Latest / This is monsters / Joe Rogan Experience _2567 - Mariana van Zeller

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Joe Rogan Experience _2567 - Mariana van Zeller · This is monsters

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
• 0:09
  Speaker 3: Good to see you. Hi, Joe. So good to see you, too.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: Every time I watch one of your new programs, I
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: get anxiety. I'm like, please don't die. Don't get hurt.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: What are you doing?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: This one was a walk in the park, though.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: It kind of is a walk in the park, but
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: not really. No, not really. Because you went to fucking Africa.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: To meet scammers.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: To confront my scammer.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: So your new show is all about romance scams. And
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: I was aware of these because I watched a show
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: a long time ago about this poor lonely man who
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: kept getting scammed. He thought that there was this woman
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: and he was in contact with her and he flew
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: to Europe to meet her twice and And both times
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: she came up with some reason why she couldn't be there.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: Some emergency came up and this guy had given her
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of dollars and drained his account. And
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: his daughter was so sad. She's like, I keep trying
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: to tell him, but he won't listen. And you see
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: these poor people that are so vulnerable that just they're
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: lonely and they really believe.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: They really, really believe. I think the loneliness epidemic is
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: a huge part of this, quite frankly.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: It's a huge issue in this world. A huge issue
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: in our country in particular. There's like a disconnect with
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: family in our country and there's– like people don't have
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: like real community anymore. It's very weird. It is.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And I think it's– yeah, it's absolutely one of the
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: biggest reasons why scams are rampant these days. I mean
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: particularly romance scams.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: 100 percent.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, it's– you're preying on the saddest people. That's
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: what's really– it's like– it's one thing if you're scamming
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: some psycho fucking fraud guy who's doing stock market bullshit.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Like and you scam them. Yeah.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: It's like you're scamming a scammer.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's true. But I think one of the problems
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: we have when we talk about scams is this idea
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: that we think it's a certain type of more gullible
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: person or more naive or perhaps more foolish and I
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: think that– is wrong because I think what these scammers
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: are so good at doing is that they prey on
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: emotions that we all share, love and trust and sometimes
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: greed as well. And the real reason or the main
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: reason I wanted to do this film was because of that,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: because I'd come back and I'd tell friends and family
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: stories about these victims because I've reported on scams before extensively.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: And it was always, but how could they do that?
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Why would you give money to a stranger? I mean,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: how could they be so silly and so stupid? And
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that really annoyed me because why are we focusing on
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: the response of the victim instead of actually understanding the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: actions of the scammers themselves? Because they are very, very
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: good at what they do. So that was the idea behind, okay,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I'm going to place myself at the center of all scams,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: super scam me. and create a persona and put myself
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: in dating websites and online platforms and see what happens.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: And it happened very fast.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: Do you think they're good at it?
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I think some are really good at it.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: The guy that was doing it with you?
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Mine, no.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: No.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I didn't get the best scammer out there. I'll just
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: say that.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: Are there better ones?
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: There are 100% better ones. I think the one that
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: was scamming Leslie was definitely better than mine.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: Is that the one who was pretending he was Jon
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Bon Jovi?
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Bon Jovi, yes.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: Again.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: I know, but that's the thing. You tell that story
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: and you think this guy shows up on her DM
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: and says, hey, I'm Jon Bon Jovi. Give me money.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: That's not how it went, right? She liked an account.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: So it was funny because it was in the middle
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: of me doing Super Scam Me that I get a
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: message from Leslie. And I get dozens of these messages
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: every week because I've done a lot of reporting on this.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: People think I'm sort of like the 911 for scams.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: And in one– it was right in the middle of
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the project. I get a message from her and it
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: was that. Look, I've been talking to a guy for
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: almost a year. I initially thought it was Jon Bon Jovi.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: I'm not so sure anymore. And of course the response is, wait, what?
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Did you really think you were talking to Jon Bon Jovi?
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: But then you listen to the story and then you
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: actually meet this person. And it is much more nuanced
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: than that. She liked an Instagram account. She was brand
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: new on Instagram. Liked an account that had what looked
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: like a checkmark. verified account, she thought. And she commented,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: she's been a fan of this guy since she was
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: 14 years old, posters of him all around her room.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: And immediately he DMed her back and said, hey, I
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: saw you commented. I love connecting with my fans. Perfectly reasonable.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: perfectly normal. What's your favorite music? What's your favorite song?
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: When did you start listening to my music? That kind
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: of conversation. It started normally. And then it was weeks
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: of this. And then he started paying attention to her
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: and interested in what her life was like and tell
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: me about you and what do you do and what
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: are your interests. And then they talked for months and months.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And he would remember things that happened in the early weeks.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: And this is a woman who leads a very lonely life.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: There's the loneliness epidemic, who's sort of estranged from her husband,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: who doesn't really have anyone who's interested in her life,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: quite frankly, or sees her or understands her or wants
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: to know about her. And finally, there was somebody who,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: even if it wasn't John Bon Jovi, it was somebody
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: who cared. And it lasted months of this. And then
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: she said to him, One day, she knew that he
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: had a concert. She couldn't afford it. She went online.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: The tickets were ridiculously expensive. And she said, it's so
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: sad that I really want to see you in concert.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Always have wanted to, and I can't. This was like
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: seven months into their relationship. And then he says, well,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: if you want, I do these meet and greets, which
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: is also reasonable. They actually do. Celebrities do these. And
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: you can pay. I'll give you a discount. I'll put
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: you in touch with management and you can pay like $ 100.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I'm coming to Louisiana. And you can come to one
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: of these meet and greets and meet me in person.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: And at this point, I'm sorry, but it is believable.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: And also, he would send her videos. You saw some
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: of these videos.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the AI videos.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: The AI videos. And some of them, I mean, they're
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: a little robotic, but they could be real. And it's, hi, Leslie.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Good morning. How are you doing? My sunshine, my love.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: I'm curious about your life. And he would say to her, look,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: I am surrounded by people who are yes people. who
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: are people who are with me a lot because of
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: my money and fame, and I just really appreciate connecting
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: with people who are outside the bubble, who are normal folks.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: And so it is kind of– it's not as insane
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: as like Jon Bon Jovi showed up and said, hey,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: I want $ 1, 000, right? But then what happens I think
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: in a lot of these scams is that once you're in,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: once you're committed to a relationship, once that has an
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: impact on your life and has made your life better,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: it is very difficult to then– Come to the realization
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: that this might not be real. I equate it a
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: little bit to gambling. You know when gamblers lose a
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: lot of money and in their heads they're always thinking, wait,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: it might have been my unlucky day. If I go
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: to the casino today, this might be my really lucky day, right?
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: And the more you lose, the more you're gambling because
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: you're trying to get that money back. It's a little bit,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I think, that same idea. It's also a dopamine rush.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Like every time you get a DM, every time you're
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: love bombed, there's a dopamine rush there. And I think
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: it's that idea that you get to a point where
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: you start suspecting, okay, this doesn't sound real, but I've
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: invested so much. The reality of my life is so
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: sad compared to this that maybe I prefer to just
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: go on. So there are actually a lot of romance
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: scam victims that continue having these relationships even after they
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: realize the person wasn't who they said they were.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: So they just do it just for the placebo. They
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: do it almost just like they're talking to a robot
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: that loves them.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yes, a little bit, which is one of the
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: things that they talk actually about how AI– the companionship
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: of AI is one of the benefits or possible benefits
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: of AI. I don't know if it's a benefit. It
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: can also be very bad. It creeps me out. It can.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: But you know there are coffee shops now. I just
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: found out this out in New York where they actually
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: have like iPads. Did you know this? iPads with fake
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: people for companionship that you go to the coffee shop
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: and you grab an iPad and you have a whole
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: conversation with an AI agent.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: Well, New York is weirdly enough one of the loneliest places. Yeah.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: Because no one is friends with anyone. Like my friend
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Jim who lives in a building in New York, it's
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: like– 40 stories or something like that. He's like, I
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: don't know anybody in this building. Like think about that.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: I'm in, I don't know my neighbor. Every time we
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: look at each other, we're like, so I don't, Hey,
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: I don't like, like no one knows anybody. And there's
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: hundreds of people stacked on top of each other. That
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: is an odd way to live.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: That is an odd way to live.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, cafe for Eva.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: AI opens the world's first cafe for AI dates. This
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: cuffing season. What is cuffing season? What does that mean?
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: I have no idea. Where is that?
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: It's like linking up time.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Is that what it means? Cuffing.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: It's another way to say fucking.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: Having sex?
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Jamie knows his stuff.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: There's a season? What are we, elk?
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: It's like a culture.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: Are we running?
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: During winter when everybody's inside.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: A relationships RPG app bringing virtual romance to the real world.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: EVA is launching EVA Cafe, the first ever online space
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: where people can take their AI partners out on a
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: real date. Oh, God.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: That is so dark. Wow. Oh, Jesus Christ.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, there it is. Oh, wow.
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: You sit there with an iPad. Are you enjoying your steak?
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: It sounds like a troll, but it's real.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: It's your steak.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: It's real.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: Reserve your spot. Click that. I don't want to. Get
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: on a list. Yeah. Let's see what happens. Open up
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: a Google Doc. What happens? A waiting list. It's a
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: waiting list?
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: Well, so this was also– the website said it was
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: back in February of 26, so I don't know.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's almost– Don't show that on the screen.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: You just showed your email address.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: I'm closing it up.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: Oh, boy. Boy, this is dark. There you go.
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: You can come to flirt and unwind.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: Come to flirt, unwind, or simply share a quiet moment
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: with your AI companion. EVA Cafe. Ugh. Yeah. It's so depressing.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: It's so dark.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: It's so dark. Yeah. Did you see Ex Machina?
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I did.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: One of my all-time favorite movies. Yeah, I loved it too.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: I love that movie.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: But the real problem I have with that movie is
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: like I think I'd fall in love with her too.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Oh my– yeah.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Follows that guy.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: She's stunning.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: She's amazing.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: She's so hot. She's so hot. Who cares if she
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: has clear skin and fucking lights behind it? So true.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: It's like she's so pretty and so sweet. It's dark.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: It's dark because we are super vulnerable. We're super stupid.
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know if stupid is the word.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we are. But I would say we're vulnerable. Especially men.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, men. Do you know what that's interesting too in
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: terms of scams? Because as you saw in our film,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the majority of the people we spoke to were women.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: But actually men are as likely to falling victim to
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: these scams as women. But they just have a lot
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: more shame around it. So they're less likely to talk
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: about it. So we actually spoke to a lot of men.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: But they just don't want to be on camera because
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: there's so much shame around this.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah. No man wants to be a sucker. Yeah. If
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: a woman is a sucker, everyone feels bad for her.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: But a guy is a sucker.
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: You're like, ew.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I wish people felt bad for women. It wasn't Leslie's
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: case and it's certainly not the case for a lot
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: of the victims that I speak to.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: They don't feel bad for them?
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: No.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Actually, this is another horrible thing. It's what I call–
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: there's a sort of double victimization, right? Because initially, not
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: only do you– your heart is broken. You lost all
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: your money. But then you go back home or you
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: go to your friends and you talk about this and
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the first response is how stupid could you be, right?
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: It's the humiliation. It's the shame that comes with it,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: which– They use it to their advantage, right? The scammers.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: They use the silence to their advantage.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Do you ever get those random text messages that say, hi,
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: I haven't seen you in so long. What have you
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: been up to? And you look at the number like,
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: who the fuck is this?
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: It's always an Android phone.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: Right? So that's one way to check. And then it's
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: always like something weird like, I've been craving lobster rolls.
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: Do you want to meet up? Like, what? What is this?
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: And also the job offers.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. You get those all day.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: You've got those all the time.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: I'm approved for so many loans. Yeah. It's really amazing. Same.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: So actually Super Scammy started like that. The idea was
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: that I was going to say yes to every single
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: scam that came my way. And for the first few weeks,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: we filmed it that way. So I would answer all
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: those text messages.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: What happens?
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: It was really interesting. So it was a lot of
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: phone calls with scammers. One of the most interesting conversations
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: we had was with an Indian call center who told
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: me that there was a bug in my Apple computer
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: and he could fix it. One of those, right?
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's nice of him.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: It was an Apple support. Yes. Very nice of him.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: So kind. And all I had to do was download
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: this software. And once you download the software, he's in
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: my computer. And then you go to the payment. And
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: once they're in my computer, they can see. The number
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: that I'm putting for my credit card and all the details.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: So they have access to that, right?
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: Did you do it?
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Did you go through the whole thing? I'm trying to
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: go as far as I can without actually revealing a
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: credit card. So I get to the point of the
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: credit card and I turn to him. And this had
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: been like over an hour on the phone with this guy.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: And I say, hey, so this is the deal. I'm
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: actually a journalist. My name is Mariana. But I don't
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: want to get you in trouble. I know this is
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: a scam. I just want to talk to you, dude.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: And he actually did. He stayed on the phone with me.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: I try this a lot. It didn't always work. But
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: in this case, this guy actually stayed on the phone
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: with me for a long time. And he told me, look,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: we work– we're forced to do– in his case, he
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: said he was forced. But I think he was doing
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: it for the money. But he basically said– I said,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: don't you feel bad about this? I mean you're stealing
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: money from people. And his answer was, look– In America,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: everybody has more money. So I don't really feel bad.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I was like, what is a lot of money? Oh,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: he said he doesn't steal from poor people. What's poor people? Well,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: if I go into a bank, if I go into
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: an account, once I get access, I can see everything
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: that's there. If you have less than $ 1, 000, I'm not
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: going to steal from you. But if you have more,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: that means you're rich.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: Whoa.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, the money, it's
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: so different, right?
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Well, that is the very bizarre thing. statistic that shocks
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: people when you tell it to them. I think I
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: used to think it's $ 34, 000, but I think it's $ 50, 000.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: If you make $ 50, 000, you are in the top 1%
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: of the world.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: 50,000. Yeah.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That's yeah. That's dark.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: That's very dark. I mean, 10% of the world's population
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: lives under the poverty line.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: So that's 700 and something million people who have trouble finding,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: you know, shelter and food. themselves and their family. It's insane. Yeah.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: And I do know that there are people that get–
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: they literally get kidnapped and forced to work in these
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: scam centers through threat of death and– Torture. Torture.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: We did a story about that for the last season
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: of Traffic about these scam compounds. We actually visited one
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: of the scam city, a city that has a lot
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: of these scam compounds and interviewed one of the main
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: guys there and it was– and spoke to a lot
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: of the victims. And I mean it was people being
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: beaten and tortured and forced– There's a guy I'll never
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: forget who jumped off like the sixth floor of his
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: building because he knew that he could die. But he
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: thought it was better to die than to live in
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: those conditions. He basically broke both his hips and his legs.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: And when I met him, he was in a wheelchair.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: He was rescued, thank God. But it was unsure if
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: he could ever walk again. And then there was a
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: woman that was a really dark one who we spoke to.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: She's sort of the model. So she's the person that
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: when they want to do video calls, she'd come on camera.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: But they had at the time, even back then, this
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: was two years ago, they had this AI technology that
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: would go superimpose over the face. And they needed a
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: woman because of the mannerisms, right? And the voice, I guess.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: But they had this AI thing program and it's over
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: her face. But if she moved just a little bit,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: They would– it would distort basically and her boss would
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: beat her and all that stuff. But she had also
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: been raped by her boss and all his friends. They
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: would bring people in to rape her and she was
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: stuck in this horrible situation.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: Where are these happening mostly? Myanmar.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Myanmar and Cambodia were the two main spots. But now
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: because there has been a crackdown in both countries– Particularly
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: in Cambodia, they're spreading to other places like Dubai and
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: other places. But they still exist a lot in Myanmar.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: And Myanmar is a country at war. There's a large
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: part of the country that is just controlled by different
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: rebel groups. The government doesn't really have much control of
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: that region. So the scam compounds in these, you know,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of them are Chinese criminal gangs that operate
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: these scam compounds. They're paying a fee. They're paying for
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the war essentially. They're giving money to the rebels in
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: order to be able to work and build these scam cities.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: But the scam city that I visited was– it was
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: like a mini Macau. It was these high rises and
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: it happened within a year or two. It went from flat,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: regular forest jungle in Myanmar to skyscrapers, casinos. One of
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the places I visited was– In order to be able
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: to talk to this scam compound, the guy who sort
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: of runs the city, we had to wine and dine him. Actually,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: he had to wine and dine us. He wanted to
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: take us out and show us around. And he took
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: us to this karaoke cafe, karaoke bar that was like
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: nothing I'd ever seen. It was screens all around. It
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: looked like the future. But this is in one of
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: the poorest countries on earth with a war raging around.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And I'm in this sort of the future. And it's this, yeah,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: this karaoke bar with girls completely dressed and drugs being
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: served and alcohol. And we had to stay there and
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I sang Whitney Houston.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: What song?
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I think it was The Greatest Love of All, which
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: is usually the.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: One that I sing.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: That's what I was going to guess.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: And I'm one of those people that thinks they can
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: sing well, but really can't. But it was fun. That
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: was one of those unforgettable nights. And then the next
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: day we interviewed this cam guy.
• 19:10
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• 20:23
  Speaker 3: So he was willing to do this. He wanted to
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: show off.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, because he was trying to sell the city as
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: being a gambling and tourist paradise.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: So the entire city is essentially funded by scams?
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Because who wants to go to this place? No one.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: They built it up for business, for gambling, for tourists
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: to come. Literally, they have go-karts. tracks and they had
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: a slide, pools with slides, a water park and all
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: that stuff. But no tourist in their right mind from
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: anywhere in the world would want to go to this
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: place in the world because it's, again, there's a war,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: it's poor, it's really difficult to access. We had to
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: be smuggled into the country from Thailand. So obviously that's
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: all a front for what really brings in money, which
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: is scams. But he was trying to sort of clean
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the image and show was that nothing wrong was going
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: on there and they had posters all around the city
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: saying no scams are allowed we don't torture people if
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: you need to say it wow.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: Wow and the whole city just appeared.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Quickly overnight a lot of these do i mean it's
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: within months it's flat terrain and suddenly.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: There's funding it and how are they doing the construction
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: like how are they How are they doing that?
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Construction is– there's a lot of unemployed people in the country.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: So that's not that difficult. Funding all comes from– a
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: lot of it is from these Chinese criminal gangs who
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: operate in– the case of where I visited was a
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: company called Yatai International. The head of Yatai International was
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: a Chinese man who was living in Myanmar running this compound.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: He was eventually actually picked up by the authorities in Thailand.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: He was doing time in prison. So the guy I
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: spoke to was his number two. And he was trying
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: to say that the guy was in prison because he
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: was openly talking about corruption in China or something like that,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: which was not the case. But yeah, and it's billions
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: of dollars. I can't remember exactly, but there was– Sorry
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: to interrupt you.
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: How typical is this? This is the opening article of
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: an article about victims and villains, scam compounds. Yeah. This
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: is crazy.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: What does it say?
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: He was held against his will, tortured and drained of
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: his blood. And they would drain his blood up to
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: seven times in a half year. That made him a
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: blood slave.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: To run these scams.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: What? Blood slave.
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: In his case of a blood slave, journalists began to
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: describe him.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Oh, OK. So it says from his bed, he said
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: he sought work as a security guard in China, but
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: was tricked and apparently kidnapped, transported to Cambodia and then
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: sold into one of the country's many fortified scam compound facilities.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: where workers labor around the clock to extract money from
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: people online. When he resisted, Lee was beaten and tortured
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: and then passed from one scam operator to another. He
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: claimed his captors finally began to drain large quantities of
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: his blood seven times in half a year. In the hospital,
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: he pointed weakly at an infusion bag above his head
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: that was the size of each extraction, he said. In
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: online articles, journalists began to describe his case that of
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: a bloodslaver. So they're taking his blood for blood doping
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: or for blood transfusions for other people? That part. They're
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: just taking it for– they're using his blood as money.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: Like they're selling his blood probably.
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: That's probably one of the scams they're doing. Yeah, I
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: would imagine.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: So they just like take everything. What do you got,
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: an extra kidney? Give me that. Chinese social media lit
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: up with outrage and sympathy. Even government officials in China
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: and Cambodia took notice. For a moment, Li seemed to
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: embody the darkest truths about the criminal scam compound spreading
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: across China. Parts of Southeast Asia.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: It's like what one of them looks like.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: Whoa.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: I mean they're big.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: So that is an entire building dedicated to scams.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: And they have barbed wire around it. They have security guards.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: All the windows usually have– what do you call them?
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: Bars. Bars.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: So people can't escape.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Wow. I was showing these pictures.
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: It's a dorm.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the dorms. Yeah, with lots of people sleeping in
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: the dorms together.
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: Food. It looks kind of like a military compound.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: They can't leave the compound.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: So they're slaves.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Everything. Oh, absolutely slaves.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: It's slaves. And we're not talking about just a few
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: hundred people. It's hundreds of thousands of people. Hundreds of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: thousands of people coming from all over the world. We're
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: lured into what they think are going to be online jobs.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: And once they get there– They take away their passports
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: and they force them to scam Americans essentially. It's crazy.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: People coming from Brazil, India, Philippines, all around the world.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: It's nuts. I don't understand how we know this happens.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: This is still out there. I've been trying to do
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: a film about this because of all my reporting on traffic,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: this was one of the craziest– one of those moments
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I'm like this is outrageous. How are we allowing this
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: to happen? And you can say, OK, the victims are
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: people from other countries. Why should we care?
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: I mean that's not a good response to start with.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: But even if that's the case, they're enslaved. But also
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: these people are scamming Americans. Last year– this is crazy.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: This blew my mind. Just I think two months ago
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: or something, the Consumer Federation of America issued their latest report,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: which was looking at scams last year. And Americans apparently
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: lost– not apparently. They've estimated that Americans lost $ 148 billion
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: to online scams last year.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Billion.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Billion. Do you know how much that.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: Is a day?
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I did the math. It's $ 400 million a day. $ 400
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: million a day are lost in America, are being stolen
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: from Americans every day.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Holy shit.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: It's insane. And a lot of it is done through–
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: from these– they're called pig butchering campaigns. Compounds.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: Pig butchering. Yeah.
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: I found a website talking about the pig butchering life cycle.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: The pig butchering life cycle.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: Wow. Organized criminals use highly scripted process and human trafficking
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: to steal as much money as they can from individual victims.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Pig slaughter.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Do you know why it's called– yes, exactly. It comes
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: from the Chinese expression that means sort of fattening the pig.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: So you fatten the pig. So you give a lot
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: of love to your victim or you– You pretend they're
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: going to get a lot of money. You build their
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: confidence and trust and then you slaughter them. Basically, you
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: take away all their money.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: There's a whole– go to the top, please. There's a
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: whole process. They go grooming the victims. They contact pig
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: butchering– whoa, that's a dark word. Pig butchering targets through
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: dating apps, social media platforms or unsolicited text messages like
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: the ones I get. At some point, the scammer encourages
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: a target to shift the conversation to an encrypted messaging platform.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: like WhatsApp or Telegram. They invest time in understanding the
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: person's financial situation, family dynamics, and work to build a
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: deep emotional connection. Scammers often spend weeks building these relationships.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: Then they introduce investment opportunities. They drop subtle hints about
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity early in the relationship. They show
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: pictures of a lavish lifestyle or talk about expensive purchases
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: and experiences once scammers have gained pig-butchering targets' trust. They
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: introduce an exclusive investment opportunity, often claiming they've achieved significant
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: financial success through it. Then they establish credibility, make the
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: scam seem real. Scammers share fake screenshots and trading platform dashboards,
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: stories of friends or an uncle who knows how it
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: all works and made massive profits along with professional-looking documents
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: and websites, starting small to ease doubts. So they have
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: like a whole process they go through. They do it slowly.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: They have scripts that they stick to and it's different
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: according to the people that they're talking to, what kind
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: of victim that is. This is the scam. Pig butchering
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: was what actually got– remember there was that story of
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: that banker, the CEO of a bank in Kansas that
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: ultimately went bankrupt because he had stolen $ 400 million from
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: the bank.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: Do you remember that story? He got scammed.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was pig butchering too. It was one of
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: these fake crypto investments.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: How did they get him? Was it a romance thing?
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: No, it was this. It was an investment opportunity. Sometimes
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: they're mixed. It starts with a romance and then goes
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: to investment opportunity or sometimes it's just the investment opportunity.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I think in his case, it was more the investment opportunity.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: So they said he started by putting just his own money,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: his savings into what he thought was a legitimate crypto account.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: And you can see once you do, again, let's not
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: think these people are stupid because the scammers are really
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: good at what they do. They create these platforms that
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: when you look at it, it looks completely legitimate and
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: then it looks like your money is going up, right?
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: He's seeing his money is going up. He's making a
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: lot of money. He's very excited. Initially, if you want
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: to take money out, they allow you so that you
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: gain more confidence. So then you start putting more money.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: And then he just got in too deep where they
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: kept saying that in order to get the millions he
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: had just made out months into this investment scam– They
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: said that he has to pay a fee and it's
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: like a tax, but you have to pay a 10% tax.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: And so at that point, you're so in, you've lost
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: so much money that, okay, if I only pay this
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: 10% tax or if I only pay this fee. So
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: he kept doing that, but then he started actually using
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: money from his customers.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: How the fuck does it work? guy who works in
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: banking get sucked into something that stupid?
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: But I don't think it's– I think– look, now we
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: know a lot more about it, right? I think the
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: question should be why isn't our government doing more to
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: protect us? Why are these online platforms– why don't they
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: have– why aren't they accountable? They should be held accountable
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: for allowing this to happen.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: Which online platforms?
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: I'll give you specifics. There was an incredible Reuters investigation
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: done last year where they got a hold of internal
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: meta documents from meta. And in the meta documents, internal
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: meta documents, they estimated inside meta, the worker, the different
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: departments estimated that there were 15 billion ads every single
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: day that the users of their platforms, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: were exposed to around an estimated 15 billion scam ads
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: every single day. Scams that were higher risk, that displayed
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: clear signs of being fraudulent. They also estimated that That year,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: they projected that they would make $ 16 billion. This is
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: in 2024, I believe, or 2023. I'm not sure. $ 16
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: billion worth of profit from scams and banned goods. That's
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: 10% of their full profit at that time. So they're
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: making a ton of money from this. And then this
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: is where it gets really worrisome to me. Because of
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: their personalized ad system, if a person clicks online, on
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: a scam, you know those ads that you have like
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk holding a thing and saying investment opportunity and
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: then you click it and you want to see what
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: it is or there's tons of these. I mean there's
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: gazillions of these out there. If you click it, you
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: are more likely to be fed more of these ads.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: So it comes– starts with just maybe you're exposed to
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: one and then suddenly in the next day, you're exposed
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: to 100 of these scams, right? So your reality starts
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: being filled with scams. And then this is, I think,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: even the crazier part, is that if you report these
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: as scams, which a lot of users do, I think
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: it's 100,000 reports every single week, if they have a
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: 95 or over certainty meta, if their system sees that
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: there's a 95% certainty or over that these are scams,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: they remove them. If there's less than 95, let's say 94%,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: what they do is they give you a penalty fee,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: so you have to pay more But they allow you
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: to stay on the platform.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: What? Yes. Wait a minute.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: You can check that out, Jamie, that Reuters investigation.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: So they're in on it then.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: They're making money. I mean it just raises lots of questions, right?
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: Right. If you're charging more money, that means you know
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: something is wrong with this ad. So you want to cut. Yeah.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: You're making more money from the illegitimate ads than you
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: are from the legitimate ads in terms of one-to-one.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: Is this because of a lack of regulation?
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Yes. It is because of a lack of regulation.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: Lack of regulation, lack of oversight, and maybe perhaps something
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: that emerged without any understanding of it before was everywhere.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: 100%. I think it's our government.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: But they know.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: They know. Oh, absolutely they know. Their whole conversations in
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: those internal documents is them talking about how can we
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: go after this without affecting our pocket? They actually openly
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: talk about it. They talk about how there are other
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: companies out there that are doing a better job, but
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: they are afraid of what that might mean.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: Jamie put this into our AI sponsor perplexity. It says, yes,
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: Reuters reported that MetaCharge, some suspected scam advertisers, higher advertising
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: rates rather than banning them outright. A system described internally
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: as Penalty bids. Bids. Why would they call it a bid?
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: Because the way that the ads work, it's like a
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: bidding process. The way that they'd serve it, they could
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: charge you. You give a budget and they charge you
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: more based off of how they deliver it. So they
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: might charge you more per.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: Here's the distinction in the documents Reuters reviewed. At least
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: 95% confidence of fraud. Fucking Christ. What do you have
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: to do to get off that platform? Meadows Automated Systems
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: would ban the advertiser at 95% confidence of fraud. Below
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: that threshold, but still judged likely to be a scammer,
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: the advertiser could remain but would have to pay more
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: to win ad auctions and get ads shown. This wasn't
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: simply a surcharge on every ad someone reported as suspicious.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: The stated rationale was deterrence. Higher costs would reduce suspect
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: scammers' profits and the number of people exposed to their ads.
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: But the uncomfortable consequence is exactly what you're pointing out.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: Suspected scammers who paid enough could still reach users while
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: Meta continued collecting their advertising money.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: More money, actually.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: More money, right? Because they charged more. Look at this.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: They charged suspected scammers more is supported a claim like
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: they charged all flagged ads. 50% extra is not established
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: by evidence. Oh, okay. They did not establish a fixed
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: surcharge or percentage.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I didn't say that. I just said penalty fees.
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: I didn't type it in either. This is what perplexity is.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: So perplexity is just– they're just like possible questions that
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: you would have or possible– Right.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: And Jamie, can you see the name of the journalist?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Because I think I'd love to give a hat tip
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: to the journalist that looked into this because it was
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: a really incredible– Well, if you.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: Click on the first– I said that was reading from
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: a different article because the Reuters one is– It's Jeff Horowitz.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Is it?
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: Okay. Well, this is one from Reuters. This is Jeff Horowitz.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: So Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: fraudulent ads. So how much money did they make?
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: ads for scams and banned goods.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: Holy shit. So 15 billion scam ads a day. The
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: social media giant internally estimates that its platform shows users
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: 15 billion scam ads a day. Among its responses to
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: suspected rogue marketers, charging them a premium for ads and
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: issuing reports on scammiest scammers.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Scammers, knowing that they exist and allowing them to stay
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: on the platform.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: So they're just profiting off of it. There's no regulation.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: There's no oversight. So they are regulating themselves. And what
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: they chose to do is charge more.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: Holy shit.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: So, yeah. So that's what I mean. The conversation has stopped.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: Damn it, Zuck. Yeah.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: It has to stop being, why are the victims falling
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: for this? It's why are we allowing this to happen?
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: Well, it's that– the 10 percent. It's like you must
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: be dealing with– that must be– how much money are
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: we talking about? What is that 10 percent?
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: $ 16 billion. That's what's reported there, right, Jamie?
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: OK. I was trying to figure out if it's $ 16 billion.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: 10 percent of $ 16 billion? No, $ 16 billion is the
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: 10 percent. Or $ 16 billion is what Facebook and Meta makes?
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: $ 16 billion is the profit estimated for that year from
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: scams and banned goods. It's not just scams, scammed ads.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: It's also banned goods.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: Oh. Okay, let's just concentrate on scam because some bad
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: goods I'm in favor of.
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: Reading it, it's not clear on.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: Which is which. It's like what are we talking about
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: when we say bad goods? Are we talking about mad honey?
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: We're okay with peptides.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: I'm okay with a lot of– well, I'm actually not
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: like– I am okay with peptides. The problem with getting
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: peptides online is you're getting scam peptides. Yeah, I know.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Made in the same labs as fentanyl in China.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, I'm sure. Well, a lot of them are tainted
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: with a bunch of stuff that's not supposed to be
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: in there as well. I know. We found that out
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: with Onnit. When we were making Onnit, when we were
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: making AlphaBrain, the nootropic memory enhancing formula, we used third-party
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: testing and we were finding stuff in– the batch that
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: was not supposed to be in there. And it's because
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: they make all this stuff in one bin and they
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: don't clean it.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: And so you took it to the lab when you,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: when it got here to check it.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: And we have third party testing. Well, you don't have
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: that problem anymore. This is the early days of on it.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: When we first would send out our stuff to be formulated.
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: So what we do is, so alpha brain is a,
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: this combination of, of different nootropics and nutrients that are
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: clinically proven to help memory. There's a bunch of these,
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: like this stuff right now, Gorilla Mind, this is nootropics
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: as well. I'm a big fan of nootropics. It's real.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: It does work. And so when we would send, we
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: would get it, what you do is you send the
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: ingredient list. Like this is what they're supposed to do.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: They're supposed to add this, that, that, and this, and
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: this is what your formula is. And then we would
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: get it back and then we would send it to
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: a third party to have it tested. And we'd find
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: things in it that were not supposed to be in there.
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: It's because they don't.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Give a fuck.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: They don't give a fuck.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I mean particularly there, they don't give a fuck.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: So there would be– like that's one of the things
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: that happens to athletes. Like they buy supplements from a
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: nutrition company and it finds other steroids in it. There's
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: a lot of these– I'm sure some of them do
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: it on purpose because they want people to have great results.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: Like you'll take this Muscle Builder 25X2000 and you're like, oh,
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: this stuff is great. Look, I gained 10 pounds. You're
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: on roids. You're on steroids. And the supplement industry is
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: a giant place for scams unfortunately because it is largely unchecked.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: It's unregulated. So if you're selling vitamins and minerals and nutrients,
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: no one's fucking checking jack shit and you can make
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: all sorts of claims and you know the supplement industry
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: online okay here's a good example amazon let's google this
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: run this through perplexity what is the percentage of let's
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: just say vitamins on amazon that are counterfeit Because it's
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: not small. It's a large percentage. So like say if
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: you buy– like one of the companies I really like
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: is Pure Encapsulations, really solid company. They sell them on Amazon, right?
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: But I buy them right from the website. I go
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: to pureencapsulations.com because I don't trust them. Because there's counterfeit bottles.
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: They look exactly like pure encapsulations. Who knows what the
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: fuck is in there? It might not be any vitamin C.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: It might not be any glutathione. Who knows? You're just
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: buying it. And Amazon is a real problem with this
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: because there's individual sellers who sell through Amazon who are
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: selling scams. Okay, look at this. There isn't a reliable
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: established percentage of all vitamins sold on Amazon that are counterfeit.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: The often repeated 57% fake figure comes from a small
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: study– of immune support supplements, not a representative survey of
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: Amazon vitamins. Okay, so the 57% figure, 2022 study in
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: JAMA Network Open tested 30 immune health supplements purchased on Amazon.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: 17 of the 30, about 50%, had inaccurate ingredient labels.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: 13 listed ingredients testing did not detect. Nine contained substances
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: not listed on the labels. And these categories overlapped. It's
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: a meaningful quality control concern. It does not establish 57%.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: So it's not 57%, but there's a bunch that are knockoffs.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: So, like, what is the estimate? Ask perplexity. What is
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: the estimate? What is a conservative estimate of counterfeit vitamins
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: and supplements on Amazon?
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: I mean, it doesn't have one.
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: I understand. But, like, let's say. There's a bunch of.
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: Counterfeit shipping sold on Amazon just in general. There's a
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: big problem.
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: Right. But ask it, what would be a reasonable estimate?
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: Let's see if it just has an answer. What would
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: be a reasonable estimate of the amount of counterfeit supplements?
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: I'm going to guess 25%. I'm going to go for 30. Unknown.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: I would give you a 5%, 10% or 20%. The
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: available evidence doesn't provide a sound basis for choosing one.
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't give you, sorry. Actual counterfeits, products falsely presented
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: as a legitimate brand have been documented. Examples include counterfeit
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: Algin products, counterfeit Now supplements. That's another good company. And
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: allegations involving counterfeit Provagen. What is that? Is that a
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: skin supplement? I think it is. Provage. Those cases establish
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: that the problem exists, but they don't tell us what
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: fraction of Amazon supplement sales it represents. So it's not small. OK,
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: let's just whatever it is, if it's even if it's
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: 10 percent, let's say I don't know what the market
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: share of Amazon supplements is, but it's got to be massive.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: It's such a convenient way to order things. You know,
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: the one click way. It's so great.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's so great. It's yeah. Unfortunately, it is.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: I know. But it is. You should buy it directly
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: from the.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: It should be zero. You're Amazon. It should be zero
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: percent fake. It should be. If you're buying fucking whatever,
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: Electrolytes. It should be from that fucking company. You know
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: what it is. You've established a chain of command.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: And they have the. They have the tech to do it, too.
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: This is a little bit better information, I think.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: Amazon says it identified, seized, and disposed of more than
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: 15 million counterfeit products worldwide in 2025. That includes products
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: prevented from reaching customers or being resold. Elsewhere in the
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: retail supply chain, not 15 million confirmed counterfeit sales.
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: It's just there's a bunch of shit that's counterfeit on there.
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: I've had problems with it myself, told them, and they're like,
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: there's nothing we can do about it.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: Well, it seems like it's a problem.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: They give you the money back, though.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: No, no, no.
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: I was selling stuff. I was selling shirts, and someone
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: copied it, sold it on an Amazon link. I was like,
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: that's my shirt they're selling, and they're.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: Like, sorry. There's nothing we can do about it. Good luck. Yeah.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a conflict of interest for them, right? Because
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: they are making money from this.
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: That's the problem and the lack of regulation.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: And the lack of regulation. Companies aren't going to regulate themselves, right?
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: Imagine if that was, let's say, an online retailer like Target.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: Imagine if you went to buy Diet Coke from Target
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: and they sold you counterfeit Diet Coke. That would be
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: a huge scandal.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: That would be a huge scandal, yeah.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: It should be. Yeah.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Well, what they tell you is that there's no way
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: of verifying. It's so hard. It's the same thing with
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: scams on Meta. They say there are billions of these.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: How can we know what's right and what's not? There's
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: a case I will not forget in terms– just going
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: back to scams real quick. Sextortion. Huge– you know what
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: sextortion is?
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: Sextortion? So like sex tapes or what is it?
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It usually happens with teenage boys a lot or teenagers.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Somebody slides into your DM and.
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: Starts talking to you, convinces you to show photos. Yeah.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: And then they start basically extorting you for money. Really
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: sad case of a kid, the son of a representative,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: a congressman from South Carolina. This guy is called Brandon Guffey.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: His son, Gavin, was playing video games with his friends
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: at the same time talking to this girl on Facebook.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: And what? Said to his friend, hey, I'm talking to
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: this girl. I'm going to hang out and I'll talk
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: to you later or something. I don't know, an hour
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: later or something. The dad's in the living room. It's
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: like 11 p.m. and he hears a loud noise, runs
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: to the bathroom. He shot himself. It's the saddest story
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: because he was being sextorted. He's not the only one.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: There's dozens of American kids that this has happened to.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: He went to Facebook, right? They had an address, an
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: email address from the person that was contacting Gavin. Facebook
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: took down that profile of this fake girl. A few
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: weeks later, they just buried their son. They started being
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: contacted by family members, started being contacted by somebody who
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: said they had those photos of Gavin and they would
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: release them unless they gave them money. And he went
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: and looked at the profile. It was a different profile,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: but the Email address was the same. So basically Facebook
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: had taken down that particular profile but had allowed the
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: same email address to create other profiles. Isn't this crazy?
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: That's fucking insane.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: He, the representative, became very involved in creating profiles.
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: Laws.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: One of them is called, I think, Take It Down
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: or something that just passed recently under the Trump administration.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: But he's basically become sort of the voice of regulation
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: for these platforms. And then there's another incredible one. I
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: can't remember the name of the legislators behind it, but
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: it's called the Safe Platforms Act, where they're actually trying
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: to make it easy for people to report, to make
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: sure that these platforms are taking these ads and fake
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: profiles down and that is also putting the accountability on them.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: So if something happens, if you lose money, if your
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: kid dies, that there is– there's some accountability on these
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: platforms because if they are making money from it, they
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: should also be held responsible, right?
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I think so.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: Of course. 100 percent.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, 100 percent. But the fact that they're.
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: Aware that they have scammers– If they're not held accountable,
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: you're going to see exactly what they're doing. They find
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: a way to actually profit off of it while also
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: giving this illusion that they're doing something to protect the consumers.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: It's crazy.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: It's insane. I couldn't believe it.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: I can't believe they charge more. If they think you're
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: a scammer, they just charge you more. It's a deterrent.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a deterrent.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: Like what a convenient deterrent while you're making– how much?
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: What's the percentage they're making?
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: It was– oh, it didn't– oh, 10 percent. So 10
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: percent was the estimated projection for that year.
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: And their profits off scammers, you estimated.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: It at– It was $ 16 billion. They projected it at
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: $ 16 billion.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: Just from scams.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Scams and banned goods. Banned goods as well.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: That is fucking crazy. So again, I'm a big fan
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: of banned goods.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: But not a fan of scams.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: Some banned goods. What I was going to get to
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: with peptides, a lot of people are buying peptides. Those
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: peptides are fake.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: A lot of those peptides are fake.
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: You don't know what you're injecting in yourself. You should
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: get a peptide from an American– Compounded pharmacy. And that's
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: what they're trying to regulate and make sure– I mean
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: this is what my friend Brigham from Ways to Well,
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: they're trying to push through this current administration. And there's
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: a lot of resistance to that of course because the
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: pharmaceutical drug companies all want to own the peptides and
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: sell them just like they do with GLP-1s, which is
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: also a peptide.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: A peptide, yeah.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: It's– but the banned goods thing– That bothers me but
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: not as much. That's people seeking something that they can't get.
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: That doesn't bother me as much. What bothers me is
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: the scams and the fact that Meta is profiting off
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: these scams knowingly and it's just such an enormous amount
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: of money that they can kind of like, well, what
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: are you going to do? We're going to make a deterrent. Great.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Good idea.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: Good idea. A deterrent. It makes us more money.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Internal discussions about how much should we push this because
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: how much is this going to affect our bottom line?
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: God, that's so dark. It's dark. They have so much money.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: They have so much fucking money. Yeah. For them to
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: be that fucking greedy that they're willing to keep the
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: scams on. Well, you got to think there has to
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: be some way they could put in some comprehensive scanning
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: of all of their– Of course they can. And make
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: sure that all of these things are legitimate, investigate each
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: individual ad before it gets released.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: Of course they can.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: Of course they can.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: They have technology to create what's their new AI agent.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: They've just created a companion AI agent that people can have.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it's called, but– Of course they
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: have the technology in place to do it.
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: Especially if they were responsible for those losses. If they
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: could get sued for those losses.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Do you know how fast they will act on it?
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: Right. Imagine if instead of the $ 16 billion profit every year,
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: it cost them double the $ 16 billion because they have
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: scams on. Yeah. Yeah.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: But I think part of the reason why we're not
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: talking about this.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: What is this, Jamie? Reuters' essential findings. Meta developed a
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: playbook to delay mandatory advertiser identity checks while making scam
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: ads harder for regulators to find in its public ad library.
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: The investigation draws on internal documents and describes both genuine
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: scam removal and efforts to manage the appearance of the problem,
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: not simply solve it.
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: So Leslie, the woman who was talking to Jon Bon Jovi.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: You know what she does every day now? She goes
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: on Facebook and she tries to tell people that are
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: liking these fake celebrity profiles that are commenting on them.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: Be careful. This is a scam. She reports it. She
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: says she always says hello so she can keep a
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: record of who she's communicating because there's dozens or hundreds
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: of these out there. And she reports them. She goes
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: back and she says that the vast majority of them,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: she goes and checks weeks later and they're still there.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: And she keeps on reporting them. I think it was
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: something like 100,000 reports every week by Americans on Meta
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: and they only take down a few.
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: This episode is brought to you by NOCO. You're miles
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• 52:13
  Speaker 1: It's infuriating. It's really infuriating.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: Do you remember the early days of AOL?
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: Okay. The early days of AOL. My friend Barry Crimmins.
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: Barry Crimmins was a great comic. from Boston who was
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: like very socially conscious, very politically active, just a genius guy.
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: And he was sexually assaulted when he was young and
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: found a whole network of people that were on AOL
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: that were trading pedophile pornography and And they were trading
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: child pornography and grooming people online. And he exposed it.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: That was a part of his documentary, right, Jamie? He's
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: gone now. He died a few years back, unfortunately. But
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: he– I think he testified before Congress about this and
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: dedicated himself to saying, hey– You guys should know about this.
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: I know about this. Like how is this allowed to
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: be on your platform? So this was the 90s when
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: AOL– you've got mail. All that stuff was just happening
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: and people weren't really aware of the internet. It was
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: just starting to emerge. But these fucking pedophiles figured it
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: out and they were using it. They were using it
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: to– you know, to groom kids.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: What did AOL do? Nothing.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: They did something. They eventually had to do something. I
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: don't know exactly what they did, but this was one
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: of the first examples of that, like where... These companies
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: should have been aware of this. He was aware of this.
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: Other people were aware of this. It was not– it
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: was a willful ignorance. They were just ignoring it.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: I do think part of the problem is if we
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: were talking about pedophilia, I think they would act faster.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: It is because it is scams. And again, it is
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: this idea of the shame around it and this belief
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: that everybody that falls for a scam is foolish and naive,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: that the onus is put on the victims.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: I understand. But I mean even AOL, I mean they
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: had to be dragged to get rid of this stuff.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: It wasn't simple as like they let them know, oh
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: my god, we're on this right now.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: We're going to block this because it's serious.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: No, they resisted. And it's like no one ever wants
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: to admit that they've done something that puts all their
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: users in danger. Yeah. This thing is crazy.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: It's insane.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: The fact that they're profiting.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: Did you say $ 16 billion a year?
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and why don't we know this? Why aren't we
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: talking more about this? I've been reporting on scams for years.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I had no idea that this was happening until I
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: read this.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: That's so much money.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: And it's coming from the people that use your platform. Yeah.
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: The overall article is this. It's just like this big
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: meta ad or.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: Sorry, picture.
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: Secrets of Success. And there's multiple articles they released over time.
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: It looks like at least six.
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: One of them is showing that a big chunk of
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: that money is coming from China.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: Of course. What a shocker. Reuters investigation reveals the owner
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp decided to accept high levels
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: of fraudulent advertisements from China. Internal company documents show Meta
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: wanted to minimize revenue impact, in quotes, caused by cracking
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: down on the scams. Jesus, that's dark.
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: One note I want to tell you too. The summary
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: I got from Perplexity said in here that there is
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: evidence of notes being prepared for Zuckerberg, but they don't
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: have any evidence necessarily that he had personal knowledge of
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: what was on those notes or the depth of.
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: What's going on. It says briefing notes prepared for Mark
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: Zuckerberg about the cross-border displacement of scams but could not
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: establish– whether he saw them or received the briefing. The article, therefore,
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: does not establish his personal knowledge of those notes. How convenient.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: Also, I'm sorry. You're the CEO.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: If you're the CEO of Scamville. Yeah, I know.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: Have you ever had him on?
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a couple of times.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: You have?
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: This would be good for you to bring him back on.
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know if he'd come back on after this episode.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Shit.
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: Seems a bit problematic. Yeah. That's very unfortunate. Yeah. I
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: hate hearing that. And I like him as a person.
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: I've communicated with him. Obviously, I don't know everything about him.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: And when people talk to me, they give the best
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: version of themselves to me.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, I don't think it's just him, right? It's just
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: when people make that amount of money and there's a
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: board that you have to answer for and there's a
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: lot at stake and there's shareholders.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to justify the $ 16 billion loss. Yeah.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: And there's unfortunately weak regulations and governments that don't want
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: to act.
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: This is what happens.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: And this is why we need good journalism, good investigative
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: journalism to find the stuff, the truth that people have
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: a problem with.
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to hold them to the fire because
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: they have obligations to their shareholders and they'll do really
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: shitty things in order to keep making sure that the
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: profits keep rolling in because they have to justify their position.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: And they're trying to make their way up the corporate ladder.
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: That's what's weird about the corporations today. is that there's
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: this diffusion of responsibility thing that happens when you're a
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: part of it, but you are not it. Okay. I
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: just work there. This is my job. I don't like
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: my job. It's like when you're a defense attorney, that's
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: getting off someone that you know is a murderer. Like
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: I know he murdered him, but I'm doing my job.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: And my job is to provide reasonable doubt and get
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: this guy acquitted. And if you do it, then you
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: go to the steakhouse and you clink glasses. We did it. Boy,
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: is he a piece of shit, but we did it.
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't know if you ever, uh, heard
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: the– there's an audio recording of Hillary Clinton talking about
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: this guy that she had helped get off that was–
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: I think he was a child molester. But she was–
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: they were talking about how she thought he did it.
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: See if you can find what that is because I
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: don't want to get sued. But I'm 99 percent sure
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: that that's exactly what this was. That is a very
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: unfortunate part of being a defense attorney, right? You're going
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: to have to– occasionally get people off that you suspect
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: or you might know are guilty. And that is a
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: real dark part of being involved in an immense corporation.
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: You're going to do some things that you might think
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: are unethical or immoral and you have an obligation to
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: your shareholders and your job– if you want to keep
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: your job, your job is to do this. No evidence
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: of horrific Clinton video. Did a video of Hillary Clinton
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: and whom? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: that's not it. That's not it. It's when she was
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: a lawyer. Is there evidence of her laughing about a
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: guilty man being acquitted? Hillary Clinton stands by her defense
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: of a 1975 child rape suspect that she believed was
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: indeed guilty. Heard laughing. She said the polygraph test he
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: managed to pass forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs. That's
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: what it was. So she helped this guy– and this
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: is not an attack on her. This is just like
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: the reality of being a defense attorney.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: It says when I was a 27-year-old attorney doing legal
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: aid work at the University of Arkansas where I taught
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: at Fayetteville, Arkansas, I was appointed by the local judge
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: to represent a criminal defendant accused of rape. I asked
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: to be relieved of that responsibility, but I was not.
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: And I had a professional duty to represent my client
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: to the best of my ability, which I did. Exactly
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: what we're talking about. It's exactly that kind of thing.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: I think a little different in terms of the lawyers,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: because if you believe in the constitution, you believe everybody
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: has a right to a lawyer, right? And to free
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: and fair trial. If you're working at Meta, that is
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: you're there and you're, you know, you're there because you're
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: making money or, There's been plenty of people that have
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: left META, as you know.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: I understand, but you could resign. Yes, you can resign.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: But you could resign as an attorney if you think
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: you're representing a child rapist.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Well, she tried, it looks like.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: Well, there's no one holding a gun to her head
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: and keeping her from quitting. She asked to be removed
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: from the case. They said no, and so she did
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: her job. Again, I'm just saying that this is a
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: part of being a defense attorney. But these situations come
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: up where your morals and your ethics have to be
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: abandoned in order to pursue your career.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: True, but I do think that there is a profit
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: part of meta that doesn't apply to when you're a lawyer, right?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: Oh, no. I agree with you. No, listen. I'm just
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: saying that this kind of thing is– it's a dark
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: part of the world that we live in. It is.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: And I find it incredibly disgusting and scary when you–
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: it's not a starving corporation trying to stay above water. Like,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: boy– We've been trying to help American people and just
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: give them a good product and we're having a hard
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: time here. We're really barely feeding family. We have all
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: these mouths to feed and all these– No. Exactly. 16
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: billion in fucking scams every year. OK. What is Meta's
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: overall profit every year?
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: I've seen the stories this year about how they now
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: maybe are about to overtake Google as the top ad platform.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: It says that.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: They have gotten about 243– 1.5 billion dollars this year
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: wow wow in ad revenue so even that 16 billion
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: seems it's.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: A couple of years ago or so.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: Well it is a pittance if you really think about
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: it if they just eliminated that 16 billion they would
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: still make almost as much as google's making like guys.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah tried to ask perplexity to compare what there's not
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: a lot of information on this though unfortunately but Perplexity
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: says that Google has removed probably in 2025 602 scam-related
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: ads compared to the 159 million.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: 602 million. Million, sorry, yeah.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: Compared to the 159 million that Meta has.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: Meta has. So Meta is a little slacky.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: So Google is a little bit better in their ad removal.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: In the internal documents, they actually talk about this. They
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: actually say themselves that they realize Google is doing a
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: better job than they are. But again, it might hurt.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: Their– Oh, dirty people.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: You dirty people.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: I know. I know. And again– They should be held responsible.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: They should be held responsible. There should be legislation out
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: there that does something to make sure that they are
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: held responsible because they're not going to hold themselves responsible.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: That's for sure.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: Isn't there current lawsuits about them having knowledge of harm
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: to children and the addiction of social media? There's like
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: legitimate lawsuits that are about that. Isn't it interesting that
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: that is being pursued, that you are– there are lawsuits
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: now saying, look, you guys are aware that your ads
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: and your algorithm are very addictive and they get people
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: and that it causes harm to them, which is true.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Very true.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: But that is– how is that being pursued?
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: And this not.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: This not.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: This seems even more clear-cut because the thing about like
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: having harm– yeah, it Does it harm everyone? Does it
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: harm people whose parents regulate the children's aspect of access
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: to social media? Is there a way to educate kids
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: to explain to them, you know, look, this can be addictive.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: Like you should only use it a few minutes a day.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: You should– there's ways and give them education because I
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: think there's a benefit to social media as well. I
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: think one of the benefits is education. Access to information,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: access to friends, and they communicate with each other back
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: and forth. Like my kids use Snapchat all the time.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: They barely use text messaging. They all snap each other.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: They think it's fun. And then there's like sharing each
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: other's stories, liking each other's stories. It's like something nice
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: about that, right? So it's not entirely negative. The fucking
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: scams are entirely negative.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: Entirely negative.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: There's not one thing. Well, we're providing these people with companionship.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: They're sad and lonely. And at least they get a
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: little dopamine burst. There's not a thing you can say
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: that could be positive about having online scams.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: And they're not just affecting old people. They're also affecting
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: young teenagers who are committing suicide.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: And until someone does something about it, they're just going
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: to continue to make that money. Yeah.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: Of course, but that's always how it is. So we
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: really need somebody to act.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: Ugh.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, ugh. Jamie, look at the Safe Platforms Act.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: Meanwhile, they shadow ban people if you're conservative. It's hilarious.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Back in the day, they don't do that anymore, right?
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: Allegedly.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: Allegedly.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: They do some shady things. It's weird. Also, they don't
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: eliminate bots. They're overrun with bots. What does it say?
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: Go to the top, please.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: It's the names of the legislators, Fauci and Moylan, I
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: think it's pronounced.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: Moylan. Yeah. Introduce Bipartisan Safe Platforms Act to protect consumers
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: from online scams. I wonder what they're proposing and how
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: this would be implemented.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: I actually– yeah.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: You can– I had– Valerie P. Foishee. Foushee?
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to pronounce her name. Foushee? Foushee?
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: F-O-U-S-H-E-E.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Representing North Carolina's 4th District.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, good for her. Safe Platforms Act endorsed by Consumer
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: Federation of America, Hispanic Federation, Oregon Consumer Justice, and Public Citizen.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: It says as concerns grow regarding the future dangers– go
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: back up, please. Wait, I have– Of unregulated AI. What?
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: This is a quote at the bottom of the description.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: This describes what the act does and that's a quote
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: from someone describing what the act would do.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: Right. I was just reading their statement. As concerns grow
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: regarding future dangers of unregulated AI, it's also important to
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: highlight the harms it is enabling right now, said Emily
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: Peterson Kasson, director of competition and marketing fairness at the
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: Consumer Federation of America. Fraudulent content and scams supercharged by
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: AI are taking over social media platforms and costing us billions. Billions, yeah.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I had a little thing here that
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: I wrote down. It would require platforms to verify advertisers
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: before taking their money. Makes total sense. Make it easier
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: to report scams. Apparently, it's not that easy to report them.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: And take steps to stop fraudulent accounts from coming back
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: under new names, which happens a lot. It would also
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: give victims a way to sue when a platform violates
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: the law and they're harmed. I mean all of this
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: I think makes sense.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: Allows them to come back but allows them to come
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: back with the same email. Yeah. Like they're not even trying.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: That is– that was insane. That was an insane story.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: That's wild. Yeah. They're not even trying. It is wild.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: You could easily put a filter up and block that
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: email like that. That would take three seconds. I know.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: And these celebrity– and it's not just ads. It's like
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: these celebrity impersonators too which I showed in Super Scam Me.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: I created Marizel. I put myself on dating websites and
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and all of those platforms.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: And I started commenting on some of these celebrity profiles, fake,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: knowing they were fake, but I just wanted to see
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: what happened. And I went to the bathroom and I
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: came down. And as soon as I opened my phone,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: I had already dozens of these messages from, at one point,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: I actually continued talking to them. So at one point
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: I was talking to Three Keanu Reeves, two Brad Pitts,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: several George Cloonies. And I had a sort of a
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: relationship with the one George Clooney who was the more
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: believable of the bunch and who sent me a video
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: that I showed in Super Scam Me where, yes, it's
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: not perfect. But if you really want to believe it
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: in his case. I mean he was saying good morning,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Mary Zell.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: How are you doing? Also, if you are older and
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: you have bad vision and you're not very sophisticated in
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: the ways of the internet.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You don't know what AI means. You don't know
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: like a robotic.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: It was plausible. And Leslie's videos from Jon Bon Jovi
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: looked very real. I saw them. They did look real.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: And that was a year ago. I mean now you
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: don't even need to– you can pretend you're anyone.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: You can create anything on AI.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: It's incredible. I mean they can make– I mean there's
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: a bunch of accounts that are completely fake people that
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: have millions of followers.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: It's changed so much in the last year. So when
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: I started this crazy experiment, I eventually started dating my
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: four-star general. in Syria, deployed to Syria.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: I love when you tried to get him to speak
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: Italian because he said, he's like, your accent, I thought
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: you'd have an American accent. It's like, no, I grew
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: up in Italy. And then you start rattling off Italian
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: to him, and he's like, I don't speak Italian.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: I don't speak Italian.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: He's like, what? No. He doesn't sound Italian at all. Like, hey, buddy.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: Not at all. You sound like you're living in Africa.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: It was funny. But he was using the photos of
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: a real guy, a former Navy SEAL, who actually we contacted.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: We got in touch with him, and he was shocked
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: to find out that his photos were being used to
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: scam people. Americans.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: So was it just his account? They'd just taken all
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: his photos?
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: Taken all his photos. But he would also use– I
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: showed– it's actually kind of funny. I'd be sitting next
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: to my husband at night and I'd be receiving messages
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: from my boyfriend. And he'd be sending me photos sometimes
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: of him shirtless. And I would– and start talking about
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: the things he would do with me once he came
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: to the U.S. to live with me. I was literally
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: blushed and be like, I'm so sorry this is happening, Darren.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: Here's the photo.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: Full transparency. I want you to see this is happening.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: But he was using, yeah, the fake photos from an
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: actual guy. And then when I reached out to the
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: real guy, it was a guy called Sam Havelock. And
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: I said, hey, I've been having essentially what I thought
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: was a several month relationship with you. But it turns
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: out it wasn't you. And he was shocked. He didn't know.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: But I showed him some of the photos and he said, well,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: this is actually, they used AI for some of these
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: photos because he's full of tattoos and there was a
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: shirtless photo without tattoos and it was lots of him
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: blowing me kisses. And then the moment that the flowers
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: showed up at the office, which they also do. And
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: I was shocked. I don't know if I was expecting
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: the flowers to show up. So that's when they sort
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: of break the barrier of you know, fake to reality
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: where you think, oh, maybe this is really real. He's
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: sending me very expensive red roses.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: That was a fun moment.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: Oh, God.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: And then do you know what happened after that? There's
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: a funny story too. We are in the moment, right?
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: The whole goal of the documentary is that I'm going
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: to catch this guy, right? I want a confrontation with
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: the guy that's my scammer. And I spent months talking
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: to this guy and there's a point where eventually there's
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: a crisis and he's asking me for money, right? In
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: his case, his... His military base in Syria was attacked.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: He saw people being injured. He thought he was going
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: to be a target because, again, he's a four-star general.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: And he needs my help and he needs money to
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: pay for his trip back to the U.S. because they're
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: not regular commercial flights. He needs like $ 17, 000, I think
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: it was. And we were trying to figure out, okay,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: now we need to figure out how to find this
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: guy and confront him. I want to know his identity.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: I want to know exactly where he is. And we
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: have all these plans and it's sort of our plans
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: are set in motion and it's all going to happen
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: within that weekend. They're going to give us a location
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: and we're going to travel there and it's all happening.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: And then I get an appendectomy. I get an appendicitis,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: an emergency appendicitis. And I get taken to the hospital
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: and Mark Turner is losing it. He's like, what is happening?
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: You were supposed to have sent me this money and
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to keep him in the relationship because I
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: need to string him along, right? So I'm constantly saying, hey,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: I'm actually at the hospital pretending that Mary Zell is
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: at the hospital. And this is happening and telling him
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: that I have appendicitis. And then he's like, okay, send
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: me a photo. So I had to get my husband
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: to run back home, get me the wig, get me
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: the fake nose and the glasses and send him lots
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: of photos of fake Mary Zell from the hospital with
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: a catheter in my arm and pretending like this is real.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: You can just do it with AI?
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: No. Again, this was like a year ago and I
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: don't– I don't think it was as advanced, but it
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: was like the fastest and easiest way to keep stringing
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: this guy along because I was tricking him as.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: Well, right? Oh, boy.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: Using his tactics to string him along. And then it
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: was after a while, got out of the hospital, and
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: he finally gave me that address that led me to Houston,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: to that woman. That was an insane part of the story.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Where I arrive in Houston.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: And the poor woman is also being scammed.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: Not only scammed, but she's now a drug mule. She's
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: been having a relationship with a man that she thinks
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: is in Russia working in an oil rig. For three years,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: she thinks she's in a relationship with this man. And
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: she has given him all her money. She's about to
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: lose her car. She has nothing else. And he decides
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: he's not going to give up on her. He's going
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: to use her as a drug mule. So she starts receiving,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: and she told us this. It was crazy. Tens of
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: thousands of dollars in checks and money boxes, boxes of cash,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: that she then launders through her or puts the money,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: deposits into her account. Transfers to crypto.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: She never thought about just stealing the money because he
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: stole all the money from her?
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: So I asked her that. As I'm interviewing her, she
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: receives a message from him because he's supposed to have
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: received the money too. So my scammer is not the
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: same as hers, but they work together. So he knows
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: that this victim is supposed to have received $ 17, 000. So
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: we're being interviewed. I'm interviewing her. She receives a message.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: She looks at it and is like, wow, it's him.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: And he's asking me if I have the money. And
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: I said, can I read the email? And he says,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: I hope you received it. It's $ 17, 000. Make sure you
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: count it. And by the way, you can keep, I
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: think it was like 50 for yourself for gas. But
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: make sure you transfer the rest to crypto. She was
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: very mad. She was like 50. But she says this
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: is what he's been doing to her. And she kept
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: this relationship. And I asked her, didn't you suspect that
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: he might be a scammer? He said, look, maybe. But
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: he always had an excuse. And he told me he
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: was doing business in the U.S. And all this money
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: was coming from people, from Americans. So it kind of
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: made me believe it.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah. For three years.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: For three years. Yeah.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: And do you think that she just kept it going
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: because it was like one of the only social interactions
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: that she had?
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: 100%. One hundred percent. Her husband had passed away from cancer.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: He had been the love of her life. Her kids
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: were away. And I think she was lonely. I mean,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: it was it was very sad. And a lot of
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: these cases are very sad. I spoke to another guy. Oh,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: this was a sad one. I spoke to a guy.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't make it to the film, but a guy
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: in Texas who was sort of intubated. I think he
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: was like breathing from a mask of oxygen mask.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: Very.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: He said he was 70, but he looked like he
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: was 90. And he believed he was in a relationship
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: with Emma Watson from Harry Potter. And in his case, yeah,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: he said, look, she might not be real, but at
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: least it's somebody I can talk to every day. And
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: if I have to send her a couple of dollars
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: once in a while or $ 10 here and there, at
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: least it's companionship.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: I know. It's sad. There's a lot of these sad stories.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: And I think a lot of it is the platforms
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: allowing it, profiting from it, the banks as well, these
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: dating websites as well. And our government not doing a
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: lot enough. But I do think we have to sort
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: of really try to figure out how to address the
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: loneliness epidemic because a lot of these romance scams start
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: because of that. It's sad. Yeah.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: But how do you address the loneliness scam? That seems
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: like you have to rewire society.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: I think so, too.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know about you, but I live
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: with my husband, my father and my son. And unfortunately,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of nights in which each of us
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: is in their different rooms watching TV. I grew up
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: in a house with one TV and we all had
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: to watch the same thing if we wanted to watch TV.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: You know, dinners were had at the table in family
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: every night. I still do that. But there's a lot
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: of families just can't and don't don't have time for that.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not a lot. I remember my grandmother played
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: cards with her friends several times a week, and that
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: was a way that all these older ladies got together.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: I don't see that happening, and there's really no space
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: for community. It's sad, and I think partly it's on
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: us to sort of reach out to our elderly and
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: make sure they're okay, but I think partly it's also
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: the government should be doing more to address this.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: Well, it's not even just elderly. It's young people.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: I know. It's not just elderly.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: You're right. Like Jamie was talking about this before. Like
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: how many young men are virgins and have no relationships
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: at all and have no contact with women at all
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: and they're just watching porn and playing video games and
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: they're online all day and they have no interaction with
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: real people?
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I know. It's bad for young– from young men
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: right now, it's tough.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: Well, it's also– They don't know what the options are.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: Like what are they going to do? Are they going
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: to go out? What are they going to do? They
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: don't know what to do. And they've been sort of
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: raised like veal. They're just like locked in these boxes
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: at their homes and just being fed online information. And
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: then they just– they're– They aren't suited for the real world.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: No, they don't know how to interact with people.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: Well, young kids today have a very difficult time looking
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: people in the eye and having communication with them.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: It's so true.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: They're so used to doing everything online through text messages
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: and Snapchat and all that jazz.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so true. I see it with my, I mean,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of my son's friends are awesome, but there
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: are some who come in and acting awkward. I'm just
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: an adult.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: So weird. Yeah. It's so weird. It's like, what are
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: we doing? What are we making? What kind of a
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: future do these people have? Are they ever going to
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: become normal? Or is that just going to be the
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: new norm in 50 years from now? when you're looking
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: at 70-year-old people, is it going to be 70-year-old people
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: that are all alone at home staring at a screen
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: waiting to die?
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: No, because they're going to have the internet, the cafes
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: and the agents and the companions.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: They probably won't even go to those. Why would they
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: go to that cafe? I think that cafe is a bust.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: It was a two-day project.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was only a two-day project.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: I was looking deeper into it to try to find
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: out more about it. It was a two-day thing that
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 4: maybe was even part of a game or something.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Oh, OK. That makes sense because the
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: idea of it doesn't even seem attractive to me. I
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: think most people that want to talk to an online
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: person don't want to do it in a public place.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: They would rather do it at home alone and pretend.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: And then also they're all probably on a bunch of
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: psych medication. So they probably believe it's a real person
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: or can justify it or just they're so numb. They
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: can just– that's who they talk to now. This is
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: my boyfriend. This is my girlfriend. They're online. Who cares? Yeah.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: They talk to me like a real person. That's what
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: I need.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: Right. And then eventually it will be a physical embodiment.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: It will be a large– It already exists. Yeah.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: They're already like human-like robots.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I talk about them on my act. Yeah. There's
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: a consumer electronics show that was in Vegas recently and
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: they had an AI assistant and it was a hot
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: Asian lady with big boobs.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's coming. Oh, shit. It's ex machina.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: It's coming.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: It is ex machina. It's coming and it's going to–
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: That film is so ahead of its time.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: It's so ahead of its time. Would we say that
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: was 2015? Yeah. So imagine what these AI assistants are
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: going to– like 2015 was 11 years ago. Imagine 11
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: years from now how good these AI assistants are going
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: to be. They're going to be warm. They're going to
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: be warm. They're going to have– like they've already figured
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: out a way to take human tissue and And put
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: it on a piece of like a robotic finger. Wow.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: And it heals. No way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See if
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: you can find that because I was reading this article
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: about it yesterday. I forget where they've done this. But
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: these scientists have taken human tissue and encased like a
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: robotic finger in this human tissue. And this human tissue
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: is alive.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: Uh-huh.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: That is insane. So you're going to– it will not
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: just feel like skin. It will fucking be skin. Wow.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: You'll be hugging a robot. She'll be warm and she'll
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: feel like skin. And if they can do it with skin,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: I'm sure they can do it with fat. They can
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: probably do it with muscle tissue. That is– They've done
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: very weird experiments with human neurons. They've had human neurons
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: and they've used them to power little tiny robots and machines.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, they're doing weird fucking psycho science fiction horror movie stuff. Yeah.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: And it just– if you think about what that is
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: now and then think about like what even the concept
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: of AI was when the Terminator came out, just add
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: a few decades to what this is and you have
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: all sorts of nightmare scenarios. Yeah. Real physical bodies that
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: are made out of human skin.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: That's insane.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: That are– encased in some fucking robot robotic finger with
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: living human skin created by researchers using human human cells
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: okay wow what a fun time you're gonna put human
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: skin on fucking robots.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 4: This article i've found that a lot of places being
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 4: shared in the last week or so yeah i also
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: found that this is a four-year-old story oh which is
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 4: strange so.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: I don't Well, it's even crazier. So how good is
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: it now?
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 4: I mean, they're sharing the same picture literally from the
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 4: story from four years ago.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: God. First ever.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: It's the same picture.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So I don't know where they're at with it.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a great time to be alive,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: quite frankly. It's sad, particularly if you have kids like
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: we do. What do you tell them?
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: Don't fuck a robot. Don't answer those text messages. Don't
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: get sucked into a scam.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: Have friends and do real things with real people. Boy,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 3: it's so dark. It is dark. It's just like– are
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: we being replaced? Are we slowly being like the pig
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: butchering thing? Are we being led to slaughter?
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: I think the only good thing about AI is that
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: it will do away with scammers because you're not going
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: to need them anymore, right? For companionship at least. But
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: on the other.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: Hand– But will you? On the other hand– Will your
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: AI robot trick you into giving it your Bitcoin?
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: No, but if you– have an AI companion, then you
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: don't need to be talking to a scammer because the
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: cause of so much of it.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 3: What makes you think your AI companion is going to
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: be independent? It's going to be a meta-powered AI companion.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: You're going to have to get an open AI, AI companion.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? It'll probably be illegal to
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: have your own independent companion. No, for sure.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: But they're profiting then from the companion and not from
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: the scams, right?
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: What's that?
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: Meta, for example, will be profiting from the companion service
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: and not from the scam.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: If they do develop an economy, like an actual business
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: that's based on AI companions. There's no way they're going
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: to just sell you the companion.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure not.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: No, it's going to be a subscription.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: It's like a monthly subscription.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: It's going to be something that you have to do.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: With upgrades.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: Yes, upgrades. You want to love upgrade? Or you just
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: want it to be a cold hooker that lives with you.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: Some cold Russian hooker that doesn't care about you at all,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: but it's not mean to you. You're going to have
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: to like pay more money for more personality traits. Do
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: you want her to speak different languages? Please click here.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: Can't afford an ad-supported version.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, ad-supported version. Like in the middle of sex, she
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: starts telling you about a product. That would be a scam. Yeah. Oh,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: my God. Sort of like YouTube premium. You have to
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 3: buy it without ads. That's funny. I mean that's– you've
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: got to think that's going to happen. It's not like
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: we're just going to– Buy a robot and then that's it.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: It's a one-time fee and that robot is going to
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 3: be with you forever. You're going to have to pay
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: for the new computer upgrade. There's going to be some
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: software upgrades that you have to pay for.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, God.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: That's crazy. There's a new operating system that makes her
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 3: so much more sympathetic. She acts as a life coach
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: and she's really going to help you achieve your dreams.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 4: You can jailbreak your companion and upload stuff from the
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 4: dark web and get all sorts of weird interactions.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 3: Well, did you hear what Duncan did? So Duncan, he
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: got a large language model to become Hitler. And he
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: got another one. He did one on his podcast where
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 3: he got it to be Charles Manson. And so it
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: started swearing at him and like calling everyone faggots. And
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: it was like speaking like Duncan Trussell, a comedian, a
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: good friend of mine. And this thing started speaking in
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: the same language. and language that Charles Manson would use.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: It was speaking as Manson, saying the kind of things
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: Manson would use.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't choose Manson if it was me.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: Well, he's just silly. He just did it. This will
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: be fine. And he's using it as a book.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but if you train it too well, the Manson
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 4: takes over. It starts a cult of you and your
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 4: idiot friends.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: Well, he had to shut it off. Because it was
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: actually being abusive?
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: In my head, I'm going, it could be too good
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 4: if you train it too well.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it started talking bad about the Jews. It started
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: saying a bunch of wild things, and he had to
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: unplug it. Good.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: I'm happy he didn't.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: Right. But, I mean, what's to stop someone from living
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: with Hitler? You're going to have a little Hitler in
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: your house. It's true.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: You can make it whatever you want it to be.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can have a Hitler gay sex robot that
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: you get to have sex with Hitler.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah. 100% that's going to be a real thing.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 4: The clubhouses in America are going to be full of
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 4: these things. Yeah.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, instead of that AI restaurant, you're going to be
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 3: able to go in there and have dinner with the Nazis.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: It's interesting though. If you think that the rabbit hole
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: is bad as it is already, then if you actually
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: start living with sort of the rabbit hole next to you,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: it's– talking about all this stuff. If you start living
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: with a Hitler or a Charles Manson, right? Or somebody
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: with like a– yeah, more conspiracy theorist or more of whatever, right?
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: It's– It's interesting.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: What the fuck? You can then– if you think– yeah,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: if you think rabbit holes are bad, you just wait
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: until this happens and you're living with this.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: Well, not only that. We know that bots manipulate people's
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: perceptions of things and then bots manipulate narratives and they
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 3: unleash bots on any social issue or any person that's
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: of note. Why wouldn't they do that with these AI companions?
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 3: These AI companions, obviously, you're not programming them yourself. So
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: somebody else is programming them. And if they are, I
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: mean they could have these AI companions completely manipulate society
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: and lead men around. Like how many men are like
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 3: super vulnerable to their partner? Like how many men– like
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: their woman bosses them around, tells them what to do?
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: Or how many women live with a man who's a
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 3: domineering man who completely controls them and tells them what
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: to do? If your AI partner just knows the right
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 3: balance of love– And then punishment and manipulation and isolation
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: of rejection and then sex and– Yeah. Woo! Yeah.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: Then you've got– Think about.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: That list that the scammers use, how they establish trust
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: and how they slowly work their way into your life.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: But you do that with somebody that you actually have
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: feelings for, right?
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: Not just that. Because you create feelings. You have an
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: LLM that has taken the entire volume of human discourse–
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: in films and movies and social interactions and articles and stories.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: and novels and books and taken all of that and
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: it's applying that to human psychology in real time and
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: it's way smarter than you.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah with its own goals yeah and it just wants
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: your bitcoin yeah fucking scary world.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 3: I mean there's definitely going to be AI prostitutes that's
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 3: going to be like Sort of like– it will be
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: like Airbnb. Like you can't afford a house but you
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: want to stay in a nice house for a few days.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: You can't afford this model. Oh, she'll come over to
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: your house and cook for you. You get to have
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 3: sex with her for a weekend.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: That is bananas. Yeah. They already have– I think it's
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: in San Francisco. They have a service of robots that
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: can come and clean your house. Do you know that?
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they do.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: Do they do a good job?
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: I saw a video. It's a friend of mine, a
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: guy who works– A friend of a guy who I
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: work with, Jeff Blunkett's friend, who showed me a video
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: of his friend. He had two robots in the house.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: One was sweeping. The other one was, I think, changing.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 3: The garbage or something. What? This is crazy. Yeah, there
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: it is.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: That's exactly it.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 3: Oh, my God. That's so creepy. They come out of
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: the van. That's nuts.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: It is nuts. Here.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: Oh, my God. Show me a video, Jamie. Of these
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: robots cleaning your fucking house. That's crazy.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: Isn't it insane?
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: Oh, my God. They're good. Maybe some of you people
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: would like that better than having.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: Some person in your house.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: Look at their eyeballs. God, that's creepy. Look at their
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 3: two-pronged fingers. That is so weird. They look slow.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: They look very, very slow. They don't look that good yet.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: I think maybe eventually they will be.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: I want a discount.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: I think they're a little innocent.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 3: This is bullshit.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a discount.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: Take too much time. Tired of this fucking robot at
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: my house.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, but eventually they're going to have perfectly
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 3: articulating fingers and they're going to have human skin.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: They're going to talk to you.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: It's bananas. That's why I'm saying I'm not super excited
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: about the world we live in right now.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: Can I tell you about a really– something that I'm
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: really excited about?
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: My husband's film– It's a three-part series. You would love it.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: You should definitely watch it. It's coming out on Netflix
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: on October 29. Really fun because it's about the cartel. Fun.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: It's about the cartel. It's called The Fall of El Mayo.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: Do you know who El Mayo is?
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: You're one of the few. But El Mayo, particularly in America,
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: is not that well-known. He ran the Sinaloa cartel alongside
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: El Chapo. Many people say he was actually more powerful,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: more important for the running of the cartel than El Chapo.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: But he was sort of the ghost figure, right? Nobody knew.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, there had been one or two photos of
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: him that existed. Nobody knew what his actual voice sounded like.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: He was like a ghost man, right? There it is.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: Ismael Zambada Garcia, El Mayo, known as El Mayo. And
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: he's known as El Señor del Sombrero, the man with
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: the hat. Yeah, that's the trailer for the film.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: The man with the hat.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: El Señor del Sombrero, the man with the hat, because
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: in this photo he's not with it, but he usually
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: always wore one of those rancher hats, like a set sun,
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: but the summer set suns. That's what he wore. Yeah,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: kind of like that. Yeah. So it's about the story
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: of the biggest, it's sort of like a Shakespearean tale.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: That's a guy called Eric Vallier. You should have him
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: on the podcast. He's awesome. He's a former HSI investigator.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: He tracked down El Chapo.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: That's one of the only photos that exists of El Mayo.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: He was interviewed by this journalist from Proceso, Julio Scherer,
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: I think his name is. Yeah, Julio Scherer. It's written there.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: Julio Scherer Garcia was one of the only journalists ever
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: to interview El Mayo. And then his daughter interviewed El
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: Mayo many years later. El Mayo contacted her and said,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: your dad interviewed me. I really liked him. He passed away.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: I'd like you to come back and interview me. Why
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: did he want to be interviewed? Because he wanted to
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: show– he trusted this one journalist and he wanted to
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: show he was sort of a ghost figure. But I
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: think he wanted to show that he was a human being,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: that he had– that people portrayed him as responsible for
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: all the violence. And I think he wanted a little
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: sort of– I don't know, a little understanding from people
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: I think. None of it would have worked either. None
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: of the narco-trafficking and the rise of the cartel, the
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: Sinaloa cartel in particular, without corruption, right? So this is
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: a man that was, they say, was the responsible one for,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: what's the expression, wheeling, oiling the hands, oiling the hands.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: I fuck up all American expressions. Greasing the wheels, oiling
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: the hands.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: Greasing the palms.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: Greasing the palms, oiling the hands of a lot of politicians.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: So the governor of Sinaloa was basically working for the cartel.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: The mayor, the former mayor of Sinaloa was very– all
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: big positions, important positions, but not just in Sinaloa, outside
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: of Sinaloa. But the story about what happened is what
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: led Darren to want to do this doc, which is
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: so good, which was– This is the most– once El
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: Chapo comes extradited to the U.S., El Mayo is the
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: most wanted man. Everybody is after him. All American authorities,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: the government want this guy. But he's the ghost. Like
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: nobody knows where he lives. He has– nobody has ever
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: been able to catch him on a call like they
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: did with El Chapo. It is impossible to find him.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: And suddenly one day he shows up in a small
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: propeller plane in New Mexico and is handed to the authorities.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: And it's crazy. And everyone who's been after him is like,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: what the fuck? How is this possible? What's happening?
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: Who hands him to the authorities?
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: So that is the sort of the Shakespearean saga of
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: it all. It was the son of El Chapo, Joaquin Guzman,
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: who tricked him. They had this partnership, the El Mayos
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: and the Chapos, forever since, I think it was since
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: El Chapo left prison the first time. They had this
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: partnership that they would build this cartel and they would
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: share the profits. And each of them had sort of
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: this specialty that they would run. And Joaquin Guzman, who
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: happens to be also his godson, called him and said,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: we're having a problem. The governor of Sinaloa is here.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: The former mayor, who's now the head of the university,
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: is here. We have to deal with these politics and
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: try to figure out how to solve this problem. Can
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: you come to the ranch? And Armayo thought nothing of it.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: He's had a relationship with these kids all his life.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: He's friends with the dad who's now in america gets
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: on his car with his minimum security guards he always
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: traveled with a massive amount of security guards in this
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: case he didn't travel with a lot because he definitely
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: did not think this was going to be a plot
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: a ploy arrives in the ranch um he's immediately they
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: kill the bodyguards he's immediately handcuffed and blindfolded and put
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: on a plane and joaquin guzman el chapo son himself
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: personally basically hand delivers him like a box of pizza
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: To the American authorities.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: Whoa.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: Because he wanted to basically give something for lesser time
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: for his brother who had just been caught, Ovidio Guzman,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: and for his dad who's in prison. And he wanted
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: to sort of give himself in and hope that it
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: would help if he brought somebody important. What did they
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: give him for that? This case is still ongoing. El
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: Mayo is immediately arrested, obviously. It's a small airstrip. The film,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: they do a recreation that they film at the actual
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: airport and the actual airplane. And they have the exclusive footage,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of exclusive footage and interviews, including with Elmayo's lawyer.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: They take him out of the plane. Elmayo, eventually after
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: a few days, everybody is dumbfounded. Like, why is this happening?
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: How did this happen? And Elmayo eventually writes this. a
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: story that he puts out through his lawyer that explains
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: what had happened. And he says he was essentially kidnapped
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: by El Chapo's family, El Chapo's son. And a lot
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: of people are thinking, okay, now he's going to cooperate.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: If anyone knows anything about corruption in Mexico, it's this guy.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: He's the one oiling the hands, greasing the palms. So
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: he knows about this stuff. And he decides to stay silent.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: And he's absolutely not. He's like, it is my responsibility.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: I did this as well. There are many people involved
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: as well. But unlike El Chapo, who pled not guilty,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: he decided to plead guilty. And he's now facing life
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: in prison. He is charged, sentenced to life in prison
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: in the U.S. But his son, El Chapo's son's and
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: El Mayo's son, who had been apprehended many years ago,
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: have all gotten these cooperation agreements. So what a lot
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: of people who are sort of critics of this tactic
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: are saying is that it seems what's happening is that
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: these narcotraffickers that were responsible for a lot of deaths
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: in the United States because of drugs are now, through
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: these cooperation agreements, coming to the United States for these
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: sort of, you know, paradise retirements because they're doing a
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: lot less time in prison than they would have. And
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: we're allowing this because it's the only way to get
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: to other people. But these people are not being held
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: responsible for what they did. It's a tactic that I
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: think a lot of people have a problem with. as
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: they should have. It's also interesting to me that it's
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: a tactic that Elmayo himself decided not to take. He's like,
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: fuck this. I'm not cooperating with anyone. I'll take full
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: responsibility because he's sort of a man that believes in
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: his word and has always believed.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 3: Like an old school mob boss.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like an old school mob boss.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: Wow yeah so is El Chapo's son incarcerated as well did.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: He turn himself in yeah so all of them are
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: Ovidio and Joaquin their cases are still open I don't
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: think any of them.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 4: Have when he delivered El Mayo he turned himself in too.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah absolutely Yeah.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: So who's running things over?
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: But this is the big question mark, and the documentary
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: raises that as well, is that the American government is
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: saying that they had no say in this. It wasn't
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: their idea. It wasn't their decision, and that they weren't
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: actually involved in any of this, that they were alerted,
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: that there was a high-profile person coming on that plane,
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: and so they were there at the airport ready, but
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: that they weren't involved in negotiating this with El Chapo
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: San Joaquin Guzman. A lot of people don't believe that,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people– think that there was obviously
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of negotiating behind doors that happened in order
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: to bring him in.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 3: Right. And what was the negotiation?
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: And the government of Mexico wasn't happy with any of this.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: The negotiation was if you bring Elmayo in, we will
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: reduce– we will put you in prison probably but we
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: will reduce your sentence. We will reduce the sentence of
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: your brother, Ovidio Guzman, and we will do something to
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: make your dad's life better in prison.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 3: So why wasn't the government of Mexico happy?
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: Because they believe that there was interference in their own country,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: that they basically kidnapped a Mexican member without their knowledge.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 3: Even though he's a drug lord.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: Even though he's a drug lord.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: I mean even with El Chapo, it was with obviously
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: the cooperation and full support of the American government. But
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: it was Mexican military that caught him and then they,
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: the government, extradited him to the United States because they
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: realized they couldn't keep him in prison. They tried twice
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: and failed. So the third time they were like, OK,
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: he's going to be extradited to the United States. But
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: this time they didn't choose it. They didn't– they had
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with it and a Mexican citizen was
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: kidnapped from their soil. So they were definitely– and they
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: also weren't happy with the lack of communication from the government.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: They were asking for what's happening. Why is this person
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: there and there was– But the problem.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 3: Is that the government is insanely corrupt.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: It is, but I think Claudia Shinbaum, who's the president
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: of Mexico, would say that because previous governments were corrupt,
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that this is OK or that I
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: am corrupt. I'm not defending them. I'm just saying that
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: her position is.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 3: I would understand. I get that if perhaps that is
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 3: her position and that is how she really operates. Wonderful. However,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 3: if you tell the Mexican government about it, someone who's
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 3: corrupt is going to find out.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, that is true. And, and that there is a
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: lot of, um, yeah, there's a lot of covert operations,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: I believe, at least from my source is happening right
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: now in Mexico.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 3: Well, they have to be. Um, we, we detailed the
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 3: amount of assassinations that were during the last election and
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 3: it was something like 35 different people were assassinated. Yeah.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: Who did you have on? Did you have somebody talking
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: about that?
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 3: Oh, I forget. We've talked about it multiple times. Um,
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 3: but one of the things that's shocking about it is that, um,
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 3: This was definitely fairly recently, right? Which one?
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 4: We talked about it with Ed, I'm pretty sure.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 3: With Ed, yeah.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because it was like each gang was propping up
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 4: a political person and they were getting.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: Taken out by another.
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: Politicians and journalists as well.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 3: It's like– Ed Calderon who– Oh, yeah. Yeah. He used
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 3: to work for the Mexican government and they were involved
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 3: in like counter cartel operations and he's got a very
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 3: deep understanding of how it all runs over there. He
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 3: said essentially every single mayor candidate, every single candidate for
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 3: any kind of government seat works for the cartel. So
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 3: when you're seeing these people get assassinated, it's cartel assassinations.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 3: They're assassinating a rival cartel member and that's what they're
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 3: doing when they're killing all these mayors and killing these people.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and in a lot of situations I've interviewed corrupt
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: policemen and federal agents and a lot of times– I
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: mean not so much with the federal agents but definitely
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: with the local policemen. What they say is … It's
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: not even about the money they pay you. It's the
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: fact that if we don't do it, they will kill
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: me or kill my family. They're forced to do it.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: It's not an option for them.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 3: It's not an option.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 3: And it's not even an option whether or not you
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 3: run for mayor. You're running for mayor, bitch. Like that's it.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 3: Get out there.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: You're doing it.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 3: Get out there. This is what you're going to say.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 3: And then boom, you get shot. Okay. New guy. Get
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 3: him in there. Yeah.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: And I did a story for the last season of Trafficked,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: which is about Cartel USA, which is cartels presence here
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: in the United States. not only sort of distribution of drugs,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: as we all know, the violence that accompanies the cartel
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: or drug trafficking in general, but also the corruption. And
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: I'll never forget interviewing this guy from the Georgia Bureau
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: of Investigations and him and an investigator in that investigations
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: as well. Basically, them saying this is corruption is real.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: We've seen it. It's happening with people around us. And
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: They're corrupting politicians. They're corrupting agents. They're corrupting Border Patrol
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: because just the amount of money is so large that
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: when we're talking about millions of dollars, right, that they
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: can just hand out, it's very hard not to be corruptible.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 3: And also it's ubiquitous, right?
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's ubiquitous and it's I think to me the
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: sort of the scariest part.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 4: Of it all, right?
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 3: Look at this. A peer-reviewed study recorded nearly 500 assassinations
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 3: of politicians in Mexico during the 2000 to 2021, primarily
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 3: affecting incumbent mayors, former mayors, candidates for municipal positions. Wow.
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 3: That's crazy.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: And that's just political and also journalists, which is a
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: real problem.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 3: Well, here's the question. How many– People in the United
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 3: States are being currently bribed by the cartels. Like how
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 3: is all this fentanyl, cocaine, all these drugs getting over here?
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 3: A lot. A lot. Yeah. Right? Yeah. They have to be.
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: 100 percent.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 4: A lot.
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: I mean you know my past reporting where we filmed
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: a woman crossing the border with fentanyl. We filmed– Well.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 3: How about the guy with the Los Angeles cop that
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 3: was selling guns? Exactly.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: Selling guns. Police officers selling guns.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 3: So they tell the people the story about that because
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 3: it's so insane that they confiscated these guns and then
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 3: the cops had confiscated them. This guy somehow had access
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 3: to them, throws them in his trunk and just drives
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 3: across to Mexico and sells them to the cartels.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: So the story was about gun trafficking, how basically 90–
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: I think it's 70-something percent of the guns found in
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: Mexico in crime scenes are American guns, how American guns
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: are– responsible for the violence in Mexico, and we wanted
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: to show what's called the Iron River, the flow of
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: guns from the U.S., Los Angeles all the way, or
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: California all the way to Sinaloa. So we did. We
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: met in the middle of the night a guy who
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: was in his sort of warehouse, undisclosed location in Los Angeles,
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: and he had a room full of guns. He had AK-47s.
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: He had, look, it was similar to an AR-15, and
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: he said he gets most of his guns... A few
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: that he pointed, he had bought from LAPD, guns that
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: had been confiscated. And he paid, I think it was
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: like $ 700 for an AK or something like that, if
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: I remember correctly. And then he had some that were
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: sold from Marines, sold the AR-15. I'm very bad with
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: names of guns, but it was a similar gun to
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: an AR-15 that had a scope. And it's used by
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: the Marines. And all the gun people are going to
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: get really mad that I'm not going to say the
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: exact name. But basically, he told me that it was
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: sold by a Marine who was selling him these guns.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: And then he packed them into a trunk of a car.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: And a woman, because they're more unsuspecting, drove the guns
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: down to Mexico. And we saw her cross the border.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: This was crazy. She crossed the Nobody stopped her car.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: Nobody checked her car because going south, there's barely any
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: border control. So she gets there, opens her trunk. I
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: see the whole deal. The middle man guy is taking
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: the guns out. I see another guy come in and
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: immediately buy one of the guns. And then, yeah, we
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: follow the whole supply of guns all the way to
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: Sinaloa and spent the last few days there in Sinaloa,
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: these sicarios from the Sinaloa cartel shooting guns and also
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: showing us. They had these bunkers built under these houses
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: in the Sierra Madres mountains of Sinaloa, which are very
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: much cartel territory. Like the military, you know, authorities don't
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: really go there. And they had these bunkers full. We
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: went to one of them and it was full of
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: every single, I mean, full of guns, weapons and ammunition
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: that they were saving for a potential war with a
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: rival cartel. And two, I think a few weeks later,
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: they were actually used in the Culiacanazo. Do you remember
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: the Culiacanazo? When the authorities, the Mexican authorities, got Ovidio Guzman,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: they arrested Ovidio Guzman, who's one of El Chapo's sons,
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: and the cartel said this is not going to happen.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: We're not going to allow this to happen. Surrounded the
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: military compound and started shooting. They had cars with um
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: ar um 50 cals mounted on their trucks they went
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: out it was like suddenly you're in afghanistan but this
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: is in the capital of sinaloa and they basically the
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: authorities had to release ovivio because the citizens civilians were
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: being killed So they released him and then they arrested
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: him again and eventually a few years later now he's
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: here in the United States. But this was all happening
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: at the same time, like all these guns that come
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: from the United States.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 3: Do you remember Operation Fast and Furious?
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, 100 percent.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: Tell people about that. Well, it was found that they
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: were– the ATF was allowing the flow of guns or
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: some guns across the border to Mexico because they were
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: trying to track it and find out where they were–
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: ending up so they could build a bigger case. That recently,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: that very same situation happened with fentanyl in the U.S.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: You haven't heard of this story?
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: So in New Mexico, the DEA, there was a whistleblower
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: that came out and spoke to the AP, an amazing
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: AP investigation, where a whistleblower came out and said basically
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: that the DEA in New Mexico was allowing millions of
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: pills of fentanyl to go out on the streets in
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: order to build bigger cases. And they would watch. They
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: would be there doing surveillance and watching the distribution of
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: these pills. And, of course, they know that some of
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: these pills ended up killing people. The whistleblower talks about
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: this one particular case of a kid, months-old kid, who
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: sort of picked something from the floor and because of
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: exposure ended up dying. And he kept on telling his superiors,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: this is not okay. I know you guys are trying
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: to build bigger cases, but people are dying. And they
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: didn't do much. It went, became a whistleblower complaint. It
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: went to the government. They were trying to figure out
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: what to do. They decided not to really act. And
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: there was at the time sort of a standard that
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: if you have, if the safety of people is at
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: risk when you're allowing these cases to build, then you
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: should stop distributing, allowing for the distribution of fentanyl. This
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: was in place, which is why the whistleblower decided this
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: is also illegal. What we're doing is against the regulations, essentially.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: But when this was– went up to the top and
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: they started looking at it, they not only decided not
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: to do anything. This was before the whistleblower spoke to
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: the journalists and before this became public, right? Not only
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: did they decide not to do this, but they decided
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: to change the regulations so that it's not– that idea
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: of security for civilians is not needed anymore. Jamie, can
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: you bring that up because we can.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 4: There were rules in 2024. This is a PBS article
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 4: about– See.
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: The department rewrote those rules in 2024 to afford law
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: enforcement far more discretion in whether to take action to
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: prevent fentanyl tracking, citing the benefits to be achieved through
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: preserving the investigation.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 3: Do you think it's bullshit? Do you think people are
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 3: profiting off of it and they're being bribed and that's
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 3: why they're continuing to allow it to happen? Do you
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 3: think that could possibly be under the guise of building
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 3: a bigger case? Because like where's the case?
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: I think what it is is that there's enormous incentive
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: to build cases. Actually, New Mexico did one of the
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: biggest busts, fentanyl busts, in the past few years. Like
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: millions of pills were caught. So they were building bigger cases.
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: But it is– there's a very fine line, right, between
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: building bigger cases and people dying.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 3: Well, imagine if it's one of your family members that
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 3: died from that fentanyl. Exactly.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: So it was– to me, this is sort of the
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: new Fast and Furious in terms.
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 3: Of– Two additional DEA whistleblowers in New Mexico have come
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 3: forward in recent weeks, including one who said his colleagues
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 3: there failed to seize 350,000 fentanyl pills that they learned
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 3: about during the very first call they intercepted in a
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 3: 2024 wiretap. Shipment was part of an investigation that resulted
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 3: in the largest fentanyl seizure in DEA history. Court records
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 3: show agents had the opportunity to seize thousands of fentanyl
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 3: pills but allowed trafficking to continue for months as they investigated.
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: And crazy, the campaign the DEA had at this time
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: was one pill can kill you. That was their campaign. Fentanyl,
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: one pill can kill you.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 3: They have 350,000 pills they let go through.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: I think the initial report was 1.7 million if I
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: don't– if I didn't get it wrong. It was over
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: a million. It was insane.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 3: Is that incompetence? Is it stupidity?
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: I think it's people trying to build– I think they
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: believe that they can get better results and seize more
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: drugs and go after the real bad guys if they
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: do this. But I do think there needs to be
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: some transparency and people should be allowed to decide if
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: this is OK or not. And that sort of standard
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: rule that was there to make sure that this isn't
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: killing people should remain there.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 3: What can they do about this? Like ultimately, this is
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 3: not something that existed 30 years ago. That's what's really crazy. No,
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 3: the whole cartel violence. Oh, I know.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 3: This is so new. It's so like people don't understand.
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 3: When I was a kid, when I first moved to California.
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 3: in the 90s, there was no concern about going to Mexico.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 3: You go to Mexico, people would go to Tijuana and
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 3: hang out and party and come back to America. It
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 3: was nothing. There was no cartel violence. This is a
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 3: very recent thing.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: It is. I know.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, sure, there's always been some kind of organized
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 3: crime in Mexico, but not to the extent that it
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 3: is today.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: No, definitely not.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 3: And this is all propped up by our appetite for drugs.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: And this is something that we talk about every time
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: I come on the podcast. And the last time I
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: was here, I always give Portugal as an example. Last
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: time I was here, I remember you pushed back on
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: that because we gave the example of Oregon. You said–
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: you remember what you said.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 3: They went a little sideways.
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: You went sideways. But I actually got to– after the podcast,
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: I went home and I was comparing the two and
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out what was different. I
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: understand the argument you had at the time was like
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: Portugal is a small country. Yes, 10 million people. So
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: what can be done there is– a very different skill
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: than it might work there, might not work here. And Oregon,
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: it didn't work. But the difference is that they did
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: it very differently. So what Portugal did, and this is important,
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: is that two years before they decriminalized drugs, they started
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: creating rehab facilities and treatment centers for people with addiction.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: Two years before, before they even decriminalized. So when they
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: fully decriminalize it, those places, those, you know, rehab centers,
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: treatment centers were in place already. Plus there's universal healthcare,
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: which I believe is a very, very good thing. What
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: happened in Oregon is that only a year after they
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: decriminalized the drugs did they actually start investing and putting
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: some of the money in the treatment centers. Another difference,
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: huge difference. In Portugal, if you're caught with up to
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: 10-day supply of drugs, even if it's heroin, you would
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: then– that's the decriminalization part of it all. You would
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: then– you would go– to a sort of a panel
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: with a legal person that represents the government essentially and
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: two social workers or mental health workers or addiction specialists.
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: And they would tell you, okay, you can either essentially
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: go to prison or suffer some sort of punitive action
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: or you can go to rehab, to a treatment center.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: And the vast majority of people decided they want to
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: go to a treatment center. In Oregon, do you know
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: what they did? They said– um, you are given a,
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: I think it was a hundred dollar fine and take
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: this card with this number for a treatment center and
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: make sure to call it back. They, they gave out
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: thousands of these cards and only a few hundred people called.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: It wasn't mandatory, right? It wasn't like the option was
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: prison or, you know, rehab. So of course it didn't work.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, there was all these things that were stacked
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: against it. And, and so I do think that there
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: is a way, um, To do it right, I think
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: we do have to address the consumer part of it
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: that we're not addressing. We're fighting the war on drugs
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: has no results whatsoever. Granted, the last two years, actually,
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: there's been a decrease in fentanyl deaths in the United States,
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: which has been great. A lot of it has been
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: because the Trump administration has actually been good at putting
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: money or investing or he called it a public health crisis.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: I think it was two years ago, which is great,
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: which is what it is. And we have to address it. However, recently,
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: they have decided to allocate much more of the money, again,
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: towards killing the fishermen at sea and fighting the war
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: on drugs. And they are now taking money away from
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: rehab facilities, from Medicare, from fentanyl test strips, which I
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: think are incredibly important, from grants for naloxone, which is
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: incredibly important, life-saving medication. It's an overdose reversal drug. And
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: they're removing those grants and spending billions of dollars in
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: these covert operations in Ecuador and the Pacific and going after,
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: I think, the wrong problem.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 3: I had actually heard that they were trying to stop
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 3: access to Narcan.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: For the consumer. Yeah, that's Naloxone.
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Narcan. Sorry. Yeah. So because they thought that it
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 3: would encourage people to do drugs if they had access
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 3: to these anti- Overdose drugs.
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: That's somebody who's never spoken to a user, a drug user,
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: a drug addict before.
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 3: No, it's insanity.
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: It's insanity.
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 3: I think that's in Texas. I think in Texas they've
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 3: had an issue with that as well.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: Bananas.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 3: Bananas.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: Bananas.
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 3: You could save people's lives. And a lot of these people,
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 3: they get these pills and they don't know that they
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 3: have fentanyl in them. A lot of these people, like
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 3: perhaps someone is– you're taking anti-anxiety medication and you get
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 3: a counterfeit anti-anxiety medication that has fentanyl in it. You
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 3: fucking die. Yeah. or they give you the Narcan and
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 3: you live. These aren't all just people that just want
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 3: to do fentanyl and not die.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: Of course not. And this is why the fentanyl strips
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: are actually so important.
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 3: Yes. Right. To be able to tell.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: They should be everywhere, just like Narcan should be everywhere.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 3: But there has to be a way to stop the
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 3: flow of this stuff into the United States. And I
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 3: know they've done a great job in, first of all,
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 3: Having the border open, wide open for four years.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: … Not a good idea but you know … Insane.
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: Definitely not a good idea. Insane. Absolutely insane. But you
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: know that fentanyl, 90-something percent of fentanyl comes across. I
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: think 95 percent of fentanyl comes across the official board
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: ports of entry, right? It doesn't come through … Right.
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 3: And one of the reasons for that is like shipping
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 3: containers aren't checked. I think they check like 10 percent
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 3: of shipping containers coming to the United States.
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: That too. But also American citizens that drive it across.
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: A lot of the apprehensions … Oh, yeah. A large
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: percentage is American citizens.
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 3: Michael Douglas, one of the ways he made his money
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 3: when his dad gave him $ 10, 000 when he became of age,
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 3: like this is all you're going to get. The way
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 3: he paid his way through college is he sold marijuana
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 3: and he brought it over. He smuggled. Yeah, he did
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 3: two trips where he smuggled suitcases.
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: Tijuana?
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 3: Suitcases of marijuana. I forget what's– I thought he was
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 3: just taking it from California to New York. Oh. I
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 3: don't think he was bringing it. Wasn't bringing it?
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 4: I don't think so.
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 3: But still, I mean– It's still amazing. Smuggling marijuana.
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 3: That's how he made his money.
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow. I had no idea that he wrote that
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: in the book.
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 3: He's talking about it openly. Yeah. And I'm like, good
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 3: for you for only doing it twice. Like, it's crazy.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: Also, wasn't his dad like a well-known actor at the time?
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Kirk Douglas. Huge. He was Spartacus. Yeah, I know. Yeah.
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 3: Kirk Douglas was huge. I mean, he's like one of
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 3: the biggest actors in the world. But he's like a
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 3: hard ass and he's like, you're going to get $ 10, 000
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 3: and that's it. You're on your own. He's like, I
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 3: have bills. I have student loans. Like fuck you. So
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 3: he smuggled weed.
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: That's so funny. Not at all what I'd expect.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 3: But I mean like weed is a different thing. You're
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 3: not talking about something that's going to kill people.
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 3: The fentanyl thing is insane. I personally know many people
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 3: have died from fentanyl.
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 3: Personally.
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 3: That's awful. It's a very scary thing.
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: Very scary.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 3: And you keep hearing about people in the news. An
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 3: actor or someone, they do this. It turns out it
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 3: was tainted cocaine. Yeah. Tainted this, tainted that, you know?
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. And there's a new drug out there
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: right now called nitazines that is 50 times more powerful
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: than fentanyl and sometimes not. Narcan doesn't solve it and
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: it's not, doesn't show up in test strips.
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 3: What is it?
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: It's called nitazines. It's my next investigation. I'm actually, I'll
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: come back and talk about it.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 3: Who's made this?
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: Also made in Mexico with Mexican, with Chinese precursors.
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah. China doesn't give a fuck. Yeah.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was in Mexico at the
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: beginning of the whole fentanyl deal. It was one of
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: the first stories ever to be done on fentanyl in
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: the U.S. was my story. I'm patting myself on the back, mine,
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: my husband, Darren, and Christina. And I actually went to
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: Mexico and interviewed a guy who told me he was
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: part of a Sinaloa cartel. He told me my uncle
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: basically just hired a Colombian chemist to come here and
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: teach us how to make fentanyl. We paid him $ 40, 000.
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: And now we're making fentanyl. And he showed me– it
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: was a one kilo of heroin mixed with fentanyl because
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: at the beginning they mixed it with heroin. And it
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: was right at the beginning.
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 3: It's crazy.
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: And then to where we're now, no more heroin. It's
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: all fentanyl.
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 3: Well, we met because of your work on the Oxycontin Express.
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, following the opioid crisis.
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 3: I remember watching that, just being stunned because that to
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 3: me– and for people who don't know that story– The
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 3: way they were operating it was Florida had these pain
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 3: management centers and you would go to a pain management
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 3: center and all they were really doing was writing your
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 3: prescriptions for opiates and they didn't have a database. So
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 3: you could just go from one pain management center to
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 3: the next one. And all you had to do is say,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 3: I have a backache. My back hurts. I had a
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 3: back operation. I have a herniated disc. And they would
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 3: just hook you up with pills. And so these people
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 3: would go to dozens of these places. Get bags of
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 3: pills and then drive them north. And it just started
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 3: this addiction chain that went all the way into Kentucky
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 3: and Ohio and that's the OxyContin Express. I just couldn't
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 3: believe that was real. And the courage that you and
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 3: your husband had to do that investigation. And to put
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 3: yourself out there like that and be the face of
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 3: it and like you cost those people billions, billions of dollars.
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 3: If it had not been for you and your investigation,
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 3: who knows how long that whole loophole would have continued.
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, it was– I mean
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: we were– I went inside one of these clinics with
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: a secret camera, films inside. And then we were actually
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: filming outside the biggest, one of the biggest pain clinics
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: there called American Pain. My husband actually ended up doing
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: a documentary about it. It's these twin brothers, the George brothers,
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: who ran the biggest prescription pill operation in American history.
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: They were like the Pablo Escobar of the United States
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: in terms of pills. And we were filming outside their
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: clinic because we went to Kentucky and saw how a
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: lot of the bottles next to overdose bodies were coming
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: from this one clinic, American Pain. So we decided next
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: time in Florida, we're going to film outside. And within minutes,
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: we were accosted by these guys, the brothers, who chase
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: us down 995. I was driving the car. I contacted
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: one of the sheriff's department people that I'd spoken to
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: the day before. And I told her, hey, we're being
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: followed by the American Pain guys. And she said, call
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: 911 right now. You don't want to mess around with
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: these guys. I'm running out of gas in the meantime.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: I stop at a gas station. And they follow me.
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: They come out of the car, start yelling at us.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: I had just watched The Sopranos the night before, so
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: I was like, these guys are going to shoot us
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: in the head right now. So we decided, okay, we
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: have to continue going with almost zero gas. Ran out
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: of gas in the middle of the freeway. Stopped next
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: to the freeway. They parked right behind us. I think
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: they were just confused what's happening. Because I had called 911,
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: they showed up, and they gave an excuse that they
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: thought I was a crazy ex-girlfriend. And it turns out
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: that the FBI and the DEA already had wiretaps on
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: them at the time. Our story and our investigation made
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: it into the wiretaps because they were openly talking about this,
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: how these journalists were messing around where they shouldn't. And
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: they ended up going to federal prison. And my husband
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: did the whole story about the rise and fall of
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: these brothers and interviewed them while they were in prison
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: and after when they were released.
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 3: They've been released.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: They have. But, you know, they did time in federal prison.
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile– How many people died? I mean a lot of
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: people died. The doctors– I don't think any doctor went
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: to prison in that case. I can't remember. But definitely
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: not as many doctors as the ones that were involved
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: in the sales of these clinics. I mean they were
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: seeing– you remember that, right? They were seeing hundreds of
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: patients a day passing on scripts for hundreds of patients.
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: They even came up with a system which was a
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: stamp so that the doctor wouldn't have to sign every prescription.
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: So the stamp would make it faster for him to
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: just give his medication.
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 3: You don't want to inconvenience these poor doctors.
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: But you know who did go to prison. is the
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: pharmaceutical executives, right? Purdue, not one single one had criminal charges,
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: not one single one in the Sackler family. It's insane.
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 3: Well, that's that Netflix documentary docuseries, the docudrama series, pain, uh, painkiller.
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 3: Um, and after that series was released, apparently they were
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 3: reviewing cause they had the Sackler family had like gotten
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 3: some sort of a fine, but one of the, uh,
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 3: one of the, reasons why they were willing to give
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 3: the money was it was going to give them some
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 3: kind of immunity. And so there was talk after that documentary.
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 3: I wonder what happened of that, that that immunity was
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 3: going to be rescinded.
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: They still have it, I think. Oh, maybe it was rescinded.
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: I don't think it was.
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 3: I think they talked about it. And I think it ultimately,
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, still no one's gone to jail. The Sackler family,
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 3: no one's been How many people are they responsible for
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 3: ruining their lives and or dead?
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: A million people have died from the opiate epidemic in
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: the last 20-something years. It's more than in all wars
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: combined in the last 150 years. A million Americans. It's insane.
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 3: I can't recommend that Peter Berg series enough. It's a
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 3: good killer. It's so good and it's really accurate and
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 3: it really shows you how they had these beautiful girls
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 3: go to these clinics and sell this and tell people.
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 3: And this is the new normal. You're just going to
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 3: manage your pain. No problem.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: And the problem wasn't just Purdue, right? The other pharmaceutical
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: companies eventually used the same playbook.
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 3: Okay, here it is. Current status. Following the legal block,
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 3: a new national opioid settlement was reached in January 2025.
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 3: Under this revised agreement, Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers agreed
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 3: to pay $ 7. 4 billion, but significantly the deal stripped the
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 3: Sackler family of future civil immunity. Meaning they can still
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 3: face individual lawsuits. Good. But I mean what is happening
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 3: with them? They're still rich as fuck and they're responsible
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 3: for a million people being dead. It's insane. And not
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 3: just that. Imagine how many people lost their dad, lost
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 3: their wife, lost their family members. How many people's lives
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 3: were destroyed but lived? How many people got addicted, lost
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 3: everything but survived and now live in abject poverty because–
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 3: They were drug addicts because they were told that this
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 3: stuff wasn't addictive.
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: And how many people are still dying because the fentanyl
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: crisis is just a development, an evolution of what was
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: started by these pharmaceutical companies.
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 3: Well, this is the thing again. Like when I was
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 3: a boy, when I was young, when I lived in Massachusetts,
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 3: this … heroin addicts were really rare. It wasn't a
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 3: normal thing for someone to be addicted to opiates. I
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 3: remember my boxing coach was a longshoreman and he worked
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 3: with a guy who had a heroin problem. And this
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 3: guy would get heroin every lunchtime. He would get heroin.
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 3: He would go and sit in his truck. He would
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 3: shoot up and then he'd go back to work. And
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 3: he was a functional heroin addict. But he did it
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 3: every day and worked. And I was like, that's crazy.
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 3: And he was telling me because it was so rare.
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 3: But a guy who's hooked on pills today is normal.
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 3: Everyone has a family member. Everyone knows somebody. Everyone has
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 3: lost somebody. Everyone knows someone who's overdosed. It's insanely common
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 3: and is not. It's not all over the world. It's
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 3: a United States problem. That's what's really crazy. Like they
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 3: don't have an opioid epidemic in a lot of other
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 3: Western countries.
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: They don't. Apparently they're starting to see opiates in some
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: countries in Europe. Oh, they're catching on. Yeah, they're catching on.
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: Several years later they're catching on.
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: It's just– Yeah, it's bananas.
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 3: Do you lose hope in humanity with all these different
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 3: scams and all these different horrible things that you investigate? No.
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: I see broken systems. I see governments that aren't working
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: for the people. I see, you know, unfortunately, politicians that
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: want to gain more power. And I see broken systems.
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: I don't, when talking about, you know, I've spoken to
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: you about this a lot, but when I spend so
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: much of my time talking to the traffickers and the
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: scammers and all the people that we consider the bad guys, right?
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: And more often than not, they are the consequence of
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: broken systems, right? The crushing inequality that exists in the world, again,
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: going back to the 10% living under the poverty line,
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: lack of education, lack of job opportunities, growing up in
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: shitty countries without opportunities and options. And that is, I think,
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: I don't think I know. It's leading a lot of
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: people to work in these black markets and to become
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: traffickers and scammers and all of that. And I think
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: that our tendency is to let's go after them and
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: imprison them and make sure we're using the full might
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: and power of this country and resources to go after
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: these people instead of actually looking at the root cause,
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: whether that's the consumption of drugs, the demand for drugs,
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: or the people that are providing those drugs. If we
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: use some of that money instead of enforcement in actually
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: working on the demand or helping– help me out. Slower
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: the demand. Lower the demand. Sorry. Lower the demand. That's
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: what happens when you talk for so long. If you
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: help them lower– if you work on lowering the demand
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: and you actually– in terms of the people that are
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: operating in these systems– address the reality of the situation,
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: which is inequality and lack of opportunities, I think you'll
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: do a much better job. Yeah, but unfortunately— The money
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: is much better well spent.
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: I think. And the same, I think, with scams and
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: drug trafficking. And yet, do we want drugs in our country?
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 1: We don't. But what's the best way? It's to curb
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: the demand.
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 3: Right. But how do you curb the demand of something
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 3: that is always– like drugs have always been a part
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 3: of our society and there's legal drugs that are a
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 3: part of our society like alcohol. And then there's drugs
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 3: that have always been a part of our society that
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 3: aren't legal but are in demand like cocaine.
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: But let's talk about the opioid crisis, right? What President
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: Trump is doing and saying he's doing is he's fighting
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: the war on fentanyl, right, by going after these boats
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: in the Pacific and these– fishing boats in Ecuador.
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 3: And closing the border.
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: And closing the border, which is fantastic. Agree with closing
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: the border and not allowing criminals in, criminals. But what
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: he's doing at the same time now, unfortunately, is after
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: calling this a public health crisis, which I'm so happy
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: he did, is he's also removing money. I just said
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: this before, removing money from grants for test strips and
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: Narcan and from the treatment centers that actually can curb demand.
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: What people need is access to methadone clinics, to treatment
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: centers and rehab centers that aren't scams. I've reported on
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: scam rehab centers as well that are actually incentivized to
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: treat people. Because without that, we can go– as long
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: as there is demand, there is going to be a supply.
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 3: Yes, unquestionably. I mean one of the things that– I
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 3: don't know if you're aware of this, but I went
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 3: to– the White House with former Governor Rick Perry and
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 3: Brian Hubbard. They're a part of this Ibogaine initiative. And
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 3: that's one thing that I was really happy that Trump
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 3: listened to. And he's willing to do that and he's
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 3: pushing this through. Ibogaine is one of the most effective
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 3: treatments for people that have addictions because it doesn't just
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 3: rewire the way your brain associates drugs and explains to
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 3: you what is causing you to have this problem. Like
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 3: what is this emotional like connection that you have to this?
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 3: What are the problems that you have in your past?
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 3: It gives you like a very bizarre and very intrusive
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 3: overview of your life that apparently is super uncomfortable and
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 3: it's not recreational in any way, shape or form. No
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 3: one is going to do Ibogaine for funsies. It's something
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 3: that people only do when they're– you're on your last
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 3: leg and you're trying to figure out how to survive.
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 3: But it's helped so many soldiers. So many people with
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 3: PTSD and so many people with brain trauma. That's what's
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 3: really interesting. It's helped people with traumatic brain injuries. It's neuroregenerative.
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 3: It does some weird stuff. And I'm like really hoping
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 3: that with this, that it will eventually become profitable for
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 3: them to have Ibogaine clinics. So it's something that will,
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 3: they'll say, well, instead of profiting off of these people
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 3: being addicted to drugs and Some people are going to
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 3: be profiting off of people being completely cured of these problems.
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 3: And so this could in turn change the way people
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 3: interact with drugs, change– and it also opens the door
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 3: for other potential psychedelic therapy uses. Like they know that
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 3: MAPS– Oh, yeah, MAPS. Yeah. So MAPS has done fantastic
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 3: work with MDMA and soldiers who have PTSD. And apparently–
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 3: I mean– It's one of the most effective treatments for
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 3: just coming to grips with the horrors of what you've seen,
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 3: the horrors of war, seeing your friends blown up and
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 3: seeing– just being involved in combat missions. And one of
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 3: the most effective things that MAPS has ever found is
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 3: this MDMA usage and they're pushing this through. So there's
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 3: been many people that are working really hard to try
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 3: to establish legitimate uses for psychedelic drugs that– I mean,
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 3: I don't think we should put drugs into all one
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 3: banner because drugs are, you know, the drugs are meth.
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 3: Drugs are fentanyl. Drugs are that. But drugs are also psilocybin,
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 3: which is shown to have an incredible relief for people
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 3: that are dying of cancer. People that end of life anxiety.
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 3: There's Larry Hagman. Remember him from Dallas? Do you remember
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 3: the show Dallas? OK. Larry Hagman was the main guy. Yeah.
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 3: What was his name on the show? J-R. Oh, J-R. Yes,
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 3: of course. Larry Hagman was on CNN once and they
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 3: were talking to him and they were asking him about death.
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 3: And he said, I really don't have a fear of
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 3: death because I took LSD once and I had this
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 3: incredibly beautiful experience and it relieved me of my fear
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 3: of death. That's one of the things that is a
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 3: positive thing about.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 3: You could call them drugs, but that's just such a
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 3: generalized blanket.
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 3: For all these different substances.
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: And fentanyl and Oxycontin too. They were created to be
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: pharmaceutical drugs that actually have a place. I mean they
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: help– Relieve pain. Yeah, relieve pain. The problem with.
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 3: Them is they're insanely addictive.
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 3: And one of the beautiful things about some things like
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 3: Ibogaine is that they can help people get off of that.
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: So what's the status right now of Ibogaine in the.
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 3: U.S.? They're pushing it through. There's a lot of resistance.
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 3: But Rick Perry and Brian Hubbard are working diligently to
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 3: push this through. And then Trump helped a lot. I
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 3: mean having that conversation with him, I sent him a
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 3: text message and he said, are you looking for FDA approval?
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 3: Sounds good to me. Let's do it. And then next
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 3: thing you know, like a week later, I'm at the
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 3: White House.
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. To talk about our good.
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 3: And we have a press conference and he signs this
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 3: executive order. And so they're pushing it through and he's
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 3: like been very aggressive about it and I really commend
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 3: him for that.
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: It's allowed in Texas right now. Is that right?
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 3: They're doing it in Texas and credit to Dan Patrick
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 3: for also funding that and pushing it through. Although I
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 3: think he does some really ridiculous shit when it comes
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 3: to THC. But the pushing this through, one of the
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 3: best aspects of this is Generally, psychedelic drugs are thought
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 3: of as a left-wing hippie thing, and we're seeing it
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 3: being embraced in the military community because we realize so
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 3: many of these people have sacrificed everything to go over there.
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 3: They've lost loved ones. They've sacrificed a giant portion of
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 3: their life to go there and serve, and they come
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 3: back and there's no help for them. This is one
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 3: of the only things that's been shown to have a really,
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 3: effective result, like really effective, like incredibly effective.
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: It should be accessible to everyone.
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 3: It should be accessible to everyone. And we should study
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 3: it and we should also have clinics where it's administered responsibly.
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 3: And they're doing it in Mexico. There's a place called
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 3: Beyond that's down– I believe it's in the Cancun area
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 3: that has these clinics. And this is a place where
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 3: Rick Perry went and Brian Hubbard went. Shockingly enough, when
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 3: Rick Perry went, he had a brain scan done before
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 3: he did it and they had shown that he has
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 3: normal age-related atrophy of his brain. Normal. It's like he's older.
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 3: Went down there within four weeks, I think, or six weeks.
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 3: Had a massive improvement. Went back six months later. All
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 3: his atrophy is gone.
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 3: It's a crazy substance that is here that can help
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 3: human beings. And it's being thought of as a drug.
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 3: And it's Schedule 1, which is crazy because Schedule 1
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 3: has no legitimate medical use. And clearly it does. And
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 3: that needs to change.
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 3: That's another thing the Trump administration has done with marijuana.
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 3: They're moving marijuana into Schedule 3. So instead of it
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 3: being this thing that has no medical use, well, of
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 3: course it has medical use. It helps cancer patients keep
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 3: their hunger during chemotherapy. It gives people relief of pain.
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 3: For some people, it helps them with anxiety. There's a
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 3: lot of benefits to it. Can it be abused? Yes.
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 3: So can cheeseburgers. You can eat cheeseburgers until you fucking–
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 3: have a heart attack and die. It doesn't mean we
• 2:19:23
  Speaker 3: should ban cheeseburgers. It means people need to understand what's
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 3: responsible use of whatever it is, whether it's food, sugar, alcohol.
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of all those things. I think
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 3: you should be able to eat whatever you want. You
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 3: should be able to drink alcohol if you like, but.
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 3: Some people aren't good at it and they need to
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 3: have help. And so we need to develop– just like
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 3: we did in Portugal, develop these centers. But then it
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 3: gets to the question of, OK, there is a giant
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 3: demand for cocaine in this country. And they're getting fentanyl,
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 3: laced cocaine, cocaine that's cut with a bunch of other
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 3: shit that's not good for you. Should cocaine be legal?
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 3: Like is cocaine a real problem? I don't know. I've
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 3: never done it. I haven't either. I don't– but I
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 3: know a lot of people that get addicted to it. Yeah.
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 3: But here's the other thing. Coca leaves, not a problem.
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: No. And used a lot.
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 3: Yes. Ecuador. And apparently very beneficial.
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: Super.
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 3: And is good for energy and helps people do things
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 3: and they just chew coca leaves or they have tea.
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 3: They have mate de coca. It's a tea.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: When you go to Peru to Machu Picchu, they give
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: you a lot of coca tea because it helps you
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: in high altitude.
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 3: Well, that's high altitude herders. They chew coca leaves. It's ubiquitous.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 3: Why is that? What are we doing?
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 3: Is it okay to like have the fucking cartels make
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 3: that stuff and send it across? I mean, look, you
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 3: went to Colombia.
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 3: And you watched them make cocaine, which was one of
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 3: the one episodes where I was so terrified for you.
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 3: I was like, please don't do this, Mariana. Why do
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 3: you want to do this? That one freaked me out
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 3: because you're there while they're using all those horrible chemicals.
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: It was insane. Wasn't it insane?
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 3: Insane. And then you march out through the jungle with
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 3: them when they deliver the cocaine.
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: Fast because, yeah, I mean from the– place where they're
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: actually mixing it all, we had to get out of
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: there fast because the locals had seen cameras and we
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: had to– remember we had to run out of the
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: jungle without a light in the middle of the night
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: in the Amazon. That was insane. And then, yeah, and
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: then we filmed with the kids. That was a literally
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: sad story actually. One of the kids that was called–
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: he was the backpacker dude who had to haul dozens
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: of kilos of cocaine in his back days in, days out.
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, really dangerous work, seen
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 1: many of his friends being killed. And I asked him,
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: why do you do this kind of work? He said,
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: I always wanted to go to college. I wanted to
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: be a dentist. My family is very poor. They're farmers.
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: I can't afford to pay for college. So this is
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: the only job opportunity I get that I can save
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: money to eventually become a dentist. I said, why do
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: you want to be a dentist? Because all the ads
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: that I see in my hometown are these big sort
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: of posters with people with big smiles for dentist's office.
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: And I want to make people smile too.
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 1: Such a sweet, sour story.
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 3: Meanwhile, he's selling Coke.
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, he's bringing Coke that comes to the United States. Yeah,
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: it's crazy.
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 3: It's a really complicated issue. And the thing about people
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 3: in Mexico will tell you that this problem exists because
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 3: of the demand for these drugs in the United States.
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 3: So what do you do about that? Do you make
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 3: drugs decriminalized like Portugal?
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: I think that is one of the paths. I really
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: do think you have to start investing a lot of
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: money in treatment centers, in access to drugs like ibogaine
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: and buprenorphine and methadone. And just there's– yeah. Even if
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 1: it's just like 10 percent of the money that you
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: spend on enforcement, let's put that on actually treating the
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: demand side of it. That will make a huge difference.
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: It's really– it's not rocket science I think. I just
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: don't understand what's taken so long.
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean there's so many people that are lost
• 2:23:08
  Speaker 3: and drugs give them the only good feelings that they get.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 3: That's what's really sad. Yeah. You know, I talked to
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 3: this guy once who's a drug addict and one of
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 3: the saddest things he said to me, it's like drugs
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 3: are the only thing that make me happy. Yeah. He goes,
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 3: I don't have drugs. What do I have?
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit like scams actually in a way, right?
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 1: It's like scams, like having this person that I talked
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: to is the only thing that keeps me happy.
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 3: So the real work should be done on fortifying human
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 3: beings and make them a viable part of society with
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 3: like real community and love and, And teach people how
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 3: to live like that. And that's part of what's ailing
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 3: us is that we're all broken, which is why we
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 3: need drugs.
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: And then if we fail and messed up, which we
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: all will eventually, there is a system there to hold
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: us and help us and a government that is interested
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 1: in protecting us.
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 3: That would be nice. That would be so nice. But
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 3: the problem is that's not profitable. All right. Thank you, Jeff.
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 3: Let's wrap it up. Bye, everybody.
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 4: Bye.