November 21, 2022 • 51 mins
A former DEA ageny sentenced to 12 years for a string of corruption-related crimes shares his story with the press. Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX crashes, leading to some interesting -- and unproven -- conspiracy theories. After more than 900 days in space, the unmanned X-37B returns to Earth... but no one's saying much about what it was doing up there in the dark for almost two and a half years. All this and more in this week's Strange News. They don’t want you to read our book.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Rating. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want
you to know. Crazy stuff is going on in the
world of crypto. Crazy stuff is going on in space,
(00:49):
and no On wants to talk about the specifics. Also
on the heels of our two part series, and the
problems with federal classification in the US US and the
rank corruption in background investigations and security clearances. Uh we
we gotta tell you before NATO invokes Article five and
(01:13):
before we take some time off for the Thanksgiving holiday,
still a big deal here in the States. We wanted
to talk to you a little bit about Team America. Yeah, yes,
Team America Drug Police also known as the d A
(01:35):
Miami Division. That's actually what we're gonna be talking about today. Yeah,
not a crime show, real thing, yep, correct, it does
feel like a crime show. It is a group of
individuals calling themselves Team America, and one of the primary
people in that Team America group is Jose Arizari. It's
(01:56):
forty six years old as of and um, so, I
guess he's around forty eight right now. Um In guys,
he pled guilty to some things so a couple of
years ago. Uh, some things that are not great honest services,
wire fraud whatever that is, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit
(02:21):
money laundering, and aggravated identity theft. Aggravated identity theft that
I always think of aggravated as like something that happens
when you're like physically in someone's presence. Yeah, it's just
it was in a bad mood when he did it. Theft,
which is like the last four your s s and
(02:44):
l m AOA yes, well why okay, Well, somebody do
something really bad. Why are we talking about it? Well?
Mr Irazari was for a long time a d E
a agent drug enforcement agent working for the d o
J and well, he was tasked with doing this very
(03:07):
specific thing for them, which included money laundering only for
the government on purpose to try and track down leads
for the d E. A basically to figure out where
the money is going into whom and what are the
channels that money is getting to places where it's supposed
to go according to the bad guys. Okay, well, uh.
(03:30):
Since January of this year, Mr Irazari has been in
prison at the Federal Correction Institution Miami. And right before
he went into prison for those charges we talked about,
including conspiracy to commit money laundering, he had a little
talk with the Associated Press and he was very forthcoming,
(03:54):
we should say, I think he talked about what he
got in trouble for. He sounded, at least in the
video interview the portion that I have seen, like he
is genuinely remorseful for what he did. I'm gonna give
you a quote. I can't justify my actions. I should
have known. I knew what was right from wrong, and
(04:15):
I chose wrong many times. That's why I'm here again.
This is literally right before he went in to the prison,
like he took himself there to go to the prison
twelve years, right for twelve years starting this year. Um,
he basically came out guys and said this was not
just him doing this whole money laundering thing. We're gonna
(04:37):
give you some more of the details here in a second.
This was basically the d e A. This was the
whole Team America group. This was everybody. They're all in
on it, just taking money off the top basically of
this money they were laundering legally the way they well,
I guess the way they were supposed to do for
their investigations. Uh. And they were just using it and
(04:59):
he was all one big game. He actually calls the
entire drug war a game, a fun game and unwinnable.
I believe right, that's correct. Mat. I'm so glad we're
talking about this when this is one of those uh,
one of those things where we see his story and
post it in a in our in our group chat,
(05:22):
you know, uh, and and say what about this? You
know what what's going on? And we take the time
to like vet this and make sure it's not just
an ephemeral headline. But as you found, there's a lot
of history leading to this moment and this incredibly candid interview.
Oh yeah, there's a ton building up to this. So
(05:44):
Mr Irizari has been employed by the d e A
since two thousand nine, and a little something happened to
him personally in two thousand ten is something unfortunate happens
to a lot of people. He had to file for
personal bankruptcy, but it was to the tune of around
half a million dollars. And apparently immediately following this event,
(06:06):
when this whole scheme to divert funds from the d
e A money laundering operation into his own personal bank
accounts started, when it became a thing he, according to
the d o J in a statement they put out
on December nine, Mr Irazari quote used his position as
a special agent to divert approximately nine million dollars from
(06:29):
undercover d e A money laundering investigations to himself and
two co conspirators. Nat, could you tell us a little
bit more about these co conspirators. Were they all d
e A. Well, some of them were supposedly d e A.
Some of them were um agents slash law enforcement officers
(06:50):
in other countries where this operation was occurring, and a
few of them were not law enforcement at all. They
were actually part of the cartels that they were, you know,
laundering money for. Again, it's the d A laundering money
for the cartels. As an investigation, that's still like wrapping
(07:10):
my head around it. I am Jack's lack of surprise.
You know, not not to sound too cynical that this
this story stands out because you know, these these three
stories are all spoiler alert folks, um entire episodes. These
are episodes. Yeah, this is definitely a full episode. I'm
gonna give you a tiny bit more from the d
(07:30):
J statement just so we all kind of have an
understanding of what was really occurring. So that was the
nine There's that nine million dollars that he diverted, Okay,
and he wasn't diverting that for himself. He didn't just
take nine million dollars. What he did do, though, was
received bribes and kickbacks worth at least a million dollars
for himself and his family, including his wife, and that
(07:54):
was used to purchase a thirty thousand dollar ring from
Tiffany's pretty nice luxury cars a bunch of I think
they're land Rovers and I think they're even two Lamborghinis
involved to the tune of around three grand apiece um.
And to carry out this scheme, according to the d
o J, this dude and his co conspirators quote used
(08:16):
a stolen identity to open a bank account under false pretenses.
And then utilize that account to receive diverted drug proceeds.
And the scheme lasted throughout all of his assignments. Basically
in that Miami Field Division, the Team America Division over
there really messed up, guys. And um, you gotta watch
(08:37):
the video of this interview. I found a really good
link on USA today. You can just search for x
d E a agent. That's probably the fastest way to
get it. Uh, it's only about five and a half minutes,
and it's produced by the AP. I believe, yes, it
is the AP. And just to hear him talk about
(08:59):
this stuff, he said, it was all about drinking, oh
and the girls, and uh, there was some soccer involved
in football. Uh, they would like travel the world following
this football team and they would like make false assignments basically,
so they had to travel he and his quote co conspirators.
(09:21):
So they have to travel to a certain place where
one of these football matches was going on, so they
could go to the football match and not really do
any work, uh, and just hang out and have a
lavish lifestyle. Now, this is where we get to some
of the questions. One of one of the things that
a lot of people are gonna wonder about is his
(09:42):
motivation right? Was? It clearly wasn't all At some point
it wasn't all financial necessity. I mean, we're flexing, we're
buying exotic cars, we're going to far flung locations, we're
making its rain. Uh. This isn't the same thing as
someone committing financial crime to pay for you know, cancer
(10:07):
treatment or something. Uh. Not. One thing that stood out
to me, at least when I first found this ap
news was his his statement about a sort of nihilism
in the d e a entire what what was his
(10:27):
I don't know. Do you feel like it's a rationale
that he's using a rationalization or what would you say?
It's tough to tell because you're talking about someone that
was in a real tough spot personally filing for bankruptcy
for that amount of money, and then he found a
way potentially to you know, get some of that money
back and not feel like a failure right economically, um,
(10:51):
which is a you know, something that all of us fight.
You want to feel like you're being able to provide
for yourself and your family, and if you can't, I'm
talking to mentally like what that does to you? And
if he found a place an outlet to make some
easy money in the way that he was. Um, I
don't know, it feels it feels like a no brainer
(11:12):
for somebody going through a really tough time like that.
I don't know, what do you guys think. I feel
like almost anybody could be corrupted if you were in
that specific situation, and then your rationale would be would
be to make sense of what you did. That's the
human thing to want to do. Nobody wants to feel
like a bad guy, you know. I mean, I think it's, uh,
(11:33):
it's only natural. But at the end of the day,
you did what you did, and you have to kind
of own up to it, whatever your quote unquote intentions
might have been. Again, people find their morality in retrospect.
It's it's strange though, like his primary issue is uh.
One thing that stands out is his primary I guess
(11:55):
objection seems to be that he feels his former employers
are painting him as a singular supervillain a Walter White
to Gus Freeing. When he is saying this is systemic
and structural, what was he saying that this was sort
(12:16):
of dancing on the grave of the drug war? Like
a lot of d e A. Agents said, Hey, we
can't really stop the flow. There's no way to put
a dent in this thing. We're just gonna make use
of the copious amount of money that gets thrown around
in this and we're never gonna stop what's happening. But
let's just let's take advantage of it. Basically. Yeah, and
(12:39):
and like you said, it's everybody he's he's calling out
a bunch of people. I don't have a huge list
of names. Maybe we can incorporate that into a full episode,
like who are the other people? Um, but you know,
this guy did plead guilty and he is in jail.
So that's I think why we feel the most comfortable
talking about him. Uh, there are names that you can
find that he is discussed. UM, probably wouldn't wouldn't name
(13:05):
them right now though, Yeah, alleged or accused by him,
but to our knowledge at this point, not officially accused
by government body in the US or abroad. I think
is the way we put it. I'll give you the
Drug Enforcement Administration's statement quote, Jose Rizari is a criminal
(13:29):
who violated his oath as a federal law enforcement officer
and violated the trust of the American people. Over the
past sixteen months, DA has worked vigorously to further strengthen
our discipline and hiring practices to ensure the integrity and
effectiveness of our essential work. I guess you just have
to decide if, uh, if you've believe the d A
(13:52):
or you believe this one guy who got caught doing
what he wasn't supposed to do. It's tough, right, who
do you believe? I don't know. I want to say
the administration, but yeah, because if it's systemic, If it's systemic,
and this is not a legal accusation here, folks were
(14:14):
a podcast, But if it is systemic, then that clearly
opens the door for a little bit of c y
a on the part of the people who didn't get caught,
people further up the chain. You know, a government loves escapegoat,
always has well. And also it seems to me that
when someone's backed into a corner in that way, one
(14:35):
way out is to tell the truth. I mean, there
is sort of like, you know, you can obviously keep
lying and lying and lying, but that usually doesn't work
and just worsens your position. So I do tend to
believe the person that's backed into the corner in this
situation because they might be trying to clear the air
or clear their name by you know, maybe bringing some
(14:57):
other folks down with them. It's possible. I don't know.
This guy, by the way, was, according to everyone who
worked with him before he got in trouble, a model agent,
like somebody who would win awards, somebody who was like,
you know, his bosses would be like, oh, manse as
just really good at what he does. I guess he
(15:20):
was just too good. Look, here's the moral of the story.
In my mind, Guy's money in this world as it
functions right now is the great motivator, no matter what
it is, the great motivator. And if you want to
motivate someone to do something right, no matter what it is,
make sure you pay them and pay them well, or
somebody tied to their pay you know, like like there's accountability. Yeah, yeah,
(15:44):
something like that maybe, because if basically what I want
to say is if you don't pay somebody well enough,
somebody else will pay them, Especially if you're talking about
law enforcement in any capacity. I mean, look at the
problems that happened with moonlighting. You know, I agree with
you whole heartedly. Matt. I would even say, I would
even take it a step further and recommend that everybody
(16:06):
watch uh some excellent TED talks and serious research into
the threshold at which money buys happiness. It's a very
true thing, and studies have showed, at least in the West, uh,
pretty specific number. We talked about this in a in
another show earlier, somewhere between seventy to seventy two dollars.
(16:27):
And that's why we need to pay teachers more across
the board. Hey, let's do it. Then the judges are
making more than the teachers. Let's go, let's go, let's do. Uh.
One other moral to the story, never ever, ever, under
any circumstance, no matter how awesome and stacked you are
by a Lamborghini, now, just don't do it. Just don't
(16:48):
do it. That's how that's one of the reasons that
he got caught. It's because somebody that was working with
him bought a three thousand dollar Lamborghini, and he also
had a three dollar lambor Ghini, and it was like
the same they connect. They made a connection between the
Lamborghini's and they all roughly know within arrange how how
(17:09):
much each person makes officially that's that's that's the other thing.
Don't be conspicuous, learn from learn from Jimmy Buffett. Wait
here you go, Jimmy Buffett or Warren Buffett. Jimmy Buffet,
(17:29):
Jimmy Buffet the type to buy like a parrot colored
Lamborghini disregarded. I thought maybe there was some scandal with
Jimmy Buffett that I was not aware of. The agent
Jim Well, Lamborghini's are like, you know, in the same
way that like a really you know, pricey red sports
car is a cop magnet on the street. It's also
(17:52):
like a magnet for eyes on you and your business
and your finances. If you buy that and you maybe
aren't they a person that on paper should be able
to buy that, then that is a massive red flag
and no offense. Lamborghini, It's incredible vehicles that you make. Man,
it's just a It's a lot of money for a car.
(18:12):
I wondered, is that like officially the priceiest car? I thought, McLaren,
Maybe no, there are much more. I thought, that's like attainable,
Like I've got so much money, but I'm not gonna
waste my million that I just made, you know, but
I don't mind dropping, you know, three thousand dollars. But
(18:33):
it's short money. It's that's short thought to think of
the maintenance. Do you have to ultimately have a subscription
for the maintenance like it's I mean, it's essentially like
a whole another you know, line item on on on
the cost of ownership. We're gonna talk about cars this
week to drive it off that lot. Baby, I was
(18:55):
taking trash on Twitter earlier. You guys, I've just full confession,
have been slamming iced coffee at advance of this listener mail.
We got. It's going to be a ride, but a
legal one in our case. M exciting stuff. All right,
that's all. For now, we need to do an entire
episode on the d e A and that undercover money
(19:16):
laundering thing, because I haven't wrapped in my head fully
around it yet, and I think we all need to.
So for now, we will hear a word from our
sponsor and we'll be right back. And we've returned. Uh,
it's been a minute since we talked about crypto currency.
(19:40):
I think there might have been some crypto fatigue for
a while because there were so many you know, kind
of ponzi schemes and sort of more you know, niche
kind of conspiracies wrapped up in crypto because of the
lack of regulation and just the ability to kind of
do all this sort of like dark web kind of trading,
you know, these projects and all of that stuff and um.
(20:00):
But through all of that, you know, the niche elements
of crypto, there were kind of some big players. We know,
way back at the beginning of crypto, or at least
the beginning of of my knowledge of crypto. Uh, there
was a massive hack of a crypto exchange called mount
Gox that was a huge red flag and it seem okay,
we learned our lesson here from Mount Cox. We're not
(20:23):
gonna let that happen again. Uh. Crypto exchange, by the way,
is just literally kind of what it sounds like. It's
a proprietary network, you know, kind of like a stock market,
you know, where crypto can be exchanged, you know, bought
and sold and turned into other tokens, other coins, what
have you. Um. One of the two two of the
(20:44):
biggest crypto exchanges are something called f t X just
what today's stories about, and another one called Finance Finance
being the biggest one I believe f t X being
the second biggest one or very close, and these two
players are entrenched in this story. Essentially f t X
(21:05):
was trying to do and it's CEO a guy named
Um always got a great name with nominal determinism. His
name is Sam Bankman fried Um SPF. For sure, let's
just call him SPF. Sam Bankman fried Um the former
billionaire UH and founder of f t X, the crypto
(21:26):
exchange UM. He and the CEO of Finance, which is
the largest crypto exchange, are kind of the two main
players in today's story, but Mr Bankman fried being the
most important one. So f t X and Finance have
really been trying to kind of legitimize cryptocurrency. I think
(21:47):
because of things like you know and f t S.
A lot of the kind of sentiment from regular folks
has been that cryptocurrency is is a scam, is a
fly by night sort of UH Ponzi scheme esque situation,
and so I think understandably folks have been a little
bit skeptical about it. But the folks that are really
(22:09):
into it, and I think we all probably know some
of those folks. Um. I believe in the long term,
you know, uh, promise of of crypto and believe that
it will potentially just keep growing and growing and growing.
We have recently had several crashes kind of corrections, they
call it, like you do with the stock market, but
this one is triggered by the issues of a single company,
(22:34):
a single exchange f t X. So essentially overnight um
f t X has gone bankrupt, not overnight, but then
in the last week f t X has gone bankrupt
and the founder, as I said, Mr Bankman Fried, it's
gone from holding billions in crypto assets to essentially being broke,
(22:56):
like broke broke um. And this company relocated to the
Hammas uh not terribly long ago, largely, it would seem,
because of easier, lighter, lacks er regulations there. But they
do still hold a division that's in the US. And uh,
this gentleman, Mr Bankman Fried has been pretty vocal about
(23:18):
regulations and has even been kind of the like public
facing kind of you know, reputable businessman of crypto and
you know, appeared in various Senate hearings and all of
that stuff and trying to say, well, we we we
do need some regulation and but but maybe not what
you're thinking there let me help you, help me, help
(23:40):
you to make these regulations more equitable and uh have
you know, crypto become a part of the kind of
more mainstream economy of the United States, and f t
X has gone to great lengths with marketing efforts to
really solidify their you know, immit as this kind of
(24:01):
you know, very legitimate UM cryptocurrency exchange they UM sponsored.
I think in California, cal Athletics that you see Berkeley
UM renamed their stadium f t X Stadium. I believe
there's another one with the professional NBA team, or maybe
(24:21):
it was NFL for giving me from missing some of
the minutia here. UM also again sort of like crypto
dot com, there's sort of at that level. I believe
the Staples Center was renamed the Crypto dot Com Arena
or what have you. Uh so really big kind of
you know, public facing marketing efforts. For example, during the
last Super Bowl, there were some commercials for ft X,
(24:44):
one of which had Larry David, uh one of my
favorite you know comedians and writers and comics, traveling through
time and kind of shilling for f t X in
this kind of comical ad um that obviously was very
very expensive. It made a lot of buzz because it
was like crypto is finally arrived their advertising on the
Super Bowl. You can't do that unless you're you know, solvent,
(25:06):
unless you're legitimate. Um, and so it was a big
shock to the industry and even Toil like kind of
just you know, look, you lose. That's f t X
absolutely tanked in a very very short amount of talk.
They have file for Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection. Their proprietary
token f t T, which again you know, it's like
(25:27):
binance coin or bitcoin and he you know, well, it's
it's different, like a token is not quite the same
as a crypto coin. Ben, can you explain the difference
between a token and a cryptocurrency. Tokens are more like
proprietary to a particular exchange. I believe, yes, so f
t T. This is a great question. Also, f t
T was like there was like their house barbecue right right,
(25:54):
it was their store brand. Yes, like you go right right,
like you buy Kirkland at a store and get a discount, right. Uh.
So f t X created this crypto called f t
T and they would encourage f t X users to
buy f t T and they would say, you know,
in return qui pro quo clarice, you get a lower
(26:14):
fee for trading if you're trading with the with the
house brand, with the house special. Yeah. And when you trade,
there are things called gas fees that's sort of the
colloquial term for it, that are essentially just you know,
fees for conducting a trade. Um. I guess they call
them gas fees because of all the electricity involved. I
guess it's sort of like offsets that all the energy involved. Um,
(26:36):
So you pay these you know fees for transactions. It's
literally to purchase or to exchange or to convert, to
do whatever, you're going to pay these fees. So when
you're using the company, you know, the company store money,
the bend bucks as it were, Um, you're essentially getting, Yeah,
you're getting a better value right for for that for
you know, for those uh, you're getting a discount essentially.
(26:58):
So this is you know, I'm no economists, and a
lot of this does get a little bit complex, but
the main you know takeaway here is that they put
a lot of stock into this token, and a lot
of they would pay people in it. I think even
employees were paid with it. You know, directly into their
accounts because it was considered stable, because f t X
(27:19):
was considered above board and very stable. And um, this
other company, Binance that that I mentioned earlier, they bought
an absurd amount of f t t UM. So essentially
you become at that point what's called in the crypto
space a whale. You know, when one organization owns one
(27:39):
type of currency to such a large degree that if
they sold it, they could singlehandedly tank the price of
that currency. Is that about the shape of it, Ben, Yeah,
you nailed it. Well, I mean we're talking two billion
in value, uh circu two billion value bidence held in
f t t and then they just when public and
(28:00):
said we're gonna sell it, and that caused, you know,
a new school version of a run on the bank.
Wasn't finance looking to step in. Well that's the thing.
We'll get to that in a minute. But they essentially
did what Elon Musk did with Twitter, but they did
it smarter. Um. They you know, kind of came in
and said, oh FDx is faltering, we're gonna offload our tokens.
(28:24):
So that becomes an act within the market, but also
a public relations act. Were there you know, you know,
publicly stating lack of confidence in this exchange, and then
they say, well, now that we've kind of scroog you by,
you know, selling off all of these tokens that we
have and you know, calling into question your stability, we're
(28:47):
gonna now swoop in and say, well, we'll rescue you.
It's basically a takeover. Um what you might call I
guess it's a hostile takeover. I'm not quite sure what
you would call it exactly. But the point is that
why f t T faltered was because essentially there is
this other hedge fund called Alameda Research that, weirdly, it
(29:10):
would seem on paper, owned way too many of these
f t T tokens. UM and Sam Bankman Fry, the
chief executive officer of f t X, is directly connected
to Alameda, So while he would say that their their
finances were separate, that just wasn't really the case. So
(29:34):
essentially they were making bets with the money of those
investing on f t X using the exchange uh into
unsecured crypto deals. I think that's the long and short
of it. Ben. Maybe you can put a little more
light on that, but I think they were essentially doing
(29:55):
kind of a Lehman Brothers esque you know, Ponzi scheme
kind of thing, paying Peter, robbing from p Her to
pay Paul, kind of situation where they were gambling with
their investors money in ways that no one had agreed
to do. There was some nepotism as well. You know,
the person who is running Almada is the allegedly the
(30:18):
girlfriend of the guy who owned f t X. Al
Meda's superinvested in f t T As you said, uh,
and then sbf Sam bankman Fried, uh was this is
where it gets Okay, this is a weird one. This
is a weird wind all right. So I heard, thanks
to uh, some of our Australian friends not confirmed, I
(30:41):
heard an interesting theory thanks to our friend Patrice out
in oz. Uh. The idea was that bankman Freed is
well connected supporter of a lot of major, big time
US politicians, right, uh, disproportionate to his influence in the
crypto space. And there's this allegation that the US gave
(31:06):
money to Ukraine. Ukraine gave money to f t X.
F t X gave money to the Democratic Party hoping
for for better like like favorable regulations kind of or
maybe maybe or maybe just to to play the shell
game right, to to remove the origin of the money. Uh.
(31:28):
And then that leads, if we're being a little conspiratorial
about it, that leads to the speculation that maybe this
was a calculated a calculated downfall. I know, I know,
it's a lot. That's why, like Matt, that's why Noel
said this this is an episode and is no question
(31:51):
about it. So what happened when Finance did what Finance
did uh and and sold their their shares their their
f t t uh. It plummeted the price, and of
course people that are invested in the token we want
to pull out before it would uh you know, go
to literally zero. That can absolutely happen in crypto. Um.
So over the course of three days, people tried to
(32:14):
pull out six billion dollars and this kind of hearkens
back to the whole game stocks thing with Robin Hood,
where you know, they didn't have the money to cover
the withdrawals, um, so they paused it or they like
free froze withdrawals. And that's because they just literally did
not have the money to do it. And so Finance
(32:37):
did swoop in uh saying they would bail out ft
X by buying the company. But then, like I was
saying earlier, where Elon Musk is kind of you know
crap talked twitter um and caused the price to to
go down. He had already negotiated a deal at that
point and and he did not do due diligence. But
when Finance did due diligence on ft X, they found
(33:01):
that there was gross mishandling of client funds and potentially
all kinds of other stuff. Not to mention, there's this
whole thing about like weird sex orgy parties in the Bahamas,
like with the employees and all of that stuff. So
there's I mean, really is a whole another episode unto itself. Yeah,
(33:21):
they're like right across from the d e A guys
on Team America. They're in the same neighborhood. They go
to the like they get they get their you know,
pdolite to fight their hangovers at the same store, and
they're like nice one, bro. Oh yeah yeah, well nice
one bro. Indeed, Finance you know, did what Ellen couldn't
do because he'd already sealed the deal essentially, and they
(33:44):
pulled out of the deal and they had a caveat
in their whole you know, bailout plan that they could
pull out of the deal at any time, and they
did just that. So this really is an ongoing story, um,
that we're gonna have to keep an eye on and
and see how it develops. And then you know, it's
the kind of thing that is like the documentary is
already being produced, you know. I mean there there are
(34:06):
people this guy Michael Sailor, who's a micro Strategy founder
of this company called micro Strategy, and a big Bitcoin guy,
Michael Sailor, he is comparing um, you know, Sam bankman
Fried to Jordan Belfour, the Wolf of Wall Street. The
level and egregiousness of these financial crimes have yet to
(34:27):
be uncovered. And I think, you know, as time goes on,
we're going to see some more shocking revelations. And um
can't wait for the Hulu documentary that's going to compete
with the Netflix documentary, and you know, we'll see which
one is better. But man, this is crazy stuff, um,
and I think we should probably just leave it here
for now and and revisit it once we have some
(34:47):
more info in a full episode. But oh I we'll
just add I mentioned Larry David doing that commercial. UM.
Tom Brady also has done some evangelizing for FTX. In
addition to David Ortiz, Shaquila Neil, and Jase L bunche In,
tom Brady's ex wife. They are all being sued, uh
for essentially participating in false advertising. I don't know where
(35:13):
that's going to go, but it is, it is, it is.
There are tentacles here that are reaching out and touching
anybody that has, you know, been involved with this company.
So let's take a quick break here, a word from
our sponsor, and then be back with one more piece
of strange news space the final Frontier Tier. These are
(35:40):
the voyages of the Starship X thirty seven B. It's
continuing mission to explore strange new redacted redacted, redacted, to
seek out new redacted and new redacted to boldly redacted.
We're no redacted has gone redacted, But what's gone what
(36:00):
is not too far off from the actual news. Uh.
This is something that I have been obsessed with for
uh quite a while, as have you, Matt. The X
thirty seven B Orbital Test Vehicle six street name O
t V six. UH. This this is an unmanned reusable
(36:24):
space plane. It looks uh, it looks a lot like
an old school NASA shuttle until you really really put
your eyes on it. Uh it is. It is owned
by Space Force, which is still a thing. So uh
we were I know, I went kind of ham on
our group chat. Sorry to abuse the access guys, but
(36:46):
I was excited about the d A. I mean, they
don't ever really explain what they're enforcing about drugs. But
I was also I was also over the moon. There
we go about the X thirty seven B. We have
been watching this for a while. How event horizon is this?
After two and a half years in space unmanned days
(37:11):
to be exact, this bad boy landed at the Kennedy
Space Hitter in Florida on Saturday, November twelve in the
pre dawn hours am local time. Six successful mission so far,
no one knows. No one's admitted what it was doing
up there. We got we have some we have like
(37:32):
the most innocuous experiments that they listed out on new scientists.
But it's like, come on, come on, guys, come on, yeah, yeah,
I'm sure. So yeah, let's let's go with that. I
I like that, man, let's go with the let's go
with news scientists before we get into the deep water. Right, So,
(37:55):
so everybody admits it's a secretive thing and and it
and it doesn't look as good as a manned space shuttles.
It's got a lot of patchwork. You know, it's got
no windows. It doesn't need windows, and it doesn't need
one of the most difficult things about any spacecraft. And
(38:17):
we won't need eyes. Uh when how does that go? Sorry,
I'm just back on the event horizon. Yeah, we don't
need eyes out here. It doesn't need all of the
accouterment that is necessary to keep meat bags alive in
an environment that they were never built for. H So
(38:38):
this thing still the size of a space shuttle, right,
So what did they put in there instead of the
in place of the equipment used to support uh terran organisms.
This was started under the auspice of NASA. Big fans
of NASA here on the show. They do great work.
Shout out to the James Webb Telescope. But it was
(39:00):
passed to the US military. That's where the X thirty
seven B comes from. It's a variant of the O TV.
And this thing has captivated us because if you if
you look at the experts who are allowed to speak publicly.
(39:21):
You will see that they're talking about they're talking about
experiments that, as you said, Matt, seemed rather innocuous with microwaves. Uh,
they're talking about releasing satellites that are experimental with electromagnetic
propulsion and so on. Doesn't that sound cool? Though? It
does sound really cool. It sounds so cool, you know. Uh,
(39:44):
Like imagine if you had one of those, right, we
would be like, why are we hanging out on on Earth?
You know, our weekend day trip conversations would be less
David Busters and more space. Why don't we just pop
off to space for a bit? You know, let's take
the elevator. Yeah, let's go. But like, electric magnetic propulsion
system sounds revolutionary to me, maybe just because I'm unaware
(40:07):
of existing technology that would use something like that. Uh,
it sounds like railgun make vehicle go forward tech exactly. Yeah.
It reminds me of that that zero drive, right, that
that made such a splash in the news and then
disappeared from conversation, just like the X thirty seven beat
(40:29):
did for two and a half years. Now, Look, we
know we we've been here on Earth with you for
the past two and a half years. We know there
was a lot of stuff going on. There are things
that are easy to miss. But that's why we do
this show. That's why X thirty seven B has to
be a future episode because of the military aspect here,
(40:51):
the streets are watching GEO politically. Uh. The former head
of Russia's space agency there NASA rosa Cosmos guy named
Dmitri Rugs and was in an interview earlier and he
said this is probably a carrier for some kind of
reconnaissance apparatus and then also possibly a carrier of weapons
(41:15):
of mass destruction. Now, of course the world has agreed
on paper not to militarize space, and of course all
the countries that could militarize space plausibly have a plan
to do. So, you know, I'm we're not saying they're
they're doing it now, We're just saying they don't want
to be last to the game, right, It's always better
(41:37):
to be first than the space there. Oh my god, accidental,
but yeah, literally, So this this thing has a lot
of speculation around it, and it's nuts to consider. You know,
how expensive it is to launch something into space if
you live in the US, whether or not. You're a citizen.
(41:58):
You are paying for part of this machine, and you
are not going to get an explanation unless you're lucky
enough to get one of those gend up security clearances
that we talked about earlier. So this, this idea, I
want to I want to bring it to you, guys.
This idea has prompted a lot of speculation about what
(42:19):
the thing is doing. Most alarmingly, other superpowers are working
on their own version of the thing. China is building
their own answer to the X three seven B. Also,
they're kind of sketchy about what what it's supposed to do, right, Pete,
don't peek behind the curtain. You know what I mean,
your tax dollars at work. My big question, Ben, is
(42:41):
so the Space Shuttle was designed to orbit in lower
Earth orbit. That's what it was designed to do. That's
what it was gonna do, and it's what it did.
This thing looks a lot like that, just smaller and
it's automated. It feels like it's going to operate in
that same essentially layer of space in low Earth orbit.
Do you think, and this is complete speculation on my part,
(43:03):
do you think this thing is steerable fliable, not just
going around in the same orbital path the whole time.
Because if it looks like it could do that, and
and if that if you could do that, then it
feels like they're serious national security concerns for like every
country that has satellites. Uh yeah, you hit the nail
(43:25):
meat head uh connected to by Mr Matt Frederick favorite
cinebite that's m e A t head. Yeah, this is
this is great. Like obviously it's reusable, it can land,
so there is some measure of control. We know that, right,
And we also know that technology exists already well established,
(43:47):
well tested to control these objects in space, including satellites,
including man shuttles and so on. The reason I'm saying
nail on the head here is because one of the
pieces of speculation that's really fascinated me is the idea
of building a satellite snatcher, right, because I remember, not
(44:09):
too long ago, there was there there was a series
of strange, cool, and frightening space events that were not
loudly reported by a lot of people's go to news sources.
The US proved that it could shoot satellites out, you know,
(44:29):
just skeet shoot him. China did the same and you know,
Russia bellied up to the poker table for a little
bit and was like, I also do stuff, but but
China and the US actually did it. And now is
this an escalation a logical expansion on that idea? The
only thing more valuable than shooting down of foreign satellite
(44:54):
is capturing it, right, you know, just like in Galagha,
The secret move got sounds so ridiculous. The secret moving
Galica is to give up one of your ships so
that you can take it back and now you have
double the firepower. Right, Are they doing a Galagha thing
up there? Are? They are the satellites, the other ships.
(45:15):
It's quite possible. Imagine how amazing that would be. Now
anybody in this industry will, I'm sure, readily point out
that it's possibly more cost effective to just remotely access
whatever those space birds are are putting their eyes on.
(45:36):
But still pretty neat. I'm I'm guys, it's this. It
brings out this strange love in me, Like, I know,
terrible things can happen, but it's so cool. It's so
cool that humans can do this. It's like I feel
like Jesse Pinkman, but instead of yelling, uh science, I'm
yelling math, you know, just the math alone. But what
(46:00):
what do you guys think? Do you guys think this
is an innocuous thing that is only testing material science,
radiation exposure, long term effects on UH seeds? I think
seeds are the primary organic material it carries for the
public eye. I mean, what what are they building up there? Well,
the thing is it stinks that we can't know, because
(46:24):
it does seem like those experiments are cool and interesting.
And that's how you're going to get the public behind
these kinds of things, because, as you said, Ben, we're
paying for it ultimately if you show like we've got
important stuff to test and we're going to test it
with this thing. And the great thing of the the
great aspect about this particular craft is that we can
(46:47):
do it for two years. We can have two year
long experiments in space if we want to, potentially even
longer than that, and we can gain massive scientific data
that we couldn't get otherwise. Even if you put this
kind of experiment on the I S S. It's kind
of weird, but think about the possible UH human interaction
(47:09):
with an experiment that could render it, you know, completely moot.
Right if you accidentally messed up an experiment because you know,
you're a human on a craft on the International Space
Station and you accidentally just barely mess it up and
not saying that happened a lot or even has a
higher potential happen or something like that. It's just you
(47:29):
take you remove the human element from experimentation, which could
be hugely advantage of a lot of doors. For sure,
there's things you can do that you just couldn't do because,
like you said, Ben, our meat bodies couldn't sustain ends,
you know, and we have to have a certain at
least appearance of ethics where humans are animals are involved,
you know. But why would you even acknowledge that the
(47:53):
thing went up if it's really doing some nefarious stuff
up there? I guess would you have to? Yeah, there's
it's just like the problem with Key with the Corona satellites.
There's no way to make it invisible. Just yet, so
other countries again, the streets are watching other countries know
every time the US makes a launch successfully into space,
(48:16):
right and and just the same it's very much again
it's not a glass house. It's a glass world in
the world. In in this sense, uh, you can find
basic information about X thirty seven B. We we talked
about it in at least one or two previous shows,
but the true purpose still remains a mystery. Maybe it's
(48:41):
not capturing satellites. Maybe it is secretly deploying satellites. But again,
if you're a foreign power or even a civilian right
with surprisingly unsophisticated telescopes, you can see new satellites, right,
you can. You can find them should you try. And
we welcome your adventures in those astronomy forums. But that's
(49:07):
that's We're just taking you to the door of that
rabbit hole because we don't want to be responsible for
you losing all those hours on all those late nights.
But we do hope you have fun. Uh. And then
again this so let's end on that. We like to
end on on future facing stuff, right, and the X
thirty seven B is probably, yes, gonna go on a
(49:28):
seventh mission, and it might not go alone. Further, aside
from you know, the publicly palatable innocuous experiments that people
think of as nerdy, no one really knows what this
is doing. No no one who can speak about it
in public unless you have an inside scoop and you
(49:52):
happen to be a fellow conspiracy realist. This is going
to be a future episode. Ft X is going to
be a future episode. The Adventures and Misadventures of the
d e A also a future episode. We can't wait
for you to be a part of it. We want
to hear your experience, your stories, your speculation, and don't
(50:13):
bother keeping it grounded. We're talking about space, all right,
last bad joke. Uh So, we hope you enjoyed this.
We're hurtling headlong into Thanksgiving here in the US, so
again the week after this, we're gonna have some of
our favorite classic episodes up and it takes some time
with our families, and we hope you do the same.
(50:34):
We consider you a part of our family and we'd
love to hear from you online. Surewood. You can find
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(50:56):
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(51:35):
want you to know. Is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Rating. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want
you to know. Crazy stuff is going on in the
world of crypto. Crazy stuff is going on in space,
(00:49):
and no On wants to talk about the specifics. Also
on the heels of our two part series, and the
problems with federal classification in the US US and the
rank corruption in background investigations and security clearances. Uh we
we gotta tell you before NATO invokes Article five and
(01:13):
before we take some time off for the Thanksgiving holiday,
still a big deal here in the States. We wanted
to talk to you a little bit about Team America. Yeah, yes,
Team America Drug Police also known as the d A
(01:35):
Miami Division. That's actually what we're gonna be talking about today. Yeah,
not a crime show, real thing, yep, correct, it does
feel like a crime show. It is a group of
individuals calling themselves Team America, and one of the primary
people in that Team America group is Jose Arizari. It's
(01:56):
forty six years old as of and um, so, I
guess he's around forty eight right now. Um In guys,
he pled guilty to some things so a couple of
years ago. Uh, some things that are not great honest services,
wire fraud whatever that is, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit
(02:21):
money laundering, and aggravated identity theft. Aggravated identity theft that
I always think of aggravated as like something that happens
when you're like physically in someone's presence. Yeah, it's just
it was in a bad mood when he did it. Theft,
which is like the last four your s s and
(02:44):
l m AOA yes, well why okay, Well, somebody do
something really bad. Why are we talking about it? Well?
Mr Irazari was for a long time a d E
a agent drug enforcement agent working for the d o
J and well, he was tasked with doing this very
(03:07):
specific thing for them, which included money laundering only for
the government on purpose to try and track down leads
for the d E. A basically to figure out where
the money is going into whom and what are the
channels that money is getting to places where it's supposed
to go according to the bad guys. Okay, well, uh.
(03:30):
Since January of this year, Mr Irazari has been in
prison at the Federal Correction Institution Miami. And right before
he went into prison for those charges we talked about,
including conspiracy to commit money laundering, he had a little
talk with the Associated Press and he was very forthcoming,
(03:54):
we should say, I think he talked about what he
got in trouble for. He sounded, at least in the
video interview the portion that I have seen, like he
is genuinely remorseful for what he did. I'm gonna give
you a quote. I can't justify my actions. I should
have known. I knew what was right from wrong, and
(04:15):
I chose wrong many times. That's why I'm here again.
This is literally right before he went in to the prison,
like he took himself there to go to the prison
twelve years, right for twelve years starting this year. Um,
he basically came out guys and said this was not
just him doing this whole money laundering thing. We're gonna
(04:37):
give you some more of the details here in a second.
This was basically the d e A. This was the
whole Team America group. This was everybody. They're all in
on it, just taking money off the top basically of
this money they were laundering legally the way they well,
I guess the way they were supposed to do for
their investigations. Uh. And they were just using it and
(04:59):
he was all one big game. He actually calls the
entire drug war a game, a fun game and unwinnable.
I believe right, that's correct. Mat. I'm so glad we're
talking about this when this is one of those uh,
one of those things where we see his story and
post it in a in our in our group chat,
(05:22):
you know, uh, and and say what about this? You
know what what's going on? And we take the time
to like vet this and make sure it's not just
an ephemeral headline. But as you found, there's a lot
of history leading to this moment and this incredibly candid interview.
Oh yeah, there's a ton building up to this. So
(05:44):
Mr Irizari has been employed by the d e A
since two thousand nine, and a little something happened to
him personally in two thousand ten is something unfortunate happens
to a lot of people. He had to file for
personal bankruptcy, but it was to the tune of around
half a million dollars. And apparently immediately following this event,
(06:06):
when this whole scheme to divert funds from the d
e A money laundering operation into his own personal bank
accounts started, when it became a thing he, according to
the d o J in a statement they put out
on December nine, Mr Irazari quote used his position as
a special agent to divert approximately nine million dollars from
(06:29):
undercover d e A money laundering investigations to himself and
two co conspirators. Nat, could you tell us a little
bit more about these co conspirators. Were they all d
e A. Well, some of them were supposedly d e A.
Some of them were um agents slash law enforcement officers
(06:50):
in other countries where this operation was occurring, and a
few of them were not law enforcement at all. They
were actually part of the cartels that they were, you know,
laundering money for. Again, it's the d A laundering money
for the cartels. As an investigation, that's still like wrapping
(07:10):
my head around it. I am Jack's lack of surprise.
You know, not not to sound too cynical that this
this story stands out because you know, these these three
stories are all spoiler alert folks, um entire episodes. These
are episodes. Yeah, this is definitely a full episode. I'm
gonna give you a tiny bit more from the d
(07:30):
J statement just so we all kind of have an
understanding of what was really occurring. So that was the
nine There's that nine million dollars that he diverted, Okay,
and he wasn't diverting that for himself. He didn't just
take nine million dollars. What he did do, though, was
received bribes and kickbacks worth at least a million dollars
for himself and his family, including his wife, and that
(07:54):
was used to purchase a thirty thousand dollar ring from
Tiffany's pretty nice luxury cars a bunch of I think
they're land Rovers and I think they're even two Lamborghinis
involved to the tune of around three grand apiece um.
And to carry out this scheme, according to the d
o J, this dude and his co conspirators quote used
(08:16):
a stolen identity to open a bank account under false pretenses.
And then utilize that account to receive diverted drug proceeds.
And the scheme lasted throughout all of his assignments. Basically
in that Miami Field Division, the Team America Division over
there really messed up, guys. And um, you gotta watch
(08:37):
the video of this interview. I found a really good
link on USA today. You can just search for x
d E a agent. That's probably the fastest way to
get it. Uh, it's only about five and a half minutes,
and it's produced by the AP. I believe, yes, it
is the AP. And just to hear him talk about
(08:59):
this stuff, he said, it was all about drinking, oh
and the girls, and uh, there was some soccer involved
in football. Uh, they would like travel the world following
this football team and they would like make false assignments basically,
so they had to travel he and his quote co conspirators.
(09:21):
So they have to travel to a certain place where
one of these football matches was going on, so they
could go to the football match and not really do
any work, uh, and just hang out and have a
lavish lifestyle. Now, this is where we get to some
of the questions. One of one of the things that
a lot of people are gonna wonder about is his
(09:42):
motivation right? Was? It clearly wasn't all At some point
it wasn't all financial necessity. I mean, we're flexing, we're
buying exotic cars, we're going to far flung locations, we're
making its rain. Uh. This isn't the same thing as
someone committing financial crime to pay for you know, cancer
(10:07):
treatment or something. Uh. Not. One thing that stood out
to me, at least when I first found this ap
news was his his statement about a sort of nihilism
in the d e a entire what what was his
(10:27):
I don't know. Do you feel like it's a rationale
that he's using a rationalization or what would you say?
It's tough to tell because you're talking about someone that
was in a real tough spot personally filing for bankruptcy
for that amount of money, and then he found a
way potentially to you know, get some of that money
back and not feel like a failure right economically, um,
(10:51):
which is a you know, something that all of us fight.
You want to feel like you're being able to provide
for yourself and your family, and if you can't, I'm
talking to mentally like what that does to you? And
if he found a place an outlet to make some
easy money in the way that he was. Um, I
don't know, it feels it feels like a no brainer
(11:12):
for somebody going through a really tough time like that.
I don't know, what do you guys think. I feel
like almost anybody could be corrupted if you were in
that specific situation, and then your rationale would be would
be to make sense of what you did. That's the
human thing to want to do. Nobody wants to feel
like a bad guy, you know. I mean, I think it's, uh,
(11:33):
it's only natural. But at the end of the day,
you did what you did, and you have to kind
of own up to it, whatever your quote unquote intentions
might have been. Again, people find their morality in retrospect.
It's it's strange though, like his primary issue is uh.
One thing that stands out is his primary I guess
(11:55):
objection seems to be that he feels his former employers
are painting him as a singular supervillain a Walter White
to Gus Freeing. When he is saying this is systemic
and structural, what was he saying that this was sort
(12:16):
of dancing on the grave of the drug war? Like
a lot of d e A. Agents said, Hey, we
can't really stop the flow. There's no way to put
a dent in this thing. We're just gonna make use
of the copious amount of money that gets thrown around
in this and we're never gonna stop what's happening. But
let's just let's take advantage of it. Basically. Yeah, and
(12:39):
and like you said, it's everybody he's he's calling out
a bunch of people. I don't have a huge list
of names. Maybe we can incorporate that into a full episode,
like who are the other people? Um, but you know,
this guy did plead guilty and he is in jail.
So that's I think why we feel the most comfortable
talking about him. Uh, there are names that you can
find that he is discussed. UM, probably wouldn't wouldn't name
(13:05):
them right now though, Yeah, alleged or accused by him,
but to our knowledge at this point, not officially accused
by government body in the US or abroad. I think
is the way we put it. I'll give you the
Drug Enforcement Administration's statement quote, Jose Rizari is a criminal
(13:29):
who violated his oath as a federal law enforcement officer
and violated the trust of the American people. Over the
past sixteen months, DA has worked vigorously to further strengthen
our discipline and hiring practices to ensure the integrity and
effectiveness of our essential work. I guess you just have
to decide if, uh, if you've believe the d A
(13:52):
or you believe this one guy who got caught doing
what he wasn't supposed to do. It's tough, right, who
do you believe? I don't know. I want to say
the administration, but yeah, because if it's systemic, If it's systemic,
and this is not a legal accusation here, folks were
(14:14):
a podcast, But if it is systemic, then that clearly
opens the door for a little bit of c y
a on the part of the people who didn't get caught,
people further up the chain. You know, a government loves escapegoat,
always has well. And also it seems to me that
when someone's backed into a corner in that way, one
(14:35):
way out is to tell the truth. I mean, there
is sort of like, you know, you can obviously keep
lying and lying and lying, but that usually doesn't work
and just worsens your position. So I do tend to
believe the person that's backed into the corner in this
situation because they might be trying to clear the air
or clear their name by you know, maybe bringing some
(14:57):
other folks down with them. It's possible. I don't know.
This guy, by the way, was, according to everyone who
worked with him before he got in trouble, a model agent,
like somebody who would win awards, somebody who was like,
you know, his bosses would be like, oh, manse as
just really good at what he does. I guess he
(15:20):
was just too good. Look, here's the moral of the story.
In my mind, Guy's money in this world as it
functions right now is the great motivator, no matter what
it is, the great motivator. And if you want to
motivate someone to do something right, no matter what it is,
make sure you pay them and pay them well, or
somebody tied to their pay you know, like like there's accountability. Yeah, yeah,
(15:44):
something like that maybe, because if basically what I want
to say is if you don't pay somebody well enough,
somebody else will pay them, Especially if you're talking about
law enforcement in any capacity. I mean, look at the
problems that happened with moonlighting. You know, I agree with
you whole heartedly. Matt. I would even say, I would
even take it a step further and recommend that everybody
(16:06):
watch uh some excellent TED talks and serious research into
the threshold at which money buys happiness. It's a very
true thing, and studies have showed, at least in the West, uh,
pretty specific number. We talked about this in a in
another show earlier, somewhere between seventy to seventy two dollars.
(16:27):
And that's why we need to pay teachers more across
the board. Hey, let's do it. Then the judges are
making more than the teachers. Let's go, let's go, let's do. Uh.
One other moral to the story, never ever, ever, under
any circumstance, no matter how awesome and stacked you are
by a Lamborghini, now, just don't do it. Just don't
(16:48):
do it. That's how that's one of the reasons that
he got caught. It's because somebody that was working with
him bought a three thousand dollar Lamborghini, and he also
had a three dollar lambor Ghini, and it was like
the same they connect. They made a connection between the
Lamborghini's and they all roughly know within arrange how how
(17:09):
much each person makes officially that's that's that's the other thing.
Don't be conspicuous, learn from learn from Jimmy Buffett. Wait
here you go, Jimmy Buffett or Warren Buffett. Jimmy Buffet,
(17:29):
Jimmy Buffet the type to buy like a parrot colored
Lamborghini disregarded. I thought maybe there was some scandal with
Jimmy Buffett that I was not aware of. The agent
Jim Well, Lamborghini's are like, you know, in the same
way that like a really you know, pricey red sports
car is a cop magnet on the street. It's also
(17:52):
like a magnet for eyes on you and your business
and your finances. If you buy that and you maybe
aren't they a person that on paper should be able
to buy that, then that is a massive red flag
and no offense. Lamborghini, It's incredible vehicles that you make. Man,
it's just a It's a lot of money for a car.
(18:12):
I wondered, is that like officially the priceiest car? I thought, McLaren,
Maybe no, there are much more. I thought, that's like attainable,
Like I've got so much money, but I'm not gonna
waste my million that I just made, you know, but
I don't mind dropping, you know, three thousand dollars. But
(18:33):
it's short money. It's that's short thought to think of
the maintenance. Do you have to ultimately have a subscription
for the maintenance like it's I mean, it's essentially like
a whole another you know, line item on on on
the cost of ownership. We're gonna talk about cars this
week to drive it off that lot. Baby, I was
(18:55):
taking trash on Twitter earlier. You guys, I've just full confession,
have been slamming iced coffee at advance of this listener mail.
We got. It's going to be a ride, but a
legal one in our case. M exciting stuff. All right,
that's all. For now, we need to do an entire
episode on the d e A and that undercover money
(19:16):
laundering thing, because I haven't wrapped in my head fully
around it yet, and I think we all need to.
So for now, we will hear a word from our
sponsor and we'll be right back. And we've returned. Uh,
it's been a minute since we talked about crypto currency.
(19:40):
I think there might have been some crypto fatigue for
a while because there were so many you know, kind
of ponzi schemes and sort of more you know, niche
kind of conspiracies wrapped up in crypto because of the
lack of regulation and just the ability to kind of
do all this sort of like dark web kind of trading,
you know, these projects and all of that stuff and um.
(20:00):
But through all of that, you know, the niche elements
of crypto, there were kind of some big players. We know,
way back at the beginning of crypto, or at least
the beginning of of my knowledge of crypto. Uh, there
was a massive hack of a crypto exchange called mount
Gox that was a huge red flag and it seem okay,
we learned our lesson here from Mount Cox. We're not
(20:23):
gonna let that happen again. Uh. Crypto exchange, by the way,
is just literally kind of what it sounds like. It's
a proprietary network, you know, kind of like a stock market,
you know, where crypto can be exchanged, you know, bought
and sold and turned into other tokens, other coins, what
have you. Um. One of the two two of the
(20:44):
biggest crypto exchanges are something called f t X just
what today's stories about, and another one called Finance Finance
being the biggest one I believe f t X being
the second biggest one or very close, and these two
players are entrenched in this story. Essentially f t X
(21:05):
was trying to do and it's CEO a guy named
Um always got a great name with nominal determinism. His
name is Sam Bankman fried Um SPF. For sure, let's
just call him SPF. Sam Bankman fried Um the former
billionaire UH and founder of f t X, the crypto
(21:26):
exchange UM. He and the CEO of Finance, which is
the largest crypto exchange, are kind of the two main
players in today's story, but Mr Bankman fried being the
most important one. So f t X and Finance have
really been trying to kind of legitimize cryptocurrency. I think
(21:47):
because of things like you know and f t S.
A lot of the kind of sentiment from regular folks
has been that cryptocurrency is is a scam, is a
fly by night sort of UH Ponzi scheme esque situation,
and so I think understandably folks have been a little
bit skeptical about it. But the folks that are really
(22:09):
into it, and I think we all probably know some
of those folks. Um. I believe in the long term,
you know, uh, promise of of crypto and believe that
it will potentially just keep growing and growing and growing.
We have recently had several crashes kind of corrections, they
call it, like you do with the stock market, but
this one is triggered by the issues of a single company,
(22:34):
a single exchange f t X. So essentially overnight um
f t X has gone bankrupt, not overnight, but then
in the last week f t X has gone bankrupt
and the founder, as I said, Mr Bankman Fried, it's
gone from holding billions in crypto assets to essentially being broke,
(22:56):
like broke broke um. And this company relocated to the
Hammas uh not terribly long ago, largely, it would seem,
because of easier, lighter, lacks er regulations there. But they
do still hold a division that's in the US. And uh,
this gentleman, Mr Bankman Fried has been pretty vocal about
(23:18):
regulations and has even been kind of the like public
facing kind of you know, reputable businessman of crypto and
you know, appeared in various Senate hearings and all of
that stuff and trying to say, well, we we we
do need some regulation and but but maybe not what
you're thinking there let me help you, help me, help
(23:40):
you to make these regulations more equitable and uh have
you know, crypto become a part of the kind of
more mainstream economy of the United States, and f t
X has gone to great lengths with marketing efforts to
really solidify their you know, immit as this kind of
(24:01):
you know, very legitimate UM cryptocurrency exchange they UM sponsored.
I think in California, cal Athletics that you see Berkeley
UM renamed their stadium f t X Stadium. I believe
there's another one with the professional NBA team, or maybe
(24:21):
it was NFL for giving me from missing some of
the minutia here. UM also again sort of like crypto
dot com, there's sort of at that level. I believe
the Staples Center was renamed the Crypto dot Com Arena
or what have you. Uh so really big kind of
you know, public facing marketing efforts. For example, during the
last Super Bowl, there were some commercials for ft X,
(24:44):
one of which had Larry David, uh one of my
favorite you know comedians and writers and comics, traveling through
time and kind of shilling for f t X in
this kind of comical ad um that obviously was very
very expensive. It made a lot of buzz because it
was like crypto is finally arrived their advertising on the
Super Bowl. You can't do that unless you're you know, solvent,
(25:06):
unless you're legitimate. Um, and so it was a big
shock to the industry and even Toil like kind of
just you know, look, you lose. That's f t X
absolutely tanked in a very very short amount of talk.
They have file for Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection. Their proprietary
token f t T, which again you know, it's like
(25:27):
binance coin or bitcoin and he you know, well, it's
it's different, like a token is not quite the same
as a crypto coin. Ben, can you explain the difference
between a token and a cryptocurrency. Tokens are more like
proprietary to a particular exchange. I believe, yes, so f
t T. This is a great question. Also, f t
T was like there was like their house barbecue right right,
(25:54):
it was their store brand. Yes, like you go right right,
like you buy Kirkland at a store and get a discount, right. Uh.
So f t X created this crypto called f t
T and they would encourage f t X users to
buy f t T and they would say, you know,
in return qui pro quo clarice, you get a lower
(26:14):
fee for trading if you're trading with the with the
house brand, with the house special. Yeah. And when you trade,
there are things called gas fees that's sort of the
colloquial term for it, that are essentially just you know,
fees for conducting a trade. Um. I guess they call
them gas fees because of all the electricity involved. I
guess it's sort of like offsets that all the energy involved. Um,
(26:36):
So you pay these you know fees for transactions. It's
literally to purchase or to exchange or to convert, to
do whatever, you're going to pay these fees. So when
you're using the company, you know, the company store money,
the bend bucks as it were, Um, you're essentially getting, Yeah,
you're getting a better value right for for that for
you know, for those uh, you're getting a discount essentially.
(26:58):
So this is you know, I'm no economists, and a
lot of this does get a little bit complex, but
the main you know takeaway here is that they put
a lot of stock into this token, and a lot
of they would pay people in it. I think even
employees were paid with it. You know, directly into their
accounts because it was considered stable, because f t X
(27:19):
was considered above board and very stable. And um, this
other company, Binance that that I mentioned earlier, they bought
an absurd amount of f t t UM. So essentially
you become at that point what's called in the crypto
space a whale. You know, when one organization owns one
(27:39):
type of currency to such a large degree that if
they sold it, they could singlehandedly tank the price of
that currency. Is that about the shape of it, Ben, Yeah,
you nailed it. Well, I mean we're talking two billion
in value, uh circu two billion value bidence held in
f t t and then they just when public and
(28:00):
said we're gonna sell it, and that caused, you know,
a new school version of a run on the bank.
Wasn't finance looking to step in. Well that's the thing.
We'll get to that in a minute. But they essentially
did what Elon Musk did with Twitter, but they did
it smarter. Um. They you know, kind of came in
and said, oh FDx is faltering, we're gonna offload our tokens.
(28:24):
So that becomes an act within the market, but also
a public relations act. Were there you know, you know,
publicly stating lack of confidence in this exchange, and then
they say, well, now that we've kind of scroog you by,
you know, selling off all of these tokens that we
have and you know, calling into question your stability, we're
(28:47):
gonna now swoop in and say, well, we'll rescue you.
It's basically a takeover. Um what you might call I
guess it's a hostile takeover. I'm not quite sure what
you would call it exactly. But the point is that
why f t T faltered was because essentially there is
this other hedge fund called Alameda Research that, weirdly, it
(29:10):
would seem on paper, owned way too many of these
f t T tokens. UM and Sam Bankman Fry, the
chief executive officer of f t X, is directly connected
to Alameda, So while he would say that their their
finances were separate, that just wasn't really the case. So
(29:34):
essentially they were making bets with the money of those
investing on f t X using the exchange uh into
unsecured crypto deals. I think that's the long and short
of it. Ben. Maybe you can put a little more
light on that, but I think they were essentially doing
(29:55):
kind of a Lehman Brothers esque you know, Ponzi scheme
kind of thing, paying Peter, robbing from p Her to
pay Paul, kind of situation where they were gambling with
their investors money in ways that no one had agreed
to do. There was some nepotism as well. You know,
the person who is running Almada is the allegedly the
(30:18):
girlfriend of the guy who owned f t X. Al
Meda's superinvested in f t T As you said, uh,
and then sbf Sam bankman Fried, uh was this is
where it gets Okay, this is a weird one. This
is a weird wind all right. So I heard, thanks
to uh, some of our Australian friends not confirmed, I
(30:41):
heard an interesting theory thanks to our friend Patrice out
in oz. Uh. The idea was that bankman Freed is
well connected supporter of a lot of major, big time
US politicians, right, uh, disproportionate to his influence in the
crypto space. And there's this allegation that the US gave
(31:06):
money to Ukraine. Ukraine gave money to f t X.
F t X gave money to the Democratic Party hoping
for for better like like favorable regulations kind of or
maybe maybe or maybe just to to play the shell
game right, to to remove the origin of the money. Uh.
(31:28):
And then that leads, if we're being a little conspiratorial
about it, that leads to the speculation that maybe this
was a calculated a calculated downfall. I know, I know,
it's a lot. That's why, like Matt, that's why Noel
said this this is an episode and is no question
(31:51):
about it. So what happened when Finance did what Finance
did uh and and sold their their shares their their
f t t uh. It plummeted the price, and of
course people that are invested in the token we want
to pull out before it would uh you know, go
to literally zero. That can absolutely happen in crypto. Um.
So over the course of three days, people tried to
(32:14):
pull out six billion dollars and this kind of hearkens
back to the whole game stocks thing with Robin Hood,
where you know, they didn't have the money to cover
the withdrawals, um, so they paused it or they like
free froze withdrawals. And that's because they just literally did
not have the money to do it. And so Finance
(32:37):
did swoop in uh saying they would bail out ft
X by buying the company. But then, like I was
saying earlier, where Elon Musk is kind of you know
crap talked twitter um and caused the price to to
go down. He had already negotiated a deal at that
point and and he did not do due diligence. But
when Finance did due diligence on ft X, they found
(33:01):
that there was gross mishandling of client funds and potentially
all kinds of other stuff. Not to mention, there's this
whole thing about like weird sex orgy parties in the Bahamas,
like with the employees and all of that stuff. So
there's I mean, really is a whole another episode unto itself. Yeah,
(33:21):
they're like right across from the d e A guys
on Team America. They're in the same neighborhood. They go
to the like they get they get their you know,
pdolite to fight their hangovers at the same store, and
they're like nice one, bro. Oh yeah yeah, well nice
one bro. Indeed, Finance you know, did what Ellen couldn't
do because he'd already sealed the deal essentially, and they
(33:44):
pulled out of the deal and they had a caveat
in their whole you know, bailout plan that they could
pull out of the deal at any time, and they
did just that. So this really is an ongoing story, um,
that we're gonna have to keep an eye on and
and see how it develops. And then you know, it's
the kind of thing that is like the documentary is
already being produced, you know. I mean there there are
(34:06):
people this guy Michael Sailor, who's a micro Strategy founder
of this company called micro Strategy, and a big Bitcoin guy,
Michael Sailor, he is comparing um, you know, Sam bankman
Fried to Jordan Belfour, the Wolf of Wall Street. The
level and egregiousness of these financial crimes have yet to
(34:27):
be uncovered. And I think, you know, as time goes on,
we're going to see some more shocking revelations. And um
can't wait for the Hulu documentary that's going to compete
with the Netflix documentary, and you know, we'll see which
one is better. But man, this is crazy stuff, um,
and I think we should probably just leave it here
for now and and revisit it once we have some
(34:47):
more info in a full episode. But oh I we'll
just add I mentioned Larry David doing that commercial. UM.
Tom Brady also has done some evangelizing for FTX. In
addition to David Ortiz, Shaquila Neil, and Jase L bunche In,
tom Brady's ex wife. They are all being sued, uh
for essentially participating in false advertising. I don't know where
(35:13):
that's going to go, but it is, it is, it is.
There are tentacles here that are reaching out and touching
anybody that has, you know, been involved with this company.
So let's take a quick break here, a word from
our sponsor, and then be back with one more piece
of strange news space the final Frontier Tier. These are
(35:40):
the voyages of the Starship X thirty seven B. It's
continuing mission to explore strange new redacted redacted, redacted, to
seek out new redacted and new redacted to boldly redacted.
We're no redacted has gone redacted, But what's gone what
(36:00):
is not too far off from the actual news. Uh.
This is something that I have been obsessed with for
uh quite a while, as have you, Matt. The X
thirty seven B Orbital Test Vehicle six street name O
t V six. UH. This this is an unmanned reusable
(36:24):
space plane. It looks uh, it looks a lot like
an old school NASA shuttle until you really really put
your eyes on it. Uh it is. It is owned
by Space Force, which is still a thing. So uh
we were I know, I went kind of ham on
our group chat. Sorry to abuse the access guys, but
(36:46):
I was excited about the d A. I mean, they
don't ever really explain what they're enforcing about drugs. But
I was also I was also over the moon. There
we go about the X thirty seven B. We have
been watching this for a while. How event horizon is this?
After two and a half years in space unmanned days
(37:11):
to be exact, this bad boy landed at the Kennedy
Space Hitter in Florida on Saturday, November twelve in the
pre dawn hours am local time. Six successful mission so far,
no one knows. No one's admitted what it was doing
up there. We got we have some we have like
(37:32):
the most innocuous experiments that they listed out on new scientists.
But it's like, come on, come on, guys, come on, yeah, yeah,
I'm sure. So yeah, let's let's go with that. I
I like that, man, let's go with the let's go
with news scientists before we get into the deep water. Right, So,
(37:55):
so everybody admits it's a secretive thing and and it
and it doesn't look as good as a manned space shuttles.
It's got a lot of patchwork. You know, it's got
no windows. It doesn't need windows, and it doesn't need
one of the most difficult things about any spacecraft. And
(38:17):
we won't need eyes. Uh when how does that go? Sorry,
I'm just back on the event horizon. Yeah, we don't
need eyes out here. It doesn't need all of the
accouterment that is necessary to keep meat bags alive in
an environment that they were never built for. H So
(38:38):
this thing still the size of a space shuttle, right,
So what did they put in there instead of the
in place of the equipment used to support uh terran organisms.
This was started under the auspice of NASA. Big fans
of NASA here on the show. They do great work.
Shout out to the James Webb Telescope. But it was
(39:00):
passed to the US military. That's where the X thirty
seven B comes from. It's a variant of the O TV.
And this thing has captivated us because if you if
you look at the experts who are allowed to speak publicly.
(39:21):
You will see that they're talking about they're talking about
experiments that, as you said, Matt, seemed rather innocuous with microwaves. Uh,
they're talking about releasing satellites that are experimental with electromagnetic
propulsion and so on. Doesn't that sound cool? Though? It
does sound really cool. It sounds so cool, you know. Uh,
(39:44):
Like imagine if you had one of those, right, we
would be like, why are we hanging out on on Earth?
You know, our weekend day trip conversations would be less
David Busters and more space. Why don't we just pop
off to space for a bit? You know, let's take
the elevator. Yeah, let's go. But like, electric magnetic propulsion
system sounds revolutionary to me, maybe just because I'm unaware
(40:07):
of existing technology that would use something like that. Uh,
it sounds like railgun make vehicle go forward tech exactly. Yeah.
It reminds me of that that zero drive, right, that
that made such a splash in the news and then
disappeared from conversation, just like the X thirty seven beat
(40:29):
did for two and a half years. Now, Look, we
know we we've been here on Earth with you for
the past two and a half years. We know there
was a lot of stuff going on. There are things
that are easy to miss. But that's why we do
this show. That's why X thirty seven B has to
be a future episode because of the military aspect here,
(40:51):
the streets are watching GEO politically. Uh. The former head
of Russia's space agency there NASA rosa Cosmos guy named
Dmitri Rugs and was in an interview earlier and he
said this is probably a carrier for some kind of
reconnaissance apparatus and then also possibly a carrier of weapons
(41:15):
of mass destruction. Now, of course the world has agreed
on paper not to militarize space, and of course all
the countries that could militarize space plausibly have a plan
to do. So, you know, I'm we're not saying they're
they're doing it now, We're just saying they don't want
to be last to the game, right, It's always better
(41:37):
to be first than the space there. Oh my god, accidental,
but yeah, literally, So this this thing has a lot
of speculation around it, and it's nuts to consider. You know,
how expensive it is to launch something into space if
you live in the US, whether or not. You're a citizen.
(41:58):
You are paying for part of this machine, and you
are not going to get an explanation unless you're lucky
enough to get one of those gend up security clearances
that we talked about earlier. So this, this idea, I
want to I want to bring it to you, guys.
This idea has prompted a lot of speculation about what
(42:19):
the thing is doing. Most alarmingly, other superpowers are working
on their own version of the thing. China is building
their own answer to the X three seven B. Also,
they're kind of sketchy about what what it's supposed to do, right, Pete,
don't peek behind the curtain. You know what I mean,
your tax dollars at work. My big question, Ben, is
(42:41):
so the Space Shuttle was designed to orbit in lower
Earth orbit. That's what it was designed to do. That's
what it was gonna do, and it's what it did.
This thing looks a lot like that, just smaller and
it's automated. It feels like it's going to operate in
that same essentially layer of space in low Earth orbit.
Do you think, and this is complete speculation on my part,
(43:03):
do you think this thing is steerable fliable, not just
going around in the same orbital path the whole time.
Because if it looks like it could do that, and
and if that if you could do that, then it
feels like they're serious national security concerns for like every
country that has satellites. Uh yeah, you hit the nail
(43:25):
meat head uh connected to by Mr Matt Frederick favorite
cinebite that's m e A t head. Yeah, this is
this is great. Like obviously it's reusable, it can land,
so there is some measure of control. We know that, right,
And we also know that technology exists already well established,
(43:47):
well tested to control these objects in space, including satellites,
including man shuttles and so on. The reason I'm saying
nail on the head here is because one of the
pieces of speculation that's really fascinated me is the idea
of building a satellite snatcher, right, because I remember, not
(44:09):
too long ago, there was there there was a series
of strange, cool, and frightening space events that were not
loudly reported by a lot of people's go to news sources.
The US proved that it could shoot satellites out, you know,
(44:29):
just skeet shoot him. China did the same and you know,
Russia bellied up to the poker table for a little
bit and was like, I also do stuff, but but
China and the US actually did it. And now is
this an escalation a logical expansion on that idea? The
only thing more valuable than shooting down of foreign satellite
(44:54):
is capturing it, right, you know, just like in Galagha,
The secret move got sounds so ridiculous. The secret moving
Galica is to give up one of your ships so
that you can take it back and now you have
double the firepower. Right, Are they doing a Galagha thing
up there? Are? They are the satellites, the other ships.
(45:15):
It's quite possible. Imagine how amazing that would be. Now
anybody in this industry will, I'm sure, readily point out
that it's possibly more cost effective to just remotely access
whatever those space birds are are putting their eyes on.
(45:36):
But still pretty neat. I'm I'm guys, it's this. It
brings out this strange love in me, Like, I know,
terrible things can happen, but it's so cool. It's so
cool that humans can do this. It's like I feel
like Jesse Pinkman, but instead of yelling, uh science, I'm
yelling math, you know, just the math alone. But what
(46:00):
what do you guys think? Do you guys think this
is an innocuous thing that is only testing material science,
radiation exposure, long term effects on UH seeds? I think
seeds are the primary organic material it carries for the
public eye. I mean, what what are they building up there? Well,
the thing is it stinks that we can't know, because
(46:24):
it does seem like those experiments are cool and interesting.
And that's how you're going to get the public behind
these kinds of things, because, as you said, Ben, we're
paying for it ultimately if you show like we've got
important stuff to test and we're going to test it
with this thing. And the great thing of the the
great aspect about this particular craft is that we can
(46:47):
do it for two years. We can have two year
long experiments in space if we want to, potentially even
longer than that, and we can gain massive scientific data
that we couldn't get otherwise. Even if you put this
kind of experiment on the I S S. It's kind
of weird, but think about the possible UH human interaction
(47:09):
with an experiment that could render it, you know, completely moot.
Right if you accidentally messed up an experiment because you know,
you're a human on a craft on the International Space
Station and you accidentally just barely mess it up and
not saying that happened a lot or even has a
higher potential happen or something like that. It's just you
(47:29):
take you remove the human element from experimentation, which could
be hugely advantage of a lot of doors. For sure,
there's things you can do that you just couldn't do because,
like you said, Ben, our meat bodies couldn't sustain ends,
you know, and we have to have a certain at
least appearance of ethics where humans are animals are involved,
you know. But why would you even acknowledge that the
(47:53):
thing went up if it's really doing some nefarious stuff
up there? I guess would you have to? Yeah, there's
it's just like the problem with Key with the Corona satellites.
There's no way to make it invisible. Just yet, so
other countries again, the streets are watching other countries know
every time the US makes a launch successfully into space,
(48:16):
right and and just the same it's very much again
it's not a glass house. It's a glass world in
the world. In in this sense, uh, you can find
basic information about X thirty seven B. We we talked
about it in at least one or two previous shows,
but the true purpose still remains a mystery. Maybe it's
(48:41):
not capturing satellites. Maybe it is secretly deploying satellites. But again,
if you're a foreign power or even a civilian right
with surprisingly unsophisticated telescopes, you can see new satellites, right,
you can. You can find them should you try. And
we welcome your adventures in those astronomy forums. But that's
(49:07):
that's We're just taking you to the door of that
rabbit hole because we don't want to be responsible for
you losing all those hours on all those late nights.
But we do hope you have fun. Uh. And then
again this so let's end on that. We like to
end on on future facing stuff, right, and the X
thirty seven B is probably, yes, gonna go on a
(49:28):
seventh mission, and it might not go alone. Further, aside
from you know, the publicly palatable innocuous experiments that people
think of as nerdy, no one really knows what this
is doing. No no one who can speak about it
in public unless you have an inside scoop and you
(49:52):
happen to be a fellow conspiracy realist. This is going
to be a future episode. Ft X is going to
be a future episode. The Adventures and Misadventures of the
d e A also a future episode. We can't wait
for you to be a part of it. We want
to hear your experience, your stories, your speculation, and don't
(50:13):
bother keeping it grounded. We're talking about space, all right,
last bad joke. Uh So, we hope you enjoyed this.
We're hurtling headlong into Thanksgiving here in the US, so
again the week after this, we're gonna have some of
our favorite classic episodes up and it takes some time
with our families, and we hope you do the same.
(50:34):
We consider you a part of our family and we'd
love to hear from you online. Surewood. You can find
us on Twitter, on Facebook, and on YouTube A Conspiracy
Stuff on Instagram, A Conspiracy Stuff Show. Yes, we also
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(50:56):
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conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
(51:35):
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