Destroying a $50 Billion Chinese Mob Smuggling Operation

What people also don't realize is that this multibillion dollar industry is used to fund a massive range of other criminal activity, most notably international terrorism through groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda. Enter Omar Khan, a good friend and an extraordinary individual, starting with his family history to his career as an international investigator for private security companies and intel organizations like the CIA.

Today he's going to tell us the story of how he infiltrated the Chinese triads and took down a huge part of their cigarette smuggling operation. He is today's hero behind the headlines. All right Omar, let's start by you telling us a little bit about your background and how you got into undercover work. Right. My father and mother came in the fifties to Australia. My father was the son of a military man. He was a colonel in the army, in the Indian British Army at the time.

And his grandfather, my great grandfather was a highly decorated and knighted soldier and my father came to Australia to study on behalf of the British government. Paid for it because of the service between my grandfather and great grandfather. So with that I was raised in an upper middle class area of Melbourne, which didn't really work well for me because I was the only kid with black hair and dark skin. So I had to fight my way through school through that period of time.

They opened up an Indian restaurant in the early sixtys and that became very well known, very famous to the point where my mother was doing the odd cooking show on television introducing Indian food to the Australians. As a result of that my father also because of his leaning towards the military and law enforcement, the restaurant became the Victoria Police headquarters and I was immersed into law enforcement.

I grew up around police officers at the end of the day, so this was my world growing up. At the same time I also had this unique ability to be able to know things ahead of time moving forward through this sort of exposure to the police. This really laid down the foundation for my work.

Later on, around about the age of 14, my mother had cancer and we're also in the middle of some sort of feud which I didn't really know about, but this sort of mad Afghan that was raised in Thailand took exception to my father and organized to have him shot. My dad came back with two bullets in him. My mother passed four days later, and after the funeral, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, you're going to have to man up.

The guy that's coming after me is coming after you because you're the firstborn and you need to watch your back. So I was then sort of trained up in counter surveillance by his police friends. How to walk to school, what to watch for, how to take different routes, that type of stuff. So I was already being trained to think outside the box and have what you call situational awareness. So growing up in that, we grew up in a fortified house with lots of guns, so I grew up with that.

After a while, you get comfortable with it, sure

But the other part, all of that is my intuitive ability really sharpened up. I started to understand what door to push open and what not to. I could figure out how to speak to a crook, what to say and how to say it. So after that, I left that and I searched to do something else. And my dad's friend suggested, why don't you get into private investigation work? So I got a license, and then I started to look around, and then I came across my mentor, Jeff Hozak. Incredible man.

Jeff trained me up, and I learned all the skill sets through him and a couple of other investigators that have been around for a very long time. And so I gained a lot of methodologies and techniques and ways of doing things which would serve me later on. And anyhow, my first job was to infiltrate a criminal gang inside a major cigarette manufacturing company. And so I was placed there for a year. And in that period of time, I gained their confidence.

And long story short, I broke an $8 million, the caught two bank robbers, and I also nailed one of the headquarters of the Painter and Dockers Union, which was the unions for the Docs. So it was a huge success at the time. And at that moment, during that raid, there was Customs, the Federal Police, and Victoria Police all involved because they had all different areas of law that all sort of connected to this particular op that really brought attention to these law enforcement officers.

And I started to work more or less along the lines with them in many respects because of the cigarette. I became known as the guy that knows about cigarettes being a year and there. And so part of my job was to infiltrate also the Vietnamese community that we're also selling counterfeit cigarettes with. That because I have the tenacious nature, I wanted to go further than what they want. So I started to frequent the bath houses where these criminal groups would hang out.

I developed a relationship with them through alcohol. Supposedly, I was giving them stolen alcohol, and in return, they were giving me cigarettes. Yeah. And where are you getting the alcohol from? I was just buying it up and giving it back. Gain their confidence by doing that. Never asked for any money. But I also knew what the Vietnamese like, which is Cognac. Cognac and Brandy. These two are their favorites. So I had this supposedly connection for that. So I became their best friend.

But what that was, it gave me a really good understanding of how the Vietnamese work or crime gangs work, which was leading into where I'm going. Okay. So after a while, I was recommended by an ex federal police officer that actually did work in Hong Kong for a while to carry out or participate in an operation in Hong Kong that had begun. And that particular operation was the Chinese Triads were containers of counterfeit cigarettes into Australia.

So they were the source of the counterfeit cigarettes? Yes, they were the source. And because of my background and connection that I had, I was the guy for the job, so to speak.

So in this case, with counterfeit cigarettes, there's a much bigger picture to this that a lot of people don't understand, that counterfeit cigarettes also finance terrorism on a large scale. And back in the day, it was Hamas and Hezbollah that was using this as a cash cow to finance their terrorist operations. I mean, to this day, it continues on, and it's a multibillion dollar business that's happening right now in America. You'll find that half the cigarettes are counterfeit.

It's a huge cash flow. There's not a lot of, how do I say, jail time for it. And it's hard to detect, in many respects, interesting. And they're so good that you couldn't tell a counterfeit from a real cigarette. You can't. You're right. I mean, here in America, they even get it down to the tax stamps for individual states. Wow. So they're very good at what they do. So with this particular job, when I was brought into it, I knew that it wasn't just landing cigarettes in Melbourne.

What they were, what I wasn't told, but what I knew, was that they wanted the key figures that were involved in counterfeiting these cigarettes. They didn't want just the guy that's landing it. They want the guy, the manufacturer, where this was coming from. Right. And this was going to penetrate into the Chinese Triad . Yeah. So my op was supposed to be long term and I was supposed to identify the key players in all of this. Right.

But they give you very limited information on very much what you need to know and no more than that. But my intuitive ability says, no, there's a great deal more going on and this is far more deeper and much more dangerous than what they're alluding to. Right. This isn't a simple sort of negotiation for a container. It's not that well, it's not simple, but in my case right.

And if we're dealing with the Chinese Triads, we're dealing with probably the most dangerous criminal organization in the world. Chinese Triads have been around since the early 1800s, even further back, and they have, how do I say, established themselves in dozens of countries with what they do.

You see, there's a difference between Hong Kong Triads and the Chinese Triads, which is a mainline Chinese, and they have a very structured organization that has really three tiers or eight parts to it, basically. And each part has a role right down to finance, right down to enforcement, right down to intel, distribution. They have it all. It's very structured. And they also liaise with other criminal networks and they're working together.

So in my case, it's the Chinese and the Vietnamese that were coming together on this. We're converging into this. Right. But nobody knew the Vietnamese were involved in this point. And intuitively, I had done all this work with the Vietnamese at this point, so this was all coming together. So I had this meeting and they briefed me up on it, and they pretty much say that you're just going to offer a way in for these containers to land into Australia. You're the guy that has a connection.

I was left to figure that one out, but that was it. So, anyhow, after that, I was pretty much briefed up and I asked for a couple of days to myself to figure out how it would work. I actually flew back. Were there other people involved in this operation? I'm sorry. Yes. So I was introduced to Daniel. He was the guy that initiated the op. He was the first guy on the ground with this. And his, how do I say, objective was to target a particular female who was a Cambodian girl raised in Melbourne.

And this was one of the other reasons why I was brought in, because she was from Melbourne. Right. So Daniel chatted her up in a bar and built up a relationship with her. Daniel is...Daniel is. Ex special forces, but also ex-Hong Kong police detective. Okay? Right. Yeah. He had a military background, but he was also a good looking guy. Tall, good looking, got that nice English, sort of good boy looks type of thing. You wouldn't pick him out for a detective, by no means.

In fact, he actually comes across quite gentle, really, at the end of the day. So with his good looks and his charm charms her. He charms her. Right. And they become very good. They become boyfriend and girlfriend. Right. This Cambodian girl is connected, is the connection to the Triads. She has a connection to the Triads. And this is why she was already targeted by law enforcement. They already knew about her. Right. But she was very good in covering her tracks.

So they weren't able to figure out how she communicates with these people and the range of what she was doing. They weren't able to figure it out. They just knew that she was associated with it. Yeah. They pieced it together, one thing to another, but they didn't have solid effort and surround her. But they knew that she was a key figure in opening up the door. And Daniel got it to that point, but they needed that Australian connection.

But it was in a conversation between the two of them that she says, oh, I have an opportunity to make some money if I can land a couple of containers in Melbourne through the people I know. Right? And that was Daniel's queue to come on board. And he intuitively said, I got someone. He did not was going to be me. He said I got someone. Right. And so with that, he went back and then said, we need a guy.

And this is where they contacted their ex federal guy that worked in Hong Kong who I'd done some work with, and this is how I was recommended by it. Now I'm there and I'm in front of this ex intel guy that heads up this international detective agency, and he briefs me up and he says, Omar, this is going to take about a year. We're dealing with smart people here. Yeah. I went, yeah, fine. He said, Just take it easy. There's a big budget to this. Just take your time with it. I went.

Sure, no problem. Brief me up. Thank you very much. I got what I needed to know. And so I needed a couple of days to figure it out. I flew back to Melbourne and I called up an old buddy, this old buddy of mine. I used to work with him in the project and mine my language, but he was a real mad fucker. This is a guy that would push me aside and push open the door and deal with whoever he needed to deal with. So good old Bobby.

Anyhow, he was also quite anti establishment, which was quite funny because he was in law enforcement. He just didn't like the, how do I say the seniority and having to say yes, that type of thing. So Bobby was always looking at how you can break the system to anything. That was his thing. So I was in good hands with Bobby. So when I asked him, of course Bobby knew what he wanted. He knew it all. He knew how to smuggle cigarettes. Yeah.

So, pretty much he explained to me that the way you do this is to have your container land in a bonded warehouse where the painter and Dockers Union control it. And he said they're paid off. Right. And the fumigation that takes part, there's normally not a customs officer there to do that. Right. It's vulnerable at that point. And with the painter and doctors, they knew how to unclip the tag and do all of that.

So the deal is that you have a mixed load, and with that mixed load, there's cigarettes in it and you've got to have wooden furniture of some sort, something that needs to be fumigated. So he worked with me on that. He worked with me on all the documentation, what you needed and how to do it. And he also explained to me they're usually 40 foot containers, not 20 foot. So all of those things were really important to know. So now you have all the I have all the details.

I understand what's going to go on. And so I go back, right? I go back to Hong Kong. I'm called back to Hong Kong to now do this meet. And so I go back and I have my initial meeting with this girl. Now, the other part of this, too, was, how do I say the team that I was working with didn't know that I had a lot of information about where she actually worked and how she worked. I understood all of that. She's from Melbourne. She's from Melbourne.

And I figured that she's also from an area called Springvale. This is where Cambodians, Vietnamese and Chinese, basically Asians, live in this area. And this is where it all happens. Right. So I'd already been dealing with the Triads sorry, the Vietnamese crime gangs, and I would frequent those areas. So I made sure that I knew all the names of the popular restaurants and the market areas. Right. She would probably know. And then I also got a lot of information about her background.

She likes dogs, she likes perfume, so on. And so forth from the Daniel. So putting all that together and piecing that in my mind and working with my intuitive side, we meet. Yeah. And her name is Rosa

And she's excited because she knows the street. I said, yeah, I had to leave it. I had to leave my dog. I had to give it to someone. Oh, you got a dog. So that built up. And then I would say, that my favorite restaurant for my three color drink that I would have. And this was a place to go to. And certain noodles were amazing. This is where you go. She knew these places. She was very excited. And we actually talked about food in Springvale for a while before we let into more serious stuff.

Then I talked about counterfeit T shirts that I used to sell, and she do the same. And so she knew some of the people that I would supposedly buy from. And this built up the relationship really fast to the point where Daniel couldn't believe how quick this was happening. It's just sitting there listening because this is a smart girl that doesn't trust anyone. She's been doing this for a little while. Suddenly, she's just opening up to the opening she's never met before, and it's going.

So after that meeting, he went off with her, and then he came back and briefed me up, and he said, Man, I don't know what you did, but she wouldn't stop talking about you, and she's ready to bring around a proposal to you, so be ready. Yeah, right. How did you identify yourself to her? Were you using your real name? Your real name? No. What I did and what I've been using for a while was another profile that I used on another job.

My name back then was Yusuf Acram, and I had infiltrated a fundamentalist Islamic group out of Malaysia. I was there for three years, and my job there was really just to gather up intel and pass it across, no raids or arrests involved. And so my cover was solid. I hadn't blown it in any way. And so my cover was also quite checkable.

And the other part of it is my ethnicity and connection to, how do I say, the fundamentalists at the time really sort of fortified a part of me with these groups of these criminals, that I had my own agenda, I had my own thing going on, right. And this is why I needed the money, right? Okay. So I always brought that across, that I'm in Afghanistan, I got my own I have Malaysia, and I go to the mosque and I do these things.

So in their mind, they go, okay, this is some fundamentalist guy, all right? We'll work with him. Right. And I would mention where these places were too, so very open. And as I said, I could be checked if they needed to. So that was my profile with her, and she took it all on. And as I said before, after Daniel had dropped her off home, he came back to me and briefed me up, and he said, Right, she's on board. She loves you, and she's ready to come

back to you to talk about the containers. Right? Wow. So that was fast. That was real fast. And it was very unexpected. We thought that we'd have to have a couple of dinners where she would sort of loosen up and talk you out, check me out. But no, she was right on board with it, too. So that was all that it launched really well. And so what happened was I figured that it would take about two to three weeks, maybe a month, for her to come back with a proposal. So I flew back to Melbourne.

Within two weeks, I get a call, get your ass back to Hong Kong. Wow. So I fly back and I meet with Daniel, and I meet with the head intel head of the investigation company, and said, Omar, she's wanting to meet with you. This is about now proposing a deal to land containers into Melbourne. And I said, great. Let's do this. So we have this conversation. And I then explained to her about how to land it based on my good friend Bobby. And so I put this across to it with her, and she's very excited.

She feels that it's solid. So with that, second meeting is arranged, right? But I fly back again this thing happens fast. What we thought was going to take a long time happens again. But I fly back, and when I fly back and I'm briefed up again, I don't feel good about certain things that don't fit right. So I decided that I'm going to book another hotel, pay cash for it, and set up misinformation.

So what I did, and I always do, because this is like your lifeline, this could be a matter you can save your life, and it can fortify it. So important misinformation, given in the right way can change the direction of any undercover op if you got the right credentials. So, I had made sure that I put together a fake passport, no photocopy of a fake passport, to make it right. Okay?

I had those and I had so called bills with Yusef Acram, with addresses and things like that that could check with, once again, fake driver's license, all of those things. And I put it all in this hotel room just in case they go there or I need to go from one hotel to the other. So I had it in the other hotel, too. So you've got two hotels from one to the other, but both had this information just in case my gut said this wasn't right. So I do that. I don't tell anyone.

I don't tell any of the team because I don't trust anyone at the same time. So we're ready to do this up, and I asked for no surveillance teams to be present. I'm much more comfortable doing it on my own because all I need is one fucker to screw it up. To screw it up, and it's my life on the line. So, no surveillance teams and

you asked for cash, right? Yeah. So what happened was, to set this up, I also asked for five grand and flash money, which they just said absolutely no. What the fuck you want five grand for? And they didn't understand it. And I said, no, there's a reason for it, so I need it. And eventually they came through and they gave it to me. I also asked for two phone calls to be made about 10 minutes into the conversation, or 10 minutes going in there.

About into the meeting. Yeah. And then the next one, 5 minutes going into it, and they said what do we say? Just say nothing. I'm going to talk into it, okay? Just say nothing. Just interrupt me. Just interrupt me. And this is all craft work, right? This is what you do? Right.

The thing about the Chinese Triads, or Chinese or Asians in general, they watch your facial features and if you're sweating, oh, my God, you're going to give it away. Forget about it. You're going to be in a river somewhere. So I needed Daniel to be as natural as possible without knowing anything, right? So I organized those two and I organize the five grand and we go. Now the other thing is that what the Triads do is they'll also survail the hotel.

Well, before you arrive, they will make sure whether there are any surveillance teams or anybody else. The hotel where you're going to meet. Yeah. So they do that, and sometimes what they do at the last minute, they'll change location. Okay. In case you set up a team there. Right. That's what happened. So we pressured Rosa into making sure that it was at this place and that we weren't going to move.

She relented, and it was back at the Four Seasons Hotel, but we did expect there were going to be people around. So as we arrive, they were there, and they're very good. They're spread out quite widely watching you as you walk up the stairs. Now, the other part, too, is Daniel is very afraid because there's about, I would say about seven or eight outside and he's already getting nervous. So he spots them. He spots them. He tells me he's already nervous.

Why he's nervous is when you have a group like that and you mess up with the Triads, what happens is that when you step out in the street, they rush at you like a crowd. They encircle you and they use meat cleavers and within about 4 seconds, 5 seconds, cover you up, run away, and you're on the ground to start chopping up. You're chopped up. Well, okay. That's their method. And so in his head, they're already preparing for this to happen. Right. So I could see his gut was moving around.

He's getting uncomfortable. And I'm saying to Daniel, don't fucking sweat. Do not fucking sweat. Yeah, right. Yeah. I said calm down. I've got it. Right. But you're just expecting to meet Rosa at this point, right? That's what we're expecting to talk about the next meeting. But when you see these Triad guys, we're probably going, this is bigger than that, right? So as we walk up the stairs, there's Rosa talking to two men.

One of the guys is in a pinstripe suit, gray, very serious, solid size, mid 40s Chinese, very well groomed. And his size, he's very tall, which represents the Shanghainese. The Shanghainese are very tall people. Okay? Right. And their accent there's a way that they speak that you can pick up, that you can tell that they're from Shanghai. So I had a lot of exposure to that in Springvale back in Melbourne amongst the Chinese and Vietnamese. So we go upstairs. She's talking to this.

Is a big dining room in the Four Seasons. Right? The other guy is a Vietnamese guy, small, dressed, very raggedy. Actually mid 40s, but very hard in face. And I would say that this guy had gone through the war, and he looked pretty hard, but very quiet. I could see Rosa mainly talking to the Chinese guy. So you said at a separate table, not yet. We come through the door. She looks at us. We see these two guys sitting at the table. She breaks from the meeting, talks to us.

And I go, oh, you brought people along? She goes, yes. I said, who are they? Have just the manufacturer and the distributor. And Daniel is like, what? Yeah. And so everything turned very serious for Daniel. As we then went to sit on a table, rosa went back. He said, Omar, we're dead. We are dead. He's figuring out what was downstairs. Right. As he looked in the dining room, he said, there are six ex Chinese Red Guards staring at us. And they are locked in. They're staring. You said look.

You said, we're fucked. He doesn't know that I've already figured out how to drop these containers in, and I've got all the information. He thinks that they've organized this to surprise us, to catch us off guard and to see whether we're lying all the way through. So from his point of view, we're fucked. Until Daniel I said bro, we're good. I got this. I said, Relax. They come and sit at the table. Your table? Yes, both of them. So the Chinese guys, he still stands up. He's about six four.

He's a tall guy. Wow. And very serious. Sole face, stone face. And of course, the Vietnamese is a little bit more polite. Sits down, but very quiet. Didn't say anything. Right? So they came over to your table? They came over to our table. They sat down. And at that moment, the phone rings. Now, I need to take it one step back. So after Daniel sat down and he said, Fuck, we're going to die, I could see Daniel turn white, but he was scared.

And the word shitless comes in because he needed to take a shit with what was happening. He, like, soiled himself. Yeah, I got to go. And so he gets up, and another three of these Chinese Red Guards follow him into the toilet. And they pat him down and check him. And that sort of rattled his cage even more. Wow. So he sat down, but he was trying to compose himself as much as he could. So as the Triad and the Vietnamese come and sit at the table, as they sat down, we make the introductions.

And then my phone call phone rings. The one that I asked for. So I pick it up and I say, assalamu alaikum, brother. And I start yelling and I say, you tell those Karachi fuckers I'm not paying any more fucking money. I've given you enough fucking money, right? You get that container done, and I want that fucking container shipped out. No more fucking money, right? You hear me? And then I put it down as we start.

And then I look at him and I said, these fucking customs officers, they want all the fucking money in the world. I've given them enough. And they smile. They laugh and they look at me and they go, yeah, we had to buy a BMW for one customs officer. I went, yeah. Stuff you have to do just to keep business fucking going, right? And he said and the Chinese go, Where are you from? Because I said assalamu alaikum. I said, I'm Afghan. Look at him. Okay, 47, you want something?

And when I said that, because there was a part of me that needed to say that, I saw him get uncomfortable. He gave it away. You wouldn't have not noticed it, but I picked up on it. He gave it away, and I went, you fucker. So he was into Arm sales. You're dealing with guns. So this went on for only a minute. Then the phone rings again, and I yell in the phone, don't disturb me. You know this pretend guy a new asshole, right? And I looked at the Chinese guy in a huff and puff. I said, Business.

It's always difficult. And he smiles. Now that me doing that with the phone is a way of extending your persona and also extending what you're into. Within a second. You give a piece of information in a way that's so organic or appears organic that that sits with them and in their subconscious, boom. I know this guy. I know this guy. Yeah, I've been in a similar situation. Now, the Chinese guy was did you understand what his position was? Good question.

Because it's something that I missed that I forgot to say. Daniel pointed it out when we were sitting alone. He pointed out when he said that we were fucked. He said what we've got? He said that guy there, he's a red pole. And that's the enforcer level of the triads. And if he's here, he's deciding whether we're going to live or die or not. That's what this is about.

And so, you know, within the triad sort of seniority Red Pole, even though it sits in the middle between eight levels, it pretty much can decide whether to move on something or not. They deal with law enforcement and intel, so they have that there. And if you want to equate it to as being the general, the chief commander that can override the president, put it that way. So it's a bit like that. So they have that much power, that particular level.

And this is one of the reasons, and it was a fair enough reason for Daniel to be so worried at what we were facing. On my end of it, I hadn't experienced the enforcer level. All I saw was a crook that I wanted to manipulate and get on side so I can get to where I needed to get to. He represented that part of the triad organization. And this comes from mainland China. Mainland China is where how do I say, the very solid structure of Triads are established in.

You have a lot of loose Triad gangs in Hong Kong that are very different to that structure. So we were dealing with serious guys, serious guys that had networks throughout the world and had relationships with a lot of criminal networks throughout the world at this point. So the other thing that I picked up, sorry, was that I found that Daniel was very nervous because he was surprised by these two guys being here.

And the first thing that this triad says to me says, how do you land a 40 foot container of cigarettes? And with that, I look at Rosa and I said, I think that is he serious?

And I said, you know, you're trying to catch me out? I don't fucking like this shit. They said, Let me explain it to you as you already fucking know. You mix the load. So we're going to mix the load with furniture so it can be fumigated. And what's going to happen is it's going to land in Melbourne and it's going to go to a bonded warehouse where it's controlled by the unions. Okay? And with that, we can open up the container.

We know how to manipulate the tags, the safety tags, and we're going to pull out the furniture and we're going to pull out the cigarettes. We're going to put other furniture, we're going to fumigate it, and it'll look all very legitimate. It went on about bills of laid in origins, things like that. Daniel couldn't believe that I had the information and it was flowing organically, as though I knew exactly what this was about. And I've done it before.

And of course, the triad guy was very comfortable because I was working through it. So at the end of this conversation, he says, okay, we're good. And I looked at him, I said, well, no, we're not good. Daniels looked at me and went, what the fuck and the Triad is like, what are we not good about? I said, we can't move forward with this until one thing. And he said, what? I said, you need to buy a gold Rolex watch for my customs guy because I'm not paying the ten grand for it.

And Daniel is like, what the fuck are you doing right now? There's a thing that I do. You make a deal to break a deal to make a deal, right? And the way you do that, you're basically telling this guy that I can walk away from this deal, right? I don't care about it. Which validates you even further, right? But you're also putting this guy in a position that he has to pay up something to make this work. So I'm in a position of authority, not him.

So I'm the one that's deciding whether this should go through, right? I don't care what you are, Triad. I'm not going to do it. Yeah. And I don't give a fuck about the money. I give a fuck about the ten grand that's coming out of my pocket. You pay for it, right? Right. Now, criminals understand this because it is a way of gaining power, gaining position. So the Chinese guy takes a step back, very quiet, and he looks at me and says, okay. He said, on the outside, it's real.

On the inside, it's not real. I said, I'm good with that. That's the Rolex. Yeah, I'm good with that. We're good with that, right? So with that, we get up. Okay? Daniel's breathing a little easier, right to a point, but he's still paranoid about all these people. And we shake hands and we'll meet again. As we leave, the Chinese Red Guards are ready to get up, and we know there's another half dozen standing outside. Daniel was like, no, we got to lose these guys.

No, we're going to have some fun and they're going to watch, right? I got five grand in spending money. I'm going to flash this around, right, as a gangster would do. As a gangster would do. Now, we're going to hit all the bars. We're going to bring all the prostitutes around us. We're going to be spreading the money out. We're going to be drinking Chivas Regal, right? Okay. And we'll be throwing money around. That's what we're going to do. Daniel all right, get ready.

We're going to lose them. Naturally. We're not going to try and lose them. So we start at Kowloon, the best bars, best whiskies women coming around, giving them tips, sitting on our laps, all of this stuff going from 1 bar to the next, jumping in Cabs. And we're losing them one after the other because they can't keep up. After a couple of hours of doing this, we head towards Kowloon, Hong Kong Central, which is we got jump on a ferry.

So because of all our movements and quick movements and jumping in and out of Cabs, we lose them. So Daniel is like, oh, fuck. Oh, my God, we did it. I'm like, yeah, it's all good. It's all good. As we get off and on the other side, there's another two of them waiting at the ferry. Waiting at the ferry. These fuckers know what to do. And they're on the phone and Daniel is like, what the fuck do we do, Omar? I said. It's all good, Daniel. He says, what do you mean? I said, Just follow my lead.

So they start following this, and I go to the hotel that I booked, the second hotel. I said, I got another hotel. He said, what the fuck? I'm like, yeah, another hotel. I said, what we're going to do is we're going to go into that hotel, right? We're going to call up a couple of girls, and when they come up, we're going to leave and we're going to go for dinner. And I said, what's going to happen is they're going to probably get into my room, because that's everything.

They want to check everything. This is what's going to validate them. Yeah, right. And so we leave, and I can see that to stay in the foyer. I'm like, yeah, perfect. They're going to pay everybody off. We're going to get into it. So we go off with the prostitutes to a restaurant and they follow us on the way through. Come back, right? Go back upstairs. Daniel leaves with one. I said, you need to go to a hotel room. Just book in there.

And then I'm going to stay here, right, and wait a couple of hours and I'm going to send the prostitute home. They'll think that we've settled in for the night, right? So we do this and it's all good. Next morning, they go, all good. And so I then get debriefed by the head guy of this investigation firm with these two other suits that are sitting behind him that don't say who they are. And I figured that they were intel or they represented somebody.

And of course, the head of this company is very excited by it all. Like he says, I can't believe it. You draw these people out. How the fuck did you do it? How the fuck did you know what to say? You weren't briefed up on that. You didn't tell us about this. You did a great job. How did you pick the hotel? How the fuck? He couldn't believe that I was ahead of it. All right, so I fly back to Melbourne. I'm sure he hadn't expected it to go. So they were taking a year, right?

They couldn't believe but what I didn't know, they had their own people there too, that were in the hook. They didn't tell me, right? So there were other people there and they identified them also on cameras and things like that. But they were trying to figure out who they were Vietnamese. They knew they were key players. So what happened was I go back to Melbourne and then I'm called up to go to Sydney, right, and buy the ex federal copper that initially referred me to do this job.

So we meet in Pitt Street in Sydney and we go to the what is it? The WINWORTH Hotel, and we go to the top floor, which is the boardroom floor, right? There is a table that's like 30 ft long and I'm sitting at the end of it and I'm asking the guy that this ex copper go, what the fuck am I doing here? And he asked me not to bring any notes either. He said, So what is this all about? You don't want me to have any notes, but is this a briefing or what is it? You said no, just wait.

And next thing all these men barrel in and I'm talking the head of the crime unit for Sydney, some police commander with his pips on his shoulders. And then all these suits come in and there were literally about ten people and they sit down and they say, how did you do it? I go, what do you mean, how did you do it? How did you draw them out? I said in the report, he said, no, how did you build up that rapport so quickly? He said, what's your training?

And then, me being a smart ass, I'm saying, obviously my training is better than your guys if you're asking me these questions. I mean, you don't know how to do it. I mean, don't you have qualified undercover guys that you work with? You should know how this is fucking done. And they can't believe that I'm talking in this manner and they go, what is the thing about the watch? What did you say about the watch? They said, don't you know how to really dominate a situation when you're undercover?

Right? You take control of the situation by not having an investment into the deal itself. You walk away from it. That's why they want it even more. And you're in control because you're getting them to buy the fucking watch, not you insisting on it. Yeah. So that's how it works. I don't know who trained you or what you trained in, but obviously not as good as what I can do. So I was a smart ass. I'm sorry, a smartass so this went back and forth and I was really interrogated.

They said, well, we were looking for these people for six years and you did it in two weeks. So what is it? Why did they trust you? So, bottom line is, what I was reading between the lines here was that they just couldn't understand how quickly I could connect, right? And they thought that Rosa, the Cambodian girl from Melbourne, met with me on the side to have a conversation, to talk about landing these containers, maybe in some other state, and they'd land it somewhere else.

And I was corrupt. Right. Because how could this trust build up so quickly? Right. So you were in on the deal? I was in on the deal. That's what they thought.

And this is what always got me into trouble right. With it. Because how could you do things so quickly? You must know something else. Right? But I never gave it away. I was accused of being psychic twice on two ops by police detectives. With it long story short, I was cut out of the deal, so they took over. Cut out of the operation. After that, mind you, there was a lot of arguing in that room. There were the heads of three major cigarette companies.

There were two guys that identified themselves as head of the crime unit or gang, gang unit and police commander. And there were two other guys which were intel that didn't say anything. Now, they were arguing back and forth. They were struggling with it because they knew I was good at what I had done and they were considering me. But there was a tap on the shoulder and said no. They went off and talked, and then they came back and went, no, thank you, but we're done well right after that.

What I figured out is that they clearly identified the players and they were the players that they wanted at that point. And they felt that they had enough intel to launch another operation around these two guys without me. Which was fine. I left. Three years later, I'm in Malaysia on another op. One of the guys that were involved in the op, he was the ex head of police intelligence and the tactical squad from Hong Kong. From Hong Kong. But he based himself in Malaysia. He retired.

And as I'm chatting with him, a phone call comes through and he says, this is for you. And it's the head of that investigation firm, that global investigation firm. And he said, Omar, he says, I have to tell you something, and I apologize. What you went through, you were ambushed for it. But we just couldn't believe that anybody could have moved this thing so fast. We expected at least a year to infiltrate. And you did in really two weeks. And he said, I want to tell you what happened.

He said, what you did was that you opened the door to the largest money laundering and arms dealing operation in the world. He said, We've been at it for years. It really wasn't about cigarettes. And he said, as a result of that, myself and a few others were called into the White House, and we were all given commendations by President George Bush and General Colin Powell for the work that we did.

And I just want to let you know that you are part of it, and I'm sorry that you weren't recognized for it. Yeah. And the story wow. So it was really about more than just cigarettes. It was more than cigarettes. Now, mind you, though, what happened after that, it did establish my credibility with these guys, and that's a whole nother story.

But I ended up in the tribal belt in Afghanistan dealing with a warlord, identifying the smuggling routes for counterfeit cigarettes that were being used by Hezbollah and Hamas back in the day. And that's a whole another story. But there was an up in that. Right, but that gave me accessibility, credibility, and access into that, which took two years to do. Wow. But yeah. So more came out of it for me. Fantastic. Omar, thank you. It's always a pleasure.

Incredible story, and we really appreciate it. No, it's a pleasure being here. Thank you, Ralph. Thank you. All right. It must be obvious by now Omar risked his life. At any point in this operation, he could have been hacked apart with meat cleavers. The inroads he made into the Triads created major disruptions in their smuggling, arms dealing and money laundering operations. It also resulted in major awards that were handed out by President Bush at the White House. Omar wasn't invited.

Over my career, I've met a lot of undercover operatives, but Omar is special. He's like James Bond. If James Bond work freelance, his motivation is how can I say it's? More spiritual. At the end of the operation, when Omar was called in and confronted by the officials from the various intelligence agencies, they didn't understand how he was able to gain the confidence of the Triads in such a short period of time. It was as if Omar had read their minds.

Maybe that explains why today he makes his living as a psychic medium to kings and billionaires and celebrities and people like you and me. He's a hero of mine. The world might seem like a dark place sometimes, but don't forget, there are brave people like Omar working to keep us safe. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe. And make sure to tune into the next episode of Heroes Behind Headlines.