Latest / The Parent Tap / Discord & Roblox Honeypots (feat. Ex-FBI Agent)

Transcript

Discord & Roblox Honeypots (feat. Ex-FBI Agent) · The Parent Tap

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Morgan Nick, six years old, Arkansas, nineteen ninety five, walks twenty feet from her mom at a little league game to dump sand out of her shoes.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Never comes back.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Morgan still missing.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: John Bene Ramsey, six years old, Boulder, Colorado, 1996.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: In her house, doors locked, family upstairs, gone by morning.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Athena Strand, seven years old, Texas, 2022.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: A FedEx driver pulls into the driveway with a Christmas package and takes her off the front step.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Three kids, three decades, completely different threats.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: A stranger in public, a stranger in the home, a stranger with a uniform and a clipboard who your kid was taught to wave at.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: And there's the part that should keep you up at night.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: None of these threats went away.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: They just got company.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because in 2026, the guy who wants to hurt your kid doesn't need a van.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't need a delivery truck.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't even need to be on the same continent.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: He just needs your kid's phone to be unlocked at 11 p.m.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: And 90% of you watching this just lost that bet.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So today we're not panicking.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're auditing.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: My guest spent 24 years in the FBI working crimes against children.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Before that, he was a Baptist pastor for 12.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: He's a dad, and he's about to walk us through the operational system every parent in this country should have already been running.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: What's the one thing you saw in the Bureau that you wish every parent knew before their kid even touched a phone?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's much less, and we'd seen some of the actual physical abductions, but it's less that, and it's more of the seductions, not abductions, but seductions where kids are led to trust in someone that they think they know because they've they've been contacting, they've been talking, they've been expressing deep things.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not always the you know, the serial killer type, the kidnapper type.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: It can also be those who are just out for their own pleasures and romances with underage kids who don't who don't understand adult urges or drives.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And what we had seen sometimes are these are kids who are being drawn into harm by individuals.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, you've got so many, so many worries and concerns as a father, and I hate to give you more, but I would then after we discuss this, talk about the ideologies that now teens and kids as they grow older can get drawn into from groups on the internet.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just those guys who prey on, you know, one guy preys on one kid.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: It can also be this group that is trying to bring people over to their ideology, and that can ruin a young person's life as well.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even think about that angle.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And for what I see as a parent, I see a lot of teachers now getting in trouble for even as young as maybe like fifth grade, I've seen teachers having relationships that are inappropriate, they're still getting through the cracks, and this is like becoming an epidemic almost where it's like, who can we really trust in our kids' lives?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and the background checks, the fingerprints, that's just, you know, so you are Ryan, you know, you didn't lie about not having a criminal history.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's so basic.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's not much that you can tell.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And even if there was like an actual physical background check where you're interviewing people, if you have secrets in your life that you're hiding, you're not sharing that with other people.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are, they're not going to share that with somebody investigating.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I even, I mean, I'm thinking of the other side.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, of course, there's harms that can come because any adult, even well-meaning teachers, can be the kind that now bring harm to a child.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: But my thought moves more towards good people like you and your wife who you want them to be an extra set of eyes and ears for the kids, where you're trying to do what you can to be involved without helicoptering in your kids' life.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and then you rely on other involved adults that can be looking out for experiences that you might not be seeing at home, interactions, uh, things that kids might be hiding.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's one that we came across, not in the teachers necessarily, but when I was working crimes against children trying to rescue teenage girls who are being pimped by little bit older men in their 20s, we would get leads and referrals from Guardian Ed Lightems, who are the attorneys representing them in court, from folks at juvenile detention centers from foster homes.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they're looking for from their experience that evidence of, well, here's a here's a 15-year-old who's got the newest iPhone, so she shouldn't be able to afford that, or she's got jewelry she shouldn't have.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a uh 26-year-old man who dropped her off at school.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So some things like that where you've got a and that you've got tripwires out there who are looking for things that they know could be indicators of harm or vulnerability.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: But also like walk us through like the day-to-day inside the bureau.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think of like to catch a predator like Chris Hansen walks up, but I'm I'm assuming it's different, right?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's days where it's just like that.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when I was working crimes against children, our mandate was the teenage prostitutes.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: I I'd left that years later, a friend of mine took over, and the mandate had changed more towards the internet crimes.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we were still doing that, but the sharing of child sexual abuse material, but also my buddy was an online undercover.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, like almost the cliche that, you know, here's a a big burly FBI guy and he's posing as a 12-year-old, or, you know, is posing as the father of a four-year-old.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then in cases like that, then he would call in colleagues and I would assist to say, hey, we've got this guy who thinks he's coming in so that he can do harm to my kid.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna meet him at this hotel, uh, this parking lot.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: What you know, we we would try to set up a location where there wouldn't be any threat to civilians.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and there we are sitting in vehicles among other vehicles, and you see this car come through, and you're like, that looks like it's him, you know, and it all does kind of raise to that to catch a predator feeling of it's about to go down.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so yeah, there are definitely times like that.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's other times where you're just swearing at your computer because it doesn't work right and trying to remember what you know how to reset your password for your email.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And in these cases, like we're talking about unique ones where if you're claiming to be as an undercover, I have an infant and a five-year-old that you can do terrible things to, that's that's a niche.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's where people are meeting in specific forms, specific groups.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's ones where I had a case where a 13-year-old boy had been messaging a 27-year-old man about an hour and a half away, and then that man came to visit him, you know, and they would go on dates and recreational things, go to the zoo, but then also there was and again, I say this the boy was 13, so he doesn't he can't assent to this, but mutual sexual interaction promoted by the man.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there are in situations like that where the parents find out by just checking the kid's iPad one day and they see messages that are inappropriate and appear to be an adult male.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't have that foresight, if you don't have that oversight of what your child's doing, that's how something like that might be able to slip into uh a kid's life.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in a case like this, too, a young boy who was homosexual, which was the parents were fine with that, but probably didn't feel like he fit in very well.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so that might have pushed him towards seeking some type of interaction that he might not have been getting in his school.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's just being aware of all those factors that might be driving your kids underground away from talking to you.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost overwhelming the amount of safety nets or you know, mechanisms we need to put in place.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: But like you said, even something as simple as checking our kids' coordinates online, you know, that that obviously goes a long way.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: What is there one case that sticks in your mind that's just like fundamentally rewired how you think about parenting your own kids?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's one.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you bring up, you know, how these people are doing horrible things and they're good members of society.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna go off the board with your question and reference that.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one where, again, my my buddy who was running uh the Crimes Against Children task force had a case on a pastor who had fostered a girl from his congregation, 15-year-old girl, and then was pimping her to other pastors in our city.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So she was being trafficked by her foster father, and then her foster sister was this this was very much in pimp style, too, where she acted in pimp terminology like the bottom bitch, which would be the head prostitute who teaches the new prostitutes how they're supposed to interact with the customers.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so she was the one to kind of hold her hand and wade her out into those waters so she could know how to be a good sex worker at her own father's direction.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: What do you say to that?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: You were a pastor.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: How do you go through like being a pastor and then you your life ends up like that?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll I'll tell you a part of insight into that was I was asked to interview one of the pastors who was involved, and I had this I had a very literal come to Jesus uh message for him because I had the evidence and I had lines of attack that I was going to use, but what I wanted to do was to impress upon him that he needed to repent of his sins.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, here's Bible verses about how you need to open up to God and turn from your sins.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was going to use that to coax him into confessing.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I started with that, and he said, Look, man, I'll talk to you, but I don't want to talk about Jesus.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so we did.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about the facts of the case and how he interacted with the girl, and you know, he made some confession, but he he he was very clearly that's the man who talks about Bible verses didn't do this.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: The guy who preaches on Sundays and works with people, the good man, he didn't do this.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk to you about the evil man who engaged in these crimes.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk to you like criminal to FBI agent, but I don't want to bring Jesus into this.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you then that would demonstrated just how much he had compartmentalized and bifurcated his life that, yep, I this is how I preach Jesus, this is how I do God's work, and I got this other area too.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the crazy thing here is I and I don't want to get into semantics and and say one's better or worse, but his involvement with this 15-year-old girl, I think like he was different than the typical pedophiles that we would arrest.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: The guys who are trading in uh child sexual abuse material, those are guys who feel completely guilty and shameful of what they do, and yet here's a compulsion, and it was typically because of something that some trauma, something that harmed them at a young age, and now they are driven to actions that they hate themselves for, but they continue on with that.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: This guy was just enjoying his lust.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it was it was different.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like, hey man, he he was always going after underage girls, here's an opportunity, and he said, fantastic, that sounds good to me.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not inherently bad.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very interested in the profilers of trying to anticipate how these people think so we can put on the safeguards and protect our kids.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as far as it leans to that, part of it is just being careful that if you are talking with especially with a man who gives you an idea that he may have endured childhood trauma, especially sexual trauma, that now you should be curious about that, investigate yourself, be aware that there could be, it's not one-to-one, it doesn't necessitate, but so everyone who is abused goes through childhood sexual trauma.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not everyone becomes an offender, but if you go backwards, the offenders are almost always ones who have been harmed.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So as a parent, as you relate this to what can we do, it's a matter of if there are indicators, if you hear things, if something is slipping in a conversation.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: There should be some sensitivity to that and some empathy for the person, but also a care that you're not leaving your children open to what they might carry out against them.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: I want to talk a little bit about how the threat has changed, all the social media stuff, all the encryption, all the um you name it.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like it's like whack-a-mole as a parent.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you like?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: How do you prevent this?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think the biggest threat right now is to our kids?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't disagree with you in that fear.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: My kids are older now, they can still be harmed, but they they're not as vulnerable.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there's much more of a visceral fear.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that you're more afraid of someone driving up in a car and physically taking your child than you are of you and your wife getting in an argument and her kidnapping a child by running away.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And yet that's much more likely.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, like one feels more threatening, and yet another is more likely.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And while much of these cases were, you know, here's someone who's kidnapped and kept in a basement, and we had a case of that in the Cleveland division where I worked with Ariel Castro, where he had three women that he had kept for years.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, that's that's a horror.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's rare.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, coming back to something that has I've seen a lot more near the end of my career as we were investigating domestic terrorism, that we have ideology that gets spread on the internet.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that is much more likely to be something that draws your kids and then your teens into a belief system that could promote violence, could bring harm, could bring criminal penalties against them, and likely goes directly contrary to your value system, too.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is that like you're describing like incels, like for instance, kind of yeah, it could be so incels, uh you know, we get we would get it in a lot too, uh, the white supremacist movements, and you know, it many of the people involved, they're very young.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: They are teenagers, 19-year-olds.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I I had one kid that I was investigating, and you know, he was in very early, and his mother was a school counselor.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, where did you learn this?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you learn to be so hateful of blacks and Jews?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's another group, I don't know if you're familiar with 764.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: That that's a that's a horrible group.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's been around for a few years now, and it's mainly teen-led against teens, and they will target vulnerable teens in chat groups or discussions that might involve depression or suicide, divorce, because they know this is where they can go after other teens, and they will extort them, they will promote self-harm.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say self-harm, it's it's very, very disgusting.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: The cutting that they try to push, they try to get them to share uh nude pictures and videos that they that they then extort them for further.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And many of those kids who were victims now start to identify, see the power involved, and they get into that group and then they become offenders later, too.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a disgusting nihilistic blend of Nazism, death, blood, and child pornography.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's the worst stew you could think of.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people think this only happens to daughters or you know, to young girls, but uh, but a lot of the statistics are right, this happens to boys as well, right?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you think this is happening so much?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say we have a young teen in the house, uh boy or girl, what can we do to kind of prevent this from happening?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is it as simple as having a conversation or checking their chat history or they're restricting their apps, or is there something we should be looking at that goes beyond that?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in my opinion, I say that it's important for parents to normalize.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one thing is open openness and honesty, that kids aren't punished for admitting poor choices.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's encouraged.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for telling me you're not in trouble for this.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So at an early age, that that's promoted, but also normalizing oversight of devices, just from my own parenting, by the time my kids were watching TikToks, I thought too much and you know, not harmful, but just like sitting like this, they were too old and we're trying to apply standards well after the fact.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so if early at the if they have an iPad that they sometimes borrow at 10, that you are instructing them, hey, look, I want you to show me the sites that you went on, and we're gonna see that.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's not something that comes after the fact and now seems like punishment, but it's just part of the this is the way our family interacts.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is normal.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so if that's a common thing, I yeah, I look at it for me.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I went to church when I was a kid, and I didn't feel like I was pushed to it.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't feel like my parents were oppressive.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was just part of our lifestyle.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so you want to just make this look, this is part of our lifestyle.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Dad checks, you are open.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: I touched on this a little bit, the gaming aspect, Discord, things like that are out there.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we think of Make It Predator like, you know, the van back in the day.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I and you know, and by the time I tell you this, I don't know if it's different, but as we investigated 764, Discord was huge.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: That was a significant place of outreach.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if kids are using that, and and it's so much more than gaming, but if kids are using that, it's just important to be aware of how they're interacting and Roblox.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Any platform could be a place where they are being reached out to.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it could be those who are looking to do them harm, draw them into that, or it could be the seduction that comes from I'm part of a group, would you like to you know join?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm teaching you values that are counter to what your parents have.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so some of that is just being aware, too, of like let's be honest.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Does does your child have good friends?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Does your child have a good relationship with you?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do they have a solid foundation?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anxiety or depression involved in their lives?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So those are, you know, those could be indicators of vulnerability.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: If if like, hey, my kid has no friends, mom and I fight all the time, so they don't feel comfortable at home.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: They have maybe autism or ADHD and they're online, that's a lot of that's a lot of things that could cause problems.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: So the AI generated CSAM, the deep fakes, the like all this stuff now that it's like we never dealt with in the past.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like, how is this changing the game?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: What's the conversation you have with them about like the the evolving technological landscape?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, I I felt comfortable with my team.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: My issue had been just the frequency of use.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember when my oldest was maybe uh eight or ten, and saying, Oh, I'm uh on this website that's it was webkins, it was related to stuffed animals, and like you you have to be 12 or under to be on it.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so they were telling me, Oh no, it's fine.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody on it's under 12.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to explain.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: My oldest was very intelligent, and even was it.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: That time, but naive enough to not realize a website where everyone has to be under 12.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's a honeypot.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's a honeypot.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's like great place to fish.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: So just explaining, hey, not everybody may be 12.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: So be aware that someone out there, if they don't seem like they're a kid, that you need to let us know.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about trafficking because you mentioned your experience with that.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh, people, you know, nowadays get their information from TikToks and random stuff, you know, the zip ties on car mirrors about this viral thing.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do we parents get wrong about this?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: And like, what are the warning signs in a kid's life or environment that they should actually be auditing for?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as far as sex trafficking goes, it can happen.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: I did not see this happen, but the prostituting, like a a typically a man taking a teenage girl to prostitute and uh benefiting off of her sex work, but that doesn't happen to Liam Neeson's daughter getting pulled from out from under the bed.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: So when we would prosecute the pimps, they they would often go to trial and fight us, and and it made sense to me because I came to understand this.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Those girls were almost always doing it themselves already.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So they were runaways, come from a broken home, the addict parents, useless, abusive parents.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were on the run through foster homes.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so now they were trying to be independent.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 16, I have no education.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: What do I have?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: I have my body, that's the only way I can survive.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so now they might have been doing this for the past months.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Along comes a pimp who says, Fantastic, I can help you, I can get you online better, I can provide transportation.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the girl is literally doing very not much different than what she was doing before he arrived.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: The issue is if you or I ran into a 16-year-old girl who was prostituting, we would help her, not profit from her work.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so that that is the typical sex trafficking situation.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And in Toledo, Ohio, where I was working these cases back in 2005, I believe it was, there was an FBI route roundup at a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania truck stop.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: And at that truck stop were an inordinate number of teen girls and pimps from the Toledo area.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so from there, people looked at Toledo like, oh man, what's wrong with that place?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a hotbed for sex trafficking.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then stories started coming, and people would say, don't go to the mall, because I heard about this girl who got drugged in the bathroom, and none of this was true.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was almost always young girl needing to survive, older man taking full advantage.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what's the threat right now that nobody's tracking?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe in the next, you know, 18 to 24 months, you think is really gonna be something we need to keep our ears peeled.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: It might be the technology or just might be something that shifts.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: What's out there that no one's really talking about right now that we should be worried about as parents?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll say this.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let me start breaking some things down.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I worked domestic terrorism, among other things, and we would see these groups get together to spread their ideology, definitely try they're talking about, if not violence, winning hearts and souls.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're always trying to win hearts and souls.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that means influencing, especially a younger generation and giving their propaganda and hate to them.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so one thing that I have seen, and I don't have the statistics to verify, but those groups, each time, this one would start, yeah, we hate these people.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: In fighting, infighting, split.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: These guys go to that group, these guys go to the that group, and they go for a while.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then infighting, nobody does anything and they split.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that is something I hope and believe, thankfully, is lessening.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not the hate is lessening, but the cohesiveness of those groups is lessening.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think of what would become uh I don't know what the newest social media things are.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you bring up AI.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: I know that my kids and and they're a bit older, so they have sensitivity to it, and they can determine that's AI, you can sense it from photos, you can sense it from what's being worded.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if AI might be used.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, one thing that is coming out is you said, like, if I take a uh screen capture of your face, or if I have a movie that I have access to off of social media, now that can be placed upon an actress's body, and now I have created perhaps underage pornography just from the face.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I would say AI is quite a threat, not knowing what it's gonna do.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking about the romance scams, and some of those are using AI and even just uh people falling in love with AI.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen those too, where like people are literally trying to marry their AI, and I'm like, what the hell?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of craziness out there right now.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: What can the FBI do to kind of infiltrate these groups?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because you've talked a lot about how these ideologies are really just they're spreading and it's really dangerous.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I can say whatever I want on the internet and whatever.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then the FBI comes to their house and they're like, No, you can't.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Why isn't the FBI shutting this out?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Do you always hear about in the aftermath, oh, they knew about this, why didn't they do more?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do you can you give us a little bit of insight on that?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so Nicholas Cruz was the Parkland shooter, and it came out after he killed people, like, oh, he was on the FBI's radar.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I just shook my head because I uh I get I didn't have to hear the story, I knew what the story was.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it turns out the story is he was saying online, I want to become a professional school shooter, or that was his handle.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was that was called into the National Threat Operations Center for the FBI.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: A lead gets sent down to the division that handles that, and most likely what happened is then the agent who got that lead took a school resource officer or local police officer and did a visit.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And all that you can do with somebody saying, It's my goal to be a professional school shooter one day, is to say, how you know what's going on?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do this, are you getting help?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's not you can't arrest him for that.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we you know, we I've been involved with a number of mass shooter cases, and a number of some mass shooter cases where one of them we had to have the person scout an area first, and then have the over act was receiving a gun from our undercover.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so now he had the means to carry it out, and that's gonna be an arrest.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And another, we arrested uh two young people who uh purchased bomb-making material, and that was gonna be the over act to then now we could charge.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the statement of the FBI knew about it, you know, we don't have the manpower to watch people.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: We would do that many times with these white supremacists.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like an informant would tell us, hey, this guy says he he works construction, he can make bombs, and so we'd watch the guy for a few months and interact, and then it would just peter out, and they're like, you don't know if he's gonna come back, but there's only so much to be done, and so that's where I'll make the pitch.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I used to do.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: I we have informants, and informants are force multipliers, they're the ones who, while the agents are trying to handle the administration, are the ones who are getting involved in these groups and at the direction of their handler with the FBI getting involved in that, and it doesn't pay a whole lot of money, but the majority of my informants I had were in it because they felt like they're doing the right thing, and so one probably the best informant I had, the most prolific, didn't look different than you.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, he he was online and he was giving me information, and one day he tells me about a kid in Ireland who's gonna carry out a uh mass killing at a mosque, and in 24 hours we got things rolling with emergency procedures.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking to people way above my grade until the Irish police got him as he was on his way out the door with a ball of kalava pulled over his head.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: On the news.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like they say see something, say something.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is it basically as parents?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is that kind of just the approach we need to take?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: It definitely is, while also being aware that you can be doing a good thing by reporting something that you see, and also have in mind there may nothing may come out of this.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: It could be something that people just go, okay, thanks.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna keep that in mind in case more comes.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: But unless, you know, unless there's something that can be acted on, then it's difficult.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: So the most profitable if you're going to say something is to have all the information ready that could follow up and identify someone, preserve the investigation such that if somebody's texting your child and trying to do something inappropriate, you don't get on and say, hey, this is Kylie's dad.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: You better knock this off.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: You just take control, contact the FBI, go, hey man, here's a guy who's looking to do something with my kid.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we've done that before.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: You take over an account and get a guy arrested.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Eric, Eric Robinson, did you want to uh tell people where they can find out more about you, get more information?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Folks can find me on Instagram at underscore Eric, underscore Robinson.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: I got on Instagram in January when I retired.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was surprised that one was not taken, but glad.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they can find me on LinkedIn with my name, put in FBI, you'll see this face.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or I've written a book to be published in the fall, and that's going to tell the story of what happens when you take a Baptist pastor who's never handled a gun before, and you stick him in the FBI for 24 years and even gets to play SWAT for 15 of those.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some very interesting stories, I think, a few that I've alluded to here.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: But if you want to find out more about the book as it comes out, you can go to preacher to breacher dot com because I used to preach.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you so much for being here.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: I am armed with knowledge.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: I feel better.