Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Elizabeth and Saron Burnett.
Girl, Oh you know the sean answer that I got another question? Do you know what ridiculous I do?
I do Mustard? Right?
It is when you do it?
You know, I'm like I've always been from the day Kenny fan. So I love I love not only is he being celebrated for his genius but his pettiness.
Oh yes, god, I love that.
But you know he's got this like amazing producer mustard, right, and where does he get that? Why do they call him Mustard? Do you know?
So they don't call him ketchup? I do not know.
His first name is Dijon, Dijon. Isaah MacFarlane. Mama was playing, so she's he's Dijon. Everyone calls him Mustard, which I think is terribly cute. You know who else thinks that's cute? The Heinz Company, Oh yeah, so there that This is our crossover today, Our mash up today is Mustard and Mustard.
So they're making him like a brand ambassad They're calling him the Chief Mustard Officer, and he's gonna They're gonna drop a brand new limited edition heinz mustard with like a new flavor, but they want it's remixed by him, but they won't tell us what's in it pretty much. And then he also like he's been using it as a secret ingredient for his homemade chicken wings and for years now heines mustard.
So they really do have a natural born collapse.
Oh my gosh. Of course this man, his whole life is mustard. You go into his house, everything mustard colored. Yeah, and they're gonna be coming out with other stuff there. They have a short film. It's up for an oscar and then they're doing like, uh, he's gonna have like events and mustard tastings, Yes, mustard tasting.
There's a flight of mustard give an.
Addition product comes out during the summer. So you can go to the Hinest website and sign up and they'll just sell your email address to the highest bidder. I don't know. Do you like mustard?
Yeah? Actually I do. I like a lot, like the Russian hot, I like the Hawaiian I like the I like even gray poop hole. Yeah, like even like.
The Westst's amazing best mustard, Mendocino mustard.
Oh yeah, that's good. Oh, yeah, I'm into that.
Mendo and that's ridiculous.
How many mustards are sitting in your fridge right now?
Oh buddy, seventeen, I got like, I don't know, I'd put it into like there's at least.
Double digites, it's eight.
Okay, yeah, I'd have to go count. But you know that like Chinese mustard.
Oh yeah, Chinese hot mustards. I'm still in the Chinese hot mustard so good. You know what else is ridiculous? Elizabeth? Yes?
Please?
Okay, when you go full fast and the furious in real life. Oh but not to like steal hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Brazil that's actually in the police headquarters. No imagine if you go full fast and the furious but for a box car of Air Jordan's.
My god, this is ridiculous crime.
The podcast about ab third and outrageous cap us, ice and cars, it's all weter free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Hell oh, Elizabeth, Today I want to talk to you about highly valuable footwear. Okay, I'm talking about Air Jordans of course.
Yeah.
Now you know I love the retro ones. I'm old school, of course I do but how about you. Have you ever owned a pair of Jordan's. No, I's not you ever wanted to own a.
Pair of jord Not really. They're high tops, right, some are?
Most are all? Yes? They are?
Yeah, I don't know it really. I'm not a Nike person. I'm an Adidas person.
Oh, you have brand loyalty.
I keep them in business Adidas.
Yeah, you and Jonathan Davis from.
Corn completely sure. But yeah they they fit my feet the best and they're the coolest looking shoes. So yeah, I'm not really at it.
Did the Beast boys turn you on to Adidas? So you found them on your own day?
No?
I mean I had. There's pictures of me as like a three or four year old with the coolest looking blue with yellow stripes.
Yeah, I know that what they're talking about.
And it was, you know, lifelong love after that.
Found foot in happiness and never look back.
It is preposterous how many pairs of shoes I own, and then the percentage that are Adidas, especially cause you only have two feet, right?
Ye?
Well that you know of.
Now, are you? You are familiar though with like shoe beast culture and the Jordan's.
I used to live nearby a place that was like a shoe imporium, but not like pale as shoe sores. It was like a cool guy tennis shoe place. Ah. Okay, they had some good stuff, but you'd see like people lining up at a supreme store. Yeah pretty much.
Okay, Well you know this, when a physical object gets coveted the way that Jordan's are coveted, as we both know, that means crime. Yes, so typically when it comes to stolen Jordan's, one might think of say street crime, right, like stick up kids. But well, for instance, back in twenty eighteen, I found a story there was this uh in East Flushings in Queens. You can know in New York. Huh it was. It was like meltdown May right, seventeen year old kids walking along as blocking Queens. He's on
Quin's Avenue if you are familiar with the area. White car pulls up alongside him, sedan, driving slowly because bad men inside a clock in this kid seventeen year old kids shoes are like, ooh, what's of them? Now? He's rocking a pair of Jordan's worth two thousand dollars.
Two thousand dollars, Like yeah, those are expenses, like high heels digit shoes.
I don't.
Yeah, what the two thousand dollars.
Jordan giving like old sex and the city shoes don't even right?
I have no idea. You better be running real fast.
These kids were not kids. These men in the car, they knew those were two thousand dollars Jordan's gold on. No, they just recognize the kicks and how valuable they were. So the car pulls over. Three men hop out the white sedan, which for some reason, I imagine does a Nissan Ultima. Anyway, the three men they run up on the seventeen year old kid. One of the muggers grabs a kid from behind yanks them down to the sidewalk right. Meanwhile, the other two muggers they come around in front of him.
They grab his feet and just yank his shoes off his feet. They didn't even untie him, just right off his feet. Oh no, I had to hurt. So then once they got the shoes off, they run back to the white sedan, but their stolen booty take off gone right. The kids like, what the hell, oh man? And what are the muggers doing next to Elizabeth? This is why I wanted to tell you this story. Yeah, not even a half hour later, these three men, same guys, they
head into a shoe reseller in the same neighborhood. One of the employees at the shoe reseller ended up telling the story to The New York Post and they said, and I quote, they tried to sell them to us. It just seem like a normal transaction. They didn't stutter. They just told me they wanted to sell it. They asked how much could I get for these?
Were they still warm?
Pretty much? Sell it socks in them. So the shoe reseller employees, right, they take these stolen Jordan's. They inspect them to see what they might be worth. They compare them to a similar model. They do the quick shoe check. Right at first, the jeorde look good, But the closer they inspect, the more they noticed little telling details an expert would see, as he put it, quote, cheaper material, The stitching was different. So the shoe reseller employee, now
it goes back to the three muggers. It has to tell them the bad news quote, they're fake. We can't buy them. Now. The street muggers remain optimistic because even if the Jordan's are fake, they're like, well, they must be worth something. So how much were you guys pay for some fake Jordan's. The shoe reseller point now is to inform them zero dollars. Yeah, because it's a fake,
that's a direct quote. Oh No, that kind of Air Jordan based crime is the old school version right now, these days thieves, muggers, street criminals, they've moved on to much bigger shoe crimes. Okay, whoa, yeah, First, since I know you're not really a hype beast tuned into the latest price trends in.
Colourway beast, baby, the air Jordan's.
I know you don't know the market, right, so I gotta give you a sense of just how valuable Air Jordan's are on the black market and how valuable they are on the auction block. So original Air Jordan once they were designed by this guy, Peter Moore, famous, right they drop in eighty five, nineteen eighty five for sneaker heads. They remain a coveted shoe. The originals they were red white black high tops.
I remember that, yeah right, Okay?
Now, according to Southerby's in twenty twenty three, a pair of the Nike Air Jordan one og high Chicago's was valued at thirty two thousand dollars.
Thirty two thousand. Well, I mean it's the kind of the impetus of oh yeah, this whole completely.
But also you got to like keep those shoes in like a climate control and environment because the glues deteriorate and then the shoe just lifts off from the sore. Yeah. I have a couple of shoes like that that I tried to go back to. It was like, oh, this is why you can't wear a twenty year old shoit.
I've totally done that. You put the shoes on, you're like, oh yeah, and then you take two steps.
She just gives up.
Soles are behind exactly. It's all crumbly, that's the thing. Yeah. So these people they're not usually wearing them either. They just keep them in a box.
Some people put them up on their walls like art. They're like little shelves and you'll see a shoe, or they'll have like glass cases. They have all the shoes and in the glass cases. Oh yeah, no for the collectors. Back in twenty fifteen, wrapper Eminem did a collab with work wear brand car Heart.
Uh huh.
They put out this custom line of air Jordan Force they were just a handful of pairs though.
Wait, than it was with Nike too.
Yeah, it's Nike, Carhart and Eminem coming together to make.
These right tricehup exactly.
So it's a handful of pairs that they create for Eminem and his family. But then he asked them to make ten pairs. They were gonna be sold on eBay for a benefit for the Marshall Masers Foundation and the money would go to a music school at Michigan State. Okay, so this pair of Nike Air Jordan four Retro Eminem car Hearts that did make it out to the market, of these ten, they will run you twenty one thousand dollars eight hundred and fifty Wow.
Yeah.
Over on the shoe reseller stock x, they report their their most expensive shoes, right you know that place?
Yeah, I got I got a pair of like sticker sold sambas from and like the limited edition color release that I nice.
You know, maybe a little shoe best are there but free and it.
Has like a little tag on it they authenticate that is true? Have you actually? You and I have a mutual friend Abby Lien though, who's an authenticator? This fascinating stuff, interesting business.
And being able to spot a counterfeit from distance.
Huh so cool.
So these stock x One of they had. One of the second most expensive Jordan's I found that they had ever sold, was a pair of Jordan Eleven's, the premium Derek Jeters. The Peters, Yeah, the Yankees shortstop. He's a Hall of Famer, right, So Nike wanted to celebrate their partnership with Jeter, so they made him a pair of shoes, not his shoes, because his shoes suck. But no one wants a pair of Jeter Eleven's, right, So hell, I'd rather have a pair of Costco Kirkland Elevens personally, right.
Oh yeah.
But Nike was like, hey, Jeter, how about we make you your very own Jordan's. And Jeter was like, bet, let's do it.
It's like I wish I were Michael Jordan's pretty much.
So they made them five pairs of these custom Air Jordan Retro Premium Derek Jeters. Now they make them available to the public. The shoes were sold out of a pop up shop a little ways away from Yankee Stadium to celebrate his Hall of Fame induction. They didn't sell the shoes directly though. They held a raffle and the winners got a pair of these Air Jordan eleven Derek Jeter specials. One pair got resold on stock X. I want to guess how much they were worth?
Yeah, no, just tell me twenty three thousand dollars.
Yeah. There is also a difference because if you want to get your hands on a pair of Air Jordan's that Michael Jordan actually wore in a game, Oh stay, you can buy those two. Yeah, like he put his stank on them in them and you can.
Have that in owning, you hit the side and all the foot the sank juices come up. Now they powder them up front.
Oh, I gotcha.
You know.
Now these are much much more expensive, obviously because Air Jordan put his blessed foot inside now Elizabeth. In nineteen ninety seven, the Chicago Bulls were in the finals facing John Stockton, Cocoll Malone right, and in Utah Jazz. It was Game five. Bad news for the Bulls was Jordan had the flu. But if you know anything about Michael Jordan, you know he's gonna will himself into greatness and threw the get a win. Right. They call it the flu
game because he had thirty eight points. The Bulls won. Right. Now, the shoes he was wearing in that legendary Game five of the ninety seven finals, he decided to give away. He gave the shoes to a ball boy for the Utah Jazz. For the Jazz, yeah, because it was in Utah.
So here's what he is his own.
Yeah. But he like me and Joe Greendam, He's like, hey, kid, here's my shoes.
Fun for him.
Yeah. So the kid, Preston Truman, he kept the shoes from this legendary game and then eventually, you know, he had to I don't know. He went to college. He hears the siren call of the market. He resells the shoes. I want to guess how much that pair of Air Jordan.
Twelves went for nine million dollars?
It was one hundred and four thousand dollars. WHOA, Yes, that paid for college. I imagine they were resold again at the time. Now they were resold again recently. Now we want to guess how much those same shoes were worth in twenty twenty three.
Uh, two hundred thousand, try one point.
Three eight million dollars?
What?
Yeah?
Who bought that? Who? Has that kind of change.
I have spent on somebody wealthy that I do not know. I did not look up who bought Kennies.
I wanted over a million dollars for a pair of tennis.
Dude, that's nothing. The Air Jordan thirteen's nicknamed bread The Jordan wore those in the next year in the ninety eight NBA Finals in Game two, which is one of the last games he ever played for the Chicago Bulls. They get resold they're the most money ever to exchange hands for a pair of Jordan because everybody loves the breads, and then he wears them on this like last season,
right right, So in twenty as a Bull. In twenty twenty three, the ninety eight game worn Air Jordan thirteen sold for two point two million dollars.
Who bought those?
I don't know.
Chancellor Rapper, I have no idea.
No, he's from Chicago, so but these are wild, right, And Elizabeth, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I wanted you to understand how coveted these shoes are before we get to the crime.
So I'm starting to understand this is wild. I had no idea they were that valuable.
Oh, and it's just only a skyrocket. In the last ten years, I've.
Seen pictures of like the knockoff ones from Timu or whatever. Yeah, the Air Jordan guy isn't really like Air Jordan's. This is just someone who's walking.
Not holding up a basketball. He just has his hand raised. Totally a class.
I love knockoffs, I know you really do you?
Also you love that guy does the TEAMO shoe reviews.
Right, Yeah, he's a little like the first ones. First couple of times, I like that's good. Then after that you're like, there's gotta be other stuffing for you to branch out.
Let's take a little break, well, ice off our shoulders and get back. Will dive into the Air Jordan based crimes and trust they get a hell ridiculous nice or back Elizabeth, get ready for more Air Jordan's based crimes. Totally okay. This year, earlier this year, earlier this month, February twenty twenty five, a business in Massachusetts was investigated for Air Jordan related crimes. The shop is called Family Sneaker House Love It Yes, located in wonderful Milford, Massachusetts.
The local cops I's already getting these tips at Family sneaker house was selling counterfeit Jordan's. So the cops investigated, and what do they find, Elizabeth, twelve hundred counterfeit items in the family sneaker house.
That's a lot. That's heavy inventor.
Total value two hundred thousand dollars of counterfeit goods. The shop owner had eight hundred and ninety five pairs of fake air Jordan's.
Wow, that's a lot.
That's a lot. Eight nine. I had eighty nine pairs of counterfeit yeasies, oh, the Kanye shoes, Yeah, made by Adidas formally, and he also had forty eight pairs of phony Adidas and nine pairs of fake as Pumasuma. Yeah, like nine pairs, Like I don't know who they were, probably me named at me. Then, So it turns out this shop owner had no idea the merchandise was fake, or so he claimed, but he was selling it as legit. He was buying his products from a Chinese distributor who
sold him the fake sneakers. So I did a little digging into this counterfeit sneaker market to see how big this reportedly billion dollar business is. Yeah, Elizabeth, let me tell you the knockoff game is a booman?
Is it now?
Back in twenty eighteen, also in New York, five men busted for running a counterfeit sneaker operation running knockoffs from China into the Port of Newark between January twenty sixteen and July twenty eighteen. They shipped forty two containers filled with fake air Jordans when they.
Were busted containers.
Yes, the men had almost a half million dollars of goods sitting around, all fake Jordan's cooling in a warehouse. Half million just when they got busted. So they've been going through this, right, that was not their whole stash.
Yeah.
The authorities estimated that the three hundred and eighty thousand pairs of counterfeit Jordan's were worth seventy million dollars on the black market, Oh my god, and the gray market like family Sneaker House in.
Milford, Family sneaker House, love them.
Yeah.
So if you track the counterfeit air Jordans back to China, you end up in the Fujan province, and which is the beating heart of the phony sneaker market. Yeah, the fake air Jordans made there are constructed in legitimate factories then sold in bulk. Next, they are transported in miss labeled boxes, so nobody knows transported to the middleman, because who knows what's inside these.
Mislabel box the same factory as the real.
One, No, no other factories. They're not made in Nike factories. They're made in a factory that makes shoes, and so they may the Nike blanks that they've reversed.
Engineer, got it, got it? Because you know, if it's not from the Fujon province, it's just sparkling Jordan's.
Exactly sparkling footwear. Now, the middlemen they amassed these shoe boxes until they have enough for a shipment of fake sneakers. Then they load all of the phony Nikes into a shipping container and they send that to the Port of Newark, or the Port of Long Beach, the Port of Oakland, the Port of Seattle, Port of New Orleans, Port of Charleston.
You get the idea, Yeah.
All the major ports of the United States, where they then get handled and distributed to middleman. Here that's where the counterfeit Nike labels are now added to the knockoff shoes so that they can't be picked up in translate. Then once these blanks have the fake Air Jordan labels, they're pushed into the US market for big, big money. Now, you know, Chinese knockoffs are very much a thing. They have.
As I said, the folks who reverse engineer legit products, they figure out way to make the knockoffs fake air Jordans. That's one thing, right, yeah, but you know they're also making things like fake bike.
Helmets, fake bike helmets, make baby.
Carriers, Like, it sucks for you if you learn that you bought a phony bike helmet when your cranium is bouncing off the blacktop and it's split. Yeah, or like imagine you saved money the wrong way when your baby slips out of the carrier and they are like, you know, bouncing off the sidewalk. That sucks.
So what is just yeah, it has no safety features.
Well, it's just basically they don't care. It's just it's not.
Up to standard. Looks like a hell.
That's all it is. It's supposed to resemble the product you want.
Cotton balls inside.
Pretty much this huge industrial counterfeit sneaker market is still just one big aspect. All of the hundreds of millions of dollars that are made off of Air Jordan crime, not the brand Air Jordan, just crime. For instance, Elizabeth, have you ever been have you been reading about these great train hests of the twenty twenties, No train robberies are back. Yeah, the crime wave of the nineteenth century is new again.
I ain robbery.
Yeah, the thieves are focused on Air Jordan's yeah. Wow, yeah, into this for you, and I learned that railroads are ripe target. Like take Union Pacific freight lines right in California. Union Pacific maintains about thirty two hundred miles of track. Now in La County, the company has two hundred and seventy five miles of track with sixteen hundred employees. That's just La County. Now. La County happens to be obviously
a hub for a railroad based Air Jordan crimes. For instance, recently in twenty twenty one, La County saw this rail theft shooting up by about one hundred and sixty percent in one year. Then came twenty twenty two, and you remember there was this viral story that showed rail lines leading out of La and the ground is just covered with cardboard boxes and stuff pulled from the box cars. Yeah, and there's like the thieves of like it. Basically it's like a miles long mess.
It looks like this, right, oh my god.
Yeah right, So that really got attention to people of like how bad this problem has gotten. Otherwise it's just like insurance companies and the freight lines complaining about it exactly. California is Governor Gavin Newsom. Now he's got to address the train robbery. So Newsom goes out to the rail yard. He goes out to pick up some trash, which, from what I can tell, is his favorite photo op is.
Picking up trash. I applaud him.
Got his technique down and everything.
You know, he's just not free to get his hands during.
Anyway, Coming to Newsome, he tells the Gathered reporters that the viral images of the trash strewn rail lines just outside the raiyard are quote images look like a third world country. What you saw here in the last week is just not acceptable. So I took off the suit and tide and said I'm coming because I couldn't take it. I can't turn on the news anymore. What the hell is going on?
Yeah, gathering or you're governor, So he jumps in there, He's like, what's going on?
Yeah, you can get the answers if any one of us can get the answer. Now, if you're wondering like I was, from what I remember from history class way back in high school, I thought railroads were allowed to
hire their own police force. Turns out they are, yeah, But as you often hear these days, there were budgetary cutbacks, which means although Union Pacific is legally allowed to have their own police force, they cut costs and don't have the railroad cops necessary to protect their box cars, and so they have to call in the like you know,
the La County Sheriffs LAPD to help them. So LA Police Captain Herman Urtado he told the La Times that quote, Union Pacific from Yuma, Arizona to La has six people patrolling six people. Sixteen hundred people are in LA County work. So they ask the local La County Police, the California Highway Patrol, the La Sheriff's Apartment, anybody they can to help out with patrols of the rail lines, the rail yards. But LA cops they got a lot of other priorities,
all right. So what happens is the LAPD sets up temporary task force until the headlines go away, and Captain Hurtado said, quote, it's like digging sand at the beach. We set up a task force, we are making an arrest, and then we see a quarter of a mile down the track someone else taking merchandise.
Oh my god.
These days, Oh yeah, I'll get to that in a second. These days they've added drones to their task force. The police have, yeah, not stop the train robbers, not one bit. It's like waving, Yeah, what are now? The train burglary Task Force of LAPD keeps getting called back to into action, as I said, right. So, in twenty twenty four, The New York Times starts covering this growing trend of train robberies in the Southwest. The Times they speak with Joe Chavez.
He's now in charge of detectives working the latest task force. Right, yeah, So he tells The New York Times about this one particular land pirate named Victor Lamas. Oh Lamas no relation to Fernando or.
Lorenzo, Lorenzo's brother.
Yeah, no, he's just a train robber. It's just no stranger to the police. Now, is Joe Chavez we call quote he said that that was the best feeling he'd ever had jumping on the train while it was moving. It was euphoric for him. Now, what he means by that is, obviously train's going slow enough for you to run alongside, or you're right till the train's gone fast and you just jump on it. Huh Okay, so you know, relatively fast.
So dangerous, Yeah, so dangerous trains?
Oh yeah, you think. During one of his mini arrests Lamas told the cops how it was that he knew which box cars were the good ones to break into because they all look alike to the untrained eye pretty much. I got were very trained to nose, Like, look at this thing. Do you know how many detectors I got? The say, exactly, so, he tells him though, he'd actually studied the placards that the rail lines used, right those diamond cars, and then he learned about the various locking
devices that they used. He researched the locks, and he learned that they had upgraded the locks, which usually meant like that's where the high dollar cargo is. And then he researched how to break the upgraded locks, which turned out he just needed a pair of bowl cutters. So so much for security upgrade. So Lamis though he had a partner for his train robberies, he worked with his girlfriend. They would their modus operandi was to get up and get out of La get set up in the Inland
Empire South that's like southeast of La Proper. They'd find a motel located near the railroad tracks. Then when night came, they'd go to work. So what they would do is they'd break into railcars and they just take the stole and booty back to their budget motel room, divvy it up, and then go this goes to the fence, this goes to me or whatever. Right, it was such an easy way to earn a living that Lamas told the cops.
As Detective Shavis recalls, and I quote he straight out told me, he goes Detective Shavist, I'm never gonna stop doing it.
Why shouldn't did he? Was he wearing Jordan's when he's like I can just I can afford it.
Yeah, just like has throw away like Jordan's. He wears once and then that's it.
Yeah, I've got like shoes that are like my gardening shoes that are by the back door, and just I wouldn't wear them in public. Beat.
He has the opposite of that.
He's got like he's got shoes are so clean that you well, you know what the reason they're so expensive. They make you.
Run so fast and play so well.
You just someone and then they're like here. His girlfriend was like, run for me and let me see how fast you're going to Oh my goodness, you run so much faster than the other shoes. You got to wear those.
You're hanging out with your nephew a bunch of probably in late twenty twenty two, my man Lamas, he gets caught, of course, his girlfriend caught. Now while his girlfriend, she gets tried, convicted, sentence and is now serving her sentence in prison, Lamas still on the lamb. Male, Oh yeah, so he did it. Was facing eight felony charges. He goes He's like, oh yeah, yeah, whatever, man. Because he's not a non violent offender, he's able to post a bail. He stops showing up for his court dates.
Him.
Man, he's in the wind. He's caught, right, the cop said, like a detective. Shavez, for one, is convinced that he will see his train hopping Moriarty again in the future. He's all like, I have a feeling I will see him again a direct quote. Oh yeah, yeah, perhaps, bro. Now, if you readlove Me on this new wave of train robberies, you can easily see why some folks wouldn't want to stop pulling off this land piracy, right, And he's just amazing. It's like and also hot. Damn do they make a
mess doing it? Like I was reading about the trash not just from the outside of the rail yards in La County, but there's one train conductor was telling New York Times about how in southeast Arizona, in the middle of nowhere and just desert, he once drove his train through like a quarter mile long trash heap. It was just strewn in the middle of nowhere. It was nothing but hundreds and hundreds of boxes of Nike sneakers and shoe boxes.
So they don't even keep the box.
They just throw it out.
I mean, wouldn't she wouldn't it be easier to sell them if you have the box.
I don't know, I'm not.
I mean, and I gotta tell you something.
Also, I think it's pretty easy to get a box.
And really chaps my hide. G littering, I.
Know it does why I brought it up.
Makes it would make cheeses me off. This littering. No, but I mean for real though, the boxes. Is it just because it's cumbersome?
Yeah, basically it's a unnecessary space. You can get a bunch of shoes in the back of a truck and you're throwing them into like usually vans, and trust that's going to.
Get them all scratched up and dirty. Well, yeah, it's like in the desert.
It's like if you're doing this, it's like dealing with grain. You just want the bulk of them to be cleaned outside, a little dirt.
On them, then.
Agriculture, they're just harvesting it like grain. They got a isle of shoes, right, But.
Is are you going to get like some generic fruit or are you going to get like top you're.
Too used to shopping? Yeah, exactly.
Place let's say wait, yeah, yes, let's let's say they had one of those Costco vacuum sealers in the truck. Oh that's good, chuck the box. Someone else was like each thing in a vacuum.
I like that someone who has a Costco vacuum seeler. I can tell you it's not that quick. Of a process.
That's something you can do on the go.
Is the sound of me really?
Okay? Good to know? So I call you. That's what that sound is. I always wondered.
I'm sucking up some rubas. That's how I talked about sealing my meat, vacuum sealing some ars.
Who, Elizabeth, you have a very like whiskey stained voice when you're on the phone.
Yeah, it's only on the phone.
No, Elizabeth. The Great Air Jordan train heightt of twenty twenty four, Yeah, are the ones I wanted to tell you about. That's why we're here today. So as you know, there are all all sorts of train lines. There's the Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, the CSX. There's a bunch of freight train lines.
Right.
One of the freight train lines is BNSF. Oh yeah, that sounds for Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Yeah, now, which means it's the parent company of the Santa Fe Railroad, which you'll probably remember the locomotives red yellow very much. So Okay, Anyway, these days, BNSF has become the ready target for Jordan thieves. They are the go to one to hit apparently in twenty twenty four, there were ten railroad heights over a one year long period and train
robbers stole away with Nike sneakers. In all but one robbery, they were all against BNSF. The value for these ten train heights was two million dollars wow. In January, in a town called paren, Arizona, robbers struck a BNSF freight train. They stole nineteen hundred and eighty five pairs of Nike sneakers.
I have to assume the nineteen hundred and eighty five pairs issues was just a coincidence and not like a whole Jordan sh They always ship Jordan's in lots of one nineteen eighty five, well, which is the first year of the shoes, right like that silly.
They ran out of room in the van. Yeah, and they had to leave some behind.
Oh maybe that's it.
They left behind the really thieves.
Are really in deluxuly really big one the size eighteen.
Yeah, the size eighteens and the size fours they left, Okay, And because you can't sell you can move those. Well.
The one Jordan one Jordan train heightst was worth four hundred and forty thousand dollars day yeah. Yeah, so you see why they do it right.
Yeah.
Now, the way these modern train robbers know which trains and which box cars can contain the highly valuable Jordans is rather simple. They also use lots of insider info because obviously they have the money to pay sure and
then and obviously there's experience you can get to recognized patterns. Yeah, but sometimes they have friends who work at the ports, who work at the warehouses the trucking companies, and they tell them I got a lot of Jordan's coming in, and then they get tipped out right, and they tell
the thieves and boom right. Once the thieves identify a train they want to hit, they follow the train out of La East, deep into the desert where lonesome, old, forgotten towns roll past out there, where no one can quickly respond to a train icet. The land pirates track a train down when it baby slows down for a scheduled stop in one of these small towns, or when it passes through a section of town where it has to slow down just to get through the town. Sometimes
they also rely on sabotage. They'll break a switchbox so the train has to stop.
You're just like this Sepi tone robberies now the most daring among them will board the train while it's still rolling.
As I've told you earlier, they'll jump on while it's still rolling. And that's what it got it difficult because you gott to match speed and so forth. Now, regardless of how they climb aboard, though the goal is typically the same. The train robbers cut a brake hose, again, forcing the train to stop, and once it does, the thieves make their moves. They board the train like pirates of yore, and once aboard the train they get to work. They break the locks, they peel open the box cars.
Then they go shopping. They toss the boxes out of the train cars onto the desert floor or to the more likely to their criminal partners to load into the truck. Huh yeah wow yeah no. Also, as you asked before, you have to understand, freight trains in America are insanely long. Like there's no laws for tailing how long trains can be. So the company is looking to cut costs have made
them longer and longer stuck. On the other side of they have less and less staff now to run them, and this results in freight trains that can be up to three miles long. Oh yeah, So that means that the thieves time it right and they pick a car far enough back. Yeah, they could be two miles behind the train crew that is supposed to go out and find them.
And in the movie of this, I'm imagining it's Michael Jordan as the conductor of the train and he gets the alert that the brake's been Oh man.
Kids, this is basically happy hunting for land pirates out there in the desert. And also these crews don't really want to get out because a lot of these guys are junior members of Mexican cartel.
Oh that's good point, that's who they're doing it.
They have sometimes like assault rifles, you know, they're not just like and sometimes they're just seventeen year olds with no weapons whatsoever. They do not know what they're gonna be getting, right, But.
If you want to move a lot of products like that, then like having a cartel connection is oh.
Yeah, you say, you need a good fence, right exactly. Now, twenty twenty four, there were sixty five thousand railroad robberies and thefts. Sixty three thousand, Yes, and that was a forty percent increase over the year twenty twenty three. Yeah, so now you've got a full scale take a little break, and when we get back, I will dazzle and amaze you with more Jordan Crimezle Elizabeth zaren, you haven't fun in the lonesome wild West Jordan.
Nextaposition of the Air Jordans in the.
Isn't that great?
It's a great image.
It's is such a fun like very American image. The Jordan's the train robbery out in the wild West. And then the time juxtaposition.
Is just like, are you going to write the screen flip.
Book where you put the different tops and bottoms on?
Totally?
I would actually wouldn't make a good screenplay.
You mentioned, right, Dibbs for you.
Well, Elizabeth, for you, I would say I was going to continue telling you facts and stats about these great Air Jordan train robberies, but I'd like you to experience. Yeah, so I'd like you to close your eyes and I'd like you.
To close to picture it.
It is around five in the afternoon into desert, and you feel a hot breeze against your face because Elizabeth, you are a foam jack in the box head shove down on the end of an antenna of a stolen white van. You bob and sway around in the wind, the wind generated by the speeding white van. It's going around seventy five, maybe eighty, I don't know. You don't know because you can't see the odometer as the unmarked white van trails after what looks to be a miles
long train. But you are not one of the primary chase cars. You're there with the van that's there to catch the halt, which means you have a perfect vantage to watch the whole train robbery go down. You watch as two of the chase cars pull alongside the train. The dust clouds they leave are tremendous. They paint the desert sky with a dull brown haze. As the dust spreads out above you, one of the land pirates leaps from a chase vehicle. It's like a scene from Fast
and the Furious, which you've never seen. The bandit lands his leap of fate, and with a well practiced hand, he draws a knife from its sheath and slices the air brake. The break is found. With the air pressure escaping the severed line, you see the train lurch and begin to slow the conductors following the emergency protocol for loss of air pressure in the breaking system. The chase vehicle stay alongside the train until it comes to a slow and final stop. Your antenna whips around as the
white van moves into position along the stopped train. If you could, you would choke on all the dust. But you don't because you're an inanimate jack in the box bobblehead. Instead, you watch the land Pirates with awe as they move with a timed precision. One train robber identifies the box cars of interest. Another leapfrost up and breaks open the lock with a slide of the heavy door. The box
car reveals its treasures. The thieves duck inside. When they emerge, they come out with handfuls of boxes with that familiar swoosh logo, The boxes of Nike they loaded into the white van. You're a white van. You watch the team empty the box car of its Jordan's, and then onto another, and then another. When the land Pirates are convinced they've stolen all the best booty, they load back up into their stolen chase vehicles to go tearing off into the
Mohave desert. Not a bad day's work. You think to yourself, maybe this outlaw life is for you now. Elizabeth, as one retired sheriff's deputy described as growing trend of train robberies, it's just like the old wild West. It's crazy.
It's crazy.
You know.
He's always wanted to say stuff like that, so I'll just add in it's crazy, but with a heavy splash of piracy, which I love. Yeah, but this is like in a desert instead of a vast sea.
It's very mad.
Max.
Well, they say, yeah, definitely, but like with the Sahara, they say, it's just a sea of sand. Like I'm seeing this. I'm dude, I'm in it.
Elizabeth, you've been to theave a bunch it stops camped there.
Yeah, it's it's insane. We're actually about a hang out there. So uh oh yeah. Because five days after that great desert train robbery that I just told you about, the freight train line BNSF phoned the police again and were like, you're not gonna believe this. And cops were like, did it happen again? And BNSF was like, it happened again. It happened again, Elizabeth, this time in Amboy, California, now you may recognize that.
Name, do you slightly.
It's one of those picturesque abandoned towns in the Mahabi Desert. Right along the route of Root sixty six, A boy was home to a very famous diner with a crazy neon sign. The place is called Roy's. I'm sure you've seen pictures of it, the Roy's Motel and cafe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, yeah, So that place was It's no boy.
Pet place was the anchor of Amboy but unfortunately it closed. Yeah, and when the owner, the original owner, sold it. And then despite valiant efforts and investments from this dude, Albert Oukura, the guy who bought the original McDonald's and turned it into a museum, he tried to save this charming mid century ghost town located there on Root sixty six, but he found there was just not enough accessible potable.
Water to run to issue out there.
Yeah, Aboys located in the Mohave Desert. And there's a reason why we don't build in the Mohabi Desert. I mean, by its name, you should know it's a desert, but it's one of the most extreme in America. The Hovey Desert is where Death Valley is with that one. They just put it right there in the name. This place will kill.
Your valley, Yeah, exactly, and you've.
Been there, Oh my god, a bunch.
Yeah, it's dope.
I do. I love it, but I guess because I have a car and air conditioning, I can leave it easily.
Well.
They always have those like kind of stunt photos in the middle of the heat waves, the rangers out there looking like they're going to die and like it's one hundred and.
Thirty people do legitimately time when they get out of their cars because it also they don't have enough salt, you know. Then they get out there drinking a bunch of water, and.
People don't understand how much water you need because it's so they're not just to sweating that much. It's a dry heat.
It's a dry heat to kill.
It if you have all this evaporative cooling that your body's trying to keep up with, so you just any water you take in, you're giving out like twice as much. It's alchemy.
I'm telling you, it's science.
It's science, or what you said.
Yeah, Now, five days after that train robbery I told you about in Little Amboy, population zero land pirates struck again, likely the same crew. Sheriff deputies from San Bernardino County were called to the tracks after reports of a train robbery were going down right. The responding deputies, they spot the unmarked white van out there in the middle of nowhere, looking suspicious as all hell, just driving through a section of the Mohave Basin. It was called like wonder Valley.
There's nothing there, right, So the sheriff's deputies they throw on their lights. The blues and twos chase after this white van, and of course the white van accelerates, chases on Elizabeth. The sheriff's deputies they go nuts. They're like, we got nothing to do out here, so they give chase. There were a high speed chase across the desert floor. The cops chasing this unmarked white van must look like something out of like a movie about the Cartels, or
like an episode of Breaking Bad. So the pursuit at last a while. The only trouble is the unmarked white van is in San Bernardino County. Yeah, it's the largest county in the United Stage if you leave out of Alaska. Now point is this white van. It ain't escaping the sheriff's deputies in the Mojave Desert. There's just nowhere to go. So the train robbers, though they try, Oh boy did they try, right up until they had a sand burm and got stuck.
Right those deputies are driving like super charged total.
Oh yeah, they're made for that environment. It's like eighthp.
Trucks and the van. I mean.
So at this point, even if you're driving like a crackhead, it's still no business. They will not do what you needed to do.
Now.
At this point, though, the two men are like, we're not giving up. So they flee the van on foot, trying to run across the desert Elizabeth, and.
Then they just turned into skeleton.
I don't know, hoping to run where I don't know, to their deaths.
They had to jump over the skeletons of the cartoons, skeletons like cattle that they had to jump over a tumbleweed.
It was it was nuts. It's a text avery at that.
It was a lot for them.
Now, don't think that they knew that they were going to be able to go anywhere, Like, I don't know if they had a plan, but running from cops at this point was probably just instinct, so they're just doing it right. They made it pretty far because the cops, the Sheriff's deputies, they had to call out a chopper to run them down, and the helicopter did that.
And mat about short orders, so they.
Get caught in the dead. It turns out the purpse were kids, just two boys, sixteen and seventeen years old. Yeah, so apparently going in with the unmarked white panel van is the move for land pirates because they go down, they steal one of those, they steal a couple chase cars, have at it. Right, They keep going basically across Arizona and California estate lines in the Mahabi Desert, right because
it stretches over both. Now in a town called Hackberry, a train had to execute this emergency stop after the sensors reported a loss of air pressure in the brake lines. And you know what that means, train robbers. So the bandits they strike the stopped train. They load their booty
into the traditional unmarked white panel van. They flee the area, but yet again, sheriff's deputies spot them fleeing because they don't have anything to do and there's no cars out there, and they just see this white van driving and they're like, oh, let's go, just see what that guy's up to. And when they do, as I have made it clear to you, the Mahabi there's nothing out there, so they're like giving
chase and then they eventually they try to flee. They catch up to the robbers and they discovered that these guys had stolen one hundred and eighty pairs of brand new Unreleaf Air Jordan Retro Legend blues. Oh yeah, the stolen hall Worth forty one thousand dollars.
Wow, one hundred and eighty of them.
Can you believe that's so? Another robbery of a BNSF train once again in yamp By Yampy, Arizona, which is a near Prescott, Arizona in the middle of the state, right smack in the middle of that. You know, the desert basin is basically a drained ocean floor right there, right, so just like left to dry out for millions of year. Arizona is so bleak to drive across. You know, I've complained.
About it because you go from like either like if you're going east, you'd have that bleakness, and then you get to New Mexico, you're like, oh, look at this, that is something so beautiful.
The land of enchantment. I get it.
And then because like it's the quality of the sky is, don't when you're driving west, like this is so beautiful Arizona. Wait what happens?
You got to get through Arizona to get to California. And if you're driving west anytime near sunset or the suns in your eyes, just pull over and shoot yourself. Not really good, but you know, dude, I have my eyes burned so bad one time. It just it's terrible.
They make these things glasses.
I've heard about it, you and my sister all right now, the place to be, Elizabeth, if you're looking to boost Jordan's from a box car is Arizona. That's the spot, even more than California because there's less of everything there.
Yeah, it's true.
So these four men they get busted after they robbed a train and they tried to get away with forty eight thousand dollars worth of Nikes. But in this case, the shoes weren't Jordan's thought. To mix it up a little bit for you, the band it stole a load of unreleased Nike dunk Low's Midnight navies. So there you go.
According to court documents from a case filed in a federal court in Phoenix, there was this string of robberies of the BNSF trains in Arizona between April and June that netted the land Pirates a stolen booty worth three hundred and forty six thousand dollars.
Wow.
But the big daddy score in Arizona has to be the pair two BNSF trains that were hit outside of the towns of Kingmen and Seligmann. Yes. Now, those two train robberies were worth a combined six hundred and twelve thousand dollars. Two train robberies, all of it. Nike sneakers, no diamonds, no oil, They're not like no gold shipments. Yeah. That pair of that pair of train robberies, though, did eventually result in eight arrests. Now, there's this one Cato
I've been waiting to tell you about. The authorities consider him a mastermind, a OG of the trained robbery game. His street name boyle Chicken in Spanish. Yeah, it's not the best boil. It's not the best street name, right, totally the crazy Chicken. But then again, if your street name is chicken like Boyo. It might have nothing to do with your character. It might just be the like, you know, you got named Boyo like a long time ago by somebody else, and it's because you were like
as tall as a chicken. And now you can just go toe to toe with anybody. So like, just because someone's named chicken, oh, do not mess with them, especially if they're a street criminal named Boyle.
Well if I think anyone with a street criminal names.
That's what I mean. If you when you're keeping it and it's like a weird whack one, like it's like, oh man, you're gonna get your you.
Know anyway, Yeah, they're like meat muffin.
Yeah, you were ready to get your card pulled, so muffin. This is meat love Muffin and Muffin. They're twins. That's how we know them. Anyway. The government name of this dude, his name is Felipe Artro AVOs Mahiaa Avolosa. Now, the reasons that the cops consider him a mastermind is because Boyo employs a team of scouts to target trains. He also coordinates vehicles for his train ride.
Little chicks, No, you're just gonna.
Run with this sooo, he hires and he pays out his crew based on their stolen halls, and you can tell that he's been in the game a while because he's good. He also arranges a whole network offences, so he gets the stolen cars. He's paying his guys. He pretty much. I mean, if he gave him health insurance. This is like a good gig. So it also this way, as I said, we always want to get it. You want to have your fence locked down. You gotta be able to sell off your stolen goods. He's got a
whole network, so he's golden. Right. But this is how you can last eleven years as a ringle. I said, eleven years because I know when it ends.
Oh no, yeah, yeah.
Are my favorite land pirate, our pirate captain. If you will up these land pirates. Boyo so Poil lasted until twenty twenty four, but he lasted right up until the California State law enforcements of HP Everybody and Homeland Security teamed up to bring down Poyo and so on Joan twentieth of last year. Agents from Homeland Security and California Law Enforcement Task forces. Right they executed search warrants on eleven different residents, is sixteen different storage units, and the authorities.
They end up arresting forty three suspects into his Dude's network. Right, they recovered three million dollars of stolen goods that were intransit between fences and whatever, and they were obviously from the BNSF train robberies, all stolen nikes and so forth. Most of the boxes are Jordan's, but Poyo I would also Mahia, He Stombaf, stayed out of the drag net. He laid low, he hit out, He managed to evade the cops that were and the FEDS are hunting him down.
When the cops executed a search warrant at the residence, but they believed he was located. They found no Boyo, but they did find seventy four cases of stolen nikes, one hundred and eight packs of socks, thirty five sock, thirty five pairs of shoes worth about ninety four thousand dollars, as well as ten stolen vehicles which were believed to have been used in prior train burglaries. In Yeah, my buddy style always wanted to have He's tell me if you ever got rich, the first thing he would do
is he'd buy enough socks. He could always wear a fresh pair of socks each day and then throw them out the end of the day. That was that to him, was like, that's the that's it. Yeah, okay. So I think my man Poo He's had a similar view. He's like, I can afford a hundred eight socks, why not give that to me?
Yeah?
Yeah, because that's enough for two a week.
Yeah, fifty two.
Weeks, right, you know, one hundred and eight Sure. Anyway, despite all his slipperiness, the Mastermind Boyo was eventually tracked down. Cops got up to Poyo at a restaurant in Huntington Park, California.
Oh yeah.
At the time of his arrest, he was dining with another man. He had on him a Louis Vautone very nice, and the Louis Vuton handbag was one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in cash along with a ledger. The ledger contained a list of Nike products that had recently been stolen from BNSF trains. The kicker was the item I list had estimated dollar amounts right next to the stolen goods.
Oh Wow, the cops had caught.
The mastermind with his fence and all the evidence they would ever need to bust both of them.
I hope it was a fake, Louis.
Dude, that's how my man Boyle got fried.
Yeah, that's for you.
Hey. I should point out he's currently in the system awaiting trial, and thus he remains innocent of all charges until proven guilty. Good luck, Captain Boyle.
So when they when they interviewed him, he was pyoto, he was grilled.
Oh would double backed on me?
Do you think any of the stolen nikes were those ones, the all white ones that Jax wore on Sons of Vanage.
Oh, the prison specials?
Yeah, the prison special Yeah, I don't know if.
They make the prison twos.
He'd always they were always like perfectly right.
Yeah. Do you want anybody wants Liz, if I got a question for you, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
My ridiculous takeaway is that it still baffles me, like how much people will pay for a pair of shoes running shoes basketball.
So if they were leather shoes, would that make more sense?
Well?
Their leather, aren't they?
So that's where you're going by materials.
No, no, no, what I'm just saying like it just seems like outsized, like you know, thousand dollars sneakers, seems like there's a.
Lot of attached cachet you're you're paying for. Jordan changed all this. He started making people feel like if I had these shoes, I can be like the bad boy Jordan who took a fine every day to be able to wear his own shoes. I mean that starts his legend as a rebel. Well no, but it's just it's this psychologist like you said about little kids, like you put them on, I'm so fast. It's that for grown
men and grown women, grown everybody, anybody wants to grown. Yeah, they were like, hey, I feel like I'm so fast to my Jordan's.
What what's your ridiculous takeaways there?
That you had to even ask that my ridiculous takeaway crime is actually that No matter how much I read about this, I'm like, man, I want to do it. I know that's wrong, I know it's wrong. I know Darren don't do it, But I was like, man, I want just like once, just one one I can get away if I get away with just a treat. Yeah, just like, come on, tell the guys like, hey, they kidnapped me.
They made me do this and then the cops catch you. You go just kidding.
Yeah, I'm like, hey, like a one times the snow.
You just tell him I wasn't standing there with a box of I did not do that.
I tell him I'm a security expert and I was doing it as undercover.
A white hat free lance expert.
Desert lampid, Well, Elizabeth, should we wash away the desert with a talkback? Yes, producer d can you favor us with one?
Oh my god, I went, hey, I'm a huge fan of the show and I was so excited to hear Darren mentioned flat track role derby the other week.
It is an amazing sport. Oh yeah, derby in Canada. My derby name is Princess Leia, and it's also an expensive sport. So make sure you get out there and you support your local roller derby, whether you follow them on social media or you check out their games. I know there's lots of teams all over California, even the Oakland Outlaws, so check them out.
Hell yeah, we will definitely do that. Oakland Outlaws, We're coming your way.
Mine. Do support it those sports that's so cool.
Yeah, Roller Derby's the I can't say what it is on the air, but you know it. That's what it is. It's also you can find us online always a Ridiculous Crime on the social media. Mostly that's a Twitter. No, it's Blue Sky and his Instagram and that's about it, I think, right. Okay, Well, we have our website, Ridiculous Crime dot com. It is a seven time Newberry Award winner and uh to check it out. Also, we love your talkback, so go to the iHeart app download it,
leave us a talk back. Maybe you'll hear your voice. Yeah, we'd like to hear it. And as always, thank you for listening. We will catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Brenette, produced and edited by the Felix Gallardo of the Mexican cartel train robbery game Mister Dave Christi and starring Annali's Rucker as Judith. Research is by Ocean Lobbing Desert Pirates, Marissa Brown and Alex French. Our theme song is by Thomas Captain Bob
Lee and Brownbeard ak Travis. The Terror of the Spanish main dot the host. Wardrobe provided by Botany five hundred guest Harah, makeup by Spoutacle Shot and mister Andre. Executive producers are Sailors of the Seven Seas of Sand, Captain Ben Bowman and Commodore No Round.
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