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Mariana van Zeller (2025) - Inside the $150 Billion Black Market · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Today we're doing a deep dive
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  into some really incredible source material covering the
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  work of investigative journalist Mariana Van Zeller.
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  She spent, what, 20 years reporting on this stuff?
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  Yeah, 2 decades. And our mission here is to
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  really unpack what she found about these huge global black
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  and Gray markets, the, you know, the corruption, the crises she
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  uncovered. It's pretty eye opening.
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  It really is. And the scale she talks about
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  the hidden third. That phrase alone tells you
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  something. Right.
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  The idea that an estimated 35%, a third of the entire global
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  economy is just operating in the shadows, unregulated, untaxed.
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  35%, it's, it's not some niche thing, it's fundamental and we
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  should probably quickly distinguish right black market
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  versus Gray market. Good point.
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  So black market is the illegal stuff?
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  Yeah. Drugs, guns, human trafficking,
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  the things we typically think of.
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  Exactly. And the Gray market is, well,
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  it's asked. It's the unregulated side,
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  untaxed work, cash jobs, maybe the guy selling fruit on the
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  corner. We talked about earlier stuff
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  that isn't strictly illegal, like selling heroin, but it's
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  outside the formal taxed economy.
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  And that starves governments, right?
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  Less money for schools, roads, healthcare.
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  Absolutely. Now, if we just look at the
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  black market side for a SEC, the drug trade, the numbers are just
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  astronomical, anywhere from 300 billion up to maybe $600
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  billion. A year, 600 billion.
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  That's like the GDP of a whole country.
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  All illegal. It's mind boggling.
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  OK, but how does she even get, I mean, getting cartel members,
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  traffickers to talk on camera about active crimes?
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  That seems almost impossible. What's the secret there?
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  Well it's not one single thing based on the sources she points
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  to. Maybe 3 main reasons people
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  talk. First one, pure ego.
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  Yeah, especially like the mid level guys, the chemist who
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  perfects the Sentinel recipe, the smuggler who finds a new
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  route, the guy finishing counterfeit bills.
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  They've mastered this illegal craft and deep down they kind of
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  want to show it off. They want recognition, even if
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  it's from a journalist. Validation even in crime.
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  OK, what else? 2nd is impunity in places with
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  really deep corruption, say parts of Mexico she reported
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  from. If you're protected, if you've
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  paid off the right people, talking to a journalist might
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  seem less risky than, you know, crossing someone inside the
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  cartel. Makes sense.
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  The internal threat is bigger. And the third reason?
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  This one's maybe more human, she said.
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  A lot of them just want to be understood.
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  Not excuse, maybe, but understood.
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  They don't want to just be seen as the bad guy.
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  They want people to see the circumstances, the path that led
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  them there. That connects to those powerful
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  stories she tells, like the teenager in the jungle.
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  Oh yeah, the what? Was he 16 or 17, carrying 20
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  kilos of cocaine? 20 kilos.
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  Just a kid. And why?
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  To earn money for dental school? His family was too poor.
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  That's what MVZ really tries to get at.
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  I think that question of could this have been me?
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  Could it have been you under different circumstances?
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  It's that link between sheer desperation and this highly
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  sophisticated criminal world, like her access to the Sinaloa
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  Cartel, that wasn't easy. No way she needed a local fixer,
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  Miguel Vega, and crucially, the OK from the very top bosses.
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  And the security Phones off masks, long sleeves to cover
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  tattoos. It's serious business.
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  And that business doesn't just stop at the border, does it?
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  It reaches right into the US. She talked to an American
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  wholesaler, El Gringo. Yeah, an American citizen, and
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  he laid out how the distribution works inside the US A lot of it
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  surprisingly moves via commercial airlines.
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  Wait, like major airlines people just checking bags full of
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  drugs? Apparently so.
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  Delta was specifically mentioned in the source material and kind
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  of darkly ironic. The reason cited was their
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  convenient baggage fees. You're kidding.
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  Baggage fees? Not kidding.
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  And the mules carrying it? Often strippers flying from the
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  West Coast to the East Coast. The cartels logic was that women
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  might attract less suspicion from TSA or cops.
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  That's wow, using the mundane systems we all rely on.
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  It speaks volumes about how embedded this is.
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  But it's not just cartels, right?
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  She also uncovered huge fraud happening right here in the US,
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  tied to the addiction crisis, the whole rehab scam.
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  Oh, absolutely. A massive domestic crisis fueled
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  by fraud. She spoke to an insurance fund
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  investigator. His estimate was that at least
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  10% of the rehab centers in places like California and
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  Arizona are probably scams, and he thought that was lowballing
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  it. 10% of thousands of facilities, that's a lot of
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  fraud and it revolves around this term body brokering.
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  What does that actually mean? It sounds awful.
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  It is awful. It's literally the buying and
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  selling of addicts. They target people, often
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  vulnerable groups like Native Americans, who might have easier
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  access to certain health plans, like the Indian American Health
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  Plan. So they target people for their
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  insurance and then what? How do they make money?
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  They lure the men with things they should like offering free
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  housing, but only if the addict signs up for treatment.
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  Then the fake sender bills the insurance company for outrageous
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  amounts for therapy. Maybe just a giant zoom call
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  with 600 people, or sometimes nothing at all, just collecting
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  checks. Unbelievable.
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  And the money involved? One place she looked into was
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  making something like $870,000 a week from exploiting addiction
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  and insurance loopholes. $870,000 a week.
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  It's just staggering, profiting off misery on that scale.
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  And meanwhile, the actual drug crisis is getting even worse
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  this trink. Dope.
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  Yeah, trink dope. That's fentanyl mixed with
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  xylazine. It was basically an animal
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  tranquilizer they added to make the high last longer.
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  But the effects are horrific. Absolutely devastating.
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  It causes these terrible necrotic wounds.
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  Gangrene leads to amputations. She reported from Kensington in
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  Philadelphia, where the impact is just brutal.
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  People walking around with open sores, like we'll use the term
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  zombies. It's a nightmare.
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  And we have to remember the context here. the US is the
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  world's biggest drug consumer, right?
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  According to her sources, We spend something like $150
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  billion a year on illegal drugs. We're driving the demand.
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  We absolutely are. That $150 billion fuels so much
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  of the black market she investigates, which brings us
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  back to that hidden third idea. If the black market is that big,
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  what about the Gray market? Right.
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  The rest of that 35%, which is actually the bigger chunk, isn't
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  it Maybe 1520% black market, the rest Gray?
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  Yeah, the Gray market is enormous.
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  And she dove into that, too, looking at things like
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  counterfeit currency in Peru. The fake dollars in euros.
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  Tell us about the detail involved there.
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  It sounded almost artisanal. It really did.
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  She described meeting this guy, the finisher.
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  She called him Ronaldo. He had this whole process for
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  making the fake bills look and feel old used.
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  How did he do? That get this he used a kind of
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  porridge made from cornmeal or cereal and a toothbrush to scuff
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  up the paper, mimic the texture, the wear and tear of real money
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  that's been passed around. He wasn't trying to pass off
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  crisp new fakes, but ones that looked believably circulated.
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  That's incredibly clever psychology, almost.
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  And where do these fakes end up? Distributed carefully, they
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  avoid big chains like Walmart where detection might be higher.
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  Instead they hit smaller towns, local grocery stores.
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  They exchange the fakes for real cash, usually getting back
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  around $0.70 on the dollar in genuine currency.
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  So 70% profit margin on fake money in this Gray market.
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  The untaxed labor side connects back to the US economy in
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  complex ways too. Doesn't.
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  It hugely The sources mentioned that undocumented immigrants,
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  who are often part of this Gray economy, paid almost $97 billion
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  in taxes in 2022. Federal, state, 8 local.
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  It's not a simple picture of people just taking there's a
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  massive, often unacknowledged economic contribution happening
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  there too. 97 billion. That's a number you don't hear
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  often in that debate. Okay, shifting from physical
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  fakes to digital ones. Modern scams.
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  Pig butchering. The name itself is terrifying.
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  It is, and it perfectly describes the scam.
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  It's usually crypto based. The scammer built a
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  relationship, often romantic, online, with the victim, the
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  pig. Over months, maybe even a year,
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  they fatten them up with trust and affection.
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  And then comes the butchering. Exactly.
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  Once the trust is absolute, they convince the victim to invest
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  money, often everything they have.
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  Draining 4 O1 KS, refinancing homes into a fake crypto
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  platform, then poof, somebody's gone.
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  And this isn't just one person in a basement.
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  These are organized operation. Oh yeah, Massive operations run
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  out of these guarded compounds like factories in places like
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  Cambodia, Myanmar. They're called scam factories.
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  Factories. What goes on inside?
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  It's essentially modern slavery. They lure people there with fake
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  job offers, tech support, translation jobs.
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  Once they arrive, passports are taken.
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  They're trapped, often beaten, tortured, forced to work around
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  the clock, scamming people, mostly in the US and Europe.
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  It's human trafficking fuel digital fraud.
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  That's horrific. And the scale.
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  Billions. Authorities recently seized $15
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  billion from just one of these crypto scam groups, 15 billion.
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  And the victims? It's not always who you'd
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  expect, right? Wasn't there a case involving a
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  bank CEO? Yeah, Kansas bank CEO.
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  He got caught in the pig butchering scam himself, lost
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  his own money, then the scammers convinced him he could win it
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  all back plus more if he just kept investing using bank funds.
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  He ended up stealing $47 million from customer accounts before he
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  was caught. 47 million from a bank CEO.
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  It shows how psychologically manipulative these scams are.
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  They prey on that hope, that desperation to just get back to
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  even. Exactly.
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  It overrides everything else, even professional judgement.
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  MV ZS work also wades into the really charged political
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  territory here in the US, especially around immigration
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  and the border. She looked at militias on both
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  sides. She did.
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  She spent time with the right wing groups down on the border,
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  some looking almost like Border Patrol themselves, and she also
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  covered left wing groups like the Black Cat rifle group.
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  But the really striking thing wasn't their differences, it was
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  what they had in common, their justification.
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  Both sides, according to her reporting, gave the exact same
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  reasons for arming themselves for training.
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  They were doing it to protect their community, their way of
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  life, their ideology from the other side.
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  So it's this perfect feedback loop of fear and tribalism.
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  Each side sees the other as the threat which justifies their own
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  existence and actions. Precisely.
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  It just fuels the division, and that division has real human
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  consequences, especially at the border.
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  Remember the story of Estella Enori.
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  The mother and daughter from Guatemala.
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  Yeah, heartbreaking. Fleeing gang rape.
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  Applying for asylum. Legally, doing everything by the
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  book, and then when they show up for a routine check in at the
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  courthouse, they're just detained, deported immediately.
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  And the mother died back in Guatemala, didn't she, because
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  she couldn't get her medication? Yeah, denied essential medicine.
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  It just highlights the the brutal reality behind the policy
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  sometimes. And MVZ even heard suggestions
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  that maybe, maybe the chaos is intentional, that some
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  politicians don't want to solve immigration.
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  That was a chilling point from the sources.
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  Yeah. The idea that the ongoing
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  controversy, the crisis, actually helps certain
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  politicians raise money, keep their base energized, stay in
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  power. So there's no real incentive to
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  find a solution, just perpetuate the problem.
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  So when you pull back and look at everything she covered from
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  like the Sackler family and the opioid crisis, you know,
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  billionaires essentially buying their way out of accountability
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  for over a million deaths. Over 1,000,000 deaths in 20
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  years from opioids. Yeah, all the way to these poor
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  souls forced into labor in scam compounds in Asia.
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  Yeah. What's the common thread?
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  It really seems to be about systemic failure and greed,
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  doesn't it? At every level, global forces of
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  corruption, praying on vulnerability, on desperation.
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  It's all interconnected. So where does that leave us?
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  What can we take away? She ended her reflections with a
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  really powerful thought about unity, didn't she?
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  About 911. She did.
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  She recalled that incredible feeling right after 911, how
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  Americans came together. There was this outpouring of
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  love, support, unity. That didn't last.
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  No, we pretty quickly went back to fighting each other.
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  And she made this stark comparison.
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  About 3000 people died on 9/11, a horrific, visible tragedy that
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  united the country. But she pointed out, roughly
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  3000 people die every single week in America from drug and
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  alcohol addiction. Every week. 3000 a week.
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  Wow. It's this ongoing silent
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  catastrophe, but it doesn't generate that same collective
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  response, that same empathy, that same urgency.
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  So the challenge is why? Why does it take a single
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  shocking event to make us feel connected, but we struggle to
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  address the constant grinding crises driven by addiction,
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  poverty, desperation, the very things fueling these black and
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  Gray markets that. Seems to be the core question
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  she leaves us with. Can we find that empathy, that
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  drive for solutions to address the root causes of global chaos,
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  the drug trade, the scams, the forced migration, without just
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  retreating into our corners and blaming the other side?
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  Can we look past the political jerseys and see the human cost?