July 15, 2016 • 53 mins
In the first part of this two-episode series, the guys interview the legendary US Customs and Drug Enforcement agent Robert Mazur. Using the cover identity of Bob Musella, Mazur and his team tracked the shadowy financial dealings of drug traffickers all the way to the international bank that aided them - and brought that bank down. Listen in as Mazur gives an eyewitness account of his harrowing experience, close calls, ultimate victory and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers. Since government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events, you can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
(00:22):
is Noel. I'm Ben. You are you that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know? But not the
average episode of stuff they don't want you to know?
Isn't that right? Guess we've got a little added value
here in this particular pair of episodes. This is this
our first ever two partner Uh No, I don't think so.
I know we've we split DARPA up into two and
(00:43):
there were a couple other ones that we well, this
is definitely our first ever two part interview episode. It's
true about the same thing. So, by way of explanation,
ladies and gentlemen, you have heard Matt Nolan I refer
to uh or allude to various adventures that we've taken
or new things that we said we're coming or we're
(01:04):
on the way. We get around, we get around and uh,
this time we got around too. Uh. We got around
to a part of the world, at least socially speaking,
that we haven't really explored into much depth, and that
was a it concerned a tale that is stranger than fiction.
(01:30):
So you've heard of undercover operations, right, Like, what what
exactly is an undercover operation? It's pretty simple. One person
who is usually in law enforcement in some way, pretends
to be let's say, uh, a nefarious gang member from
a different part of town or new to town. But
(01:51):
I'm in all this bad stuff like I I like
to let's say, launder money or maybe deal drugs, maybe
torture kittens. Yeah, do one of those things get in
with a crew like low level maybe something like that.
And that's a distinction that we need to make right
up front. There are certainly different kinds of undercover operations.
Some might just be for a particular sting where you
(02:15):
have a cop posing as as one of these various
types you mentioned. But what we're talking about today is
long term, deep undercover operations, which is a whole another
ball game, a very dangerous one indeed. So just to
illustrate the difference pretty quickly, one of the rules has
always keep things as close to the truth as possible
(02:37):
so you don't compromise your actual identity. So Matt Frederick,
then for instance, if is there, okay, if we make
you street level, sure, okay. So Matt Frederick then is
assigned to do some street level infiltration of maybe someone's
selling what's a drug? Well, I have to go in
(02:57):
and infiltrate stringer bells like low level crew. So I've
got again get in with the the group who's selling
drugs out of the apartment. Yeah. So okay, so you
become Matt Frederick is gone and replaced by Murdoch Farnsworth.
(03:18):
That name I've ever heard of my life, Murdoch Farnsworth.
I think people just call your Murdoch. Murdoch Farnsworth has
a c I or an informant who comes along with
him to vouch for him from their days in an
outlaw biker gang or something. Right, And the weird thing
is that at some points, uh, Murdoch is going to
(03:41):
have to do things that Matt Frederick would never do,
you know, properly sample a drug at some point, possibly
because there's a lot of the streets order people might stuff, yeah,
other illegal stuff, aiding a bets uh crimes, maybe rough
someone up to to show that you are Murdoch. Possible
even witness a murder that you could have prevented. Possibly
(04:04):
possibly not, because you know, I'm a little squeamish, and
the line blurs. And this line is even blurrier if
we take, for instance, uh, Noel Brown, and while Matt
Frederick is working at the street level operation, let's say
Noel Brown is infiltrating a human trafficking ring. This is
(04:26):
even stickier human trafficking ring because let's see he changes
his name. What's his name now, Matt Nicholas Barnaby, Yes,
Nicholas Barnaby, two first names, Nick Nicholas Barnaby, a well
old money, wealthy philanthropist who has and philanderer who has
(04:46):
decided that the only people you could trust in this
world are people that you own. And so he is infiltrating. Uh.
Sadly this is true because of Hartsfield Airport here in Atlanta.
It is a hub for human trafficking, so is you.
You would see, hopefully, ladies and gentlemen, how this undercover
(05:08):
steing kind of stuff can happen as an little set
for variety of recents. So we've got Murdoch on there
for maybe a few months, right, pulling everyone you can
maybe nab somebody, maybe the maybe there's something political where
you're involved, where they say, okay, now we need the
Bust because someone's coming up for election, which unfortunately happens.
(05:28):
But in the other case, we we have Mr Barnaby.
I am like embedded in this world. Yeah, yeah, I
am make I am playing the long game. I am
making connections, meeting people above those connections, and doing everything
in my power to make it as high up the
chain as possible so that I can turn those people
into my um the people that I answered to. And
(05:50):
should you, should either of you survive, Uh, this strange
and terrifying thing is that neither of you will will
be able to live fully return to your natural life
because there will always be concerns for your safety. Right.
What's going to happen when uh, the foreign connection for
(06:14):
whatever drug empire Murdoch Bust learns that Murdoch Farnsworth is fictitious,
but someone who looks a lot like them lives in
the same area. Sure, even if we successfully put people
away for years, maybe even a life sentence for twenty years,
in the future, those people will be out of jail. Well,
(06:36):
not only that, I mean if watching shows like oz
or you know the Sopranos teaches you anything, it's that
being in prison is not the end all be all.
You still have associates on the outside that you can
communicate with quite easily, especially if you're uh, you know,
a big player, and in that scene, you are protected
and you are surrounded by your people in prison, and
(06:58):
it's very easy to get a mess of gilt to
put out a hit, even from prison. So why are
we beating around the bush with all of this fantasy. Yes,
excellent question. Perhaps we're more painting the background of the
picture of today's topic, which is undercover policing, which which
(07:20):
is uh, these sting operations, these long term embedded things,
Ladies and gentlemen, Matt and Noel and I spoke with
someone who has done this in real life, and uh,
during the course of our interview, we've got a first
hand look at how these how these operations occur, both
(07:42):
of the good and the bad. And we do want
you to know that, due to security concerns, we have
had to mask this person's voice. Uh. This man's name
is Robert Maser. Now, last Friday, Ben and Alan I
got to go and see a film, The Infiltrator, which
is based on the book that this man, Robert Maser
(08:05):
wrote about his time infiltrating the the Medine cartel in Colombia. Now,
this show is going to focus a lot on that
film and what we saw and the experiences, because it
is based on what this guy actually did, and you're
going to see as we get into some of these questions,
(08:27):
he's kind of separating what became the film as opposed
to what was, you know, his real life and what
he experienced. Fascinating in and of itself, because it's how
cool was it to be able to talk to the
subject of a biopic like this and say, hey, so,
what's up with that scene where you had to go
into the Santa Ria Temple and um, you know, be
(08:49):
kind of given a test by you know, this practitioner
Padrino exactly, and you know what, how did that really
go down? This is a question that you will hear.
And just just to give you a little context the
scene that happened in the movie where this band is
being vetted by these high level drug officials spoiler it's
a little bit of a spoiler alert, But I just
wanted to give you a sense of how cool it
(09:11):
was to be able to separate what happened in the
film with what happened in real in the actual operation,
the course of the operation, and there's a lot of
moments like that. It's a great film. I really would
recommend it. It was a lot. It reminded me kind
of had the the feel of Good Fellas in a
way that kind of really dynamic, interesting kind of um
ensemble cast. And it was very funny. It moves very
(09:33):
quickly and it doesn't pull any punches. It really gives
you a sense there's no glorification of either what this
man is doing, because he has to do some pretty
intense stuff in the name of his operation and getting
it done. And then of course you see the havoc
that drugs and drug violence and smuggling and money laundering
(09:55):
can wreak on people's lives. So Robert Maser began something
called Operation ce Chase, and with a team at its
height hundreds and hundreds of people. Uh, he and his
group did something extraordinary at the time, which is they
(10:15):
began to follow the financial footprints rather than the narcotic footprints,
by which we mean they didn't just start chasing cocaine
shipments from c I s or whatever or can you
know informants. What they started doing was finding out what
(10:35):
banks handled, what money, where it went, how it changed hands.
And over the course of this he became Bob Maser,
became somebody named Bob Mussela. We were given the opportunity
to interview Mr Maser because of his involved in this movie.
Um An agency reached out to us and asked if
we were interested in speaking with him, and it was
(10:56):
something we just could not pass up. And while the
infiltrator did not sponsor this episode, we do have a
sponsor and we're going to get to that now and
then get right into the interview with Mr Maser. So,
(11:16):
first things first, Mr Maser, how satisfied are you with
the adaptation of the story? Well, you know, um, and
I'm not say that. You know, it's very difficult for
me to compare because we're talking apples and oranges, you know,
those films for entertainment. UM. And my book is my
attempt to tell my version of the truth. And I
(11:39):
say it that way because you know, this was no
individual effort. This was a team effort by about two
and fifty At the height of the operation, about two
fifty people, so and I think if you asked each
of them to write a book, you'd probably have some variations.
And it's not because anyone's not being truthful, just because
they have their own perspectives. And this for me, Um,
(12:01):
you know, I think that the film adaptation certainly brings
across a lot of the the issues that need to
be brought across. And of course when they want to
go from point to point B if it took me
five steps to do it, they just obviously can't do
it in d medium. But um, they get to the
(12:22):
end point. And I think deliver um the type of
end result on a given topic, like the the relationship
between let's say the me Brian Cranston and Benjamin Bratt
in the film. You know, some of the things that
are in there that are that build to helping the
(12:44):
movie goer to recognize that this is um beyond just
an undercover agent and a bad guy dealing together and
and being an undercover agent causes you to have to
to build some bonds with with a person. Um is different.
It happened a little bit differently with me, but the
(13:07):
end result is still the same. You you still had
a recognition by both characters that you got to know
each other over a period of time, and that that
involves much more than just um the give clinical contact
as undercover agent and bad guy. If if, if I'm
getting through on that, It's so fascinating to me. This
(13:27):
is known by the way UM watching this film and
thinking of it in kind of a meta sense where
you know, clearly we're watching this very excellent character actor
Brian Cranston play this role of a man that is
essentially being a character actor and playing a role and
having to disappear into a part um. I just find
that very fascinating. I'm just wondering if that aspect of
(13:48):
it felt, did it ring true to you? Just the
the need to completely disappear into these covert characters that
you're essentially creating. Yeah, you know. And And to bring
up a good point about character, because the character that
I created, because when I was trained to be a
long term undercover agents and I was an agent traditional
(14:12):
in a traditional sense for fourteen years before I went
through the undercover school and then began to develop um
the undercover identity of Robert Mosella. But one of the
things that was taught to me right from the very
beginning UM. It was that I really needed to build
a persona that would put me in a position to
(14:32):
lie the least so because it's so hard to keep
track over years period of time if you're not naturally
working within your own skin and so to speak. So
I'm originally from New York. I have previously before working
for law enforcement, I worked at a bank, and then
I worked in a brokerage firm, and I UM. I
(14:55):
have some of the family experiences that I lived in
the neighborhood and was in around some people who were
UM certainly connected to another part of the world. And
I then I became connected with UM and and so
I had a sense of what Italian American organized crime
was about, and and so I didn't really have to
(15:18):
That's that's what Bob Mascella had in him too. Bob
Masell I was was a guy who had my My
degree was in business administration finance, and I had a
heavy emphasis in accounting, and and so was Bob Macella.
He was a guy who uh knew how to deal
in the business world and had a financial background. Then
(15:39):
was from the New York area and had these connections
with organized crime, and so a lot of that stuff
is stuff that I was very very comfortable with. I
didn't create a persona where you know, I would turn
on a switch and now I was this big, flamboyant
guy that, UM, that was a completely different person My personality,
(15:59):
I think, UM, that I portrayed was probably similar to
what UM, my real personality is. I think you know,
at least what I would hear back from the traffickers
about why they were interested in doing business with me,
It was because I was stable, I was I knew
about the things that they didn't know about in the
(16:20):
financial markets. I was cautious, UM, I was low key. UM.
All of those things were very important to them. And
all of those things, those things were really a part
about Masor. And this this is a this is a
fascinating aspect of the story because, as you say, being
(16:41):
in someone else's skin for the duration of this operation
that the operation specifically cited is called c chase. And
one thing that really impacted us and impacts our audience
as well, is the recognition of just how long term
(17:02):
this operation became. Could could you tell us in our
audience a little bit about the origin or the genesis
of C Chase and Bob Masella sure well, having worked
on a multi agency task force that's whose principal responsibility
(17:23):
was attempting to identify the commanding control of the cartels
as well as identifying the problem the money launderers who
were servicing the commanding control. UM. We had been using
search warrant's wire taps, historical witnesses, that type of thing,
(17:43):
and came to the conclusion um, and I was really
blessed with working with the leadership that was willing to
hear out the idea of this plan. Um. UM. My
view was, and it was shared by a few of
my colleagues, that the best way to accomplish our goal
(18:03):
was to infiltrate their money wandering systems, and that that
was embraced. So that got me through the undercover schools.
That got me through then about eighteen months of time
where we put together the undercover front and that was
put together with the help of several informants and concerned citizens. Um.
(18:26):
There were two guys that were informants of mine who
were um we would call them in in the underworld,
knock around guys. They didn't work for any one particular crew,
but they were certainly part of a family and um,
they they they they're under their Their organized crime contacts
(18:47):
enabled us to be able to use certain businesses. Actually,
both those guys played the roles in the undercover operation.
From time to time I would bring them in in
cameos as my cousins. And one of guys used to
be a bodyguard for a capo in a crime family.
And you can't. I mean he would walk in a
room and people would look at him and nobody had
(19:10):
to say anything. They immediately recognized what he was really
all about, very much like the dominic figure in the
movie UM that is played by Joe Gillen. And Uh.
The other guy was much more polished and had some
Wall Street contacts and um, and then we also had
an informant from Columbia. And then I had a couple
(19:34):
of lifelong friends of mine who were bankers and brokers
who enabled me to establish accounts at various institutions. UM.
This took about an eighteen month period of time, and
as I emerged from that, I was embedded in real
businesses a finance company, a mortgage brokerage business. We had
(19:55):
a air shorter service with a private jet, a jewelry
chain with thirty locations on the East coast, and even
a brokerage firm with a seat on the New York
Stock Exchange. So I didn't have to be the best
undercover agent in the world. I was less with leadership
that gave me the latitude to put that together. And
then UM, we were waiting for a unique opportunity to
(20:19):
use the trojan horse that was built and lo and
behold my gentleman who became my partner and is now
a brother to me, Amir Obray who played by John
Leguizambo in the movie. UM had an informant who had
made connections with a money broker, that money broker being
someone who personally knew members of the Ochoa family who
(20:44):
were sitting on a Median kartel and who was trying
to get himself well established in the money landering business.
So with with that opportunity, we engaged the Trojan horse
and marched into the Median cartel. And it took about
two years to get to the end. UM, and and
(21:04):
believe me, along the way, we were very lucky. Um.
Sometimes they say it's better to be lucky than good,
and I'm proof of that. Uh. The good things that
happened along the way. For example, UM, the people in
the cartel wanted me to pay out in dollar accounts,
but they preferred that they beat dollar accounts established in
(21:26):
institutions in Panama. For obvious reasons, accessed by US law
enforcement was more restricted. So I needed to open that up.
And I had just happened to be driving through downtown
Tampa and noticed this big bull sign. That's that Bank
of Credit and Commerce International b c C I and
assumed that they must have the ability to help you
(21:50):
bank in in their foreign locations. I didn't really know
much about the bank, so I called and like anyone
else who approaches an international inc. That has a private
client division, UM, I was asked to provide a resume,
copies of bank statements, UM, copies of I needed references
(22:10):
in the bank and business world. UM. I had all
that stuff. I needed to have a million dollars at
that I could potentially they could manage. All of that
was verifiable and UM. And I was invited to have
a meeting at the bank. And I mean, here's an
example of lucky instead of good. UM. I go in
and I sit down, and UM, the guy asked me
(22:32):
what it is I'm looking for. And I explained, well,
you know, most of my clients are from Medie in
Columbia and they have businesses, they have business activity here
in the United States that generates a huge, huge amount
of capital and it's my responsibility to help them to
move that money in a very discreet and quiet way.
And um and I didn't get much past all of that,
(22:55):
and the guy said to me, what do you do
You think you'll have a need because I was telling
them about moving money in from Panama to buy real
estate in the US. And he said, you think you'll
have a need to move it in the other direction
And I said, well, yeah, there's no doubt about that.
And then they broke into this discussion about well, I
know what you're talking about. That's the black money market.
(23:15):
And we have clients like you that have sensitive clients
and and we were helping them to open accounts and
grand came and until this treaty was signed with the
US government. Um, and I knew the treaty. The treaty
had to do with turning bank records over in drug cases.
And he said, you know, but we're now we're recommending Panama.
And ultimately he drifted into saying, well, you know, you've
(23:38):
got to be careful when the stupid people get caught,
get yourself involved in cash businesses. You've got to cover
to take in the cash. And I left that meeting
and went contacted my office and said, you're not not
going to believe the meeting I just had. This is
like every red flag I've ever been taught in my
entire government career, uh to look for. And this is
(23:59):
not an endo vidual bank are looking to do something
against management. This is this sounds like an institutional plan
and lo and behold. Over probably a year and a
half period of time, I was able to uh get
the evidence through discussions with more than a dozen senior
(24:19):
bank officials at that bank about the bank's institutional plan
to market the underworld. Um, that sounds like an easy
thing to do and was. But but it was amazing.
How lucky breaks, you know. I guess some people say
luck is just being well planned for the opportunity when
(24:39):
it comes by. And the opportunity came. Um again, really
when we opened up an account in Panama and one
of the checks written by one of the bad guys,
because I would just signed the checks one of the
checks written by the bad guys, um was filled out improperly.
It was supposed to be for let's just for example,
(25:00):
say say a hundred and three thousand, and then it
was written in words a hundred three thousand, in numbers
a hundred three thousand, five hundred. And so the officer
assigned to my account in Panama called me and said
what amounts should be honor? And I said, well, you
probably know I can't answer that. I'll have to call
Columbia and I'll call you back. And I did, and
(25:21):
I explained what the amount was to pay, and he
said to me, Um, you know we need to meet
because you're gonna get caught. And uh, there's a lot
better way to do what you're doing. And so there
was no doubt in my mind that the people managing
my account in Panama could tell, just from the movements
and the accounts, that we were marketing Narco dollars on
(25:44):
the black money market. And because of that mistake, back
up flushed out. He came to Miami, we sat down.
Of course, all these conversations were being recorded, and um,
he explained how it is that I could better laundered
UG money. And then and then I said to him, well,
it's great, you're getting back on a plane and going
(26:04):
back to Panama. Um, I'm here in Florida. And if
there's a problem and I need to see someone quickly,
are there any people in your Miami office that are
on your team handling these kinds of sensitive accounts. And
at that stage she said yes, and there were two people,
and he named them. And when I called back to
the office and explained that one of them was a
fellow named Amada One, all the bills and whistles between
(26:27):
Florida and Washington went off because that was a financial
advisor that UM the US government was eager to try
to pin down. He was managing, UM the illicit fortune
of Manuel Noriega. And so when you know, we went
from there to Paris, to London, to the Bahamas, UM
and UM. Eventually we got to the end of the
(26:50):
end of the story. But it was pretty well proven
that the bank was marketing the underworld anybody with money
that was seeking secrecy from governments, and the bank of
it in Commerce International was at this time one of
the ten biggest banks in the world. Is that correct,
seventh largest privately held anchor the world. At the time
of their assets were I think about nineteen billion dollars.
(27:13):
They were in seventy two countries, more than five seven
branches UM. As we substantiated later. There their clients included, um,
not just arms dealers and terrorists and drug traffickers and tactivators, UM,
but also UM some of the bigger politicians in the world,
(27:34):
and the intelligence community as well. You guys, you know
what I hate more than anything. I'll tell you. It's compromising.
It's the worst. I do not play well with others.
I hate compromise, and so therefore I will not compromise
when it comes to my shave, even though I don't
(27:56):
actually shave. If I did, though, I would use Harry's.
For far too long, you've either paid too much for
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(28:18):
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And we've actually used these, that's right. I don't not
blowing smoke, guys. I used it on my neck this morning.
The blades last for a while. They've lasted since we
got them, what it's been several weeks and absolutely and
I you know, with the stuff that Harry sent to us,
(28:39):
we also got some little uh coutrement, you know, some
shave gel, some cooling lotion, and a face wash. And
I used that face wash every single day. It's got
the little gritty things into its minty. Yeah, exactly. It's
very mentally, but it has those little grit things in
it that kind of make you really feel like you're
getting your scrub on. I do that, you know, I
don't have to shave to enjoy a nice clean face.
(29:03):
Harry's starter set is called the Truman. That's the thing
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(29:26):
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So stop all that compromising, Stop letting people push you around,
(29:46):
stop letting these razor big wigs tell you how to shave.
You need to give Harry's a try today. I actually
want to clarify something um as as as your relationship
with these folks in the film, At least as it
was portraying, the film progressed and you had to earn
(30:07):
their trust and and get their business and close the deal.
It seemed to me that there was more going on
than just moving money around. That you needed to show
them that you could actually grow their money. Is that
accurate or did I miss misinterpret that? Well, I had to.
I had to be able to show that their money
would be secure. I had to be able to, as
they put we need guarantees, you know, people with illicit fortunes,
(30:33):
unlike what I think some people suggest that they may
have tried to trick a bank into laundry money. UM.
We never tricked anybody, and and my my clients in
the cortetail never tried to trick anybody. UM. It was
something that required UH, an agreement and an acceptance of responsibility,
(30:56):
knowing full well that the consequences of lost funds could
be your lie UM. So I was trying to get
them too, and I think to a degree succeeded to
get them. Not just to wander money through my accounts.
That doesn't really accomplish much. After you've wandered money for
(31:16):
the same guy a couple of times, you know, if
you continue to wander money for the same person and
the money is going into the same place, all you're
doing is facilitating crime. Um. And so the mantra by
what we we move forward was if you're not meeting
any new bad guys and you're not uncovering any new crime,
(31:39):
we could shut down. We should shut down. UM. And
so we were always on the move of trying to
to do just that, and we were also on the
move to try to get them to keep money with
us as long as we could, because if we get
them to use us to invest their funds will have
more disease at the end, but even more important play
(32:00):
and clearly more important play in order to be able
to have the responsibility to invest funds for someone, in
all likelihood you're going to be able to force a
meeting with the beneficial owner of the funds. And that's
really what it was all about, getting past all these
middlemen and trying to deal directly with the type of people,
as Benjamin Bratt portrayed, who were major players within the cartel,
(32:26):
so you know, the investment um angle. Although it was
nice to get investments to manage with a technique to
be able to meet people of responsibility important an authority
within the cartel. I have to ask about that Sentaia
scene that was so compelling the way it was portrayed
(32:47):
in the film. That was just as a life or
death situation that you know, from where we set was
tied to you know, what some might call superstition. Um,
what was walking into that situation like, well, nobody got
to sitting next to me, but I you know, it
was pretty controversial. Um, I was dealing with a guy
(33:08):
who his wife was related to Gotta Rivera, one of
the members out of the cartel, and I think it
was his wife was a niece and he was a
practicing uh he was practicing somebody. And as I got
(33:28):
to know him some, he said, you know, I'm very
interested in doing business with you, but I need to
make sure that my Padrino, my priest um, believes in you.
And so i'd like him, I'd like you to come
to Miami and we'll go visit, uh the Santero, and
(33:52):
will we'll see what he has to say. Well, some
people back in the office thought that was kind of
way too risky that if the guy, for whatever reason
said no, didn't matter how good we were what we did,
you know we were going to lose the relationship. Um.
But I knew we weren't going to get a relationship
with him if we didn't do it. So you have
(34:15):
to lose really so Um. It was in an area
called Sweetwater in Miami. Um, very low, I would say,
low blue collar at best kind of area. Um. The
house itself had burglar bars on it, so once you
were in, you were in a bird cage. It couldn't
get out. Um I went there with him. He went
(34:40):
into the room with the priest. The room was just
like a bedroom with a wooden floor. Um. And I
could see, I mean, there was an altar there. Um.
I could see the end candels and statues and all
that kind of stuff. And I could see that there
had been sacrifices there. There's dry blood on the floor
and you know, checking parts and stuff like that. And um,
(35:04):
so I came into the room and he wasn't The
guy wasn't a big, imposing, muscular guy like the guy
in the film. But it's important to show that because
he had a lot of power. And you know, that's
the kind of thing that I think, you know, you
need to appreciate as a movie go or when you
look at that, when you see that guy you in
(35:26):
the movie, you know he's powerful. You could tell from
his body style. Well, the guy that I dealt with
wasn't like that. He was much much slighter. But all
he did was come and embraced me and turned back
to the altar. And then he came back to me,
held my hands and asked me to step outside, and
(35:47):
I did, and then he brought a trafficker in there
and and then I waited outside and when he came out,
the trafficker came out. He was all smiles and hugged
me and said, you know, Drino says you're a good
and honorable man and that I should do business with you.
So we will. And and what I told that story
(36:07):
to the people in the office, some of them kind
of chuckled because they said, well, do you know the
the priest wasn't that wrong. You're you are a good
and honorable guy. It's just that you're not You're just
not a money loannder, really a money loaned or so,
you know. I don't know whether there's much to them
or not. But it worked for them and it worked
for me. Yeah, and it's uh, that was one of
(36:30):
the scenes that really that really stayed with us. And
also the it seems like one of the most important
currencies involved in this operation was trust. Was earning the
trust of these people through as you said, uh, the
personality traits that they prized, the stability, consistency, reliability, and
(36:53):
when when we were looking at this this larger network
from Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Uh, one thing
that we noticed that a lot of our audience, we'll
have questions about is the nuts and bolts of converting
drug money into something that appeared to be legitimate and
(37:16):
ultimately what happened to the funds and the assets that
were seized at the conclusion of operations. C Chase. Well,
you know, as far as laundering goes, it's like snowflakes.
I mean, there's so many different ways in which you
can do it. Um, very few are alike. But there
are some fundamental issues. I mean, you've got suitcases and
(37:36):
boxes full of cash, and you need to get it
into the financial system so that you can make a
payout um and either a wire transfer or a check.
So what bcc I was doing at the time, and
it's something that continues to happen today. You know, I've
read the deferred prostitution agreements and and the toothless indiamonds
(37:57):
that have been brought against banks in the in the
in path I say toothless indictments because if you're indicted
and you're a bank, you should lose your license. But
that doesn't happen. Um. One indictments are returned against banks
these days. Um they wind up paying a fine and
um not a whole lot of people go to jail
and and life goes on. But when you if you
(38:20):
look at those deferred prosecutions, there's a section in there
UM called a manner of Means by which the crime
of how they're committing a crime for an account holder
is done. And and I've looked at them, there's one
for well, they all have a lot of a very
very similar techniques that we're being used by d c
(38:43):
c I back in the day, or are clearly still
being used based upon my reading of the deferred prosecutions
in the last five or six years. But anyway, the
long and short of it is that number one, they
offered to take the cash from US and deposited into
their branches. But they they were very mindful at the
time to do that in the U. S branch needed
(39:05):
needed a very fine twist to it. So um I
was offered to take the money to the Bahamas. I
was offered to take the money to Uruguay. I was
offered to take the money to um Panama. Um I
do know that in other instances UH they were bringing
in cash in Miami, booking it in as though it
(39:27):
was cash shipped back from the Bahamas branch. UM and
being deposited in b C C I in Miami. UM.
But once you get the cash in the next step
was to take the capital and put it into a CD,
which was normally done in Luxembourg. UM. They had to
find form a lot of UM. They either had to
(39:49):
form or I needed to give another lawyer to form
one way or the other. The accounts needed to be
in the name of an offshore entity, and most often
those entities were in uh B v I, Panama, Gibraltar. UM.
Those are the want to Hong Kong. UM. So a
c D gets established. Let's use as an example, a
million dollars and it's a ninety days c D with
(40:12):
an automatic payout. UM. What they did then was they
would go to another part of the world and they
would open a facility, a lump facility UM. So a
totally different entity would be issued alone based upon in
the papers of the bank just the financial worthiness of
(40:32):
the and of the corporation. So there was an off
book loan against the capital. No auditor would be able
to link the two together. The loan proceeds were then
moved to yet a third, fourth, and fifth farm jurisdiction.
And the reason for that is any time the US
government or any government wants to try to get bank
records in a jurisdiction, they've got to go through the
(40:54):
legal process. That takes a very very long period of time.
If you've got a ring of Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France
and Panama that you've got to get get through UM.
The theory is that it will take him fifteen years
to get through all that stuff. So now the money
(41:15):
it leads the loan facility, it winds up going to Panama.
UH was at that stage put into a checking account
and then based upon UM. Their preference was based upon
oral instructions. Payouts would be made to different accounts and
parts of the world that we're controlled by the cartel.
(41:37):
Of course, their accounts were opened up in the name
of nominees UM and then those would be moved through
other accounts. So you know, there was a long, long
line of of bridges that had to be crossed before
you could ever work your way back to the original
cash deposit. And that is the first hand history of
(42:04):
operations see Chase from the Inside. We will be returning
next week with part two of our interview with Mr Maser,
wherein he details the present and the future of banks
that practice money laundry in one way or another, and
(42:25):
what if any consequences befall those organizations. Not to be
too much of a tease here, but we get into
some really interesting territory, including Mr Maser's perspective on the
War on drugs as a whole, on things like marijuana legalization,
where we're heading as a country in that direction. And
this is an authority on this stuff, and he's got
some really interesting things to say, so look forward to that.
(42:47):
But first, I feel like we would say but first,
very often as we're setting this stuff up. But first,
this is the part of the show where we would
typically do a shout out corner. However, we're going to
do something different today. We're going to have an in
the news segment because something popped up recently, probably on
(43:08):
your news feeds, if you participate in social media, maybe
you have seen a bunch of people walking around, staring
at their phones even more so than usual, running into walls,
perhaps tripping over park benches, stopping cars in the street,
any number of bizarro scenarios. No, my friends, it is
(43:29):
not the zombie apocalypse. It is, in fact, the gaming craze.
Dare I say of our generation app wise, Pokemon Go,
Pokemon Go. I'm looking forward to it, honestly, I mean,
I'm I'm into that stuff. So you know, so, uh what,
what the blue blazes? What the smala Shenanigans? What the
(43:50):
heck is Pokemon Go? If you never heard of it
or played it before, which would be rather astounding if
this is the first time you're hearing about it. But
it's an augmented reality game. It's an app that you
get on your smart device and it uses your geo
location as well as a lot of other information that's
there resides within your phone, your accounts, your Google account. Uh,
(44:14):
just to know exactly where you are, where you're going,
where the Pokemon exists around you in the real world. Matt,
You've got to catch them all. It's you take take
my information, Just give me Pokemon. Just put a Squirtle
in my kitchen. That's all I ever wanted. That's true.
You said that the day we met you, Like, I
(44:34):
just want I could just have a squirtl in my kitchen.
I will be happy, man. But seriously, no, I have
a seven year old which is my excuse for playing
the game. You know exactly now. Honestly, it's a it's
a it's a very thin um disguise for the fact
that I am a bit of a nerd for this
kind of stuff as well. But yeah, we played it,
and it's it's it's it's one of these situations we've
(44:56):
talked about in the past with privacy, with buying and
selling of your personal inform nation you submit to it,
you know, on Facebook. It's like, I want my news feed,
I want to be able to have all this great
free stuff take my information. I know that's a very
odd opinion to have be being on a conspiracy podcast,
but I really am just like, just just have it.
It's fine, you're gonna take it anyway. But one of
(45:17):
the concerns also would be it's similar to the secondhand
smoking argument, because when people are walking around, so you
think about Google Earth, for instance, Google Earth did second
hand compromising of people, possibly in terms of the information
(45:37):
that was available on you know, street view things like that,
but still that's a public place. The street is a
public domain sort of situation. One thing that Google and
other companies of this nature couldn't do as easily is
get into buildings, have a Google floor view. Right. But
(45:58):
now this stuff that's been captured on camera every time
somebody chases a char rezard or whatever it is going somewhere, right,
So the second hand smoke in this situation would be,
let's say one of our coworkers. Name a co worker
who wouldn't like this. Jonathan Strickland, he would love this.
(46:22):
Scott Benjamin. Scott Benjamin. Yeah, Scott Benjamin, the man with
no Gmail address by the way, he okay, So Scott Benjamin,
one of the co hosts of our vehicle show Car Stuff.
Scott Benjamin would probably never sign on to compromise the
information on on his phone or in whatever accounts he
(46:43):
has floating out there in the cloud. However, if say
Jonathan Strickland is walking around hunting Pokemon, then the camera
feed and the audio feed that his app is using
could easily capture got Benjamin sits here during this time
of day to this time of day. Now, of course,
(47:04):
that's a somewhat of an extremist view that someone would
care where a single person sits for a few hours
every day, but it's generated a lot of concern, and
we'd like to give a shout out to a couple
of folks in particular who sent some information about this
(47:25):
our way or asked about it. Yes, and Nicole Harris
and Rob Phillips both were they had they were on
the cusp. They knew what was going on, and they
reached out to us immediately and said that we should
cover this. And there it actually was referencing a pretty
cool article on black Bag, which is Gawker's kind of
conspiracy type blog. And um, the most interesting thing from
(47:47):
this article to me is the fact that the company
that developed Pokemon go as a company called Neantic, which
was founded by a guy named John Hanker. I think
I'm pronouncing that right, might just be hank Um. And
he also founded a company called Keyhole that specializes in
geo positioning location software. Now Google Earth uses key Holes technology.
(48:13):
As far as I'm aware, they absorbed Keyhole and likely
folded some of the research and technology that company had
done into Google Earth. But there's one more step, and
longtime listeners you might recognize this next one. That's right,
Keyhole got a pretty sizeable amount of funding from a
firm called in q Tel. This is a firm that
(48:34):
we have mentioned several times on this show, and we
talked about the FBI and other front agencies or front
companies that agencies use UH to put forward new technologies,
emerging technologies. They'll get money from places like in q
Tel injected into let's say, other company that's looking into GEO,
(48:56):
you know, GPS technology, and then they're like, hey, now
we've got a hour that we created from this soil.
And here's the thing. I'm joking mainly when I say
I'm being a bit nihilistic and saying give me my squirtle,
take my information. I'm fine with it. I don't really
feel that way exactly. I just kind of feel like
we are living in a situation where we are being monitored,
(49:20):
and it's almost like either do you live in fear
and panic all the time or you just kind of
accept it and move on with your life and you know,
enjoy the free stuff that that allows you. Or are
those the only two choices? Maybe not, And that's a
good point, Matt. But what this makes me think of
is um There was a great interview with Edward Snowden
on Vice recently where he was showing you how to
(49:41):
disconnect the cameras in your iPhone and all of the
microphones and kind of showing you where the different chips
were and all this stuff. And he made a wonderful
point where he was sort of like, yeah, I mean, now, okay,
really it's not super nefarious what's being done with this information.
You know, no one is being um monitor heard in
any kind of nefarious way, no one is being targeted
(50:04):
because of any of this stuff. It's just the technology
is there. But what happens if we have a regime
change where all of a sudden we're in more of
a totalitarian system and all of a sudden the man
or woman in charge flips the switch and decides to
really start using this against us, right, And also it
could be something a little more insidious, a progression by degree.
(50:26):
So for instance, what if instead of a switch being flipped,
it becomes a matter of insurance rates changing for someone.
Because the privacy agreement in Pokemon Go does explicitly allow
the selling of this data or the transmission of this
data to a third party, it's basically, uh, we'll do
(50:48):
what we want and good luck finding a squirrel sort
of agreement. So this does mean that if if if
they wished, the makers of Pokemon Go could uh take
your geolocation data. Let's say you're at Let's say you
are always at some crazy place. What what's a crazy
(51:11):
place to be? Crazy Town, Crazy Atlanta. Isn't there a
restaurant called Crazy? Let's say you're at a place called
crazy Atlanta Town and it's a known drug den and uh,
your information about that is is sent out and maybe
your car insurance folks say, well, statistically, because we know
(51:34):
that this person is a Crazy Atlanta Town, the notorious
drug den bar, then their insurance rate is going to
go up because we can't say that they're taking drugs
and driving or whatever. But they're there for two hours
between one and uh between one and three am every night,
and they're driving home after that. So this, I mean,
(51:57):
is this substantiated? I don't think so. Is it possible? Yes?
But is it probable? That's a whole another bag of badgers.
So we want to know what you guys think. Is
Pokemon Go is an example of a r that's just
a game changer, teaching us the capabilities of this amazing
technology we hold, or is it something a little bit
(52:21):
more perfidious? Is it something a little bit disingenuous? Uh?
And do you play Pokemon Go. Also, what do you
think about all the stuff that Robert Mazer was talking
about in in this interview about banks and just taking money,
just taking billions of dollars of drug dealers money and
(52:42):
just converting it because they make a huge profit and
they don't really get in trouble for it. Yes, let
us know what you think about all of the above.
You can find us on Facebook and Twitter, where we
are conspiracy Stuff. You can also find us on Instagram
speaking of privacy violations and conspiracy stuff show. If you
(53:05):
don't feel like messing with any of that stuff, you
can just send us a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers. Since government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events, you can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
(00:22):
is Noel. I'm Ben. You are you that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know? But not the
average episode of stuff they don't want you to know?
Isn't that right? Guess we've got a little added value
here in this particular pair of episodes. This is this
our first ever two partner Uh No, I don't think so.
I know we've we split DARPA up into two and
(00:43):
there were a couple other ones that we well, this
is definitely our first ever two part interview episode. It's
true about the same thing. So, by way of explanation,
ladies and gentlemen, you have heard Matt Nolan I refer
to uh or allude to various adventures that we've taken
or new things that we said we're coming or we're
(01:04):
on the way. We get around, we get around and uh,
this time we got around too. Uh. We got around
to a part of the world, at least socially speaking,
that we haven't really explored into much depth, and that
was a it concerned a tale that is stranger than fiction.
(01:30):
So you've heard of undercover operations, right, Like, what what
exactly is an undercover operation? It's pretty simple. One person
who is usually in law enforcement in some way, pretends
to be let's say, uh, a nefarious gang member from
a different part of town or new to town. But
(01:51):
I'm in all this bad stuff like I I like
to let's say, launder money or maybe deal drugs, maybe
torture kittens. Yeah, do one of those things get in
with a crew like low level maybe something like that.
And that's a distinction that we need to make right
up front. There are certainly different kinds of undercover operations.
Some might just be for a particular sting where you
(02:15):
have a cop posing as as one of these various
types you mentioned. But what we're talking about today is
long term, deep undercover operations, which is a whole another
ball game, a very dangerous one indeed. So just to
illustrate the difference pretty quickly, one of the rules has
always keep things as close to the truth as possible
(02:37):
so you don't compromise your actual identity. So Matt Frederick,
then for instance, if is there, okay, if we make
you street level, sure, okay. So Matt Frederick then is
assigned to do some street level infiltration of maybe someone's
selling what's a drug? Well, I have to go in
(02:57):
and infiltrate stringer bells like low level crew. So I've
got again get in with the the group who's selling
drugs out of the apartment. Yeah. So okay, so you
become Matt Frederick is gone and replaced by Murdoch Farnsworth.
(03:18):
That name I've ever heard of my life, Murdoch Farnsworth.
I think people just call your Murdoch. Murdoch Farnsworth has
a c I or an informant who comes along with
him to vouch for him from their days in an
outlaw biker gang or something. Right, And the weird thing
is that at some points, uh, Murdoch is going to
(03:41):
have to do things that Matt Frederick would never do,
you know, properly sample a drug at some point, possibly
because there's a lot of the streets order people might stuff, yeah,
other illegal stuff, aiding a bets uh crimes, maybe rough
someone up to to show that you are Murdoch. Possible
even witness a murder that you could have prevented. Possibly
(04:04):
possibly not, because you know, I'm a little squeamish, and
the line blurs. And this line is even blurrier if
we take, for instance, uh, Noel Brown, and while Matt
Frederick is working at the street level operation, let's say
Noel Brown is infiltrating a human trafficking ring. This is
(04:26):
even stickier human trafficking ring because let's see he changes
his name. What's his name now, Matt Nicholas Barnaby, Yes,
Nicholas Barnaby, two first names, Nick Nicholas Barnaby, a well
old money, wealthy philanthropist who has and philanderer who has
(04:46):
decided that the only people you could trust in this
world are people that you own. And so he is infiltrating. Uh.
Sadly this is true because of Hartsfield Airport here in Atlanta.
It is a hub for human trafficking, so is you.
You would see, hopefully, ladies and gentlemen, how this undercover
(05:08):
steing kind of stuff can happen as an little set
for variety of recents. So we've got Murdoch on there
for maybe a few months, right, pulling everyone you can
maybe nab somebody, maybe the maybe there's something political where
you're involved, where they say, okay, now we need the
Bust because someone's coming up for election, which unfortunately happens.
(05:28):
But in the other case, we we have Mr Barnaby.
I am like embedded in this world. Yeah, yeah, I
am make I am playing the long game. I am
making connections, meeting people above those connections, and doing everything
in my power to make it as high up the
chain as possible so that I can turn those people
into my um the people that I answered to. And
(05:50):
should you, should either of you survive, Uh, this strange
and terrifying thing is that neither of you will will
be able to live fully return to your natural life
because there will always be concerns for your safety. Right.
What's going to happen when uh, the foreign connection for
(06:14):
whatever drug empire Murdoch Bust learns that Murdoch Farnsworth is fictitious,
but someone who looks a lot like them lives in
the same area. Sure, even if we successfully put people
away for years, maybe even a life sentence for twenty years,
in the future, those people will be out of jail. Well,
(06:36):
not only that, I mean if watching shows like oz
or you know the Sopranos teaches you anything, it's that
being in prison is not the end all be all.
You still have associates on the outside that you can
communicate with quite easily, especially if you're uh, you know,
a big player, and in that scene, you are protected
and you are surrounded by your people in prison, and
(06:58):
it's very easy to get a mess of gilt to
put out a hit, even from prison. So why are
we beating around the bush with all of this fantasy. Yes,
excellent question. Perhaps we're more painting the background of the
picture of today's topic, which is undercover policing, which which
(07:20):
is uh, these sting operations, these long term embedded things,
Ladies and gentlemen, Matt and Noel and I spoke with
someone who has done this in real life, and uh,
during the course of our interview, we've got a first
hand look at how these how these operations occur, both
(07:42):
of the good and the bad. And we do want
you to know that, due to security concerns, we have
had to mask this person's voice. Uh. This man's name
is Robert Maser. Now, last Friday, Ben and Alan I
got to go and see a film, The Infiltrator, which
is based on the book that this man, Robert Maser
(08:05):
wrote about his time infiltrating the the Medine cartel in Colombia. Now,
this show is going to focus a lot on that
film and what we saw and the experiences, because it
is based on what this guy actually did, and you're
going to see as we get into some of these questions,
(08:27):
he's kind of separating what became the film as opposed
to what was, you know, his real life and what
he experienced. Fascinating in and of itself, because it's how
cool was it to be able to talk to the
subject of a biopic like this and say, hey, so,
what's up with that scene where you had to go
into the Santa Ria Temple and um, you know, be
(08:49):
kind of given a test by you know, this practitioner
Padrino exactly, and you know what, how did that really
go down? This is a question that you will hear.
And just just to give you a little context the
scene that happened in the movie where this band is
being vetted by these high level drug officials spoiler it's
a little bit of a spoiler alert, But I just
wanted to give you a sense of how cool it
(09:11):
was to be able to separate what happened in the
film with what happened in real in the actual operation,
the course of the operation, and there's a lot of
moments like that. It's a great film. I really would
recommend it. It was a lot. It reminded me kind
of had the the feel of Good Fellas in a
way that kind of really dynamic, interesting kind of um
ensemble cast. And it was very funny. It moves very
(09:33):
quickly and it doesn't pull any punches. It really gives
you a sense there's no glorification of either what this
man is doing, because he has to do some pretty
intense stuff in the name of his operation and getting
it done. And then of course you see the havoc
that drugs and drug violence and smuggling and money laundering
(09:55):
can wreak on people's lives. So Robert Maser began something
called Operation ce Chase, and with a team at its
height hundreds and hundreds of people. Uh, he and his
group did something extraordinary at the time, which is they
(10:15):
began to follow the financial footprints rather than the narcotic footprints,
by which we mean they didn't just start chasing cocaine
shipments from c I s or whatever or can you
know informants. What they started doing was finding out what
(10:35):
banks handled, what money, where it went, how it changed hands.
And over the course of this he became Bob Maser,
became somebody named Bob Mussela. We were given the opportunity
to interview Mr Maser because of his involved in this movie.
Um An agency reached out to us and asked if
we were interested in speaking with him, and it was
(10:56):
something we just could not pass up. And while the
infiltrator did not sponsor this episode, we do have a
sponsor and we're going to get to that now and
then get right into the interview with Mr Maser. So,
(11:16):
first things first, Mr Maser, how satisfied are you with
the adaptation of the story? Well, you know, um, and
I'm not say that. You know, it's very difficult for
me to compare because we're talking apples and oranges, you know,
those films for entertainment. UM. And my book is my
attempt to tell my version of the truth. And I
(11:39):
say it that way because you know, this was no
individual effort. This was a team effort by about two
and fifty At the height of the operation, about two
fifty people, so and I think if you asked each
of them to write a book, you'd probably have some variations.
And it's not because anyone's not being truthful, just because
they have their own perspectives. And this for me, Um,
(12:01):
you know, I think that the film adaptation certainly brings
across a lot of the the issues that need to
be brought across. And of course when they want to
go from point to point B if it took me
five steps to do it, they just obviously can't do
it in d medium. But um, they get to the
(12:22):
end point. And I think deliver um the type of
end result on a given topic, like the the relationship
between let's say the me Brian Cranston and Benjamin Bratt
in the film. You know, some of the things that
are in there that are that build to helping the
(12:44):
movie goer to recognize that this is um beyond just
an undercover agent and a bad guy dealing together and
and being an undercover agent causes you to have to
to build some bonds with with a person. Um is different.
It happened a little bit differently with me, but the
(13:07):
end result is still the same. You you still had
a recognition by both characters that you got to know
each other over a period of time, and that that
involves much more than just um the give clinical contact
as undercover agent and bad guy. If if, if I'm
getting through on that, It's so fascinating to me. This
(13:27):
is known by the way UM watching this film and
thinking of it in kind of a meta sense where
you know, clearly we're watching this very excellent character actor
Brian Cranston play this role of a man that is
essentially being a character actor and playing a role and
having to disappear into a part um. I just find
that very fascinating. I'm just wondering if that aspect of
(13:48):
it felt, did it ring true to you? Just the
the need to completely disappear into these covert characters that
you're essentially creating. Yeah, you know. And And to bring
up a good point about character, because the character that
I created, because when I was trained to be a
long term undercover agents and I was an agent traditional
(14:12):
in a traditional sense for fourteen years before I went
through the undercover school and then began to develop um
the undercover identity of Robert Mosella. But one of the
things that was taught to me right from the very
beginning UM. It was that I really needed to build
a persona that would put me in a position to
(14:32):
lie the least so because it's so hard to keep
track over years period of time if you're not naturally
working within your own skin and so to speak. So
I'm originally from New York. I have previously before working
for law enforcement, I worked at a bank, and then
I worked in a brokerage firm, and I UM. I
(14:55):
have some of the family experiences that I lived in
the neighborhood and was in around some people who were
UM certainly connected to another part of the world. And
I then I became connected with UM and and so
I had a sense of what Italian American organized crime
was about, and and so I didn't really have to
(15:18):
That's that's what Bob Mascella had in him too. Bob
Masell I was was a guy who had my My
degree was in business administration finance, and I had a
heavy emphasis in accounting, and and so was Bob Macella.
He was a guy who uh knew how to deal
in the business world and had a financial background. Then
(15:39):
was from the New York area and had these connections
with organized crime, and so a lot of that stuff
is stuff that I was very very comfortable with. I
didn't create a persona where you know, I would turn
on a switch and now I was this big, flamboyant
guy that, UM, that was a completely different person My personality,
(15:59):
I think, UM, that I portrayed was probably similar to
what UM, my real personality is. I think you know,
at least what I would hear back from the traffickers
about why they were interested in doing business with me,
It was because I was stable, I was I knew
about the things that they didn't know about in the
(16:20):
financial markets. I was cautious, UM, I was low key. UM.
All of those things were very important to them. And
all of those things, those things were really a part
about Masor. And this this is a this is a
fascinating aspect of the story because, as you say, being
(16:41):
in someone else's skin for the duration of this operation
that the operation specifically cited is called c chase. And
one thing that really impacted us and impacts our audience
as well, is the recognition of just how long term
(17:02):
this operation became. Could could you tell us in our
audience a little bit about the origin or the genesis
of C Chase and Bob Masella sure well, having worked
on a multi agency task force that's whose principal responsibility
(17:23):
was attempting to identify the commanding control of the cartels
as well as identifying the problem the money launderers who
were servicing the commanding control. UM. We had been using
search warrant's wire taps, historical witnesses, that type of thing,
(17:43):
and came to the conclusion um, and I was really
blessed with working with the leadership that was willing to
hear out the idea of this plan. Um. UM. My
view was, and it was shared by a few of
my colleagues, that the best way to accomplish our goal
(18:03):
was to infiltrate their money wandering systems, and that that
was embraced. So that got me through the undercover schools.
That got me through then about eighteen months of time
where we put together the undercover front and that was
put together with the help of several informants and concerned citizens. Um.
(18:26):
There were two guys that were informants of mine who
were um we would call them in in the underworld,
knock around guys. They didn't work for any one particular crew,
but they were certainly part of a family and um,
they they they they're under their Their organized crime contacts
(18:47):
enabled us to be able to use certain businesses. Actually,
both those guys played the roles in the undercover operation.
From time to time I would bring them in in
cameos as my cousins. And one of guys used to
be a bodyguard for a capo in a crime family.
And you can't. I mean he would walk in a
room and people would look at him and nobody had
(19:10):
to say anything. They immediately recognized what he was really
all about, very much like the dominic figure in the
movie UM that is played by Joe Gillen. And Uh.
The other guy was much more polished and had some
Wall Street contacts and um, and then we also had
an informant from Columbia. And then I had a couple
(19:34):
of lifelong friends of mine who were bankers and brokers
who enabled me to establish accounts at various institutions. UM.
This took about an eighteen month period of time, and
as I emerged from that, I was embedded in real
businesses a finance company, a mortgage brokerage business. We had
(19:55):
a air shorter service with a private jet, a jewelry
chain with thirty locations on the East coast, and even
a brokerage firm with a seat on the New York
Stock Exchange. So I didn't have to be the best
undercover agent in the world. I was less with leadership
that gave me the latitude to put that together. And
then UM, we were waiting for a unique opportunity to
(20:19):
use the trojan horse that was built and lo and
behold my gentleman who became my partner and is now
a brother to me, Amir Obray who played by John
Leguizambo in the movie. UM had an informant who had
made connections with a money broker, that money broker being
someone who personally knew members of the Ochoa family who
(20:44):
were sitting on a Median kartel and who was trying
to get himself well established in the money landering business.
So with with that opportunity, we engaged the Trojan horse
and marched into the Median cartel. And it took about
two years to get to the end. UM, and and
(21:04):
believe me, along the way, we were very lucky. Um.
Sometimes they say it's better to be lucky than good,
and I'm proof of that. Uh. The good things that
happened along the way. For example, UM, the people in
the cartel wanted me to pay out in dollar accounts,
but they preferred that they beat dollar accounts established in
(21:26):
institutions in Panama. For obvious reasons, accessed by US law
enforcement was more restricted. So I needed to open that up.
And I had just happened to be driving through downtown
Tampa and noticed this big bull sign. That's that Bank
of Credit and Commerce International b c C I and
assumed that they must have the ability to help you
(21:50):
bank in in their foreign locations. I didn't really know
much about the bank, so I called and like anyone
else who approaches an international inc. That has a private
client division, UM, I was asked to provide a resume,
copies of bank statements, UM, copies of I needed references
(22:10):
in the bank and business world. UM. I had all
that stuff. I needed to have a million dollars at
that I could potentially they could manage. All of that
was verifiable and UM. And I was invited to have
a meeting at the bank. And I mean, here's an
example of lucky instead of good. UM. I go in
and I sit down, and UM, the guy asked me
(22:32):
what it is I'm looking for. And I explained, well,
you know, most of my clients are from Medie in
Columbia and they have businesses, they have business activity here
in the United States that generates a huge, huge amount
of capital and it's my responsibility to help them to
move that money in a very discreet and quiet way.
And um and I didn't get much past all of that,
(22:55):
and the guy said to me, what do you do
You think you'll have a need because I was telling
them about moving money in from Panama to buy real
estate in the US. And he said, you think you'll
have a need to move it in the other direction
And I said, well, yeah, there's no doubt about that.
And then they broke into this discussion about well, I
know what you're talking about. That's the black money market.
(23:15):
And we have clients like you that have sensitive clients
and and we were helping them to open accounts and
grand came and until this treaty was signed with the
US government. Um, and I knew the treaty. The treaty
had to do with turning bank records over in drug cases.
And he said, you know, but we're now we're recommending Panama.
And ultimately he drifted into saying, well, you know, you've
(23:38):
got to be careful when the stupid people get caught,
get yourself involved in cash businesses. You've got to cover
to take in the cash. And I left that meeting
and went contacted my office and said, you're not not
going to believe the meeting I just had. This is
like every red flag I've ever been taught in my
entire government career, uh to look for. And this is
(23:59):
not an endo vidual bank are looking to do something
against management. This is this sounds like an institutional plan
and lo and behold. Over probably a year and a
half period of time, I was able to uh get
the evidence through discussions with more than a dozen senior
(24:19):
bank officials at that bank about the bank's institutional plan
to market the underworld. Um, that sounds like an easy
thing to do and was. But but it was amazing.
How lucky breaks, you know. I guess some people say
luck is just being well planned for the opportunity when
(24:39):
it comes by. And the opportunity came. Um again, really
when we opened up an account in Panama and one
of the checks written by one of the bad guys,
because I would just signed the checks one of the
checks written by the bad guys, um was filled out improperly.
It was supposed to be for let's just for example,
(25:00):
say say a hundred and three thousand, and then it
was written in words a hundred three thousand, in numbers
a hundred three thousand, five hundred. And so the officer
assigned to my account in Panama called me and said
what amounts should be honor? And I said, well, you
probably know I can't answer that. I'll have to call
Columbia and I'll call you back. And I did, and
(25:21):
I explained what the amount was to pay, and he
said to me, Um, you know we need to meet
because you're gonna get caught. And uh, there's a lot
better way to do what you're doing. And so there
was no doubt in my mind that the people managing
my account in Panama could tell, just from the movements
and the accounts, that we were marketing Narco dollars on
(25:44):
the black money market. And because of that mistake, back
up flushed out. He came to Miami, we sat down.
Of course, all these conversations were being recorded, and um,
he explained how it is that I could better laundered
UG money. And then and then I said to him, well,
it's great, you're getting back on a plane and going
(26:04):
back to Panama. Um, I'm here in Florida. And if
there's a problem and I need to see someone quickly,
are there any people in your Miami office that are
on your team handling these kinds of sensitive accounts. And
at that stage she said yes, and there were two people,
and he named them. And when I called back to
the office and explained that one of them was a
fellow named Amada One, all the bills and whistles between
(26:27):
Florida and Washington went off because that was a financial
advisor that UM the US government was eager to try
to pin down. He was managing, UM the illicit fortune
of Manuel Noriega. And so when you know, we went
from there to Paris, to London, to the Bahamas, UM
and UM. Eventually we got to the end of the
(26:50):
end of the story. But it was pretty well proven
that the bank was marketing the underworld anybody with money
that was seeking secrecy from governments, and the bank of
it in Commerce International was at this time one of
the ten biggest banks in the world. Is that correct,
seventh largest privately held anchor the world. At the time
of their assets were I think about nineteen billion dollars.
(27:13):
They were in seventy two countries, more than five seven
branches UM. As we substantiated later. There their clients included, um,
not just arms dealers and terrorists and drug traffickers and tactivators, UM,
but also UM some of the bigger politicians in the world,
(27:34):
and the intelligence community as well. You guys, you know
what I hate more than anything. I'll tell you. It's compromising.
It's the worst. I do not play well with others.
I hate compromise, and so therefore I will not compromise
when it comes to my shave, even though I don't
(27:56):
actually shave. If I did, though, I would use Harry's.
For far too long, you've either paid too much for
a comfortable shave, you've settled for a low price but
low quality razor. Not with Harry's, my friends, Harry's offers
something you've never had before, a great shave at a
fair price. For real. Harry's makes its own a high
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(28:18):
them directly to you. Forget this, half the price of
the leading brands. You've got a good shave a good price.
It's simple. You get the best of both with Harry's.
And we've actually used these, that's right. I don't not
blowing smoke, guys. I used it on my neck this morning.
The blades last for a while. They've lasted since we
got them, what it's been several weeks and absolutely and
I you know, with the stuff that Harry sent to us,
(28:39):
we also got some little uh coutrement, you know, some
shave gel, some cooling lotion, and a face wash. And
I used that face wash every single day. It's got
the little gritty things into its minty. Yeah, exactly. It's
very mentally, but it has those little grit things in
it that kind of make you really feel like you're
getting your scrub on. I do that, you know, I
don't have to shave to enjoy a nice clean face.
(29:03):
Harry's starter set is called the Truman. That's the thing
that we were checking out earlier. It's a great option
for new customers. It's an amazing deal for just fifteen bucks.
You guys, you get a razor handle, moisturizing shave cream,
three of Harry's five blade German engineered razors, plus there's
a special offer for you, just for checking out this show.
Harry's will give you five dollars off your first purchase
(29:26):
if you use the promo code conspiracy stuff. Hey, that
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conspiracy stuff at check out and you'll get five bucks
off and you're going to support the show by doing it.
So stop all that compromising, Stop letting people push you around,
(29:46):
stop letting these razor big wigs tell you how to shave.
You need to give Harry's a try today. I actually
want to clarify something um as as as your relationship
with these folks in the film, At least as it
was portraying, the film progressed and you had to earn
(30:07):
their trust and and get their business and close the deal.
It seemed to me that there was more going on
than just moving money around. That you needed to show
them that you could actually grow their money. Is that
accurate or did I miss misinterpret that? Well, I had to.
I had to be able to show that their money
would be secure. I had to be able to, as
they put we need guarantees, you know, people with illicit fortunes,
(30:33):
unlike what I think some people suggest that they may
have tried to trick a bank into laundry money. UM.
We never tricked anybody, and and my my clients in
the cortetail never tried to trick anybody. UM. It was
something that required UH, an agreement and an acceptance of responsibility,
(30:56):
knowing full well that the consequences of lost funds could
be your lie UM. So I was trying to get
them too, and I think to a degree succeeded to
get them. Not just to wander money through my accounts.
That doesn't really accomplish much. After you've wandered money for
(31:16):
the same guy a couple of times, you know, if
you continue to wander money for the same person and
the money is going into the same place, all you're
doing is facilitating crime. Um. And so the mantra by
what we we move forward was if you're not meeting
any new bad guys and you're not uncovering any new crime,
(31:39):
we could shut down. We should shut down. UM. And
so we were always on the move of trying to
to do just that, and we were also on the
move to try to get them to keep money with
us as long as we could, because if we get
them to use us to invest their funds will have
more disease at the end, but even more important play
(32:00):
and clearly more important play in order to be able
to have the responsibility to invest funds for someone, in
all likelihood you're going to be able to force a
meeting with the beneficial owner of the funds. And that's
really what it was all about, getting past all these
middlemen and trying to deal directly with the type of people,
as Benjamin Bratt portrayed, who were major players within the cartel,
(32:26):
so you know, the investment um angle. Although it was
nice to get investments to manage with a technique to
be able to meet people of responsibility important an authority
within the cartel. I have to ask about that Sentaia
scene that was so compelling the way it was portrayed
(32:47):
in the film. That was just as a life or
death situation that you know, from where we set was
tied to you know, what some might call superstition. Um,
what was walking into that situation like, well, nobody got
to sitting next to me, but I you know, it
was pretty controversial. Um, I was dealing with a guy
(33:08):
who his wife was related to Gotta Rivera, one of
the members out of the cartel, and I think it
was his wife was a niece and he was a
practicing uh he was practicing somebody. And as I got
(33:28):
to know him some, he said, you know, I'm very
interested in doing business with you, but I need to
make sure that my Padrino, my priest um, believes in you.
And so i'd like him, I'd like you to come
to Miami and we'll go visit, uh the Santero, and
(33:52):
will we'll see what he has to say. Well, some
people back in the office thought that was kind of
way too risky that if the guy, for whatever reason
said no, didn't matter how good we were what we did,
you know we were going to lose the relationship. Um.
But I knew we weren't going to get a relationship
with him if we didn't do it. So you have
(34:15):
to lose really so Um. It was in an area
called Sweetwater in Miami. Um, very low, I would say,
low blue collar at best kind of area. Um. The
house itself had burglar bars on it, so once you
were in, you were in a bird cage. It couldn't
get out. Um I went there with him. He went
(34:40):
into the room with the priest. The room was just
like a bedroom with a wooden floor. Um. And I
could see, I mean, there was an altar there. Um.
I could see the end candels and statues and all
that kind of stuff. And I could see that there
had been sacrifices there. There's dry blood on the floor
and you know, checking parts and stuff like that. And um,
(35:04):
so I came into the room and he wasn't The
guy wasn't a big, imposing, muscular guy like the guy
in the film. But it's important to show that because
he had a lot of power. And you know, that's
the kind of thing that I think, you know, you
need to appreciate as a movie go or when you
look at that, when you see that guy you in
(35:26):
the movie, you know he's powerful. You could tell from
his body style. Well, the guy that I dealt with
wasn't like that. He was much much slighter. But all
he did was come and embraced me and turned back
to the altar. And then he came back to me,
held my hands and asked me to step outside, and
(35:47):
I did, and then he brought a trafficker in there
and and then I waited outside and when he came out,
the trafficker came out. He was all smiles and hugged
me and said, you know, Drino says you're a good
and honorable man and that I should do business with you.
So we will. And and what I told that story
(36:07):
to the people in the office, some of them kind
of chuckled because they said, well, do you know the
the priest wasn't that wrong. You're you are a good
and honorable guy. It's just that you're not You're just
not a money loannder, really a money loaned or so,
you know. I don't know whether there's much to them
or not. But it worked for them and it worked
for me. Yeah, and it's uh, that was one of
(36:30):
the scenes that really that really stayed with us. And
also the it seems like one of the most important
currencies involved in this operation was trust. Was earning the
trust of these people through as you said, uh, the
personality traits that they prized, the stability, consistency, reliability, and
(36:53):
when when we were looking at this this larger network
from Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Uh, one thing
that we noticed that a lot of our audience, we'll
have questions about is the nuts and bolts of converting
drug money into something that appeared to be legitimate and
(37:16):
ultimately what happened to the funds and the assets that
were seized at the conclusion of operations. C Chase. Well,
you know, as far as laundering goes, it's like snowflakes.
I mean, there's so many different ways in which you
can do it. Um, very few are alike. But there
are some fundamental issues. I mean, you've got suitcases and
(37:36):
boxes full of cash, and you need to get it
into the financial system so that you can make a
payout um and either a wire transfer or a check.
So what bcc I was doing at the time, and
it's something that continues to happen today. You know, I've
read the deferred prostitution agreements and and the toothless indiamonds
(37:57):
that have been brought against banks in the in the
in path I say toothless indictments because if you're indicted
and you're a bank, you should lose your license. But
that doesn't happen. Um. One indictments are returned against banks
these days. Um they wind up paying a fine and
um not a whole lot of people go to jail
and and life goes on. But when you if you
(38:20):
look at those deferred prosecutions, there's a section in there
UM called a manner of Means by which the crime
of how they're committing a crime for an account holder
is done. And and I've looked at them, there's one
for well, they all have a lot of a very
very similar techniques that we're being used by d c
(38:43):
c I back in the day, or are clearly still
being used based upon my reading of the deferred prosecutions
in the last five or six years. But anyway, the
long and short of it is that number one, they
offered to take the cash from US and deposited into
their branches. But they they were very mindful at the
time to do that in the U. S branch needed
(39:05):
needed a very fine twist to it. So um I
was offered to take the money to the Bahamas. I
was offered to take the money to Uruguay. I was
offered to take the money to um Panama. Um I
do know that in other instances UH they were bringing
in cash in Miami, booking it in as though it
(39:27):
was cash shipped back from the Bahamas branch. UM and
being deposited in b C C I in Miami. UM.
But once you get the cash in the next step
was to take the capital and put it into a CD,
which was normally done in Luxembourg. UM. They had to
find form a lot of UM. They either had to
(39:49):
form or I needed to give another lawyer to form
one way or the other. The accounts needed to be
in the name of an offshore entity, and most often
those entities were in uh B v I, Panama, Gibraltar. UM.
Those are the want to Hong Kong. UM. So a
c D gets established. Let's use as an example, a
million dollars and it's a ninety days c D with
(40:12):
an automatic payout. UM. What they did then was they
would go to another part of the world and they
would open a facility, a lump facility UM. So a
totally different entity would be issued alone based upon in
the papers of the bank just the financial worthiness of
(40:32):
the and of the corporation. So there was an off
book loan against the capital. No auditor would be able
to link the two together. The loan proceeds were then
moved to yet a third, fourth, and fifth farm jurisdiction.
And the reason for that is any time the US
government or any government wants to try to get bank
records in a jurisdiction, they've got to go through the
(40:54):
legal process. That takes a very very long period of time.
If you've got a ring of Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France
and Panama that you've got to get get through UM.
The theory is that it will take him fifteen years
to get through all that stuff. So now the money
(41:15):
it leads the loan facility, it winds up going to Panama.
UH was at that stage put into a checking account
and then based upon UM. Their preference was based upon
oral instructions. Payouts would be made to different accounts and
parts of the world that we're controlled by the cartel.
(41:37):
Of course, their accounts were opened up in the name
of nominees UM and then those would be moved through
other accounts. So you know, there was a long, long
line of of bridges that had to be crossed before
you could ever work your way back to the original
cash deposit. And that is the first hand history of
(42:04):
operations see Chase from the Inside. We will be returning
next week with part two of our interview with Mr Maser,
wherein he details the present and the future of banks
that practice money laundry in one way or another, and
(42:25):
what if any consequences befall those organizations. Not to be
too much of a tease here, but we get into
some really interesting territory, including Mr Maser's perspective on the
War on drugs as a whole, on things like marijuana legalization,
where we're heading as a country in that direction. And
this is an authority on this stuff, and he's got
some really interesting things to say, so look forward to that.
(42:47):
But first, I feel like we would say but first,
very often as we're setting this stuff up. But first,
this is the part of the show where we would
typically do a shout out corner. However, we're going to
do something different today. We're going to have an in
the news segment because something popped up recently, probably on
(43:08):
your news feeds, if you participate in social media, maybe
you have seen a bunch of people walking around, staring
at their phones even more so than usual, running into walls,
perhaps tripping over park benches, stopping cars in the street,
any number of bizarro scenarios. No, my friends, it is
(43:29):
not the zombie apocalypse. It is, in fact, the gaming craze.
Dare I say of our generation app wise, Pokemon Go,
Pokemon Go. I'm looking forward to it, honestly, I mean,
I'm I'm into that stuff. So you know, so, uh what,
what the blue blazes? What the smala Shenanigans? What the
(43:50):
heck is Pokemon Go? If you never heard of it
or played it before, which would be rather astounding if
this is the first time you're hearing about it. But
it's an augmented reality game. It's an app that you
get on your smart device and it uses your geo
location as well as a lot of other information that's
there resides within your phone, your accounts, your Google account. Uh,
(44:14):
just to know exactly where you are, where you're going,
where the Pokemon exists around you in the real world. Matt,
You've got to catch them all. It's you take take
my information, Just give me Pokemon. Just put a Squirtle
in my kitchen. That's all I ever wanted. That's true.
You said that the day we met you, Like, I
(44:34):
just want I could just have a squirtl in my kitchen.
I will be happy, man. But seriously, no, I have
a seven year old which is my excuse for playing
the game. You know exactly now. Honestly, it's a it's
a it's a very thin um disguise for the fact
that I am a bit of a nerd for this
kind of stuff as well. But yeah, we played it,
and it's it's it's it's one of these situations we've
(44:56):
talked about in the past with privacy, with buying and
selling of your personal inform nation you submit to it,
you know, on Facebook. It's like, I want my news feed,
I want to be able to have all this great
free stuff take my information. I know that's a very
odd opinion to have be being on a conspiracy podcast,
but I really am just like, just just have it.
It's fine, you're gonna take it anyway. But one of
(45:17):
the concerns also would be it's similar to the secondhand
smoking argument, because when people are walking around, so you
think about Google Earth, for instance, Google Earth did second
hand compromising of people, possibly in terms of the information
(45:37):
that was available on you know, street view things like that,
but still that's a public place. The street is a
public domain sort of situation. One thing that Google and
other companies of this nature couldn't do as easily is
get into buildings, have a Google floor view. Right. But
(45:58):
now this stuff that's been captured on camera every time
somebody chases a char rezard or whatever it is going somewhere, right,
So the second hand smoke in this situation would be,
let's say one of our coworkers. Name a co worker
who wouldn't like this. Jonathan Strickland, he would love this.
(46:22):
Scott Benjamin. Scott Benjamin. Yeah, Scott Benjamin, the man with
no Gmail address by the way, he okay, So Scott Benjamin,
one of the co hosts of our vehicle show Car Stuff.
Scott Benjamin would probably never sign on to compromise the
information on on his phone or in whatever accounts he
(46:43):
has floating out there in the cloud. However, if say
Jonathan Strickland is walking around hunting Pokemon, then the camera
feed and the audio feed that his app is using
could easily capture got Benjamin sits here during this time
of day to this time of day. Now, of course,
(47:04):
that's a somewhat of an extremist view that someone would
care where a single person sits for a few hours
every day, but it's generated a lot of concern, and
we'd like to give a shout out to a couple
of folks in particular who sent some information about this
(47:25):
our way or asked about it. Yes, and Nicole Harris
and Rob Phillips both were they had they were on
the cusp. They knew what was going on, and they
reached out to us immediately and said that we should
cover this. And there it actually was referencing a pretty
cool article on black Bag, which is Gawker's kind of
conspiracy type blog. And um, the most interesting thing from
(47:47):
this article to me is the fact that the company
that developed Pokemon go as a company called Neantic, which
was founded by a guy named John Hanker. I think
I'm pronouncing that right, might just be hank Um. And
he also founded a company called Keyhole that specializes in
geo positioning location software. Now Google Earth uses key Holes technology.
(48:13):
As far as I'm aware, they absorbed Keyhole and likely
folded some of the research and technology that company had
done into Google Earth. But there's one more step, and
longtime listeners you might recognize this next one. That's right,
Keyhole got a pretty sizeable amount of funding from a
firm called in q Tel. This is a firm that
(48:34):
we have mentioned several times on this show, and we
talked about the FBI and other front agencies or front
companies that agencies use UH to put forward new technologies,
emerging technologies. They'll get money from places like in q
Tel injected into let's say, other company that's looking into GEO,
(48:56):
you know, GPS technology, and then they're like, hey, now
we've got a hour that we created from this soil.
And here's the thing. I'm joking mainly when I say
I'm being a bit nihilistic and saying give me my squirtle,
take my information. I'm fine with it. I don't really
feel that way exactly. I just kind of feel like
we are living in a situation where we are being monitored,
(49:20):
and it's almost like either do you live in fear
and panic all the time or you just kind of
accept it and move on with your life and you know,
enjoy the free stuff that that allows you. Or are
those the only two choices? Maybe not, And that's a
good point, Matt. But what this makes me think of
is um There was a great interview with Edward Snowden
on Vice recently where he was showing you how to
(49:41):
disconnect the cameras in your iPhone and all of the
microphones and kind of showing you where the different chips
were and all this stuff. And he made a wonderful
point where he was sort of like, yeah, I mean, now, okay,
really it's not super nefarious what's being done with this information.
You know, no one is being um monitor heard in
any kind of nefarious way, no one is being targeted
(50:04):
because of any of this stuff. It's just the technology
is there. But what happens if we have a regime
change where all of a sudden we're in more of
a totalitarian system and all of a sudden the man
or woman in charge flips the switch and decides to
really start using this against us, right, And also it
could be something a little more insidious, a progression by degree.
(50:26):
So for instance, what if instead of a switch being flipped,
it becomes a matter of insurance rates changing for someone.
Because the privacy agreement in Pokemon Go does explicitly allow
the selling of this data or the transmission of this
data to a third party, it's basically, uh, we'll do
(50:48):
what we want and good luck finding a squirrel sort
of agreement. So this does mean that if if if
they wished, the makers of Pokemon Go could uh take
your geolocation data. Let's say you're at Let's say you
are always at some crazy place. What what's a crazy
(51:11):
place to be? Crazy Town, Crazy Atlanta. Isn't there a
restaurant called Crazy? Let's say you're at a place called
crazy Atlanta Town and it's a known drug den and uh,
your information about that is is sent out and maybe
your car insurance folks say, well, statistically, because we know
(51:34):
that this person is a Crazy Atlanta Town, the notorious
drug den bar, then their insurance rate is going to
go up because we can't say that they're taking drugs
and driving or whatever. But they're there for two hours
between one and uh between one and three am every night,
and they're driving home after that. So this, I mean,
(51:57):
is this substantiated? I don't think so. Is it possible? Yes?
But is it probable? That's a whole another bag of badgers.
So we want to know what you guys think. Is
Pokemon Go is an example of a r that's just
a game changer, teaching us the capabilities of this amazing
technology we hold, or is it something a little bit
(52:21):
more perfidious? Is it something a little bit disingenuous? Uh?
And do you play Pokemon Go. Also, what do you
think about all the stuff that Robert Mazer was talking
about in in this interview about banks and just taking money,
just taking billions of dollars of drug dealers money and
(52:42):
just converting it because they make a huge profit and
they don't really get in trouble for it. Yes, let
us know what you think about all of the above.
You can find us on Facebook and Twitter, where we
are conspiracy Stuff. You can also find us on Instagram
speaking of privacy violations and conspiracy stuff show. If you
(53:05):
don't feel like messing with any of that stuff, you
can just send us a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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