Austin Shamlin, CEO and Founder of Traverse Project

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
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Speaker 2 (00:41):
To another wonderful episode of soft Rep Radio. I am
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(01:25):
likes this world and this community that we are in
right now. So, without further ado, I have the Traverse
Traverse Project main man, Austin Shamlin on with us today
and we're going to talk about the Traverse Project. Now.
I'm doing the waves with my hands if you're not,
if you're listening, I had to really work on the

(01:46):
word traverse. So are traverse because I'm saying traverse right,
I'm from Utah. I'm so sorry it's traverse and welcome
to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Austin, thank you so much for having me today.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
No, it's cool. I'm glad that Cyrus Nork awesome mutual
friend of ours. Like Yo, Rad, you should get my
man on and have him talk, so shut up to Cyrus, right.
And he's also I noticed on your team's profile if
you go to if you go to the Traverse Project Traverse,
if you go there, the.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Amount of people that do the same thing. You know
you're not the first. Don't worry about it.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
I think we're gonna make it memorable. People will be like,
it's the reverse the Reverse project. Cyrus is part of
the faces of your team. You're part of the faces.
You've got quite a few faces on there.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
We do, we do It's uh. I think people just
kind of connect with our mission and.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Just want to get involved and tell me your mission,
tell us your mission. Let's just hear that right now.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah, So we we combat human drafting and we do
it a little bit different than everybody else out there.
You want to get into the origin story.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Oh yeah, yeah, what what? What? Yeah? Let me choose
you over them. You know what I'm saying, like, what
is it that you know your organization is doing differently
than the other organizations because there are organizations out there
that say they are combating human trafficking, But you know,
is it like us on the outside of the organization

(03:10):
might look at it and say, oh, it's just another
organization trying to create itself to be a not for profit.
But when you start reading about what you're all about,
you can see obviously that you guys have meaning and
and heart into what you want to do. So please
let us know what. You're the vocal point and we're listening,
So go ahead.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
So the name will start with the name, right, Traverse Project.
It's because when you traverse something, it's difficult, right, And
that's where the name came from. So it's difficult for
the victims of human trafficking. It's difficult to fight this
it's just difficult all the way round, right, And so
that's why we came up with the name that we

(03:49):
did for this organization. My background is in law enforcement,
and then I spent a bunch like eighty percent of
my career working for PMCs and every place that's been
on TV for the last twenty five years. Right. But
when I left government work in contracting in twenty sixteen,

(04:11):
I went to go work for a rescue organization, right
and in the in the human trafficking nonprofit space, and
very quickly, you know, when I was a cop, I
realized that we weren't going to arrest our way out
of this problem, right, And then when I went to
this nonprofit side of it in twenty sixteen, I realized

(04:31):
pretty quick that we're not going to rescue our way
out of it. It's just kind of like mowing the grass.
And we can get into what I mean by all that,
you know, down the roads, it's.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Just never going to stop. If you have grass, it's
always going to grow.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
And you have you're out there every Friday mon it, right,
or every Saturday morning more.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Right, and trafficking's not going to stop, like you said,
since you know, since King George banned it before we
went to war with them in England to become America. Right.
A lot of people don't realize that America it was
all about, you know, the tea and the t axes
and dumping it into the harbor. But really it was
King George put out a message saying no more slavery

(05:07):
because he's like, no more, because he's like it's bad.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Which is funny because you know, the United States in
the nineteen hundred it has had to force the UK
to stop colonizing, which is you know, a force of labor.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Right since since gang it's I mean absolutely, yeah, look
how long they get colonizing.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Every every population in the world has been trafficked right
by our terms, right, whether it's late or not. My sister,
my oldest sister is actually adopted, right, and so she
is Vietnamese. She left Vietnam. She was trafficked out of
Vietnam three days before Laos fell. Yeah. Absolutely, and so

(05:48):
this has been you know, part of my DNA before
I was even a you know, sparkle in my daddy's eyes.
They say, right, so it's it's and you know, this
is either a testament to how stupid I am or
true love. But I was probably ten before I realized
that this Asian woman was not related to me by blood, right,
I'm serious. I remember having a conversation with one of

(06:09):
my other sisters when I was like ten years old.
She had to break the news to me, so, uh yeah,
and I you know, so anyway I.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Feel you on that, I feel it. I feel it
because my friends were all growing up, we had saw
owens in California and the church that we went to
and we'd all take baths and I'm like, well, how
come they're still not how come they're not getting it off?
And I'm not, what do I get my dark I'm
just like little six year old me. No, I thought
this was my family, my brothers, you know. No, Yeah, it's.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
Amazing, Like how I mean, I think it's a testament
to true love, right, you know, like you love your
your your adopted family that you grew up with. I
loved my I still love my my sister very much.
You know, she just had her third grandson, so it
was a couple of hard years for me. Yeah, it
was a couple of hard years for her. But you know,
she came to the family and like came into a
very loving family and and you know we're just we

(07:01):
are one big, happy family. So anyway, I kind of
got off.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
I'm sorry, Ah, no, would you call? So was she
adopted through the pipeline or was she really like kind
of you know, extradited out of like trafficked out by
with love.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
But it's still you know, it wasn't it wasn't loved
when she left Vietnam. I mean, it was she came
to the United States is what's referred to as an
indentured service, and uh, you know, it's a form of
debt trafficking where you just never get out of it, right,
And so she was here in the United States being
a victim of trafficking. My mother was a foster mother

(07:39):
at the time, and she came through the system through
CPS or Child protect Services, came was placed with my
mother and just she is the only child that my
mother just she never left. She wouldn't love her very
much yet. And so when my mom moved from Missouri

(08:01):
back to the DC metropolitan area, you know, QUI came
with it, and so you know, it's just yeah, it's
it's a it's a really great story. I mean, I
I and it's just amazing that I ended up in
this career field because of what happened to my sister, right,
you know, I kind of smunked it up and and

(08:21):
throughout throughout my career working overseas and developing in conflict zones.
You know, we see I mean, you were in the military, right,
We see every form of trafficking in the various places
that we spent you know, uh in in Afghanistan. We
all know what happens, right, We all remember the stories
of the Special Forces major that punched the guy in
the face and got you know, you know, all the

(08:42):
bad stories that happened because of the trafficking situations and
really bad stuff that we'd see. I spent a lot
of my time in Haiti and there you just you
see it everywhere, right, yeah, And so Haiti. I've spent
the most amount of my career in wow there in
twenty ten. And I mean, like, I'm divorced now, but

(09:04):
my wife at the time would joke with me and say,
you've got another family down there. You're there so much.
There has to be something you are. You know, she's
joking with me. But I mean it was just I
really love Haiti and it's really tragic what's going on there.
But anyway, I got off on the paneling here. So
when I left Juglement twenty six, finally done with government,

(09:26):
I went to go work for this rescue nonprofit. That place.
You just learned very quickly that mowing the grass is
never going to stop the grass from growing, all right.
And so I was there for about five years as
the director of international operations, and twenty twenty two, I mean,
it was a super busy year. We had a nine
month long investigation in Dominican Republic which resulted in the

(09:48):
rescue of eighty three Venezuelan and Colombian women out of
the Dominican Republic. About twenty ish Dominicans were arrested, and
we repatriotd those eighty three girl back down to Colombia.
Obviously we couldn't send them back to Venezuela with what
everything going on there, right, but the you know, And
then I went down. I met with their version of

(10:11):
the FBI, and it's this young twenty eight year old
police captain and she had four investigators that worked for
and she had over seven hundred cases of Colombian women
that have been trafficked out of the out of their
borders internationally, and she had no resource, Like she didn't
even have enough money to send her investigators from one
part of the country to the other. And you know

(10:33):
what do you need? It was data analytics like force multipliers, right.
And so I went back to my boss at the time,
and you know, this is no slight to him. It's
a slapped to the face to him. But it's just
the way the nonprofit world works. Donors want to see
the stuff that we've all seen on Instagram or you know,
TikTok of. You know, they want to see Navy seals
busting open doors and rescue the little kids. And that's

(10:56):
great and all, and there's a lot of organizations out
there that do it. I'm not a fan of it,
you know. I guess I would consider myself an expert
in this field, and I don't think that those things work.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
The door kicking aspect of it is that we're talking about.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
Yeah, the rescue, the door kicking, I just I don't
think it works. It's mowing the grass, you know, because
that's where we stop. Then it's it's the raid, it's
the rescue. And then we're like Okay, it's over and
done with, right, and and the reality of this, this is, uh,
this is transnational organized crime. So when I went down

(11:29):
there and I went back to my boss and said,
this is how we need to support, you know, the
Colombians with all these cases with data and analytics. It
was like, we can't raise money off of that, right,
And he's right, it's hard, it's super hard. It's the
worst part of my job. And so I left. I
was fed up with the organization. I was fed up
with the industry. And I remember calling a bunch of

(11:51):
my colleagues and you know, at c suite level in
different organizations and pretty much saying like you suck, we suck.
This needs to change. And I left for months. I left,
I think it was in October, and I think it
was December, right around Christmas time of twenty twenty two,
and one of the donors from my previous organization reached
out and he said, I'm going to fund the startup

(12:15):
of your organization because this is the route that it
needs to go, and.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
That's where he wants to go. Yeah, he's probably got funding,
and he's like, what am I putting into And if
he here's you, and he's like, well, that's not where
the money should be going. I wanted to go to
the lane that you're going to get into. Absolutely, that's
what I'm just getting from, you know, the donor. So
good job on.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
And I mean, and I'm actually going to see this
guy tomorrow. You know, this guy is uh, he's just
he's in the mission, right, and he wants to find
real solutions that are going to stop the problems. And
so we started. So I started Traverse Project and it
was me and one other guy, and you know, we
flopped around. I think it was two weeks after we started,

(12:56):
and one of my very first board member said, Hey,
you need to come to Houston and do a presentation
in front of all these you know, fairly wealthy people.
And I was like, I have no idea what I'm
even going to present. We're two weeks old. I don't
even know what the hell we're going to be doing.
And so I went down there present It did the

(13:17):
best that we could. It didn't result in much, but
you know, it was good practice. And it took us
about six months to really figure out how we're going
to do things differently and how we were going to
not only do things differently, but how we're going to
make actual impact and solving the bigger issue. And so
you know, we landed on combating this threat through human

(13:37):
or through data intelligence. And you know it's not just
collecting white paper type research. This is like actionable intelligence
that we can give to the frontline defenders of this
this problem. Police, you know, international organizations that have sanctioned authority,
things like that. But you know, people, I hear one
of two things when we're talking about human drafficking from folks.

(13:58):
It's like either the the city they live in is
the worst city for human drafting, or that doesn't happen here,
that happens somewhere else, and neither or true. Right, it
literally happens in every city town in America, every city
in town in a world. I could take you you

(14:18):
and I could jump on a plane right now. You
could pick the city anywhere in the world, and I
guarantee you we'd have a better than eighty percent chance
of finding a Columbian woman for sale.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
I bet you, I mean, and that's sad. That bet
is sad. I don't mean to say I bet you
like that's facts. It's just that that's a sad situation.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
It's a very bad situation.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
And like you said, it is here too, you know.
And even in good old Sandy, Utah where I'm at
right where you think, oh, hey, we're the thirty fourth
safest city, that might be just the best place to
do it, you know, where no one realizes it. It's
like it doesn't have to be like the slums. You know,
in fact, it probably isn't even the slums. It's people
with a lot of money wanting a pet human.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
Well and a lot of it. So in the you know,
there's different categories of human trafficking. My organization focuses in
on sex trafficking. Uh, you know, there's labor trafficking, which
is a very complex issue that happens all over the
world in supply chains to all over the place. Absolutely

(15:21):
back to work, showing shoes together, very popular shoes. I
don't want to say any names because I don't want
to get sued, but showing very popular shoes or very
popular clothing together that is manufactured outside of this, you know,
our borders. You know, it happens in supply chains and
and again it's no fault to the organizations or the
companies that that manufacture this or you know that sell

(15:44):
this stuff that their brand is on you know, and
it's not this one. I can tell you that. But
you know, but organizations that their brand is on clothing,
it's not their fault. They can only do so much
to to fight that, right.

Speaker 4 (15:59):
So you know, it's everything from let me say this,
like a major brand company is saying that they're like
one hundred percent you know.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Oh, you know, there's these companies out there they say
like they're eco friendly, they're one hundred percent you know,
sustainable there all their goods come from a certain place,
and they may be told that throughout the whole entire
process of them evaluating it. But hidden underneath the layer
of lie to them is some kid in the coal
factory or some body doing that jobs. Yeah, oh yeah,

(16:34):
every single avocado, it doesn't there's no machine to do it.
So that's a human touch on every single avocado.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
Absolutely, So it's it's uh, there's so we don't even
touch labor drafting. It's such a complex.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Wow, yeah, so much.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
But but there is no like when there is a
child or there's a woman being forced to have sex
for months. Yes, there's no ifsands or butts about it
like that is a bad thing. So we really concentrated
in on that. So it's you know, we we like
to and we're not one of these gimmicky kind of
like rescue organizations. We're there to support law enforcement or

(17:11):
with actionable intelligence. And the cool thing is, like you know,
here in the United States, our law enforcement is extremely capable.
Most of them is extremely capable of handling pretty much
any crime sets out there. Right If they don't have
the capabilities, there's a state agency that has the capabilities.
I think they can request, you know, federal resources to

(17:32):
come in and help them. So for the most part,
there are some areas we'll talk about that in a
few minutes when we get into specific programs that we're doing.
Sorry you're good, But overseas you have and I mean,
if you look at like the current administration that's just

(17:53):
come in and how they're stopping stuff at the border
right now, and the executive order that that hit drug
cartels and is designating them as foreign terrorist organizations, right,
we know the Special Operations community knows this law enforcement
put community, and he knows this that drug cartels and

(18:13):
terror organizations do have connections like we know that perfect.
And I can tell you that drug cartels and human
trafficking absolutely have connections. And so a lot of these
actions that the Trump administration is taking is really good
to combat this stuff.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
I'd like to see him go after modeling agencies.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah, And I'm I don't know specifics about that, but like.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Well, I mean, like we know that, you know, like
Epstein and all those guys, they're all you know, and
like like P Diddy out there, you know, he's all
going through this whole situation, but they all use modeling agencies.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
Well, and I think that's a great point of some
of the domestic trafficking that's happening here in the United States,
right when you're dealing with situations like Epstein, where he
it's very clear here's.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
We already know. Yeah, I can say it's not. No,
it was.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Very clear that you know, the sweetheart deal that he
got down in Florida from the US attorney that ended
up having to resign out of the first Trump administration.
You know, he he it clear that this was sex trafficking. Yes,
And and then I mean it just continued and I
remember hearing that news. I don't remember what year it
was when they when he flew into JFK and the

(19:25):
FBI met him there and arrested him. I don't remember
what year that was, maybe.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Like eight or something.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
It was more recent. I think it was under the
first trumpe atministration.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Because he got off they like they slapped his hands,
didn't make him serve prison and then he went back
to doing his normal routine and they captured him again,
and we all know what happened at that point.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Yeah, So that's when that's when I remember hearing that story.
And it was, you know, the time when he was
arrested and killed himself or whatever and federal in the
holding facility. But I remember hearing that and being like, finally,
finally they're doing something. Who did he piss off that
this is now happening, right? Oh so and P Diddy? Right,

(20:02):
here's another guy who it was that last year that
they rated his.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
I'm gonna say, I'm gonna presume he's innocent, okay, because
we have due process, Okay, but Brow's got a lot
of stuff going against him, So I'm just using him
as an example of like, hey.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Absolutely what I what I find very interesting about the
p Didty case is that, and I don't know a
lot of the details of that, you know, just what's
been reported on the news. But when you have a
lot of these famous people in his world that have
gone to these parties or whatever, and they're coming out
there saying like, hey, uh, you know, I'm worried because

(20:36):
I'm afraid he's going to try to detract attention from
him by making up stories about me. And it's like, hmm,
that's interesting to me. Right. Why why is the client
list not been released from Epstein?

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Right? And also why do we not think that P
Diddy has turned federal witness?

Speaker 3 (20:56):
I mean that there are so many insane to me,
you know what I mean? And and you know, so
you know, we we can we can get into the
craziness of these type of well it's.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
It's it's that's all. It's all sex trafficking, you know,
that's just here in the US, you know, like Americans.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
Not only Americans. I mean, Prince Andrew was, of course
that the US Attorney at the Southern District of New
York wanted to speak to Prince Andrew about this Epstein case,
of course, and he did.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Not come right, No, he just paid twelve million pounds
to stop the story because he was innocent. So twelve
million pounds, I think that's what he paid.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
I don't want to I don't want to pass judgment
on anybody, because we live in a great photos.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
There's photos of him with the girl did she's seventeen.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
I totally get it. I actually interviewed one of Epstein's victims.
You just made her on a call for three hours,
and I mean the names that came out of I
don't want to mention any names. I don't want to
get sued, but the names that came out of her
mouth that were that she encountered on the island or
in different you know situations, I mean, will blow your mind.

(22:13):
And so it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Right on the list. I'm not on that list.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
I'm not.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
But there's people who I really liked. When I found
out that they visited that island, and I was just
like wow. I watched all of his movies. I used
to watch her talk show. I used to you know this,
that and the other with all of these different people
who well.

Speaker 3 (22:30):
I want to be clear, like I don't personally, I
don't think that everybody who went to that island was
involved in nonsense.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
But yeah, like Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton wasn't involved in nonsense.
Eight times, That's what it was. That's what we're gonna say.
You're gonna say he wasn't involved in nonsense. Think about
everybody that was there for that guy. Everybody that went
there for Epstein on his private plane which is still
actively flying, well was until president. It's crazy, just the

(23:00):
circle of influence. And now you know, the president's been
re elected and put into power, and he's got everybody
in like the DJ and everybody out there doing feelers
and just doing whatever for the country quote unquote. And
here you are trying to do the right thing for
people who are literally being human trafficked, and I feel
like there might be people trying to like thwart you

(23:21):
from finding the real information. You know, you gotta be so.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
I'll say, I truly do believe that President Trump is
the first president that has focused in on human trafficking.
Ivanka Trump when she was in a senior advisor whatever
her position was at the White House, this is a
passion of her. She was the daughter correct, so her

(23:47):
and and her husband Jared are very passionate about this.
President Trump, during his first administration created a White House
Task Force on human Trafficking, and he also put somebody
at the White House as the human tree ating for
lack of a better term, bizarre right or or coordinator
of all efforts. That is the first time that's happened

(24:07):
in history. So there are certain presidents that come in
and put this much money towards human drafting, and then
there are people that come in and start just packing,
you know, doing that layered approach to combating this problem.
Same with governors, right, but there are a lot of
governors out there that just put like they throw the

(24:28):
kitchen sink at it, right, everything at it. And then
there's there's governors that are like, okay.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, Like here in Utah, we had a company that
kind of like folded within.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
Oh no, we can talk about that.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
You know, there's a company here, a lot. I don't
really know much except that, yeah, yeah, you know, and
it folded from within here. You know, I don't know
why you got to drive a Camaro with your logo
all around I fifteen by my house. You know, what's
the Camaro doing? You know? It's like, where'd that come from?
I would see that driving and you have to understand,

(25:03):
we're passionate towards that cause as humans, like, we don't
want others to be suffered. You know, my father was
a Green Beret, so his model was Dale Presso Lieber,
which is to free the oppressed right. And so I'm
a big believer in freedom of choice and the freedom
to move. And if you want to do something, you
do it, but you don't have to make me do it.
That's freedom of choice. So you want to get a tattooed,
go get one, but don't give me your tattoo unless

(25:25):
I want it. So I just to understand how donating
money to a cause that's supposed to be just and good.
And then I see this guy, I'd rather see him
driving around like a Ford truck or something that could
go off road, I don't know, not a Camaro with
a logo all over it.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
You know, Like, I don't know the specific organization you're
referring to. There is out of Salt Lake there was
a probably the largest counter human trafficking organization. Okay, I'm
touching my nose.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
I'm like, you're on the money. Yeah, I'm touching my nose.
If you're listening and you're not in the video, I'm
like ding ding ding ding ding.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
Right, Yeah, so there was this Yeah, exactly, well, and
I don't mind talking about it because I do want
to make it. You know, this year, you're going to
hear any podcasts and I'm on any you know, interviews
I do. I'm going to make sure that I informed
donors of what they should be looking at, what they
shouldn't be looking at us.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Right.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
So, you know, the worst part of my job is
raising money to combat human trafficking. It's the worst part
of my job. I hate going after people and saying,
please give me your hard earned money. And this this
nonprofit industry is the only industry in the world that
we can do everything right. We can, you know, have

(26:43):
the most successful programs out there. It's so go bankrupt, right,
It's it's not like our our money generation is not
based off of how great we're doing the things that
we're saying we're doing. It's based off the generosity of
our fellow man, right, or or corporations that are doing
So it's really frustrating to me when organizations come out

(27:05):
and they say, hey, we're doing this, and they give
the donor this sex appeal. Right, I'm using air quotations
if you're listening of this industry, right, everybody, every donor
wants to feel like they're part of the mission. And
I get that they want to see kids being rescued,
Navy seals busting open doors. And this is nothing against

(27:26):
you know, the soft community. It's just it's not our
approach to do the rescue mentality, right. But this organization
that you're specifically talking about, there was a movie that
came out in twenty twenty three, big blockbuster movie that
was in all the theaters I think domestically, made about
one hundred and eighty million dollars, which was supposed to
be based off of the founder of the organization you're
talking about in Salt Lake, and it's called The Sound

(27:51):
of Freedom. Right, everybody asks me about this, I can
tell you we are not a part of that organization.
We have nothing to do with that organization. And in fact,
that organ oranization's board of directors fired the founder two
weeks before that movie came out. And it's because there
are allegations from I believe eight different women, and you

(28:12):
can google Tim Ballard and New York Times and you
can read all of the allegations. It's pretty horrific shit
if it proves to be true.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
And right, that's jacked up too, because again, Austin, I
want to believe in what you're saying to you, Like
here if I had thirty bucks to donate, and again,
let me piggyback on what you just said about, like
profitability in this industry that you're doing. I run businesses
as an entrepreneur, and I do retail. I buy a product,

(28:43):
I mark it up a little bit, I sell it
for that maybe give a discount on it, and I
take that profit and I put it back into it.
What you're doing is you're not really getting any money
back now. This money just goes right into the situation.
And so that's where a donor comes into play, because
it's not profitability you're after. You're just after sustainability of
the mission so they can continue to do the missions

(29:05):
consistently with funding. Otherwise you know there's no funding, yes exactly.
And so that's where these donors that you're getting pulled
into two weeks into your career are eager and chomping
at the bit to donate, and like, are you the
right guy to donate to? Is you sure? Is the
is the you know, Traverse Project the place that we

(29:25):
need to put our funds.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
And absolutely so when you have a situation that happened
with UH, with Tim Ballard in his formal organization, it
undermines trust in the entire industry. And and just to
be clear, we knew that there was i'll be, i'll stay,

(29:49):
I'll keep myself out of a courtroom. There was smoke. Yes,
it's that individual for many many years before all this
stuff came out, and I personally always said, something is
going to happen with this because they were promoting that
they were involved with things that they were not involved with.

(30:12):
And honestly, it's donor fraud, right. If you're telling somebody
that you're doing something and you're not doing it, you're
you're misleading, and it's the criminal offense to do that.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Right. I've talked to those guys before, several of their
cadre during promotions and like things that we did donations
back in the day when everything was like like kind
of level or it seemed like it. And then yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean, and let me just be clear, like we
would so I do war games on a large scale
here in Utah. You know, two or three four hundred
people show up. Wow. So what we did is we said, hey,

(30:43):
everybody pays twenty five bucks and all proceeds go to
ex organization here Salt Lake City. This is like twenty ten. Yeah, okay, it's.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
Probably a little bit later than that if it was
this organization, but yes.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
It's the same organization on a hundred percent y. Yeah. Yeah,
we were helping them out. We did four different annual events,
like we did one one on one. I mean we
probably donated. You know, everybody in the community would pay
twenty five bucks, so four hundred people times twenty five bucks,
and then they would show up to the desert where
we were wargaming to collect the check and they would
just split. They say, hey, thank you everybody. We can't
tell you what we're gonna be doing, but we're gonna

(31:17):
be doing stuff with this check. So when I'm driving
up and down the freeway and I see that Camaro
fly by me, I am just like, bro, no way,
no way that our four years of annual donations to
you affords you to buy that zeal one Camaro and
wrap it well.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
And it gets even worse, right like the organization from
that movie. And I could be wrong, but I'm pretty
sure it was one hundred and eighty million dollar gross
for the movie domestically. None of that money went back
to the organization. No, so they fired Yeah, they fired him, right,

(31:58):
They brought in a whole new board, brought in a
new CEO. I'll leave it there.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
It's just a little late, you know. It's like, you know,
change your name, go to the Z Corporation or something. Man,
stop being black, stop calling yourself blackwater, go to Alphabet group.
I don't know what to tell you. It's like, are
you guys this guy's no, no, no, we're alphabet group.
Oh yeah, what do I know?

Speaker 3 (32:25):
No? Uh, you know, I don't want to I don't
want to put a current organization.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
We won't. We won't. Let me ask you a question.
Let me ask you something different though. Let's talk about
the fall of Afghanistan for a second. All right, let's
talk about human trafficking during that situation. So I've got
a lot of just that.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
It was the entire time we were there, I mean.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
Correct, correct, But like specifically I had acquaintances right coming
to me buying five plate carriers. I'm like, why did
he fight plate carriers? You're not playing airsoft war games.
And he's like, I'm going somewhere else and doing something else.
And I was like, oh, I see. And then I
find out like interpreters are locked behind enemy lines and
they're Afghani and they're interpreters, and they want to go

(33:06):
get their turf out and their interpreter to rescue them, right,
and to steal them out of Afghanistan and then bring
him to America. And I'm like, well, here you are
saying one thing like don't traffic, but then you're going
and doing the traffic. Yeah, I mean, so how do
you justify? And then I asked him, I said, Okay,
let's say you got your guy out and you got
him into a different country, and you smuggled him out

(33:26):
because you have to smuggle these people out of that Afghanistan.
So now you're literally going in and smuggling out somebody
and getting them out. A friend of mine, he's former
sas he was captured, they beat his feet for like
three or four weeks. I interviewed him on the show
as well, but he got four hundred people out.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
So then I said to my guy, I said, what
if that same interpreter escaped persecution on his own, made
it to the Mexican border. Because here's what I get. Oh,
they deserve to come to here because they fought with us.
Oh we should have them in the because they're from here.
And I'm like, well, but technically they're Afghani. Technically they

(34:05):
just did a job that they chose to do and
that's the turf that they deal with. So what if
you're interpreter in Afghanistan snuck out because everything was going down,
got out and said I'm gonna make my way to
San Diego. Yes, Sandra Sidral border bro, and I'm gonna
come over that way. Does that person still get to
come over that border? Does that person still get the

(34:28):
I mean, where do we draw the line on who's
coming in and who's not.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
So, you know, I've done a bunch of podcasts and
interviews where kind of the immigration versus trafficking issues come up,
and you know a lot of our politicians like to
use illegal immigration and you'll just kind of loop it
in with with trafficking, and it's just not it's not factual. Right,

(34:54):
there are there is, there is illegal immigration, and then
there is trafficking. And you can have a case of
someone who's being smuggled across the border. That turns into trafficking,
and I can explain how that works, but uh, you know,
specifically with Afghanistan, I think the difference would be, you know,

(35:15):
all those guys.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Would would the interpreter and his family be able to
come to or just the interpreter, you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (35:23):
Like and so those are those are those are I mean,
those are big issues that so so I think the
difference is with with trafficking a human being. My interpretation
would be that you are doing a bad thing to
make money. And I don't believe that those guys that
were helping get people out were doing a bad thing

(35:44):
for money. I think they were trying to do They
were taking a really shit situation and pulling people out.
Like I had terps that they're still there, right, I
just had one of my terps. I think it was
the last year who just got approved by the c
I S I think is the agency Custom Immigrant whatever
it is, Citizen Immigrant what whatever. That just got proved

(36:07):
to stay in the United States, which is great. He
came in on a SI visa. But you know, I
think that that was just a really bad situation and
I wouldn't. I wouldn't necessarily say that that's trafficking human being,
but because they're not doing it for for bad.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Intent, right, but it is trafficking a human being, and
you are trafficking a not national human being into America
to save them from persecution in another country, which is
what we're saying at the border right now is there's
a lot of people trying to escape political persecution, you know,
sexual trafficking persecution, and they're trying to get out, and like,

(36:46):
where do we draw the line on who do you who?
Who's who's coming in and who's not, Who's who's deciding that?
And why are guys that are against human trafficking okay
with bringing those guys back, but not I'm justin.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
And I think the situation now may be a lot
of those people that came in illegally, right, regardless of
whether they came in from Al Salvador, Afghanistan. And the
reason I mean, I think that most people come to
the United States through you know, whatever the whatever the
term is now that we're using undocumented, illegal, whatever the

(37:21):
term is that we're using.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
Probably undocumented, you know, yeah, I think undocumented because you know,
the guy that I know who's from there. It is.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Right, But like you said, it is it is illegal
to come across our borders without going through the process, correct,
And so it is you are committing a crime when
you come across our borders. So I think a lot
of those people, regardless of the reasons they got in here,
it came to the I think a lot of those
people are going to be deported here under the current
administration unless they set up some sort of thing that

(37:53):
you know, kind of we don't work with any like,
we don't touch any of that stuff. Well, like, like
I said, what we focus in on is sex traffiing.
And so where where an illegal immigration issue can then
become a trafficking issue is and it's probably about ten
percent of illegal immigration that turns to some sort of trafficking.

(38:16):
Is coyotes that also work for cartels are trafficking people
over and it costs money to do that, right, you know,
five ten thousand, fifteen thousand US to do this. And
so when you have a child that's coming across, how
did that child pay five thousand dollars to fifteen thousand
dollars US to get across? So it becomes like a

(38:39):
situation where don't worry, We'll take care of it on
the other side. And then all of a sudden, we
have three hundred thousand kids that go missing. And you know,
one of my biggest issues before was under the first
Trump administration, we were doing DNA testing and then they
stopped that under the Biden administration. So if you you
came in with a child that has a different last

(39:01):
name than you, and there's no I mean, how do
we check to see if your family or how how
do we check any of that?

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah? Well, I mean, like you know, I mean, how
do you immigrate here? You know, like the Statute of
Liberty's scrolls, you know that she holds Ellis Island there,
how do you That's.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
That's an immigration issue that we don't we don't focus
in on that at all.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
It's like the Irish were totally trafficked, you know, into
chicken factories, and you know, when they first arrived, they
were considered like just blah, you know, and they were
totally you know, I mean.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
We have a lot, Yeah, there was a lot of
indentured servitude here in the United States when it came
to Irish immigrants that came through and there was a
lot of during the slavery days of the United States, right,
that there were a lot of indentured servants that were white.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
Right, I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. We have a
bad track record America itself.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Well, I think the world. I think the world. I mean,
if you look at you know, not to get into
you know, the.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Like slavery, Right, that's we had.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
We had five hundred thousand, roughly five hundred thousand slaves
here in the United States, and Brazil had thirteen million. Right,
So you know, the entire world suffered from this issue.
I'm not making an excuse by any means. The entire
world suffered from this problem. You know, Great Britain colonized
half the planet and.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Oh yeah, dude, Iraq, as we know it was redrawn
by the Ottoman Empire. It should be cause Kurdistan.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
Yeah, the Persian Empires, everybody in the Romans, everybody had slaves,
you know. And I don't think sexual orientation or color
or anything had anything to do with it.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Hey, the pyramids don't build themselves, bro.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
Right, right, right, Okay, we aliens, I think.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Oh I got to do that with the aliens, right,
And I only want to smile through this because it's
a tough conversation to have it and it's real, you know.
And again, aliens are not I'm sure you know. The
pyramids don't build themselves.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
No, no, for sure, right, And the fields.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Didn't get picked by themselves, the plantations on the tobacco
fields didn't get picked by themselves. The chains that people
were made to wear around their necks that weighed like
twenty pounds or over their lips.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
And today there are more slaves in modern slavery today.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Jeez, I don't realize it or what it's like, just
like now.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
I mean, they're age fifty million slaves across the world,
and that covers so twenty roughly twenty eight million in
the labor trafficking category, which then the subcategories are organ harvesting,
sex trafficking, agriculture, labor trafficking, you know all those things, right,
and then there's the remaining is like arranged marriages, which

(41:48):
is a form of slavery.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Right.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
You take some child who's being forced to marry a
guy our age, right, and yeahs, I don't.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Know, let me tell you something about Utah. Okay, fourteen
years old, these kids are getting married off in the
FLDS the Fundamental Latter day Saints. So there's the Latter
Day Saints aka the Mormons, and then there's the FLDS
who never agreed with changing the doctrine of the Church
of multiple wives, et cetera. And so they kind of
live on the outskirts. But those outskirts are now encroached

(42:20):
with people building houses around them because they looking for land.
And now they have populations in the solid valley that
are just these people are rich. The Poligaments that had
the property they sold it to developers. Now they have
huge houses for like twenty kids with one door. You
see this, I think you're.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
Bringing up a really important thing to kind of segue into.
At least state laws change. So one of the biggest
issues that we deal with in human trafficking is that
nobody is saying the same thing. The definitions are different.
You know, there are some states here in the US,
so at federal law level, nobody under the age of
eighteen can consent to a commercial sex act right. So

(42:59):
that means regardless where I live, not too far away
from you know, I have an airport and I live
in you know, close to the nation's capital, and one
of the capital one of the airports here has a
hotel district, and there are teenagers that are prostitutes right
here too, and the county police say, well, they want

(43:20):
to do that, And it's like that a fifteen year
old wants to go do this, and it doesn't make
a difference. If they do want to go do this,
it's against federal law. Federal law says nobody under the
eighteen under eighteen can consent to a commercial sex act, right,
so that is trafficking by definition. But then there are
places here in the US where you have police departments

(43:41):
arresting prostitutes, and that's kind of like arresting the crack
addict for having an addiction. Right. It does not solve
the war on drugs. This is not solving the trafficking
issue by arresting prostitutes. And I don't remember the exact number,
but it was greater than seventy percent, and it essentially
that's greater than seventy percent of prostitutes at some point

(44:04):
when they got into this career field, that they were
forced into this career field, right, and that is trafficking, right.
So seventy percent or greater of prostitutes are victims of
human trafficking. So you've got some police departments that are
still arresting prostitutes and calling it a human trafficking arrest.
It's not solving any issue. You've got a and I'll

(44:29):
just use this example with most of my talks. You've
got a situation where, like, you know, a sixty five
year old man loses his wife to cancer, he gets lonely.
At some point, he goes and solicits an escort. Right,
And let's just say for the sake of this conversation
that that escort is works for herself, is not being trafficked.

(44:50):
She is, you know, does this because she wants to
do this.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
Full choice choice right, full choice yes.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
And if that, if that sixty five year old man
is arrested for that, he gets caught in active of
soliciting this. In some states he's been he's being arrested
for a human trafficking related offense. Right, And it's like,
this is insane to me. Let's start, let's start really
like digging into the problem. Let's and I'll give you

(45:16):
a great example. So we were given a case. We
are based in Houston, Texas, even though none of my
all of my folks are work remotely, but we're we're
a Houston, Texas based organization and we were given a
case of a convicted sex trafficker and I don't remember
the exact charge, but it was sex trafficking by force

(45:39):
or something like that. Right. Uh. He lives in the
suburbs or in the suburban area of Houston. Again, registered
sex offender because he's been convicted of sex trafficking by force,
convicted felon. And so we found we got we get
this case and it had one victim that we knew

(46:00):
of h and if I remember correctly, it was in
Florida where she was. He's in Houston, Texas. And my
team digs into this case and finds out now there's
eleven victims throughout the United States and he is making
over a million dollars a year, like over a million.
But see that we our generation called it pimps, right, Yeah,

(46:23):
this guy is a human trafficker. He is by coercion
or force or any number of other means. This is
what happens when when I think the average American looks
at these girls and says they're just prostitutes or they're
just escorts. That's not the case because some of these
girls feared this guy. And so that's coercion when you're

(46:44):
forcing somebody to go do this.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, and I'll tell you the reason why I also
pick pick on, you know, talent agents kind of you know,
is I knew a guy back in the early late
nineties in my acting career. He started up his own agency.
He wanted to represent a lot actors here in the state.
We were all friends with them. No one thought nothing
of it. He was older than us. But you know,
some of the girls would say, like when they were
one on one in his office, it became more like, oh, hey,

(47:10):
you want this part, or you don't want this part?
You know what? No, No, But that's that is exactly
another situation. It's it's preying on there's multiple people. They
want to be an actress or an actor. It goes boy, girl,
whatever you want. Okay, the whole color spectrum of a rainbow.
See I got that in there. So I'm gonna say,

(47:31):
I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say right now, okay, So
you know, you never know whose style is what when
you see him to your face. It's one way, but
in the behind the closed doors, and so this guy
got a really bad reputation. And that's why I'm like, wow,
you know, I see these guys, you know, like who
we were talking about earlier in the show, who has
his own island, they had a modeling agency. It's just
kind of like, hey, come to us. You know, the

(47:53):
other guy who's locked up trying to prove his innocence,
did he modeling agency? Ask do you remember the.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
Movie Trafficked with Michael Douglas and Cather Zada Jones.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
I think so really long movie.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
He Michael Douglas plays the Drugs Are for the United
States Catherine Zeta Jones. I think her husband was like
a massive drug trafficker and was arrested and she took
over the business. Anyway, in the movie, Michael Douglas's daughter
gets addicted to I think it was heroin if I
remember correctly, And this is the Drugs Are of the

(48:29):
United States, right, a presidential appointed member of the cabinet, right,
and she ends up becoming a victim of human trafficking. Now,
when we when we were all watching that movie back
in the nineties or early two thousand, whatever it was,
nobody looked at it like that. They were just like,
here's some girl that's prostituting herself to defeat her addiction,
right right, And it's like, no, this is this is

(48:51):
where where we're wrong.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
Right.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
If you watch a movie, watch the part where Michael
Douglas goes and bangs on this guy's door in the
middle of you know, you know, lower end neighborhood or
you know, lower income neighborhood, and you know this guy
who ups to his door and it's having sex with
the girl. You know that somebody is having sex with
the girl for so she can get her fixed. It's

(49:13):
all coercion, right, And so that's where But if she
was arrested, right, it would have been solicitation of prostitution
in most states. So when when I was talking a
minute ago, and I said, we're all saying different things.
All the laws are different. You know, in our industry,

(49:34):
the new term for child pornography, we're not. We don't
say child pornography anymore. We say se sam child sexual
abuse material. Because the movement was that, or the kind
of the push behind it was that saying child pornography
implied that there was consent there. And I get it.
But all federal loss is child pornography, right, So when

(49:56):
somebody is charged with something, it's child pornography, not ceesam.
So we're trying to like change all this stuff and
we're not even talking to each other. This industry, you know,
is so siloed when it comes to nonprofits, and this,
this crime set is the only crime set that nonprofits
play such a big role in. I mean, we're we're

(50:18):
doing we we are we are NGOs, we are non
governmental organizations, meaning we are doing a government function or
a function that should be reserved for the government, and
right and right.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
So I'm just kind of shocked still that you're so right.
It should be totally should be. And I'm sure there's
some kind of a team, but it's only if they
stumble on it. I don't know if they're like like right.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
So, on a federal level, right, you have the FBI
and Department Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, right, which is
similar to the FBI, except HSI is mandated by Congress
when they were created to do smuggling, trafficking, all of
this stuff. Right, So this is the mandated agency that
should be handling child you know, any human trafficking cases

(51:03):
domestically or internationally, and then you have the FBI, who's
they just dabble in everything, right and so and so.
But there was recently a memo that came out under
the previous administration. There was a memo that came out
that made human trafficking cases so hard for the case

(51:25):
agents to investigate that essentially they got to almost and
I'm not speaking for the FBI obviously, but almost got
out of the business of human trafficking cases. And so
they've moved into so HSI. The problem with them is
they aren't funded the way the FBI is. So you know,
when you're talking about the FBI, they have more or

(51:46):
less of one to one ratio of analyst agents. When
you're talking about HSI, DEA, or you know a lot
of the other agencies, it's like one analyst twenty four
agents or twenty six agents or twenty two agents. When
you get into the state level law enforce it's like
one to fifty investor you know, investigators. You get down
to the local level and it's like maybe one at

(52:06):
the whole department. So one of the great things that
we do it traversus when we partner with or you know,
with law enforcement. Is we kind of bridge a gap
because we are an organization full of analysts and we
have access to just unbelievable amounts of data that we
just kind of look at in different ways. So we
take all kinds of data and we can get into

(52:27):
that a second, but so we can provide once we
kind of layer that data together in you know, old
school cop work, right yea, our binoculars, camera, notepad, stale
doughnuts and coffee and telling bad you know, dad jokes
to each other for twelve hours. We don't. We don't
do that. Like my guys sit on a laptop and

(52:47):
they can pretty much see all of this stuff from data,
So we can without getting into the secret sauce too
much publicly here, but we have access to commercial data
and telemetry data and all of the good stuff.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
Right yeah, yeah, we have.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
Access to this. Law enforcement should have access to this,
but they don't have the analyst to be able to
do it, and it's so expensive that law enforcement agencies
just can't afford this stuff. It's donated to us because
we're a nonprofit, which is where that kind of non
governmental organization aspect really does help law enforcement.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
Yes, but yeah, you don't really have a leash on
you like they do. You know, they're like, hey, man,
I can't go after this because it's not in my jurisdiction.
You're just like, well, I'll go across the street.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
Well see what we specifically do. You know, a minute
ago we talked about how siloed everything is, sure and
how everybody's kind of recreating the same things. Right, we
stuck in our lane and we said this data intelligence
is our lane. We're not going to recreate this. When
I can recreate this. If we need this or need that,
we're going to partner with organizations that do that really well.
But the one thing that does apply to us is

(53:58):
that some of our evidence is used for court cases
or should be used for court cases.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Right, because you're getting it right.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
And we're turning it over to law enforcement. So we
have to be very careful about not because me, as
a private citizen, my organization is a private organization, we
alone cannot violate your Fourth Amendment rights because only the
government can violate your Fourth Amendment rights. However, if we
partner with law enforcement, then there's an argument to be

(54:26):
made that we are acting as agents for law enforcement,
and so then the rules do apply to us. So
that's where it's really good to have an ex cop
who was an executive that says, no, this is the
rules that we have to stick with. Right, So even us,
we just can't do this vigilanting stuff that a lot
of these organizations that you see raising money are doing.

(54:48):
It is not leading to a solution. It's leading to
make you feel good. But at the end of the day,
when somebody, when a bad guy who is trafficking a
child does not get put in a prison self for
the rest of his life, gets let out on a technicality,
or you know, whatever the case is, or you get
arrested because you put your hands on a bag. There's
an Instagram profile, right, dude, they're doing these what we

(55:11):
refer to as a john op. They're pretending that they're
a john, right, you know, in the terms of solicitation prostitution,
that they're a john and they're getting these or that
they're a little kid and they're getting these men to
meet them at Walmart or whatever. And then we're sneaking
the ship out of these people and it's like, Okay,
what are you doing. This guy is still a pedophile. Right,

(55:31):
that guy is never going to be arrested off what
you did. And now you're going to be arrested because
you just assaulted this guy. What good did you do?

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Right? Right? And he's making awarenesses and it causes a
bad situation for what you're actually doing.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
Right, And I listen, I get the sentiment behind what
they're they do. We all want to smack the shit
out of these guys and feed them alligators, right, right, right.
But the reality is all of us doing this job
all have the right intention. We want to stop people
from hurting children and women, right, just because we are

(56:06):
good people. This is why we joined the military. We
became cops or firemen or whatever the case is. But
you know, I was on Dan Crenshaw's podcast and I said,
when you went through buds, did they teach you anything
about rules of evidence? No, they didn't teach you anything
about that. Right, So we have to build cases, We
have to work within the system in the limits that
we have in the United States and our judicial process.

(56:29):
I still have a lot of confidence there. You know,
there are some screwed up things that have happened with
bad cases or you know, bad evidence or whatever. The
case is right where people get off, you know, when
they should be going to.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
Prison, Like.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
That guy should have served the rest of his life
as from prison.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
He shouldn't have had to go back. He should have
already been in You're absolutely correct, that's all. I'm just
pointing that out for the listener. For like who we're
talking about here, like that kind of a thing, right,
like absolutely and his cohorts. His gris the Maxwell or
the lady she's in prison.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
Yeah, and I don't remember how many years she got.
But you know, but when a judge says, and I'm
doing this for memory, so please excuse me if I'm wrong,
I'm sure somebody will fact check me.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
Here, go ahead, common down below.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
But the judge in Max Maxwell was her name.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
Right, yeah, Gislaine Gislaine Maxwell.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
Yeah, his friend right, said something about that they couldn't
release the list because it would be too detrimental to
public safety or something along those lines.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
Right, It's like, let us judge that talking about it. Yeah,
that's what it is.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
It was detrimental to a federal investigation. Okay, I'm good. Right,
you were under investigation for sex traficking. Go for it.
But it's been how many years.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Bro, what's the investigation stalling on? You know, it's like
we don't want to say thing because we're investigating this
for It's like you already know.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
Yeah, I don't know much time we have left, but
I really want to talk about one big project.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
That we have going on if we I'd love to
hear that.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Okay, great. So how I met Cyrus is? Cyrus is
a Native American and Navajo. Yeah he's Navajoa. That's exactly right, Cyrus.
He is a great, great dude. Yeah, and such a
sauce spoken, like gentle hearted guy.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
I really love him, but a ranger with night vision
and he will people will he.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
Will keeck open your door and c QP the shit.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
Out of you, right bro. Yeah, he's great. He is.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
So. So I met Cyrus because you know, back in
let's see, we're in twenty twenty five, so twenty beginning
of twenty twenty four, we want to look at doing
a domestic project. And you know, obviously, coming from law enforcement,
I know that cops can be very territorial, uh, and
you don't want to step on their toes because they

(58:58):
really do for the most they're really great at what
they do. So we wanted to find law enforcement that
really needed our help with data and actionable intelligence. So
we looked at what what is a great law enforcement agencies,
agencies right in the United States that don't have resources,
and we looked at tribal law enforcement and tribal law enforce.

(59:21):
You know, the complexity of jurisdictional issues on a Native
reservation is insane.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
I was going to say something that it's ridiculous anymore,
even though I am it. Okay, we're all on the spectrum, brother, Yes, exactly.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
So it's like you have some states that that tribal
land is state jurisdiction. You have some state and they're
called it's a two eighty state or a non to
eighty state, and then you have some states that the
tribal lands are federal jurisdiction, and you have some jurisdictions

(01:00:00):
that and then the the jurisdiction of sentencing, like for example,
in Cherokee, they can sentence somebody for a maximum of
nine years in prison. That's it. So if you have
somebody who's committed a homicide, the most they're getting is
nine years in prison, but you would hope that they
get a federal sentence and it's so complex between each
nation that I don't even understand all of it yet

(01:00:23):
We're still we're still you know, digging in and learning
as we go. But anyway, so in early twenty twenty four,
we wanted to support We decided we wanted to support
a tribal program. And because they suffer tribal it's called
Indian Country throughout the throughout the US, like all of
the tribes, Indian Country suffers from a problem that they

(01:00:48):
that it's called different things different places, but the federal
term is m sorry m MP, which is missing murdered
Indigenous people, right, So you're talking about trafficking, homicides, addiction,
like everything. It just covers so much. And so we

(01:01:08):
really wanted to partner with tribal law enforcement and tackle
this issue because it is a really stupid issue to
have here in the United States where you have people
that could be murdered or good missing, right, and nobody
has the resources to look into this stuff. So we
are piloting a person. So how we work programs is

(01:01:29):
we every January, we sit down, we say these are
the programs we'd want to do for the following year,
and we take a year to concept these the programs
out so that we are extremely thoughtful because this is
super complex stuff. You know, internationally, you're talking about geopolitics
and all these other nonsense things that kind of play
into it. So we took all of twenty twenty four

(01:01:49):
started building out this program that we refer to as
Task Force Red Hand. Red Hand is the you might
have seen it, the red handprint over the face. Yeah,
over the face, righties m m I W m mi IP.
It goes by a few different things. Navahou Nation calls
it something else, missing murdered relatives. I believe it. It's

(01:02:11):
just called a few different things, but all meaning the
same thing. And so we have we are piloting a
project in Oklahoma, and we have several Native nations that
have signed on board that support this program. We have
the State of Oklahoma Attorney General's office that's signed up

(01:02:31):
to support this, we have local police. So we've created
this public part private partnership and the intent was to
not have a siloed approach to this, but have nonprofits,
for profits, academia, law enforcement, and other government bodies kind
of come together. Everybody bring their specialty to the table

(01:02:53):
and really create a program a full you know, in government,
we used to call it a government wider, a whole
of government approach to this one problem. So it's kind
of a three tiered system. The first one is education
and awareness. So we have University of Houston that is
partnering with us who is going to be partnering with

(01:03:15):
tribal colleges which are equivalent to like a community college
to develop curriculum so that those tribal kids that are
going to those schools are going to be pushed out
into their communities and teach this this awareness and education programs, right,
it'll go to community leaders, students, and their parents to

(01:03:36):
kind of give them a full scope. This is the
reality of what MMIP, you know, all the issues that
kind of surround it. That part does two things. The
first is we want it to encourage the next generation
of fighters in this and get local young kids involved
in the fight in their communities. And the second thing

(01:03:58):
is hopefully we're going to stop the next generation of victims,
yes by doing this awareness hurt. The second tier is
our interdiction or our enhanced law enforcement solutions. So one
of the biggest issues that we saw in tribal country
was our Indian country was tribes were not communicating with

(01:04:18):
each other in their own states about trafficking or you
know other issues that fall under m MIP, and so
we wanted to create a system where everybody was kind
of talking to each other. So we'll be building out
a database that's backed with machine learning and AI that
there more data we pour into it, the better the
insights are that come out of it. So then we

(01:04:40):
can start targeting, like, hey, there seems to be a
lot of you know, young people coming from victims right
coming from this tribe or this area to another area,
whether it goes into casinos or share oil camps or
you know, any variety of different things that could potentially

(01:05:01):
be popping up cartel issues. There's a lot of cartel
issues happening on tribal lands because you have small police
departments that don't have enough resources to police their entire
I mean, these reservations are massive, right, You're talking about
thirteen counties, seventeen counties, you know, I mean, they're just massive,
and then you have like a small amount of cops

(01:05:22):
that work each shift. So that's one thing. The second
is we'll be standing up an operations center, so any
tribal cop from any of the jurisdictions that we partner
with can pick up the phone twenty four to seven
and say we've had a murder or we've had a
missing person. Here's all the pedigree information that feeds it
into the system, and our targeters are analysts will go

(01:05:47):
to work right away twenty four and that will give
them exactly and that will give those cops actionable intelligence
to turn a body recovery into the rescue of a
human being and bring them back home to their parents
and their family that love them right now. So, just
to give you a quick statistic on that, the last
real data that we had on a national level was

(01:06:10):
twenty sixteen. There was five seven hundred and twelve cases
of missing and murdered Indigenous people right nationally, and of
that the FBI investigated one hundred and sixteen cases. One
hundred and sixteen cases.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
I thought, is it just manpower?

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
It's a combination of things, And I'll be really honest.
So I did an interview with Native News Online, and
I think that I said something very similar to what
I'm about to say. It's that Native Americans are forgotten people.
They have historically been forgotten people. In this country and
we just do not provide the resources they have. The

(01:06:49):
jurisdictional complexity, there's issues with you know a lot of
non natives that live in and around the reservations see
addiction and alcohol abuse, and they say, these people are
just bad. Every every time that we have something bad
that happens in our town, it's these people. I mean,
I've heard stories there there are police officers that are

(01:07:12):
targeting Native Americans when they come off the reservation, right,
and and it like I get targeting behavior, right, but
targeting people, it's just you know, and I don't want
to give cops a bad rep here.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Like, you know, it doesn't mean that you're a bad person,
and that's kind of what you're they're just like kind
of they're they're profiling.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
I Like I said, I always give cops the benefit
of the doubt. I'm a former cop, right, I always
give cops the benefit of the doubt. It is a
very difficult job. So I don't want to I don't
want to put a bad connotation on this. I think
it's just decades of like bad blood between you know,
the reservations and non natives.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
Saying you can't come on our land cop and the
cops this guy just this guy just escaped into your
land and they're like, well, we'll have it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
Yeah. I mean it's it's just a combination of so
many issues that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
You're white and you're on the land, they can't arrest you.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
That's true sometimes, Yeah, and that's your sexual complexity. It
was for a long time that if you so, tribal
police would not investigate homicides because if it turned out
the suspect was non Native, they could not investigate.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
Yeah, it's just like, yeah, he's like, we had so
much crime once they realized that we couldn't arrest them
on our land. He's like crime just exploded with people
just coming in and just doing whatever and then just
leaving because the tribal cops are are are not able
to arrest a white guy.

Speaker 3 (01:08:43):
Yeah, and and and I mean it's a matter of
like sometimes it's just as simple as like just a
pissing contest between native and non native cops.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
Agencies and so yeah, agencies, right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
And just it's just decades of bad blood between people,
and some of it is one side fault and some
of it's the other side fault. But one of the
biggest things I wanted to accomplish with Task Worces Redhand
was to build those bridges because I truly believe in humans, right,
and I truly believe that like all of us, all

(01:09:15):
of us are just trying to do the same thing.
We're trying to get dinner, kids, bellies, provide a safe
home to them, send them off to to to.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
School so that they Everybody wants that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
Everybody wants that, everyone right, So I like, I think
that if we can kind of break down some of
these walls and and traverse project can be kind of
the the go between until we can get those folks talking.
Then I think we're gonna We're just gonna have it.
It's just gonna build that bridge, right, and we'll start
solving a lot of problems.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Well, should be Bob the Builder now because you.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
Because my last name is Shamlin and and uh what
was the guy from the infomercial that sold the uh
that was my call signed in Iraq unfortunately. Wow yeah, sham.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Wow, come clean on this up. ShamWow.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
Very exciting. So the third tier of this is aftercare,
right in survivor care, and you know, I just we
are not a survivor care organization. It is one of
those things that like, if you do it poorly, you
can really I mean you're taking somebody out of a
really bad situation. And if you do it poorly, and

(01:10:27):
there's been a couple of organizations we may or may
not have talked about earlier that did it poorly for
a number of years and just didn't care. I wanted
to make sure that we were being responsible and did
it really well. So we partner with organizations, yes, and
so when you bring somebody out of this situation, whether
it is addiction, prostitution, because of human trafficking, whatever, whatever,

(01:10:50):
whatever you're surviving right that we're putting you into a
path for success moving forward. And so we've partnered with
Ranstad USA, which is one of the largest staffing companies
in the world. And we've partnered with Annie Cannons, which
is a fantastic aftercare organizations, and both of them have
similar programs. The Ranstad program is they have a thirty

(01:11:13):
five week program where vulnerable women can be placed into
their program. The first week they're learning about building resumes
and LinkedIn profiles and things like that. They go through
they graduate thirty five weeks later and Ranstead hosts essentially
a career fair with all their customers that you're talking
about Google and Nike and Amazon and you know, all
of their customers and they place them for employment. And

(01:11:35):
then Annie Cannons does a very similar thing. There are
new partners. So I don't have all the details on
how long their programs, but they teach people essentially to
be computer engineers. They're teaching them coding and all this
great stuff. And so when you graduate their program, they
also have career placement and those folks are going off
to super high painion jobs, right.

Speaker 2 (01:11:56):
Oh yeah, they're curating them for those positions. Eloye, You're like, hey,
let me talk to you of your program. Yeah, and
as soon as you give me two students that graduate
your program, I will hire them absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:12:07):
So with the rams that they had a great they
had one of it that was trafficked. She went through
the program, went to the career fair, got hired into
an HR position, made her way up to management, and
just last year bought her first home. Right and like
to hear that kind of pack to success, that's what
I wanted for task worts redhand, and so you know

(01:12:29):
it's it's super important. This is this is a first
of its kind program in Indian country. You know, we're
we're going to Congress here next week, I think, and
pushing for congressional funding for this. You know, we've got
a lot of just amazing partners. I didn't even talk
about her tech partners that are in that tier two
of the law enforcement solutions, but we have amazing partners

(01:12:52):
there and and really giving us access to just unbelievable data,
building out our our infrastructure so that we can support this.
And I'm really stoked about it, you know, And you
can go to our website Traverse Project dot org. All
of our programs, all of our leadership. You know, we
try to be as transparent as possible to the public.

(01:13:14):
So it's all on there. This is. And just to
be clear, because I've gotten beat up a couple of
times about not being native and kind of leading the
Native Project, all the leadership on Task Force Red Hand
is all Native, all of it right for that exactly? Well,

(01:13:35):
I listen, I worked in Afghanistan, I worked in Iraq,
I worked in Haiti, I worked in Somalia. And what
I learned very quickly was, you know, people refer to
it as the white savior complex, Right, I are the
Superman complex. We don't suffer from that, right, So what
we like to do is create programs that really in

(01:13:55):
processes that really solve the problem. And when I was overseas,
I learned that first probably the most important thing is
is to shut up and start listening a little bit
more and add value where you can. And where we're
adding value is data solutions, processes, things like that, you know,
bridge building, but this needs to be a solution that

(01:14:17):
natives are leading the charge on. And what our intent
is that with you know, three years, four years, we
have to we have to. I don't want to put
a timeline on it, but somewhere around that time that
we will be handing this project off to a native
nonprofit that will then become the program manager, the umbrella

(01:14:37):
that keeps it all together, and will go back to
tier two, which is what we're really good at, pattern
of life investigations, data analytics, targeting, things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
Right, it sounds like you're just trying to help create
this subset of you within the native culture so that
they work it, and then you have to shift back
to another situate, a situation and.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
We'll still support it forever. And so that's where like
guys like Cyrus and Jeremiah from from War Party Ranch,
you know, and Bernardine from Four Corners Canine, you know,
which is another she's Navajo. She's got a great program
down there as well. Like we're bringing in all these
Native nonprofits to support what we're doing, and we're just

(01:15:22):
adding a value with the program management and doing what
we do best from a tech and data perspective. But
this is the most important priority of Traverse Project for
twenty twenty five, right, and it's been incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
I love that and Cyrus too. I love Cyrus too.
So anything to help, you know. I mean on the show,
he was talking about how it's just wild, you know,
what happens on tribal lands, and you know, we can't
forget that, and god, you know, boy boy, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:15:59):
Really do think that. You know, this this current administration.
You know, we have Christy Nome, who I know she
got she had some issues with some of the tribes
in her in South Kota when she was a governor.
But Christy now Noam is now the Secretary of Homeland Security.
Homeland Security is going to play a huge role in this.
You know, we are Traverse Project as partners with the

(01:16:20):
Center for Countering Human Trafficking at h s I. It's
kind of their their kind of incubator, not an incubator,
but kind of their their central brain for human trafficking programs,
and they kind of coordinate everything from there.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
But we don't know any funding to tribals though, you know,
because they're in there right now with like axes and
guillotines cutting off funding.

Speaker 3 (01:16:42):
I think I think funny is going to get cut why,
you know, government wide for probably six months, which pushes
back some of the stuff, some of the plans that
we had. But I think, I really do think that
with all the issues that tribal lands deal with through cartels.
I mean I was just on on the phone two

(01:17:03):
weeks ago with another tribe in Oklahoma who's like, yeah,
we're dealing with you know, we have historically dealt with
cartel issues here. You know. I remember hearing from a
deputy attorney general in another state. I don't want to
because it's under investigation, so I don't want to give it.
But another state where they're dealing with organized crime out

(01:17:23):
of Eastern Europe, you know, deal in their casinos, so
you know, it's just there's so many problems that you know,
bad guys using air quotations right are kind of abusing
the jurisdictional complexities of the tribal lands and.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
It's just money there.

Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
But I can tell you right now, uh, and I'll
go on record saying this, if you are abusing a
child or or a woman. If if there is someone
who is a bad guy focused in on one of
the categories that falls under m m IP, my team

(01:18:08):
is going to put a stop to what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
Is there a place that they can reach out to
you and maybe say, hey, this is happening, I'd like
to report this to you guys and let you investigate it.
Is that on the Traverse project dot org. Is there
like a drop down where it's like submit it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:23):
Will be so there will be as soon as this
operation center gets stood up, there will be an email
that you can see. Yeah, right now, absolutely what right now?
What I would suggest is that DHS or HSI Homeland
Secuting Investigations has a tip line for any trafficking issues.

(01:18:44):
Call that number and report what you need to report there.
HSI is a I mean the agents that we've worked
with from HSI are unbelievably dedicated to combating human trafficking,
combating drug cartels and everything else that kind of goes
in that that space. So I make the call, let

(01:19:04):
them know what's going on.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
You know, I've I've really enjoyed our conversation, you know,
I mean we've taught. I don't know if you realize
it's been an hour twenty so yeah, and usually it's like,
you know, it just kind of flows, and I don't
want to stop it. But I just want to say,
if anybody out there has any uh, you know, ambition
to reach out to Thetraverseproject dot org, h you know,

(01:19:28):
I would encourage you to do so if you want
to see if there's a position probably there for you.
Are you guys looking for you know, real quick, I'll
give you like a minute. Are you looking for any
veterans or anybody to join your organization right now?

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
So what we're you know, supporting veterans is super important
for me. So we we are constantly looking for people
that want to reclass is intelli analysts or you know, targeters,
things like that. We are always looking for interns. So
if you're in college, you're using your post nine to
eleven GI bill right now, and you want to do

(01:20:00):
something good and learn some new skills, get over to
the website, put in an application. One of our folks
will get back to you like pretty much right away
that you know right now. We have three that's a
one air Force, one Army, one marine and the females
the marine. Uh, all three of them. All three of

(01:20:22):
them use their post nine to eleven g I bills
at UC Berkeley to get their masters. We had partnered
with UC Berkeley early early early days, and they said, wow,
we love what you're doing and wanted to stay on.
And they are all three still here with Traverse two
years later. So it's we are always looking for for
folks to join our our fight.

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (01:20:43):
I love that at Traverse project dot org Verse Project
dot org Traverse.

Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
Traverse like you're traversing the mountain on a snowboard. I
had to get that in my head. Traverse Traverse projects
we got, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:58):
Side, it's all Instagram, find us on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2 (01:21:03):
We'll have some of those things put into the dissertation
down below when this goes on the website. So my
listener out there, the viewer, you can just click on
that once it's live and you can go check out
the Traverse project dot org. Uh Traver Traverse.

Speaker 3 (01:21:17):
So you got it. You got it man.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
Now I'll be on behalf of myself and Brandon Webb
who runs this whole soft rep with his crew, and
you know, shout out to him, and shout out to
you and to Cyrus and to your friend at the
Canine four Corners Canine, and to Jeremiah. I'm just going
to rehash that name. I like that name. Uh, you know.
I just want to say thanks for being on the show,

(01:21:40):
and I wish you best of luck in your endeavor
with Congress and all these budget situations that are happening
and in this day and age. I appreciate what you're
doing and I'm just don't drive no Camaro though. I
just want to tell you right now, Bro, I don't
want to see that. I want to see you understand that, right.
I'm just like, what's the optics on that? Right? Optics

(01:22:01):
is what I'm all about.

Speaker 3 (01:22:01):
Right, Believe me, that was the least of his worries.

Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
I know, Bro, show me some humbleness in your situation,
then I'll donate. I still will donate you, but just
be humble about it, Bro, don't have me.

Speaker 3 (01:22:13):
I remember watching the very first interview that you did
that I saw was the interview it was a doctor
down and down in Baja doing usch yahuasca or something
the I be game and I actually went to that
because you're interview with them. So yeah, uh he's uh.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
So, I.

Speaker 3 (01:22:35):
Appreciate what you're doing. And uh, I appreciate for you
having us on to kind of spread.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
Oh you're sweet and sweet, but stay hard. You know
what I'm saying, Bro, And I got you and and
I appreciate it. Anytime you want to come and like,
you know, update us and let us know what's going
on with your project. Uh, task Force red hand.

Speaker 3 (01:22:51):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:22:53):
You're You're welcome here at soft Rep.

Speaker 3 (01:22:55):
Thanks brother, appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
All right, Well, this is rad say check out our
merch store, check out the book club which is soft
reap dot com, Forward slash Book hyphen Club. And this
is Austin Shamlin with Project or the Traverse Project dot org. Okay,
and I want you guys to go check it out
and make your own decisions and go from there. And
thanks for being on the show.

Speaker 3 (01:23:15):
Thanks brother.

Speaker 2 (01:23:16):
All right, Hey, cheers and we'll talk soon. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:23:18):
Sounds good man, all right, peace it

Speaker 1 (01:23:36):
You've been listening to your self REP Radio

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.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Austin Shamlin, CEO and Founder of Traverse Project

Episode Transcript

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Austin Shamlin, CEO and Founder of Traverse Project

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