Latest / The Dustlight Archives / NXIVM: Interlude: Interfor, CanaProbe, and Rick Alan Ross

Transcript

NXIVM: Interlude: Interfor, CanaProbe, and Rick Alan Ross · The Dustlight Archives

• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: An interlude in three parts.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Part one interfour.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: At four ten AM on September fifth, nineteen seventy-two, eight members of Black September, a militant faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, named in Solidarity after a massacre from two years earlier that they were avenging, scaled the chainling fence surrounding the Olympic village in Munich, West Germany.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: In a surprise bit of luck, they were actually assisted through the fence by American athletes sneaking back in after a night out.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Once inside, the members of Black September forced their way into the building housing the Israeli Olympic delegation.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Wrestling coach Mosh Weinberg was one of the first to notice, and when he tried to fight back, he was shot through the cheek before being forced to lead them through the rest of the building to gather hostages.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: At some point, Mash Weinberg tried a second time to fight them off, allowing one of the wrestlers to escape to an underground garage but being shot dead in the process.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, after another killing, this one of an ex-IDF soldier responsible for murders in what the Western media labeled the Six Days War, nine hostages were taken.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: By morning, Black September was on live television, demanding the release of 234 prisoners, including members of the PLO and the Red Army faction.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Israel, with its cold refusal to not negotiate with people they had labeled terrorists, basically tossed this hot potato on the laps of the German government.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: German police attempted a brief, extremely inept rescue mission being filmed live on TV as the members of Black September watched, and it was aborted at the last minute.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Realizing they were not going to get their demands met on site, they requested a plane to Cairo, and the German government appeared to capitulate while secretly planning an ambush at the tarmac.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: It all fell apart pretty quickly when officers posing his flight crew on the Boeing 747 freaked out and abandoned their position.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: When the leader of Black September realized the plane was empty, he saw it as a trap and a brutal two-hour gunfight ensued.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: As the members of Black September realized their situation was looking pretty irretrievably hopeless, they killed all of the hostages before most of the Palestinians were killed by police, and three were captured alive.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: In the immediate aftermath, Golden Meyer, the Israeli Prime Minister, put together Committee X consisting of herself, the defense minister, and various intelligence officials.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Israeli government, never missing an opportunity to label something as both eerily religious and brutally fascistic, came up with Operation Wrath of God.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: The goal was to kill every PLO and Black September member that had anything to do with the 1972 Munich hostage crisis.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Also, in true Israeli fashion, it was both technically brilliant in parts and also a complete mess that left several civilians dead.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: They pulled off a couple of assassinations, including one actually where future Prime Minister Ehud Barak disguised himself as a woman in a wig and a dress with dynamite in his handbag in order to conceal his identity as they raided one of PLO's headquarters and killed everybody inside.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Operation Wrath of God was put on hold after a particularly egregious fuck-up where one of the teams misidentified their target and killed some random Moroccan waiter before being arrested by Norwegian police and having their operation as well as a series of safe houses exposed.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Five years later, Israel would quietly finish the operation and assassinate Ali Hassan Salama in a car bombing that also killed four bodyguards as well as four civilians.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And not that it necessarily matters to this story, but it's just a bit more flavor.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Israel would claim their motivation for the attack was that he planned the 1972 Munich hostage crisis.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is he also was a CIA asset.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: There was a direct line between the US government and the PLO, allowing them to bypass Massad altogether when negotiating if they so chose.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And let's just say I don't think it's not a factor in why Israel killed him.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So why am I telling you this story?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because in several popular accounts, including the 1984 book Vengeance by George Jonas, as well as the Steven Spielberg movie based on the book Munich, there is an IDF assassin named Avner.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: The story goes that Avner led a five-man hit squad who carried out all of these attacks.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: The Prime Minister of Israel personally approached him, and as part of the deal, he resigned from Mossad so that Israel could disavow him if he were caught.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: What we know for sure is that several different teams pulled off these assassinations, not just one, and that Yuvalviv, a man with ties to the IDF, a man who would start Interfort in 1979, one of the main mercenary firms that worked with Nexium, would claim to be the mysterious Avner.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: He was in fact born in Israel in 1947, and he did join the IDF.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Although records are unclear whether he was a sergeant or a gate guard.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: On one side, Simon and Schuster would stand by the claim, and Steven Spielberg would tell journalists the book was true, and he had secret sources that confirmed Yvalv is who he said he is.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Which, first of all, is an incredibly sus thing to say on Steven Spielberg's part.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I also am not particularly inclined to take him seriously, because he obviously has a pretty clear motivation to want to spread this specific story, since the heart of his movie relies on it.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yvalviv also spent years on cable news claiming to have ran a team that did Operation Wrath of God.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: On the other side of things, you have several members of Masad in the Israeli government, who as well as those in the US intelligence community and investigative journalists who claim he was a gay guard.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: This all gets even more complicated when we factor in that FOIA records do show he was actively an asset for the FBI and DOJ in the 80s and 90s.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it sure seems like this guy knew tradecraft and had sensitive information.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Interforce spent some time as what appears to be a boutique consulting firm before really making their bones in 1989 when they hired were hired by Pan Am to give their professional opinion on the Walkerby bombings.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: The basic situation was that a bomb had been hidden inside a walkman in a suitcase and exploded, killing everybody on board.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: The government determined it was a group of rebel Palestinians who had snuck the bomb on, and if that was the case, Pan Am would have to accept liability and almost certainly would have gone bankrupt from the lawsuit.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Enter Interfor, who does an investigation of their own, and comes up with a genuinely shocking conclusion for a group tied so deeply into the intelligence establishment.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: They claimed the CIA was secretly allowing Syrian drug runners access to the plane for smuggling purposes, and that this access had been abused to send through a bomb, therefore tossing liability onto the CIA.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: They used it as the pillar of their defense in court.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Plan failed.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Pan Am got accused of willful misconduct by the court, was ordered to award$500 million to the victims, and did in fact go bankrupt.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's an incredibly bold claim, and I'm kind of amazed it happened.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose it makes sense for Pan Am, given they were desperate and out of options.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: But why would Uval Aviv and Interfor do this?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: One option is that Uvalviv is actually that much of a fucking madman and decided to take on some of the most powerful intelligence institutions in court, ruin his career, and risk committing suicide with two bullets to the back of the head, maybe hoping it would help his reputation.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I find this Andrew unconvincing, and it requires a little inference, but I think I have a better answer.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: What if he was always controlled opposition?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least double dipping?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: We already know he has longstanding ties to the FBI, DOJ, and IDF, and he was in fact a longtime asset for US intelligence.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Rumors were already swirling about US drug smuggling on Pan Am planes before the bomb ever went off.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can't stop the rumors, you can always shitcoat them until normal people no longer take it seriously.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: He also would spend the next several decades having his personal and professional fortunes increase.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you, it's pretty rare for somebody to directly take on US intelligence and end up better off than when they started.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if you accept this, which I really do think is fairly reasonable given the circumstantial evidence, the question I would ask next is have Uvalov even interfort assets or at least people in a symbiotic give and take relationship with the CIA the whole time, if not in fact a literal cutout?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think that question gets pretty interesting when you start thinking about how they acted as an enforcement arm for Nexium.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: The official story is that the Bronfman sisters hired Inter 4 in 2003 after the Forbes hit piece that came out.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I find incredibly interesting about all of this is that it's the hit piece where Edgar Bronfman Sr.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: first calls Nexium a cult.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Edgar Bronfman Sr.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: was the head of the World Jewish Congress, and in fact hired Interfour to investigate World War II era Swiss banks in the 90s.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: After that, he had a continuous relationship with them, and they were basically on retainer for the family.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So when I hear that they hire Interfor as a direct response to the hit piece where their father calls it a cult, I can't help but feel this adds more to my Kfabe theory.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: The daughters continue to wander money and whatever else.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Edgar Bromfman Sr.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: and the wider family cleared themselves publicly of any involvement, and meanwhile, Interfor is this subterranean glue helping keep the whole thing together.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if we look at the mainstream theory pushed by all the documentaries and books, why in the actual fuck would these sisters hire Intervore?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Interfor is loyal to their dad.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: He had the money, he had the power, and he had the decades-long relationship.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Hiring your dad's favorite PI service is pretty obviously handing him all your information on a silver platter.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one of the first major operations we're aware of the Interfor would engage in was a targeted attack on a man named Rick Roth.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not the rapper, not the Iran-Contra-era drug dealer, but yet another Rick Ross, this one being a cult deprogrammer.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: He also sometimes goes by Rick Allen Ross.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: We will get into Rick Ross later this episode, but suffice it to say, they were most likely two grifting operations in a turf war.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And for what it's worth, he did seem to go hard.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: They tried to sue this man and his group into bankruptcy, had him physically followed, stole personal information like his taxes, bank records, and client lists.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And in what I would call a particularly strange incident, if Nexium and Interfour didn't try this same thing several times on several people, they got a warrant for his arrest in Canada and attempted to lure him there.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time, this trick would be attempted in Mexico, where Emiliano Salinas had direct lines to the legal system.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: What had happened was that at one point Rick Ross published some of executive success programs course materials.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: In the US, doing this was protected under free speech laws and journalistic protections.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: But in Canada, this was considered publishing trade secrets.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: So they got the Canadian legal system to put out a warrant for his arrest and then pretended to be a wealthy Canadian client willing to spend a lot of money that needed to meet with Rick Ross in per in person first.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: They set up and attempted the sting, but Rick Ross got weirded out and he never came.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I also suspect they were there to keep an eye on Keith and Nancy and do internal security on Naxium members, but whatever.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these stories from Interfor's time working for Nexium are really bonkers.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're the sort of thing I imagined you would only try if you were completely insane, or if you believed you had institutional backing that would keep you safe.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: At one point, while they're being sued by Rick Ross, Interfour will use fake identities to steal the banking information of two federal judges.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Another time they broke into the Albany Times, which is running an investigative piece on Nexium and put keyloggers on their computers.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: In 2013, the heat was just too much, and the budget for all the work Interfour was doing became too much as well.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they seem to have cut ties.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: That is until 2018, when a bunch of unsealed trial exhibits revealed their crimes, which the company and Uvalviv both would never ever be charged for.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Nowadays, the company seems to have passed to his son Don Aviv, and he appears to have mostly migrated to white-collar firms where they practice corporate risk, cybersecurity, and asset recovery.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I can't prove this next part, not yet, but the ultimate question we have to ask is this how much of Nexium's two-decade trove of behavioral data ended up on InterForce servers?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And when they pivoted to servicing corporate clients, is it possible that that dark database was packaged, sold, or consulted by tech giants, whose entire business model relies on behavioral modification and data extraction?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or by Uval Aviv's many friends in international intelligence?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Something to think about.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Part two Canniprobe.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Incorporated in Montreal by a PI named Richard Marier, Canniprobe was essentially a front.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Mare held the license and owned the company, but almost everything the firm actually executed was subcontracted out to a husband and wife team, Cullen Johnson and Elaine White.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Prior to Canna Probe, they had a series of failed LLCs and were doing fairly boots on the ground PI work.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Following cheating spouses, insurance fraud checks, skip tracing, stuff like that.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: At some point, they started getting into the game of international forensic asset tracing.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing about forensic asset tracing, especially when it's international, is that it is oftentimes a scam, at least on the face of it.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now there are a pretty limited number of ways for private entities to trace back somebody's finances, say the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you oftentimes have two separate options.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can either trick some call center person, bribe somebody with the information, or you can make it up.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: God damn it.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: From the looks of it, Cannaprobe would do all three, and they would oftentimes claim the information came from a series of secret informants they had.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's how you avoid outrightly making it clear that you're breaking the law.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: The Bronffman's paid for Canopa just like they paid for Interfort, and the main line you'll hear for why they would give them almost a million dollars is that they needed somebody to forensically audit their father financially because they believed their father was involved in an international conspiracy to take down Nexium.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't believe that silly bullshit, do we?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even if you ignored everything else I've said in the series up to this point, Edgar Sr.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: would have better things to do with his time than go on an international crusade to get two of his least valuable children out of a cult.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And as much as it's convenient for them legally and financially to play stupid, the Bronffman sisters are in fact sharper than this.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: So what use would they have had for canoprobe actually?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there are a couple of things I think this particular PI firm offered, and actually it fits almost shockingly well into our thesis that they were laundering money.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, they were Canadian expats and operated out of the Bahamas and Turks, which means whether or not the documents were real or how they were gotten, they could commission documents to be used in court cases against their enemies.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you hire Interfort and Interfor obtains a document illegally or makes it up, they can be subpoenaed in court pretty easily, which causes all sorts of legal headaches.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, saying a group in Canada gave us these documents solves that problem in a lot of ways.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And when you claim to lose over$60 million in bad investments, you have to at least for show attempt to do some restructuring of the entity that lost it, in this case, Nexium.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it also means engaging in lawsuits and legal actions, even if they're for show, and that means filing paperwork.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Canoprobe could have given them foreign documents they knew would go nowhere, but could still present as evidence of their loss, either in a restructuring or in a lawsuit.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Second of all, we go back to one of the Dust Light Archives' favorite things to look for, which is dual use.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Groups like Inter4 and Canapro.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Are already great for moving dark money just at a baseline.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're often hired through a lawyer or secondary group.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it requires stripping away multiple layers to even find the customer the money is coming from.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: On top of that, if the firm is operating internationally, it makes this exponentially more difficult.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, and most importantly for Canoprobe, those same people you may have bribed to get somebody's bank information on the Cayman Islands, they can also be used to move money through those banks.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that if if somebody's willing to give them illegal banking information on the one end, they're probably not going to balk it.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Also helping hide money.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one way to move money out of a trust is futures investments, which we've discussed earlier, because they are legally structured as commercial investments, and another way is paying companies for services, particularly when that company what it does is obtuse and there's no real way to prove value, and particularly when that company has links to offshore untraceable bank accounts.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: There is a good tale involving Nexium and Canaprobe.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: I do think this company and these two particular goofballs who run it are pretty funny, which offers some nice levity to a story that has often gotten pretty dark in parts.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: The funniest story, I think, is when Keith Rainery and Nancy Salzman tried to start an a cappella group to recruit new members because and let us never forget, Keith Rainier is first and foremost.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: He's an absolute fucking nerd.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it was called a cappella innovations, and they put on some nonprofit show where they like weirded out a bunch of people.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the first things they do is approach a man named Deke Sharon who ran another a cappella group called the Contemporary A cappella society, who immediately went online and warned the broader a cappella community about them through forums.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And like I I really do feel like this is just a Keith and Nancy mission.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like if this wasn't a giant behavioral modification, data and money laundering apparatus, and it was in fact just Keith and Nancy's group, we'd see a lot more things like fights between competing a cappella groups.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, Keith and Nancy, they get Cannaprobe to forge documents, claiming this guy who once again is just a random guy who likes a cappella a lot and talked shit about them on a forum.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: They claim this guy had tens of thousands of dollars hidden in the Cayman Islands.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they attempt to go to the police with these forged documents first, and presumably the police ignore them because they don't care and the documents seem fake.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: So when that doesn't work, they decide to sue Deke Sharon, but the lawsuit is dismissed when they attempt to enter these documents into evidence.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said earlier, most of the time it becomes very difficult to get an international firm into a US court.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: But these documents were so fake, they were just so obviously fake that in order to enter them into evidence, Colin Johnson and Elaine White of Canaprobe had to sign affidavits under penalty of perjury, saying the documents are real, which they then hilariously refused to do.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Which is just a good money laundering move, frankly.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you use these people in financial crimes of your own, then you need to sue them once they're convicted, or at some point somebody might begin to question why you gave convicted criminals a bunch of money.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's much better to paint yourself as a victim rather than a conspirator.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Which is very much what they did.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: He was adopted and his father was a plumber.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: His mother would become employed at the Jewish Community Center when his family moved to Phoenix at three years old.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: In 1973, he would be arrested for the first time at 22 while working as a debt collection agent for the American Credit Bureau.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was arrested because with an accomplice, he decided to burgle a vacant model home, but the pair were both caught by police when they were attempting to kick down the door.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: And for this, Rick Ross would receive a year of probation and ten days of jail time.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the things cults would use to assassinate his character for decades after the fact.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if this were the only incident, I would say reading too much into this is unfair.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Lord knows I did equally stupid stuff in my young twenties.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that it doesn't end there.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And as his life continues, a certain pattern tends to emerge.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: While on probation, he plans a heist of a jewelry store.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: The plan went like this.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: His friend Daniel Schroeder worked at KB Jewelers, and at 11 p.m.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Rick Ross would come in wearing a mask in disguise, and he would quietly slip a piece of paper to Daniel, claiming he had a bomb and he would set it off if he didn't hand over a bunch of jewelry.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: He made off with over$100,000 worth of diamonds, and probably would have gotten away with it if they hadn't been caught on a wiretap talking about it and bragging about how easy it was.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I have a couple of questions here.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, these crimes took place in Maricopa County, and I know it wasn't it wasn't run by Sheriff Joe Arpayo, who is a man so credinous and authoritarian.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: The best thing that can be said about him is that he never forced his prisoners living in open-air concentration camps to form a human centipede.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a reason the man was elected in the first place.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maricoba County has a long history and culture of extreme punishment and an almost maniacal focus on law and order.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: I guess what I'm getting at here is you can imagine why I would find it a bit odd.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, anywhere in the US, but particularly in this county, that Rick Ross did absolutely no prison time for stealing$100,000 worth of diamonds, placing a bomb threat while already on probation.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't even mention this yet, but he also took a court-ordered psychological evaluation where the psychologist claimed he had in this is a quote sociopathic inclinations and can't see that what he does is socially unacceptable and dangerous.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, with all of this considered, all the core did was extend his probation for four years.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now he did have a couple of things going for him.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was white and he did come from a family seen as respectable.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, technically he was Jewish, but I guess the point I'm making is that he wasn't brown or black.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Also, all of the merchandise was recovered.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I think most importantly, he was willing to snitch on his friend and work with the police.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there is no proof he was an official informant at this time, outside of him informing on his friend.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: But when I see this pattern of catch and release for serious crimes, and I also know he would work intimately with US intelligence in the future, you know, I have to wonder.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh definitely gets me thinking.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he would go on to work at his cousin's auto salvage and used car business for the next six years, where indications seem to be that he got really good at these sort of high-pressure sales tactics and cold reading necessary to excel in this line of work, eventually climbing to vice president.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Then something happens in 1982 that I'm not going to pretend I fully understand.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: But as far as I can tell, the story goes something like this.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Rick Ross' grandmother was in a Jewish care home for the elderly.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: And while visiting her, he supposedly finds out about this cult, the Hieronymus Church, that is recruiting old vulnerable people, sometimes with dementia or other forms of cognitive decline.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently they were sometimes getting these elderly people to sign stuff over to them.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: He finds out about this and decides to go to the local press, as well as contact local Jewish leaders.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: He manages to get the cult out of this nursing home, and then he realizes he's got a knack for cult deprogramming.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now my first problem with this is the timing.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: This all happens in 1982, and by 1983, Rick Ross's record will be totally wiped clean, which seems pretty convenient.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: On top of that, I this whole thing just reeks of mythmaking.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Almost like a superhero origin story.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, keep in mind, this was a small local cult, and I honestly couldn't find any evidence of them doing anything truly insidious.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't a normal response to the situation on Rick Ross's part at all.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: His grandma was not being scammed.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: She had supposedly been approached, and that was it.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: But yet Rick Ross goes absolutely nuclear for reasons that are unclear and decides to fight this cult that, you know, it seems questionable, but kind of benign, and really isn't any of his business.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: I could maybe buy this easier if he had a history of standing up for the little guy and seemed like somebody driven by his conscience, but I have to stress that all we know of him at this point is that he is a thief and a grifter.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there are two things that do lend credence to the story.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: One is that the Hieronymous Church was a small operation, so it's not like he was taking on Scientology or something.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: The other is that his mother already worked for the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix, so he presumably already had connections there.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And in the 70s and 80s, a concern for a lot of these Jewish groups was that other groups were recruiting their members, meaning that it's possible, if approached, the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix might have taken this somewhat seriously.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Either way, this whole thing smells wrong, but he would use it to catapult himself into a new career path.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, a specialized niche as a youth program coordinator, anti-cult committee member, and community lecturer.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: He gave talks and advised parents on how to keep their kids away from calls like the Hieronymous Church, but more importantly, groups like the Hare Krishna's or the Unification Church, which the larger National Jewish Federation apparatus were very concerned about at the time.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: His ties to the National Jewish Federation also allowed him to become a spokesperson on local and national news, elevating his profile and getting his face out there.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: While doing this, he began to run into a lot of distressed parents whose adult children had joined churches or cults and would pay good money to get them out.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: This quickly revealed itself to be an untapped commercial market, and Ross ditched the relatively low-paying work he was doing to head into the lucrative trade of cult deprogramming and started a private practice joining forces with more established groups like the Cult Awareness Network or CAN.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the way these groups work is that a distressed parent in the 80s, they see a billboard or an ad directing them to call a phone number for help.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when they call it, the cult awareness network answers and links them up with one of their subcontractors.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the CAN would claim to be a nonprofit, but there were loopholes in order for them to make money, of course.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for instance, they would often say they required a donation before setting up a meeting between the client and the subcontractor.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Another way they would make money is that the line between telephone operator and subcontractor could oftentimes be blurred or non-existent.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Ross was making money hand over fist through this whole operation.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Standard fee Ross would float for his work would be between$10,000 and$30,000.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's 1980s and 1990s money.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: At first, these groups would limit themselves to sitting down and talking with people who wanted to talk.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: But as the money kept flowing and new strategies were developed, they moved into the realm of involuntary deprogramming.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Which, I mean, it's it's quite literally a euphemism for kidnapping and false imprisonment.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I know most people have some familiarity with this, but I want to I want to lay out exactly what involuntary deprogramming looks like.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it it first requires kidnapping a grown adult off of the street or snatching them from their home and stuffing them in the back of a van.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: You then drive them to a remote location like a motel room or a rented cabin.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: You lock the doors, take their driver's license, shoes, and phone, before you basically scream at them and manipulate them and try all sorts of the kind of tricks you would find in an MK Ultra experiment until they eventually capitulate.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: The insanity of this method got pushed to its breaking point in a 1995 lawsuit that bankrupted both Kann and Rick Ross.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: At least it got pushed to its breaking point as far as doing it to adults.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, these same strategies would continue with children and teenagers even up to this day with certain groups.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: But, anyways, the lawsuit was filed by Jason Scott, who was kidnapped when he was 18.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: According to court documents, three security men ambushed him, tackled him, threw tape over his mouth, and took him to a beach house where Rick Ross spent days trying to break him down.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, Scott pretended to capitulate so he could leave, and as soon as he got out of there, he immediately went to the police.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to say, it's uh uh it's obviously kind of amazing that this didn't happen sooner.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this resulted in criminal charges being filed against Rick Ross, although he was acquitted by a jury since he did not personally apply physical restraints to Jason Scott, which is an insane reason to acquit somebody.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: And as if the story surrounding the cult action network wasn't already crazy enough.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: At this point, Jason Scott agrees to file a massive lawsuit with legal counsel from the Church of Scientology, which, for the record, he was in a totally unrelated cult, so it's not like this is some sort of direct tit for tat.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: However, Scientology and the CAN were enemies, and this was a golden opportunity.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: This lawsuit created a bunch of bizarre outcomes that are all fascinatingly strange.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, it bankrupted the CAN and Rick Ross.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: The CAN and Ross had both been sued for millions of dollars they didn't have, which forced them both to file bankruptcy proceedings.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: The first incredible result of this lawsuit is that it actually allowed Scientology to buy up the CAN for pennies on the dollar, keeping the exact same name and branding.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: So now, in a darkly hilarious and dystopian turn of events, when distressed parents called the Cult Action Network, the phone bank operators would direct them to the Church of Scientology.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: And another effect it would have was it allowed the Church of Scientology to collect all sorts of data on their adversaries, which they also very much did.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um another of the like just completely bizarre outcomes of all of this is that Jason Scott is realizing he's being manipulated by the Church of Scientology.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: So at a point, he fires his lawyer, who then in turn attempts to convince the court his client is mentally unwell.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, this failed.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in a move that was too late to save the cult action network from a buyout, but early enough to pull Rick Ross out of bankruptcy, he resettled for$5,000 and 200 hours of Rick Ross's services.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, really, this was a legal maneuver meant to make the lawsuit settlement$205,000, with the court valuing Ross's service at$1,000 an hour.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: This also allowed Jason Scott to receive$5,000 instead of the promise of a million dollars, which would almost certainly never come.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I would be lying if I said I also didn't find it pretty darkly funny that his lawsuit winnings were largely paid off in the form of professional services from the man who falsely imprisoned him and caused him severe psychological distress to begin with.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jason Scott obviously never took him up on these services.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um after all of this blew over, Rick Ross decided the involuntary removal industry was a legal minefield, and he pivoted to exit counseling for people voluntarily leaving cults.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: He also started the Cult Education Institute, which will often be the first thing that appears in Google searches for groups it classifies as cults instead of the group itself.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like the same way if you like if if you Google how to use heroin, you will not get the answer you're looking for, and will instead get several pages of suspiciously similar sounding nonprofits that all just list the dangers of heroin.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I will say, broadly speaking, I find this approach to be harmful and counterintuitive.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: The fact is, if somebody is going to use heroin, they should know the best, safest way to do it.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: And lecturing somebody about to tie off isn't going to stop them.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: Which, if I hadn't made it clear yet, brings me to my main thesis as far as Rick Ross and groups like the CAN go.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's the good guy, and everybody's got a grift.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: In a way, it reminds me of the old TV show To Catch a Predator, where like the mission statement on paper is something most of us could agree with.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: But in practice, it is done so unethically with such ulterior motives that the side doing these supposedly good work comes off looking almost as bad as those they're fighting.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I call it my Hansen versus Predator horseshoe theory.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Also, like any good grifter, Rick Ross became a professional witness in court cases, which I mean are like 99% absolutely shameless con men, willing to feign expertise on pseudoscientific or sociological phenomena, and unsurprisingly, he would end up on the side of whoever is paying them every time.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Ross first crossed paths with Nexium in 2002 when the wealthy parents of two siblings who were low-level members in Nexium paid for his services.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: He eventually ended up being able to successfully talk one of them out of the cult, and when they left, they brought a bunch of manuals and guidebooks with them.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: Ross published these online starting a 14-year ongoing legal battle when Nexium accused him of violating copyright and exposing trade secrets.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: He could have never afforded to take on such a wealthy group on his own, but due to the case being important to certain precedents involving free speech, he was able to draw in a robust group of high-level activist attorneys to help with the case.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: By 2004, they had already lost their case, which accidentally set some important free speech precedents, so that's cool, I suppose.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: But Nexium would continue finding ways to draw out the process for the next 14 years in a long protracted legal battle.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my theory is that this makes him the perfect outsider once Frank Parlato, who remember appears to be a journalist for hire working for the Bronfmans, Mark Vicente, who had a South African spy for a father, and a diplomat for a mother, and the Oxenbergs, which we have covered extens extensively, finally decided to set off their controlled burn and leave Keith Rainier holding the bag.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ross had a long documented legal history of fighting Nexium.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure he genuinely hated them for being a thorn in his side for so long, and he had the credentials to act as a professional witness during Keith Rainier's court case, and considering he'd spent his entire life as a con man of one sort or another, I think he would have been on their wavelength.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Also, for what it's worth, this is a side note, but when I began doing research, the first book I picked up was The Program by Tony Natalie, which broadly speaking is one of the most useless books on the subject, but I did have some familiarity with Rick Ross.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when I saw that Tony Natalie's book had a foreword by him, it felt like a sign, and I immediately knew there would be something to this story, even if I didn't know what it was yet.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: And to kind of tie this all together, I'd say what all three of these sections have in common as a through line is that all of them operated in legally gray areas at best.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: And yet at just about every turn in every situation, they seem to be allowed to continue on doing what they're doing.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Every time they face the threat of prison or serious consequences, it seems like the justice system itself contorts itself into pretzels in order to keep them from facing any sort of serious jail time or anything like that.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the implication seems to be that all three of them were serving much larger, more useful institutional interests than Keith Renee.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: At a certain point, once as an anomaly, twice as a coincidence, and three as a pattern.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: My question is, what does this pattern mean?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, guys, thank you for tuning in again.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: That is our episode for this week.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: We will be heading back into Nexium's Mexican section in order to finish wrapping all of this up.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: We are in the home stretch now.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you as always to if you want to support my work, if you would like a lot more content.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm starting to really build a library up there.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: Please check out my Patreon.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've got my Sinister Forces Book Club going.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's next week.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to be completely finished with the first of the three books in that series.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think uh I don't know I'm pretty proud of the work that I have been doing on it.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I would say that they that it's a little bit looser than these more scripted episodes, so they run a little bit longer.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean if you're looking for more longer form content to like if these episodes run between you know 30 and 60 minutes, I would say uh my book club episodes pretty regularly hit about an hour and a half or so.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, please uh check that out.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you cannot afford it, let me know and you know hit me up and we can work something out.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to keep this information from people.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if you would like to support me in a way that is non-monetary, uh leaving a five-star review and even more importantly, a comment always means a lot.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I will see you next week.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, it's me again, one more time.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to say that when I was going back editing this episode, I realized that several times I called CAN the Cult Action Network, and their name is actually the Cult Awareness Network.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: So sorry for any confusion there, but I just wanted to make sure to make that correction.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, you can do that.