bit i have to
point out one thing you said how scams are not as prevalent these days i should
have said that
that's not what i meant really i meant um the government that it's very it's
more difficult for
government yeah online because we're living in the crazy you were living in the
golden age of scams i get
like 30 texts a day the dude that owned my phone number before me this dude raymond
was a moron and
raymond raymond you idiot did you sign up for everything because this guy like
every day like
hey raymond like your loan's been approved so really fun i'm going to come on
your podcast next year once
i'm done with this project but i'm working on a really fun project for national
geographic which is
where i say yes to every single scam that comes my way oh boy i've been filming
it for a few months and
it's been the craziest wildest journey can you tell us no i just can tell you
that i've been i have
romantic relationships with people hot damn i spent a lot of time on my burner
phone with people love
bombing me really but it's not it's a fake persona like i i put a wig and
glasses oh so you use your own
picture you don't even use ai no no i don't use ai we actually sort of modified
we put a fake nose
on me and a wig and glasses but people say it doesn't look a little like me i
can see it's me
but um but i will talk it's it's really fascinating but also to talk about scams
which
i can talk about a lot is uh we are living in the golden age of scams uh i
think it was barren
buffett that said fraud and scams are the number one industry growth industry
of our time
and one of the stories we did which is so sad and i hate to bring it down back
to a bad
sad topic but is that we i didn't know this before starting to report on it
which a lot of times you
think you know these scammers these guys that are texting and emailing you and
calling you that these
are you know people in west africa or you know wherever but like loan operators
well we did a story
about these scam factories have you heard of these no it's these compounds in
places like cambodia and
myanmar in asia where they are it's basically factories with sometimes with
thousands and thousands of
people forced labor so these are mostly people from india sometimes brazil
other asian countries the
philippines is a big place where they respond to ads to work in what they think
are legitimate businesses
to work in online companies and whatnot and they are they pay for their
expenses to travel to these
places to cambodia and myanmar in myanmar they're operating out of this area
that's that's an ongoing
civil war and is ruled by these militias and they get in there and they're as
soon as they get in
they take away their passports and they're trapped and they're forced to scam
so they spend 24 7 scamming
americans and european people wow and it is an industry where they're making
billions of dollars the us
government just recently seized uh 15 billion dollars from one company from one
group of people alone in
crypto it's the craziest thing so these people are being tortured and and um
you know beaten sometimes
killed and forced to to scam so we went actually to myanmar we were smuggled
into the border into
myanmar into the country illegally whoa um across the river um and uh spent
time in this town that was
basically built by these this chinese gang that was all with the money of scamming
americans and uh they
were trying to build like a mini macau and the guy that ran the the company is
called yatai international
and he took us on a tour of this mini macau and it was so surreal it was like
these aqua parks with no
one in the aqua park and these luxury casinos we ended the night it was so
crazy in uh we were trying
this guy said he would give us an interview but first we had to do the tour so
and the interview would
happen the next day so we ended a night this was actually not filmed in a
karaoke that was a massive
room where every single the whole every wall and the ceiling was all the screen
it was like the future
and this is in a war-torn area of a country that's incredibly poor and they've
built this place with
millions and billions of dollars from from profits of scamming and we ended the
night with this guy who's
basically the head of this criminal chinese gang running these scams in this
karaoke singing celine
dion and whitney houston and being poured whiskey and whatever oh my god brand
we wanted you were
getting drunk with them oh my god yes i was singing my heart out i spent the
whole night singing whitney houston
the videos are so embarrassing because i cannot sing to play my life but i was
like we need to get
this guy on tape so i'm just gonna do whatever and then the next day we
interviewed him and and it was
just crazy then we ended our last day i mean we interviewed him chinese dude so
sad like 21 year
old who was caught trying to escape and was chased out of the building he ran
out of a third floor broke
both his legs one at the hip practically died was actually saved by an onlooker
who took him to the
hospital and then moved to thailand where i met him he was in a wheelchair told
us about beatings we spoke
to another indian kid also who was for like they had a water hose on his body
for he was forced to
stand for 24 hours um and then electrocuted and i mean the videos out of these
places were insane like
people with uh horrific wounds and people dying and killed and yeah and just
forced to be forced and
forced into scamming yeah forced into scamming and then we interviewed a girl
called angel
who was raped repeatedly by her bosses and she's sort of the face model so a
lot of times after
speaking to these what they think are romantic relationships for a long time
they want to see
people's faces so this is the girl that then they put a fake of ai face on top
of her but it has to be a
girl because of the aneurysms and the voice and they have this girl who
actually speaks english and she
would talk to victims of scams and pretend that she was the wonderful woman
that they'd been dating for
months and and convince them to put their money into this crypto business that
was fake and uh and take
millions out of these victims so this woman starts crying and telling me how
she knows she's doing something
awful but and how she's raped and how she doesn't want to be doing and uh at
the end she says i just
want you i said yes just doing this even though it's incredibly dangerous but i
accepted doing this
because i just want a message for the victims in america the people that i've
spoken to that i don't
that i'm sorry i just want to apologize for all the harm that i've caused and
she's like in tears but i have
no way out i mean these are heart-wrenching heart-wrenching stories and the
last day we were
there um we were able to um there's this amazing organization called acts of
mercy religious-based
organization that is working to try to get these people out and a lot of these
bosses actually if
you can pay for ransom you can pay ten thousand dollars to save a person from
there so because if
you're a bad scammer if you're there and you're horrible and you're you know if
you're sad and
depressed and you're not doing your job it's better for these bosses if you
just get paid ten thousand
dollars to let this person go so there was this case of this the filipino woman
who the boss had
agreed to a twelve thousand dollar payment to release her but it's really
dangerous for there's this
negotiator that goes and sort of tries to get her out of this compound but he
has to come with the money
and he has to be able to pay the crime boss but he also has to pay the
malicious to get him in so it
was like a whole process and we were with this group acts of mercy and another
guy filming them as
they're on the phone negotiating her release and they're on the phone with her
she's inside the scam
center and she's like where do i go this camp center is massive she had no idea
where to go and
they're saying go to the west gate and the guy is there waiting for you she's
like i don't know where
to go and she's crying if they see me with the phone because it's a confiscated
phone they're going to
beat me and they're going to put me in the dark room where i'm beaten and you
know tortured for for
days and and and amy the woman on this side is telling her believe us there's
somebody waiting for
you do not be afraid bring your phone we need to be telling you how to get
there it's this whole it was
her soul ordeal it was like insane it was out of a movie and in the end they
didn't manage to get her
out um but she was not that day but she was released a month later um and she
made it to safety but so
this just to show how dangerous and difficult it is even when they agree to let
them go so what are
most of the scams are most of scams from crypto scams they're called pig butchering
scams um yeah that's
the name they give them because it's an express chinese expression it started
in china started as
a domestic scam in china actually and the pig butchering because the idea is
that you fatten
the pig which is your victim and then you kill them at the end right and and uh
which that's why it's
called paper train but the idea is that you meet somebody online and it's
usually a beautiful girl
or man and um and you create you start a relationship with that person you just
start
how do they meet them you know those texts that you get a lot of times like hey
i haven't talked
to you in a while a lot of those are big butchering scams a lot of messages you
get on instagram from
these beautiful girls or they're stepping it up because i got a few i messages
like that yeah me
too like whoa me too not even just a green text bubble anymore they got iphones
now and then they
tell you you know follow me on instagram and then you go let's go on whatsapp
and then they're sending
you photos of them in their private jets and living this wonderful life is that
what they're doing
with you yes with your in other ways yeah you know this so these scams that you're
responding to one
we're trying to get is that we're getting several different kinds of scams like
indian call centers
and all the different scams but eventually they start saying look we are leave
living and so you're
curious like how do you like how are you making so much money it's like oh yeah
i've been investing
in crypto and you know i can't really tell you much about it now so they like
last it can last
months and at some point they're like okay i've built a relationship yeah i'm
going to tell you how
i do it you've got five thousand dollars right now and then you put the five
thousand dollars and then
they show profit on these fake websites it looks completely legitimate and you're
saying oh my god
i put five thousand and now i have ten how much more can i put in so people are
going all in and
they're like everything they have 401ks they're remortgaging their houses
everything and then
did you hear the case of about the guy in kansas no the bank no the guy that
was the head of this
bank in kansas jamie did you hear about this it's a fascinating story it was a
story in the new york
times and then it got reported everywhere i was trying to get this guy to talk
to me
because this story is fascinating so this guy amazing member of the community
small town in kansas
the local bank that was started by the farmers decades decades ago it's where
all the farm
community was put would put their money would trust this bank well it turns out
that this guy
the head of this bank that everybody trusted upstanding member of the community
was stole millions of dollars from the bank and the bank went bankrupt
and he was stealing the money because he was being scammed by a big butchering
scam
and it started with him putting his own money and then they kept on saying that
in order to release
the funds and all the millions that he made from his initial investment he
would put in more and
more money i think he ended up putting in something like 47 million dollars
from customer accounts to
scammers depleting the bank's holdings when a state banking regulator uncovered
this fraud
it closed the bank and called the fbi whoa he started slow investing a few
thousand dollars in 2022
to buy what he thought was cryptocurrency oh my goodness how sad is that wow i
mean awful obviously
he was stealing from his customers wow but i find it so he actually traveled to
australia at one point
thinking he was going to meet these the the people that owed him money i mean
he actually was completely
scam and this is like the head of a banker yeah the head of a bank wow it's
fucking crazy these guys are
so good it's that's crazy they get a banker but it's a banker in kansas though
you know what i'm saying
well he's in prison now oh well he should be he stole 47 million dollars but he's
also a dumbass
and the crazy thing is that you could be a dumbass and be a smart person if
greed gets involved greed is
like for greed i think greed for shady people
it it it's almost it's kind of fascinating because you gotta know at one point
in time this is not
smart but the greed is like but whatever it is but yeah i think more than greed
i think it's the
acceptance that you have lost all that money and that must weigh so heavily on
you if you have
you know if you're about to foreclose your home if you'd sent all the money
from your kids college
funds if oh i mean the banker oh yeah but yeah but i mean but even the banker
he sent all his
initially it was right but then he started stealing that's all greed i i i i
don't think i think it
got to a point that he was swindled and made to believe that if he gives more
money he would can't
he would get the money that he initially invested back one million and he would
be able to put back
the 45 million that he gave he stole from his customers i think the realization
and this is
something that i know from talking to so many scam scamming victims the it's
not so much about
wanting to make that money it's the realization that you've been talking to
somebody that's not real
and that you have been so swindled and you know i don't want to use the word
dumb because i think
all of us can fall victims to these scams but that the acceptance of that is
really difficult so
you just want to keep on believing it you know you just pay whatever you need
to pay so the dream
stays alive yeah there's a carl sagan quote about that that it's easier to
convince
a person like it's harder to like once a person has been swindled it's much
more difficult to
convince them of the swindle they'll they'll find ways to justify that it must
be true 100 i feel that
experiment i'm doing right now i mean even though i know i'm being swindled but
there's something about
once you're deep in that relationship it's it's yeah it's it does something
funny to you it's also
exciting right and that's the problem is that most of life is boring yeah you
know and if you're
involved in something that may or may not yield money or may or may not yield
some sort of romantic
relationship or may or may not yield 100 a drug deal or a celebrity scam which
is huge these days
if you're taught if you think you're talking to you know brad pitt yeah yeah
like you get that maybe
maybe your life has a meaning right there's a reason why you're here there's
something exciting
happening especially if you have like a 65 iq right that's the problem there's
a lot of dumbasses out
there and it's not fair to scam those people some scams like we tolerate like
televangelists we fail we're
like look if you really believe that guy with the private jet and the bentley
that guy you need to send
him money because god wants you to send him money you're on your own you know
it's such a dumb scam
it's so out in the open you know astrology is another one i've been looking
into i don't know
if astrology is 100 percent this is my take on astrology i think at one point
in time they had
some knowledge about astrology that may or may not be lost maybe some people
understand it i'm a believer
like you there's thousands of books that are like ancient books i don't know
thousands but a lot
written about the very specific details of astrology like in terms of like
where the constellations are
what time of the day it is where you know where the earth is in relationship to
mars it's very weird
stuff because i want to know like what the was the origin of all this right
absolutely i meant psychic
scammers sorry not astrology i meant psychic oh psychic scammers yeah i'm a
believer in astrology as well
i think there's something to real astrology i need to get a real astrologer on
i've tried to find one
that i think is legit what sign are you by the way i am a leo oh of course you
were of course that's
ridiculous so is my son so is my dad it's uh one of my favorite signs i'm a taurus
okay um i don't
know i think that like newspaper astrology is bullshit yeah of course but i don't
know that real astrology
is not nonsense wait do you get do you get that a lot that when you say you're
a leo they say of
course you are i've heard it before yeah why i don't know oh because you like
the the spotlight
right which is my son and my dad as well is that what it is a spotlight leo's
like to
interesting what is it it's uh like attention like attention yeah i'm i think i'm
a little leo as well
but i'm a i'm a taurus i'm yeah i've heard like bullheaded i've heard you know
strong willed that's
tor that's a leo yeah taurus as well right the bowl right yeah um but i don't
what i'm talking about
is like the super specific stuff like you were born at 3 a.m you were conceived
nine months before
that when were you conceived what was going on like how did this you know where
what in the procession
of the equinoxes where's this the position of the earth you know there's a lot
of weird stuff they
take into consideration i'm like wow look i'd really like to learn about it
right like from someone i'm
going to have someone on that really understand that i just have to have
someone that's not a kook
and that's the problem is it's like one of those disciplines that's littered
with kooks right
yeah i find it fascinating too and i'm a non-believer in everything i'm very
skeptical
about everything but astrology i've always kind of believed into i mean it's it's
the idea that
you know where the sun and the stars they have an effect on on tides and
currents and and why
wouldn't that all have an effect i mean i know nothing about it but why wouldn't
it have an effect of
on you when you're born and when and where the time right it's probably a part
of nature's natural
order too to create a bunch of different kinds of people yeah maybe because i
mean what makes you
who you are there's a lot of factors right there's environment there's genetics
and then there's
probably some some yeah celestial going on maybe i'm not you know i don't know
enough about it too
but i'm i'm open to it because i think there's a lot of information that was
lost i think there's a
lot of information that we would dismiss you know from ancient civilizations
that we dismiss that i think
i think the problem is that these ancient civilizations collapsed and like with
the burning of the library
of alexandria you're left with very little like a lot a lot of like very
important information is
missing and so then you gotta kind of like go well that seems like bullshit
that seems like old folksy
stuff like maybe or maybe that was like yeah maybe they had figured something
out over a long period
of time and there was a science to it right yeah you should have an astrologist
on that'd be super
interesting one who's not crazy yeah you know like a psychic like get a psychic
on it's not crazy i've
had people on that were remote viewers that's another weird one you have yeah
how put off how put off who's
um he was uh running uh some various programs for the united states government
specifically i had him
on though to not talk about remote viewing to talk about ufos and uh he was
actually brought on board
during um herbert walker bush's administration they um well he was working for
the government at the time
but they brought him on as one of the scientists that they they'd got a group
of people from various
disciplines and they said we're going to compile a list of pros and cons in
terms of the impact of
society of disclosure of alien life and this is what they were telling him we
have recovered crashed ufos
and we are doing back engineering programs on them we have for years we also
have recovered biological
entities we are thinking about disclosing this information to the american
public i want you to
compile a list on the positive aspects of disclosure how it'll affect society
and give a numerical value
to these things and then negative and all these scientists came up with a much
higher negative than
positive and so they didn't disclose well and what do you know what the list
was well yeah it was
religion government um the economy um those were all negative it could affect
religion yes it could
affect the economy it would affect government and the fact that no one would
ever listen to the
president because he's just a the aliens are hovering over our head abducting
people every day so
this is where i think it would be interesting i actually think that there's a
positive if it were
to happen right now because it sure as hell would bring us all together yes
well that was reagan said
that you ever see that speech no it was a famous speech that he gave at the in
front of the united
nations and i think he gave this speech at a time where you know this is like
gorbachev tear down that
wall it was that kind of speech where there's like trying to unite us all
together and his speech was
imagine if we were all faced with an alien threat from another world how
quickly we would unite together
yeah yeah i mean we need it now more than ever so if they're out there i know
but is that the only
way we can unite we have to be threatened by another enemy like god we're so
warlike we're so warlike we
need an interstellar war to unite america and the rest of the world it's so sad
because it didn't used
to be like that right a politics wasn't something that people talked about all
day long all the time
like that's the negative aspect of social media yeah yeah because this is all
people talk about
like even us like you know there's so much interesting stuff to talk about and
yet we've spent time
talking about politics because but we're talking about the fascinating aspects
of politics as it affects
human civilization and discourse yes but also like the division and the right
and the left and
being careful with what you say because what if the other side this and that it's
it's now in every
single home in every single conversation people have and it it's just it didn't
used to be like
that it just didn't like government was there it existed it's supposed to work
well if it's not
hopefully there are good journalists out there exposing what's not working out
well but it should
not be the discourse all the time about whether you're right-wing you're left-wing
whether you're with
us or not or against us and and it it just taints everything and and and takes
too much space yes for
other conversations with much more important conversations that we should be
having whether
it's about ai whether it's about social media whether it's about aliens they're
much bigger problems
that are coming in our future and we shouldn't be so sort of tunnel focused on
whether we're you know
whether or what we're saying is approved by the right or the left or whether
this or that it's just just
this is an amazing waste of mental resources and it's also a way for very
uninteresting people to
attach themselves to a worthy cause yeah people that have nothing else going on
in their life and all
of a sudden it's this whatever issue it is whatever issue it is that's their
whole identity yeah and
they're go all in and it's generally a distraction for a failed life i think so
too there's a lot of
it it's not doing what you really want to do not having the relationships you
really want to have
the friendships real and instead you're involved in this stupid cause yeah you
know yeah i know that's
so dumb but you're right if the aliens showed up we'd probably all unite
together but unfortunately like
i feel like the most united moment that i could remember in my adult life was
right after september
11th yeah same were you in america i was in new york you were in new oh boy
yeah i was uh how different
was the feeling where everybody was like smiling to each other and saying hi on
the street afterwards
the elevators i mean i did the initial reporting for portugal for portuguese
television that day
oh so i was at columbia university's journalism school i just moved to new york
a month before
oh wow yeah and i think it's where were you living i was living on uh 72nd and
broadway okay so you're
upper west pretty far away from the actual yeah did you go down yes so i didn't
go to ground zero but i
went to midtown to the rooftop of this building where everybody was doing sort
of the satellite life feed so
you had journalists from all over the world meanwhile i was 24 25 years old i
had like zero experience
doing a live feed i was just i just moved to the united states it's actually it's
an interesting story
how i even got to the u.s because you know i applied for columbia university
three times the first
time i was not accepted the second time i was put in a waitlist and didn't get
accepted the third time
i flew to new york and i knocked on the dean's door and i explained i'm portuguese
i really want to
come to this university i want to be a journalist in america and he sat me down
we spoke for
an hour and that year i was accepted that's amazing that's amazing that you
could do that and
it taught me my first big important lesson in journalism which is get in there
persistence
don't be afraid to get nose because i mean what's the worst that can happen
right yeah and uh but a
month after this i'm in new york i'm sleeping in the morning and i start
getting phone calls and i was
sleeping that late because i'd been studying until really late that night the
night before and the
first phone i pick up uh was uh my television station that i'd worked for in
portugal i'd done an
internship there and work there and they called me and said hey turn on your
television and uh it was
when the second the first tower had collapsed and they said turn on the
television and see what's
happening i had no idea this was happening and they said we need you to go to
midtown and do that
we have no portuguese journalists in manhattan they're all our journalists are
in dc or they're
outside of manhattan manhattan had been locked down you need to go down and do
the live reporting for
us of what's happening and on and suddenly my cell phone started ringing and it
was my mother who was
crying and begging me not to leave the house and uh and i was i had to explain
to her mom this is like
my dream is to become a journalist it's part of my job and i i have to go
anyway an hour later i was at
the rooftop of this building surrounded by all these journalist heroes of mine
that i grew up watching
on live television and shaking i was so so nervous um i wasn't sure if i was
going to be able to put
two words together so nervous and uh i ended up doing my live report and it all
went well and i was
ecstatic i was so happy i was like oh my god i did it i did it i have a future
in this profession that i
really want to be a journalist and this is great and then i will never forget
and i get emotional every
time i talk about this but i will never forget just walking down to the streets
and
it's every time i talk about this but and seeing the first um people looking
for their loved ones
right and it's like the posters with the faces of the husbands and the children
and not knowing where
they were and that moment totally changed my life because sorry it was a moment
that i yeah first of all
a realization like what the this is not about you and this is about something
so much bigger that's
happening where so many people are affected by this and it was the moment also
that i realized that the
kind of journalism that i wanted to do was um try to understand why this sort
of evil happens in the
world and how do things like this exist and a year after i graduated from colombia
i moved to the middle east
and i enrolled in the university of damascus in syria to learn arabic and to
try to um
do my i did my first story as a freelance journalist about the jihadis who are
crossing to iraq to fight
against the americans that was the first story i ever did as a freelance
journalist
and uh and so yeah so i was i was there on 9 11 and uh um remember after
reporting and going you know to
school and going up to my building and meeting strangers on the streets and
everybody was just
like looking at each other and hugging each other and there was so much love
and support
um the last thing for months and it lasted for months and it was really
beautiful and everybody
came together and it was a beautiful beautiful time everybody went right back
to being and everybody
went back to this yeah which is yeah which is me against you you know which is
so sad well for just
that one brief moment i realized like for that during that time when everybody
had that american flag on
their car and they were driving around with it in l.a yeah which is like one of
the most unpatriotic places in
the country they all had american flags in their car it was it was a crazy
moment and i realized like oh
this is possible to unite us like we don't have to be in this stupid mindset
but why does it take
something terrible why does it take a tragedy for us to be united and and you
know what's so sad is that
3 000 people died on that day right um i'm going to bring it back to drug and
alcohol addiction but
3 000 people die every single week in america from addiction from drug and
alcohol addiction these these
crises are happening every day and uh and and like yes let's actually unite to
do some good and to try
to solve problems instead of you know dividing to try to figure out you know
how to hate more another
person yeah and how to separate us all yeah yeah i mean you know that and i
know that and we both live
that way we can talk in circles about this what's going on we could get the
rest of the world on board
we need to get people to stop paying attention to all this right and just just
learn how to be nicer
right i agree i mean there's you don't have much time in this life it doesn't
last as long as you
think it does no and just have empathy it's my main message always it's just
like try to place yourself
on somebody else's shoes don't be quick to judge like actually try to
understand why these migrants
are coming to this country why these you know people are carrying drugs on
their backs and excruciating
difficult work and dangerous work why are they doing it instead and why are
people scamming right you
know try to understand why they're doing what they do and once you understand
the root causes then you
can actually make a difference and try to change that and actually have an
impact absolutely which is much
harder right much harder to try to solve it that way yeah much harder it's it's
hard for people to have
empathy too some people especially they're just tired all the time and
exhausted and they're unhealthy
and their life sucks and they just want other people like and they don't see
those people don't feel it
they're not they need a martin luther king yeah they need a james talarico well
we need someone like
that for sure we need someone who's got a someone who is a powerful speaker too
like they have to be
charismatic that has a message of non-violence and love because it's really the
only way you you don't
get anything from violence other than more violence you know unless you're the
the biggest baddest bully
and then you squash everything around you and great now you're a dictator right
it's not good for any of
us no it doesn't it's contrary to what we're supposed to be about in the first
place this is supposed to be
the united states of america we're supposed to be a community i don't think
that la is the most unpatriotic
i know you don't like la i still live there and i know you don't like it but i
disagree that it's
unpatriotic what do you think it is why would you say it's unpatriotic california
is an incredible
state if you have an american flag uh in front of your house people will call
you racist that's a fact
uh that i haven't seen that that's a fact that's a fact there's there's a lot
of indoctrinated young
kids perhaps and those people are assholes and yeah not they're they're as full
as hate as you don't
get that in texas right but you you also have places in america where if you
have an lgbtq flag
on the front of your door you're called lots of other things sure yeah right so
that goes both ways
well that's not necessarily patriotism that's just being an intolerant asshole
but i think that the
real problem with los angeles is the government and the fact that they want to
ignore the rampant fraud
and the fact that everything is so over-regulated it's impossible to get
permits for things so
industry's leaving the overtaxing there's just have you read israel klein's
book about no i have not
uh i haven't read the book yet but i've heard him giving a bunch of interviews
about about it um
he's getting attacked for it now people are saying he's leaning right which is
hilarious but it's about
how if you're he's a democrat as you know um but how democrats have to figure
out how to make the
system work or and and and how to build things and how to and not do what you
were saying create all
these limits and these problems for like building houses in the palisades and
it's also the problem is
that democrats are the democrats of 2025 not the democrats of 1994. if you go
back to the democrats
and bill clinton was president it's a totally different thing like bill clinton's
if you hear
him talk he sounds like a populist that is uh like sex work going after
criminals yes pretty pro america
like it's so it's like that's what everybody can get on board with it's like
that's the the real
problem is these ideologies shift with special interests and money and funding
and propaganda
and then they become something unrecognizable they become something that
supports war
they become something that suppresses free speech they become something that
was like entirely
in direct opposition to what it would have been in 1985. it's like yeah but not
all not all no of
course not all but this is the same problem because it's like if you decide i'm
a right winger
you're supposed to take in all of that you're supposed to like like that guy
said to my friend like you
got to support a party across the way that's the only way you got to get them
on your side
like what even if i don't agree at all with what they say i have to bite my
tongue because i'm a
part of a gang now off and that's the problem is that we only have two stupid
parties
and huge problem yeah i mean you do have a liberty i've voted libertarian twice
but it's kind of like
fuck these people i'm gonna vote for nothing right you know that's never gonna
win right which is
crazy to say yeah but that is kind of what it is right you know and then you
see other countries that
have like six seven yeah portugal and the majority of european countries the netherlands
yeah there's a
lot of countries that have multiple parties and yeah you know obviously there's
division but there's
nothing like the division that exists in the u.s right now it's well that's the
negative aspect
of social media i believe i believe it's ramping up people and it's it's
pushing the divide even
further but what i'm hoping is that this is a growing pain and that we'll sort
through this and and then
but we need non-violent leaders that are very intelligent that also make sense
to both people
which i do think is possible both groups both ideologically captured sides
which i do think is
possible because in the middle is where we all live in the middle is where i'll
live we all want safety
we all want education we all want fairness we all want to make sure that no one's
polluting and
good access to resources and a chance to make a life for yourself and pursue
your dreams that's what we
all want all that other stuff is just dividing points one of the things i had
rep luna on the
podcast we were talking about something and she said they don't want to fix
this issue because they can
fund their campaign with it of course i mean that's immigration to it wasn't
that crazy like that
politicians will fail to resolve an issue on purpose right because they want to
raise funds
by campaigning on this issue it is disgusting yeah it's so gross that is un-american
that's that's
truly evil truly evil and when she said i was like oh i didn't think of that
yeah but i kind of did but
i didn't want to believe it and then coming out of someone's mouth who works in
government i'm like oh
fuck right if you stand for a cause right and that and and you're seen as the
person that can
potentially solve that problem yeah and then that problem goes away then you
don't have a platform to
stand on so a lot of times you don't want to solve that problem she's um and i
think in many ways that's
what immigration has been because it is not possible that we have the broken
immigration system that we
have we have the backlog of people trying to become to get papers that who can't
we don't have a
a way for people want to come to this country legally to come to this country
legally it's you know and
and it's been decades and decades of this and we haven't been able to figure
out how to solve this
problem it has to be because it benefits all politicians yes that this is hasn't
been solved
right well another very high level politician told me once i can't remember if
he said on the podcast
i don't say his name but that he had a conversation with a man who was a ceo of
a large corporation
and said he was very opposed to um tightening up the border because he needs
the illegal immigrants
for the workforce he just said it openly like yo like so that's part of it too
they want cheap labor
right yeah because it helps their bottom line which is like oh god yeah oh god
and as long as those
people don't have paperwork they have to shut the up they can't demand better
worker rights they can't yeah
yeah which is a problem also now with the raids is that a lot of violence is
happening you know
even if it's rapes or domestic abuse and people are just even if they're going
through this they're
not going to call the police because they're afraid of being they're scared
they're going to get deported
of course yeah yeah yeah i know it's like boy it's an over correction after
over correction
you know without actually fixing the left and right and left and right and that's
where you
get real cynical you're like i think these people like it like this yeah i
think they like all this
crazy yeah it's difficult not to get cynical right and i actually it's to me it's
always heartbreaking when
you hear people saying that they don't vote or they don't really they're not
into politics they don't
they don't care about what's happening because politicians are all the same and
they don't
they're completely disengaged and to me that's heartbreaking it is because yeah
that's taking
the power away from people right the other thing you think about these dark
times is they call for
people to rise up like not i mean like rise up against the machine and rebel i
mean like they call
for a hero and that's what we always hope for we're like maybe there's one
person's going to figure this
out maybe there's going to be this person that emerges this real leader right
and they're looking
at the democratic party and they're like no there's no one there who's it going
to be i don't think
talarico's trying to run for president so outside of him who who really makes
sense well you got a bunch
of people that are just politicians politics as usual and then once they get
inside a bunch of cowards on
the republican side that even when they're seeing this stuff happening even
though we know that they
don't agree with it even though we know they know it's morally wrong they aren't
they're too afraid
to speak out and they're all inside of trading yeah all of them on top of that
they're all making
it's crazy you see they're making 170 000 a year they get into office within a
couple years they're
worth 10 million they're worth 15 million and you look at it it's all stock
trades like this is bananas
that this is legal you motherfuckers put martha quinn in jail put martha quinn
in jail
tried her for insider trading and got her on lying martha stewart you mean oh
did i say martha quinn
that's the mtvvj sorry martha stewart i love martha stewart that's so funny i
really want to have
her on my podcast oh yeah she's a badass lady um but they put her in jail they
put martha stewart in
jail it was like i know i mean so ridiculous have you watched the doc no it's
so good no she's quite
a lot so great but you also have to be quite a lot to become that person you
know yeah absolutely that's
how you become that person she's a proud and i love her yeah i mean that's it's
kind of funny you know
but that's you could say the same thing about a lot of people that are very
famous
um well listen it's always great to talk to you i really appreciate you coming
here and you do amazing
work you really do it's so courageous and so necessary and i think you provide
a window into
various aspects of of life on this planet that otherwise people would not have
access to thank
you and i hope the podcast will be the continuation of that i'm sure it will be
i'm sure it will be
so um the hidden third and uh it is available on youtube is it available
everywhere everywhere everywhere
who is this first guy you have here that's the trailer alomar is an amazing guy
that's the
retired fbi agent that i spoke with you should listen to that what is it about
he's the guy who
went after the pill mills in florida who was doing his investigation at the
same time as i was doing
and then fabian alomar is a great guy and he he's a oh the former skater did
nine years in prison
uh two he was sentenced to seven years in prison for kidnapping and beating the
out of
this guy who supposedly he was on meth high very on crack actually very high on
crack anyway beat the
shit out of this guy who supposedly allegedly had raped his sister but beat the
kept him in a trunk
beat the out of him it was arrested for seven years and then did two more years
because he
he almost killed a child molester in prison but basically did a whole 180 um is
now an actor on
the mayans has an incredible life story he was brought up by gangs his family
member were all gang members
all the time in prison but has done a whole 180 is now involved in and what is
the mayans it was that
show with the guy the bikers oh it's a biker gang he also did that that uh with
the evil angoria
the hot chili what was it called the flaming hot movie also in that movie
anyway he's become an actor
but also very involved a pro skater and also very involved in anti-recidivism
and then another guy we
had on was matt boyer do you know matt boyer he was uh you should have him on
he's in prison right now we
interviewed him a week before he went to prison actually he's the guy in the otani
scandal baseball
the baseball the otani scandal i don't know that scandal yeah do you know what
jamie yeah what
happened so you know what tony yeah the biggest most well-known most successful
i don't know term i
don't know the best player baseball player ever apparently is otani uh he's in
the dodgers he was signed up for the dodgers it turns out that his translator
who was also his best friend because otani is japanese and doesn't speak fluent
or doesn't speak
english so he has a translator who's also his best friend in the u.s was with
him 24 7 had a gambling
problem and the bookie in this gambling problem was a guy called matt boyer
fascinating guy grew up in
orange county and built an empire i mean making millions of dollars as a big as
an illegal bookie
flying private jets like betting insane amounts of money himself he's also a
gambling addict but was like
had high you know athletes from all over and important celebrities basically
placing bets with
him instead of placing them online they place them with him um but all illegal
and it was found out
just before he was about to sign for the dodgers the otani that while they were
investigating a casino
in vegas they came across this bookie and with through this bookie they found
out that otani's
translator and possibly they thought initially maybe otani was illegally
betting this is a guy that stands
to make millions for the dodgers for all the companies that he sponsors so this
was a massive deal and uh
it turns out that otani was not the one betting that it was his translator matt
boyer who's at the
center of the scandal believes that otani knew that he had that his friend and
translator had a betting
gambling problem um but um he came out and said he had no idea and uh you know
nobody wanted this
problem on their hands right the amount of money that you you could lose and uh
and so they basically
the guy came out saying initially he said that otani knew the translator said
otani knew and then he
came out and said actually otani had no idea and i lied and now he's also in
prison but matt boyer is
now serving i believe it's uh seven or something months in prison and uh yeah
illegal gambling for illegal
for being a bookie yeah for for money laundering and he was i think it was
something
like 40 million dollars yeah okay yeah much more his losses were around 19 000
bets boy that guy was
hooked between september 21 and january 2024 his winnings amassed to be over 142
million whoa
he won over 142 million which he kept for himself his losses were around 183
million oh
he lost 40 million million dollars that he still owes matt boyer by the way he
only he only again i mean his main
was this guy oh my god he must have been gambling so high it's insane that oh
and he couldn't stop and
matt talks about like this guy i would text he would like he'd be down on a
place and he says let's
double that let's triple that he was always sort of chasing that dopamine it is
a crazy addiction it's
the secret it's the hidden addiction as they call it because you can be
completely you can have a job you
can be a working addict and nobody will ever know that you have a massive
gambling problem and until
it all comes whatever reason when people get hooked they can't shake it it is a
crazy one yeah because
because the dopamine it's really interesting because you get the hit of
dopamine whether you lose or win
so you're always getting that dopamine did you see uncut gems
uh i did yes the best representation of a gambling addict i've ever seen in a
film like watching that
film gave me anxiety i was like oh my god don't do it don't do that i know i
know it's so anathema
to who i am too that i always get so nervous like don't let people do i know it's
but i i've been
around a lot of those people you know when i was in my early 20s i spent a lot
of time in pool halls
and i was around a lot of gambling addicts and i was just fascinated by it
people that would go from
the track to the pool hall so they would go to the racetrack all day gamble on
the races and then go
to you know maybe off track betting bet there and then they go to the pool hall
bet there try to get
a poker game bet there try to go to atlantic city on the weekend bet there yeah
just full-on gambling
junkies their whole life revolved around gambling didn't care about anything
else because they know
that the probability that they're going to lose more than they win they were
like a full-on meth head
that was just chasing the high i mean there was no thought of hey i don't have
any money and i'm 40.
there was nothing like that it was just there was no it was just i'm in this
and this is what i'm
doing i need to i need to win right yeah it's crazy yeah it's a terrifying
addiction terrifying it's
really really because it's weird it's like oh my god what what hijacked your
brain and unlike other
addictions there's no government program out there to help you and now we're
making betting legal sports
betting is now legal in the majority of states so it's like and you know we've
got espn and all
these big companies making money from it i know but i'm not opposed to that
here's it because i don't
have a gambling problem so if like but that i i agree that you the problem is
not that you're making
money from the betting but then knowing that gambling is a problem and that
there is addiction then you
should be able you have to it is your responsibility to set aside some money to
try to figure out how to
address the problem of addiction in gambling yeah but i don't think there has
been an established
solution for gambling addiction i think some people are going to fall by the
wayside and they've always
been that way that that's my take on it it's like i'm not a gambling addict but
like say if there's
a boxing match and like it's terence crawford versus canelo alvarez i'm like i
think terence
crawford's gonna beat the odds i think he's gonna beat him that's what i was
saying before the fight
no i didn't but if i did i would have bet but i would have bet a couple hundred
bucks or something
maybe a thousand right you know yeah um and i think the odds are i mean it
might have been like two to
one for canelo so you would have made a two thousand bucks on a thousand right
uh but
i don't have a problem with gambling you know so it's not i think it should be
legal just like i think
alcohol should be legal i think you should be able to go to a store and buy
alcohol you know i think most
drugs should be legal i think the real problem is the fact that they're illegal
which means you're
getting them from cartels you know and but then there's a dilemma of how do you
change that like
would you just rip off the band-aid and make everything legal and then you
become portland
for a few years the whole country's and how many people die of overdoses
because of that like that's
important i don't think it's a good example because they also didn't have the
safety net so that's what
they were also super kooky right it's a super kooky place to live anyway keep
portland weird mariana i
appreciate you very much thank you joe uh when you're done with the scammer
thing come back
please i need to hear everything okay all right um one more time the show is
called
the hidden third hidden third it's on youtube on youtube.com slash mariana van
zeller
and we've got two episodes already that premiere this week and it's a weekly
podcast
new episodes all the time and you can also get it on spotify apple podcasts or
wherever you get your
podcast all right good luck with that thank you thanks for being here bye
everybody