Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Influencer Cash Cartier Sentenced to 40 Years in Girlfriend’s Death He Blamed on Dog

Transcript

Influencer Cash Cartier Sentenced to 40 Years in Girlfriend’s Death He Blamed on Dog · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Usually, you know, when we talk about a crime scene,
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there's this expectation of clarity, like you find a shattered window,
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or you find a.
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Speaker 2: Footprint in the mud, Right, it's tangible.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. An investigators points and says, there's the point
0:11
of entry. It's a physical puzzle, you know, action and reaction.
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Speaker 3: It's comforting, honestly, I mean in a grim sort of way,
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because it follows the laws of physics. We like things
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to be visible, easily categorized.
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Speaker 1: But then you step into the world of digital personas
0:27
and coercive control and curated realities, and suddenly that magnifying
0:32
glass is just well, it's completely broken.
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Speaker 4: Oh absolutely, it's shattered.
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Speaker 1: We're looking at a landscape that is just terrifyingly murky.
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Speaker 3: Because the weapon isn't always something you can, you know,
0:43
dust for prints. Sometimes the weapon is literally the narrative.
0:47
Speaker 1: Itself, which brings us to a frankly terrifying question for you,
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the listener who's joining us on another deep dive today.
0:53
What happens when a digital projection of ultimate success sona
1:00
promising wealth and faith and hustle is weaponized.
1:04
Speaker 4: It's incredibly dark.
1:05
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this We've all seen them, right, the influencers,
1:09
flexing luxury cars, promising these secret formulas for wealth.
1:13
Speaker 3: Right, you just scroll past them on Instagram every day exactly.
1:16
Speaker 1: But how does a man trick thousands of people into
1:19
believing he's a savior while hiding a reality of brutal
1:22
domestic violence behind a highly curated feed?
1:26
Speaker 3: And not just that, how does he attempt to hide
1:29
a murder behind a frantic nine to one one call about.
1:32
Speaker 4: A dog attack?
1:33
Speaker 1: I mean, that is the core of what we're pulling
1:35
apart today. Our sources today center on a really harrowing
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cultural report titled The Mask of Cash Cartier Influence, Violence
1:43
and Accountability.
1:44
Speaker 3: And you know what's crucial here is that we're looking
1:46
at a case that sits at a very dangerous intersection.
1:50
It's not just a true crime story, oh definitely not.
1:52
It's about social media influence, predatory financial structures, and intimate
1:56
partner homicide all colliding.
1:58
Speaker 1: So let's set the scene yourself. In this moment, it's
2:01
October eighth, twenty twenty three. We are in an apartment
2:04
in the Arlington and Fort Worth area of Texas. A
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thirty four year old man named Caleb Mickens dials nine
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to one one. He's frantic. He tells the dispatcher his
2:13
thirty eight year old girlfriend, Sheila Cuavas, is unresponsive.
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Speaker 3: But the very first thing he establishes, like the total
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anchor of his story, is that his.
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Speaker 2: Dog attack her, right, a pet named Soldier.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Soldier. And think about the immediate psychology of that choice.
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I mean, the person he's supposed to love is dead
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or dying in his bedroom. Yeah, he knows law enforcement
2:34
is coming. He obviously can't hide the body, so instead
2:37
of fleeing, he attempts to construct this built in, ready
2:41
made explanation.
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Speaker 1: He literally blames a creature that cannot speak.
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Speaker 3: Exactly, a creature that cannot defend itself and cannot testify
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in court.
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Speaker 1: I am just trying to wrap my head around the
2:50
audacity of that. It's like, it's like he's a director
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hastily staging a theatrical set before the audience arrives.
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Speaker 4: Oh, that's a perfect way to put it.
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Speaker 1: He genuinely thought he could control the narrative in the
3:01
physical world just as easily as he controlled his digital one.
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Like he could just post a caption on reality and
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the cops would double tap and believe it.
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Speaker 3: What's fascinating here is that abusers fundamentally seek total control
3:12
over their environment. Blaming Soldier wasn't just a convenient cover
3:16
up for the police. What do you mean, well, he
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knew the protocol for a dog involved in a fatal mauling.
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By making that claim on a recorded nine to one
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one line, he was basically signing the dog's death warrant.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow.
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Speaker 3: He sacrificed an innocent life, denying that dog any chance
3:34
at rehabilitation or adoption, purely to buy himself time.
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Speaker 1: And the awful part is it worked, at least initially.
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First responders rushed to the scene, they find Sheila Quivas
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unresponsive at the foot of.
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Speaker 3: The bed, and animal control is called in immediately right.
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Speaker 1: They remove Soldier from the apartment, and based on that
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initial emergency response, just the sheer chaos of a presumed
3:55
fatal mauling, the dog is quickly euthanized as a dangerous animal.
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Speaker 3: Which is just a devastating piece of collateral damage.
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Speaker 4: In all of this.
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Speaker 1: Wait. I have to stop you there, though, because something
4:04
just doesn't add up for me and probably for anyone listening.
4:07
Let's look at the actual physical evidence. Oh yeah, The
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sources detail that Sheila was found with a swollen face,
4:13
a cauliflower ear, puncture wounds, and fifteen broken ribs. Yeah, fifteen.
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How do EMTs walk into a room, see a woman
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with a cauliflower ear and a caved in chest and think, yeah,
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the dog did this. I mean, I don't care how
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chaotic it is. A dog does not give someone a
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cauliflower ear.
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Speaker 3: It's a completely fair point, Yeah, it really is. But
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you have to separate the adrenaline of an emergency response
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from the methodical nature of a forensic investigation.
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Speaker 2: Okay, fair.
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Speaker 3: Imagine you're one of those EMTs arriving at the door.
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You have a frantic man screaming about an active animal attack.
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Your immediate priority is securing the area right right, trying
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to save her life exactly, attempting life saving measures and
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neutralizing any declared threat.
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Speaker 1: So they aren't exactly diagnosing the mechanism of injury in
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that first thirty seconds.
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Speaker 4: Not at all.
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Speaker 3: If someone says fatal dog attack, public safety protocols just.
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Speaker 4: Take over instantly.
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Speaker 3: You secure the animal first, so the medics can work
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without getting mauled themselves.
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Speaker 1: Right, that makes sense.
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Speaker 3: It isn't until the dust settles, the scene is locked down,
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and the medical professionals actually look closely at the body
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that the lie begins to unravel.
5:20
Speaker 1: And unravel it did. Let's talk about the science of that.
5:24
Because Mickens could script his digital life, but he couldn't
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script forensic pathology.
5:29
Speaker 4: No, you can't fake physics.
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Speaker 1: When animal control officials and veterinarians conducted their reviews, they
5:35
definitively ruled out Soldier. How exactly do they prove that
5:39
a dog didn't do it beyond just the obvious broken ribs.
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Speaker 3: It really comes down to biomechanics. When a canine attacks,
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especially a fatal attack, there are highly specific tissue damage patterns. Okay,
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dogs lack the ability to grasp and release with hands, obviously,
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so they bite, clamp down, and shake right.
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Speaker 1: The shaking causes the damage.
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Speaker 3: This creates deep tearing lacerations and very specific evulsion injuries
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where tissue is ripped away. You also typically see severe
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defensive wounds on the victim's forearms and hands from trying
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to block the jaws.
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Speaker 1: What Shila didn't have, No, she.
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Speaker 3: Had signs of massive blunt force trauma. You do not
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get fifteen broken ribs from a dog bite. A dog's
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jaw exerts incredible pressure, yes, but it crushes localized areas,
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right fifteen ribs breaking requires broad heavy impacts, stomping, kicking,
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being struck with a heavy object.
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Speaker 1: And you brought up the cauliflower ear earlier.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that is technically an auricular hematoma. It happens when
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severe friction and blunt trauma caused the cartilage of the
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ear to separate from the skin, filling the space with.
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Speaker 1: Blood, which you usually only see in what UFC fighters exactly, It.
6:49
Speaker 3: Is almost exclusively seen in combat sports wrestling, boxing, or
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severe prolonged beatings, not animal attacks.
6:57
Speaker 1: Well, what about the puncture wounds, because I imagine Mick
7:00
saw those and thought, perfect, those look like bite marks.
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That'll sell the story.
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Speaker 3: Well, they might look like bites to a layman in
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a panic, but not to a forensic Veterinarian canine dentician
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leaves a very specific arch pattern and the spacing between
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the canines is perfectly measurable. Oh, the so called puncture
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wounds on Shila did not match the dentician or the
7:21
attack dynamics of soldier at all. Furthermore, toxicology revealed she
7:25
had been drugged. Wow, the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to human
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inflicted trauma combined with chemical incapacitation.
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Speaker 1: I really want to highlight the investigators who piece this
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all together, Detective Tracy Dixon from the Arlington Police Department,
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Terren County DA investigator Timothy Pinckney, and victim advocate Karma Anderson.
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Speaker 2: They did incredible work, they really did.
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Speaker 1: They didn't just take a frantic nine to one one
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call at face value.
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Speaker 2: They followed the science they did.
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Speaker 3: But to truly understand how Sheilaquaves ended up in that
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apartment experiencing that horrific level of islands.
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Speaker 2: We have to look backwards, right at the backstory.
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Speaker 3: You have to look at how Caleb Mickins lured people in.
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We have to look at the bait.
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Speaker 1: And enter the alter ego cash Cardier. Yeah, to the world,
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Caleb Mickens didn't exist. He was cash Cardier, a thirty
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four year old self proclaimed king of network marketing, a
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digital entrepreneur, a stock trader, a motivational speaker.
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Speaker 4: He built this.
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Speaker 3: Entire persona around a platform called I am Academy. For
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those who might not be familiar, I am Academy operates
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as a multi level marketing company in.
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Speaker 1: MLM right, the classic pyramid shape.
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Speaker 3: Right, and they focus heavily on trading education, specifically teaching
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people how to trade the foreign exchange market or four
8:40
X and cryptocurrency.
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Speaker 1: Let's actually dig into that for a second, because I
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feel like the term four x MLM gets thrown around,
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but people don't always realize how manipulative the structure itself is.
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Speaker 4: Oh, it's highly manipulated.
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Speaker 1: He had nearly one hundred thousand followers on Instagram. At
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his peak, he was reportedly making twenty thousand dollars a
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week a week.
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Speaker 4: Just let that sink in his pitch.
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Speaker 1: Was this He was a former footballer who hit rock bottom,
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found faith, grinded his way to the top, and now
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his only goal was to help you become a walking ATM.
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Speaker 4: Walking ATMs. Just sit with that phrase for a second.
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It really is.
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Speaker 3: It reduces a human being to a vessel of cash extraction.
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And the way these four xmlms operate is crucial to
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understanding his control. The foreign exchange market is incredibly complex
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and volatile. Institutions trade billions daily.
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Speaker 5: Right, It's not for amateurs exactly, but I am academy
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in similar platforms sell these education packages to retail consumers everyday,
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people promising they can beat the market if they just
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buy the courses and use their trading signals.
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Speaker 1: But the real money isn't in the trading, It's in
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the recruiting exactly.
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Speaker 3: The structure heavily incentivizes recruiting new members under you building
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your downline, you get a cut of their monthly subscription fees.
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Speaker 1: So a guy like Mickens using his cash cartier isn't
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making twenty thousand a week because he's a Wall Street prodigy,
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not at all.
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Speaker 3: He's making it because he has thousands of people beneath
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him paying monthly fees, believing he personally holds the secret
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to wealth.
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Speaker 1: Here's where it's really interesting, though. It's like a digital
10:14
venus fly trap. Think about it.
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Speaker 4: I like that analogy.
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Speaker 1: The plant secretes this incredibly sweet nectar on the edge
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of its leaves. The insect is drawn to the sugar
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it lands, it feels safe, It's getting exactly what it wants, right, the.
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Speaker 3: Nectar being the promise of financial freedom. The screenshots of
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supposed trading profits.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the aspirational lifestyle porn luxury cars designer clothes exactly.
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But the moment the insect triggers the hairs inside the trap,
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it snaps shut and what was a source of nourishment
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suddenly becomes a prison. Mickens was selling himself as a
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financial savior.
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Speaker 3: And when you view someone as your savior, your mentor
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the person holding the keys to your financial future, it
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becomes almost impossible to question their authority. If we connect
11:01
this to the nigger picture, the MLM space often demands
11:04
a culture of toxic positivity. You see it all the time,
11:07
no negative energy. Cut out anyone who doesn't support your hustle.
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Speaker 1: Which is literally the first step in the abuser's playbook,
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right isolation.
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Speaker 3: One hundred percent. Cut ties with your skeptical friends, rely
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only on me. If you're failing, it's because you aren't
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grinding hard enough. He weaponized his leadership role. He used
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economic control like I control your income stream and status
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based control. I have one hundred thousand followers, I'm the boss.
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Speaker 1: So he's creating this massive power imbalance.
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Speaker 3: Yes, he naturally filtered for vulnerable people seeking community and
11:37
for financial stability, and then he exploited that immense power imbalance.
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Speaker 1: And behind the screens, you know behind the edited profit
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margins and the motivational quotes were real people whose lives were.
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Speaker 2: Being destroyed, real victims.
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Speaker 1: Let's focus on Sheila Cuevas. She was thirty eight. The
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sources paint a picture of a woman who was the
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exact polar opposite of the manufactured monster she was dealing with.
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Speaker 3: She really was.
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Speaker 1: Every Ones remembered her as a daughter of God, someone
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with a remarkably kind spirit. This a genuine person trapped
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in this highly fabricated world.
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Speaker 3: And we have to consider the profound psychological toll on
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her family. Shortly after her death, her brother, Johnny Quavis,
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created a go fundme for funeral expenses. Think about what
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that family went through. Initially, they are told Sheila was
12:24
killed in a freak brutal animal attack. They begin grieving
12:28
a random tragedy.
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Speaker 1: Right, because you process the loss of a loved one
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to an animal attack very differently than a murder exactly.
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There's no human malice to direct your anger toward. It's
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just a terrible, chaotic accident.
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Speaker 3: Then days or weeks later, investigators have to sit them
12:44
down and say no, it wasn't the dog. The man
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who claimed to love her beat her to death. Drugged
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her and broke fifteen.
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Speaker 4: Of her ribs.
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Speaker 1: I can't even imagine that conversation, that.
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Speaker 3: Whiplash, having the narrative completely flipped to reveal something infinitely
12:59
more sinister and intentional. It adds a layer of profound,
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complex trauma to their bereavement. They were initially robbed of
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the truth of how she died.
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Speaker 1: And while the family is agonizing over this, what is
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Caleb Mickens doing. The sources give us a timeline of
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his decline.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, things were falling apart from by.
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Speaker 1: The time of the murder that twenty thousand dollars a
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week was drying up. His MLM income had dropped significantly.
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The facade was cracking.
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Speaker 4: The illusion was failing.
13:24
Speaker 1: But it's what he did on Instagram after the murder
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that I simply cannot fathom. I mean, it is visceral.
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After Sheila was killed, after Soldier the dog was euthanized,
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Mickens actually updated his Instagram bio.
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Speaker 4: It's sickening.
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Speaker 1: He listed the death dates of both Quevas and Soldier
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with the caption goodbye my sweet family.
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Speaker 3: It reveals the absolute depth of his pathology.
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Speaker 1: It makes my stomach turn. He isn't just trying to
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hide from the cops. He is actively attempting to monetize
13:52
the tragedy in the currency of online sympathy. Right, he
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murdered her, condemned the dog to death, and then use
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their memories as props to get heart emote jees from
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his followers.
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Speaker 3: He was garnering narcissistic supply from the very tragedy he orchestrated.
14:05
Its classic coercive control extending past death. So dark Now,
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it's tempting to look at his falling income and say, oh,
14:12
the financial stress made in snap. But experts know we
14:16
need to be very careful with that logic. Why is
14:18
that because financial stress does not cause intimate partner violence.
14:23
The drop in income didn't create the violence it threatened
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his illusion of control. Abuse is fundamentally about power, right, Okay.
14:32
When an abuser feels their external control slipping, their finances
14:36
drying up, their public statu is crumbling, they often violently
14:39
tighten their grip on the things they feel they can still.
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Speaker 1: Control, which in this case was Sheila.
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Speaker 3: Yes, he couldn't control the four X market, he couldn't
14:47
control his downline, so he escalated his physical control over
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his intimate partner.
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Speaker 1: The pressure cooker exploded. But here's the thing that investigators
14:56
realized as they dug into this. Sheila wasn't the first, No,
15:00
sadly not, This wasn't a one time snap under pressure.
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Peeling back the layers of Caleb Mickens's life revealed a sprawling, horrifying.
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Speaker 3: History, a very long trail of survivors.
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Speaker 1: Fast forward to his sentencing day. We are in a
15:13
fort Worth courtroom, April seventh, twenty twenty six. The room
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is packed and it's not just Sheila's grieving family in
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the gallery.
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Speaker 4: There are multiple other women there.
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Speaker 1: Yes, some traveled from across the country just to deliver
15:24
victim impact statements.
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Speaker 3: And the power of that testimony cannot be overstated. Their
15:29
testimonies revealed a deeply entrenched pattern, a consistent, calculated mo.
15:34
Speaker 1: He had a playbook he did.
15:36
Speaker 3: He used his status, the money, the followers, the charisma
15:40
to draw women in. Once they were isolated in his orbit,
15:44
the mask.
15:44
Speaker 1: Dropped, just like the Venus fly trap, exactly.
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Speaker 3: The survivors detail how he used threats, drugs to incapacitate them,
15:52
severe physical beatings, sexual assault, and intense psychological torment to
15:56
keep them isolated.
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Speaker 1: And it wasn't just undocumented testimonies either, he had prior
16:01
documented crimes. The investigation revealed a previous aggravated assault causing
16:05
serious bodily injury which actually led to a probation revocation. Yes,
16:10
and another case in Dallas County involving aggravated assault with
16:13
a deadly weapon. Let me repeat that for the listeners,
16:15
aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
16:17
Speaker 3: The immense courage it takes for those survivors to step
16:20
into a courtroom knowing his followers might be watching, knowing
16:24
the media is there.
16:25
Speaker 1: It's incredibly brave.
16:26
Speaker 3: To face their abuser and recount the worst moments of
16:29
their lives. It is unimaginable. But their collective testimony dismantled
16:33
any defense he had. It proved unequivocally that October twenty
16:37
twenty three was not a tragic accident. It wasn't a
16:40
one time loss of control.
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Speaker 1: It was the culmination of a systemic pattern of predation.
16:45
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
16:45
Speaker 1: But wait, I have to ask, how does someone with
16:48
multiple prior aggravated assaults, including one with a deadly weapon,
16:53
managed to keep building an MLM empire.
16:55
Speaker 4: It's a great question, like how did.
16:56
Speaker 1: These platforms allow someone with a violent criminal record to
17:00
ascend to a leadership role where they are actively recruiting
17:03
vulnerable people. Does society's obsession with wealth just cause us
17:09
to collectively turn a blind eye to massive red flags?
17:12
Speaker 3: Unfortunately yes. In many of these decentralized hustle networks, there
17:17
is no HR department, There are no background checks. The
17:20
only metric of value is can you recruit and can
17:25
you generate revenue?
17:26
Speaker 1: If you make money, they look the other way exactly.
17:28
Speaker 3: If the answer is yes, you are elevated. The successful
17:31
entrepreneur halo effect is incredibly powerful. When someone projects extreme
17:35
wealth and confidence, it creates cognitive dissonance in the observer.
17:39
Speaker 1: You mean, we don't want to believe they're bad.
17:41
Speaker 3: We subconsciously assume that someone that successful, someone who posts
17:45
about faith in grinding, couldn't possibly be a violent monster.
17:49
The wealth acts as a shield. It blinds followers, it
17:52
blinds the platforms that profit off his engagement, and it
17:56
allows him to hide in plain.
17:57
Speaker 1: Sight until the survivors shattered that shield. The truth is out.
18:02
He is cornered by a mountain of evidence, forensics, and
18:05
a history of extreme violence.
18:07
Speaker 3: But securing the conviction wasn't exactly a straight line.
18:09
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't. This brings us to a really fascinating
18:12
legal chess match, because you would think with a battered
18:16
body and a fabricated a nine to one one call,
18:18
they just charge them with murder and lock them up, right,
18:20
he'd think so, But the law requires a terrifying level
18:23
of precision.
18:24
Speaker 3: Precision that the physical evidence couldn't entirely provide. Sadly, when
18:28
the medical examiner conducted the autopsy, they faced a massive
18:31
forensic hurdle.
18:32
Speaker 1: What was it?
18:33
Speaker 3: Because Mickens had used both severe blunt force trauma and drugging,
18:37
the medical examiner could not definitively prove the exact physiological cause.
18:42
Speaker 1: Of death, meaning they couldn't give a percentage like they
18:45
couldn't say it was eighty percent the broken ribs and
18:48
twenty percent the drugs that ultimately stopped.
18:50
Speaker 4: Her heart exactly.
18:51
Speaker 3: In a capital murder or first degree murder trial, the
18:54
cause of death must be ironclad to prove it beyond
18:57
a reasonable doubt. A mixed cause of death trauma combined
19:01
with complex toxicology is a defense attorney's dream.
19:05
Speaker 1: I can hear the defense argument. Now, Ladies and gentlemen
19:08
of the jury, My client didn't murder her. She tragically
19:11
overdosed on these drugs and the broken ribs were just
19:14
from a chaot or altercation beforehand.
19:17
Speaker 3: It's a disgusting argument, but it introduces reasonable.
19:19
Speaker 1: Doubt, right, and if a jury buys that doubt, a
19:22
murder charge can result in an acquittal or a hung jury.
19:26
Speaker 3: And Terry County prosecutors Elena Bangs and Peter geese King
19:29
recognized this vulnerability immediately. They couldn't file a clean murder
19:33
charge without risking him walking free or getting a drastically
19:37
reduced sentence on a lesser included charge.
19:39
Speaker 1: So they made a strategic pivot. They pursued first degree
19:43
aggravated assault family violence. Right, So what does this all mean.
19:47
It's kind of like sacrificing your queen in chess. The
19:51
murder charge is the queen. It's the most powerful piece
19:53
on the board. It's what the family wants, it's what
19:55
the public wants to read in the headlines.
19:57
Speaker 4: That's a really good analogy.
19:59
Speaker 1: Thanks, But the defense had a trap set around that
20:02
square with the toxicology report. So the prosecutors sacrificed the
20:06
title of murder. They give up the optics In exchange,
20:10
they secured a checkmate.
20:11
Speaker 3: Because first degree aggravated assault with a family of violence
20:14
enhancement carries massive penalties in Texas. By presenting an overwhelming
20:20
case for the assault, the fifteen broken ribs, the cauliflower
20:23
ear the pattern of previous violence from the survivors, they
20:27
backed Mickens into a corner where he realized he couldn't
20:30
win a trial.
20:31
Speaker 1: He had no way out, so he pleaded guilty.
20:33
Speaker 3: He pleaded guilty, which crucially spared the survivors and Sheila's
20:37
family the excruciating trauma of having to testify and be
20:40
cross examined about the horrific details of their abuse.
20:43
Speaker 1: And the outcome of that strategic pivot. He receives a
20:46
forty year.
20:46
Speaker 2: Prison summence, and the judge layered it.
20:48
Speaker 1: Right That forty years runs concurrently with a twenty year
20:52
sentence for the probation revocation from his prior assault and
20:56
another fifteen year sentence from the Dallas County deadly weapon case.
21:00
Speaker 3: They gave up the word murder on the indictment to
21:03
guarantee the reality of a serial predator spending decades behind bars.
21:08
Speaker 1: At the sentencing, Sheila's brother, Johnny stood up. He looked
21:12
directly at Caleb Mickens and said, there can be no
21:14
justice that brings Sheila back, but there can be outcomes,
21:17
and there can be accountability, and you deserve this.
21:20
Speaker 3: This raise is an important question, and I think Johnny
21:23
perfectly articulated the limits of our legal framework how so well.
21:27
A forty year sentence is severe accountability, but it is
21:31
not justice because justice implies making things whole again. The
21:35
legal system is a blunt instrument. It can only punish
21:38
the crime after the.
21:39
Speaker 4: Fact, right.
21:39
Speaker 1: It can't fix what was broken.
21:40
Speaker 3: It cannot unbreak fifteen ribs. It cannot undo the psychological
21:44
torture inflicted on the surviving women. It cannot bring Soldier back.
21:48
Speaker 1: The damage is permanent, which is why we are talking
21:50
about this. The courtroom provides the legal accountability, but the
21:54
media attention, the documentaries on Oxygen, the coverage in People magazine,
21:59
Lawn Crime, Fox for CBS Texas, and deep dives like
22:03
this one, they provide the vital societal awareness.
22:07
Speaker 4: We need that awareness.
22:08
Speaker 1: We are talking about a man who sold financial freedom
22:11
while literally running a private dictatorship of torture.
22:14
Speaker 3: So how do we prevent the next narcissist? From successfully
22:18
building their trap. It requires looking past the curated pixels.
22:22
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine you are scrolling through your feed right now.
22:24
We are so conditioned to associate a massive follower count,
22:28
a designer suit, and motivational quotes with authority, with goodness.
22:32
Speaker 4: Even it's an ingrained bias.
22:34
Speaker 1: This case is a blaring alarm for anyone listening. It
22:37
reinforces the absolute necessity of believing victims when they step forward.
22:40
Because course of control doesn't usually look like a monster
22:43
screaming in an alleyway.
22:44
Speaker 4: No, it rarely does.
22:46
Speaker 1: Often it looks like a charismatic mentor a boss who
22:48
demands your absolute loyalty in exchange for your dreams.
22:52
Speaker 3: True leadership, true success must be rooted in empathy and character,
22:57
not follower counts and crypto wallets. Exactly, Sheila Quavis deserve better,
23:02
the surviving women deserve better. Soldier deserved better. And while
23:06
Caleb Mickens sits in a Texas prison cell, stripped of
23:09
his phone and his influence, it leaves us with a
23:12
deeply uncomfortable question about the digital ecosystems we inhabit every day.
23:17
Speaker 1: Let's explore that as we wrap up. Because the muddy
23:19
waters we talked about at the beginning aren't just at
23:21
the crime scene, They are right there on our screens.
23:24
Speaker 3: If a purely digital persona can be manufactured that easily
23:28
and then utilized as a literal weapon to lure, isolate,
23:31
and trap victims across the country, what ethical responsibility do
23:35
social media platforms have.
23:37
Speaker 1: It's a huge question.
23:38
Speaker 3: What role do algorithms play when they aggressively promote hustle culture,
23:43
toxic positivity, and rapid wealth. Are we participating in or
23:47
even building digital ecosystems that inherently reward the mask while
23:51
completely ignoring the monster behind it?
23:53
Speaker 1: The X ray doesn't work on Instagram, you guys, you
23:56
have to look harder. Thank you for joining us on
23:58
this deep dive. Stay curious, stay vigilant, and we'll catch
24:01
you next time.