From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Brush your shoulders off, folks, we've made it to another evening. Now before we begin a little bit of housekeeping here for our strange news program, We, like everybody in the United States and the world entire kept a close eye on the attempt assassination of former President Donald J.
Trump.
We do have a breaking news episode that we put out on that on that subject, on those events. You can listen to it now wherever podcasts are available.
As far as this exact moment in the news cycle, I don't know that there have been any particularly new earth shattering revelation that we didn't discuss in that episode. Is there anything you guys want to add that maybe we didn't cover? That's kind of popped out that maybe I'm missing.
The biggest thing for me is that people were watching there's video.
Oh yeah, like he's got to go on there he is.
Yes, look look please, plenty of time, more than enough time, an absurd amount of time.
That was pretty shocking, it really is. But you know, other than that, you guys did a really great job. I really liked that episode. I got a chance to listen to it before it came out in Really good job guys.
That's very kind, Thank you, Matt.
Yeah, we also know it was the first, what we would say, near JFK level operation of its type in the world of abiquitous social media, so more details will emerge. We just want to get that out of the way.
I did have one little thing I believe on the episode, we already shouted out friend of the show, Frank, and he was listening to it and sent me a text thank you Gus for the shout out, and then he said, we were asking good questions about the other roof and asked, did you hear at the head of the USS made the decision to not put someone on the roof because it was sloped.
So yeah, I continuing, thank you to everybody reached out to us as a group or to me specifically about that. Again, check out the episode. It seems like when you have a lot of moving parts, you also have a higher likelihood of different organizations saying not my problem or someone else's job.
And just one last thing to add here. Weird enough, and it's mildly connected. But just because this is happening, I'm gonna plug a show that's coming out in September through through our team. It's it's called Rip Current and it is about the two attempted assassinations of Gerald Ford. And it's a really interesting tale of two women who attempted to kill a president and failed. And just it's mildly connected. I just want to put it out there.
Look for it. It's going to be called Rip Current.
And thank you for that shout out.
Man.
Yeah, well, I mean I certainly think everyone's interested, you know, with so little information about the motives of this this young man, Like what goes through the mind of someone trying to achieve something like this, And was this just a case of someone getting incredibly lucky to the point of, you know, getting into that very rarefied position, you know, on that rooftop and then literally being able to take the shots, and then of course another series of happenstance
kind of circumstances leading to it.
Being a failure.
But boy was in a perfect storm of kind of successes, you know, happenstances and then ultimately failures.
Great way to get Epstein documents out of the news, along with a couple of criminal cases. All right, I walked down the street for that one. We have so much to get to this evening. We also in our notes, folks, fellow conspiracy realists, I think we organically discovered a little bit of a spy situation. We are going to talk about some things that may not be appropriate for all listeners this evening. There is a fentanyl robbery gang.
There are.
Numerous bodies being discovered in Kenya as we record. There is an update from the founder of ocean Gate, and there are a lot of spies getting busted. You guys, remember a while ago we were going to do an episode about why so many spies are getting busted and then we backpocketed it.
Do you remember that, I do, Yes, I do?
Okay, Oh cool.
Well, it's because we were talking about that guy specifically that was spying for Cuba who was working in high levels of the government here in the United States, and he'd been doing it pretty much his entire career, and he had a long career. So that was a bit of a weird situation. And now we're seeing more and more people former White House staff members. Who was the other person, one of the a Senator Bob Menendez was just caught taking some crazy bribes apparently working for other countries.
Was it Egypt like working for Egypt?
Yes, well, working for someone who works for Egypt is probably got it the most accurate, you know, you want the hand And also shout out to Ken Jim Chol who recently drowned in a pond in Russia.
Was weird, he still was a part.
Yeah, So we're going to pause and then we are going to dive into some updates on ocean Gate.
And we rip serve.
Do you guys remember ocean Gate, Remember that little debacle with the PlayStation controller and everything.
And the sub that the private sub that imploded. While that's attempting to take some very well, to do very well to the wreckage of the Titanic, that's.
Right, and all the while naysayers, you know, we're chiming in people who do this for a living, people like James Cameron, who, while you know, he's largely known as a big shot Hollywood film director of the Abyss Terminator franchise, true lies all of that stuff, he also is, I don't know, has devoted a large portion of his time, resources and wealth to this very thing, these very very deep, deep deep water excursions, you know, in these single or very few small crew subs, and he the whole time
was saying, this is a bad idea, and then sure enough the thing was unresponsive. And then it turns out that it did, in fact implode. Ocean Gate was the name of the company they were using. I think it was some sort of like mesh woven kind of micro like what would you call it, There was a name for it. It was almost like a really stiff, kind of like impenetrable mesh weave that maybe could be used for aircraft. I'm sorry, I'm doing a bad job of
describing this material. But it turns out that once it gets penetrated or is cracked or there are you know, let's call them vulnerabilities within them, they spread very quickly and then the whole thing just kind of went pop. So we also know that there's another billionaire out there that's attempting to do another Titanic excursion, you know, to kind of prove that it's safe. I think we talked
about this on a previous thing. There were some memes saying this dude has the chance to do the funniest thing ever, which is, you know, have it happen exactly the same way a second time. He hasn't funny at all. Every life is important, but it is a little bit shocking to see that level.
Of hubris in some of these you know, billionaires.
It just thinks it's because they have money that means they also have expertise, because, as we all notice, because you have lots of men doesn't necessarily mean that you're smart. So one of the co founders of ocean Gate, an Argentine American businessman named Gulielmo Sonline, has announced plans to colonize the Moon, you know that old chestnut, Let's colonize the moon. He wants to create a society that's spread
across the Earth and the Moon. And he's very kind of hithily named it mirth like me e a r thh. So that'll be what the society is and he believes that this is achievable by twenty sixty three, and the pilot program for it is. One of the programs associated with this is something called Project Moon Hut, which is kind of like the very first you know, outpost that would be created on the Moon.
He says.
It is a basic hut comparable to a double wide trailer that is commonly used on job construction sites. And this would be in place by twenty thirty one. And I imagine the idea is to build out from there. Four to eight people, he says, would be kind of the initial colonizers, and then and then eventually would assemble an industrial park that could grow to house around ninety people.
And I don't know, Ben, this made me think of you.
He is kind of talking about it being like a company down, you know, like the idea of your buy and stuff from the company's store. You're beholden to this guy's you know, corporate structure.
Here's a quote.
Sixteen tenants have been selected to utilize the Moon's unique environment for discovery, manufacturing, and selling products from the Moon to Earth. According to a statement from Project Moon Hut, this marks the beginning of the mirth economic system, and then eventually he would establish what he referred to as a mini city on the moon. This had happened by twenty forty six. And you know, how's about six hundred people.
Oh no, could you.
Real quick for those of us in the crowd tonight, could you spell out mirth so at the body knows it's not m I R now, it's not.
Mirth like the quality of happiness and lightheartedness. It's it's like a portmanteau of Moon and Earth. It's pretty cringe if you ask me a M E A R T h. Oh, yes, mirth Okay, and the people this is you can't make this stuff up, guys, Well, actually you could.
That's I guess that's the opposite.
It's the kind of stuff you normally find in science fiction novels.
The people that were that are colonizing, he would refer to them as spacers. Does that not sound like something out of a Hinlun novel? Or it even has? I think it already exists. I'm certain I've heard spaceers somewhere.
Before video games as well.
I think you're absolutely right.
He has this to say as well, or at least a statement from Project Moon Hut, which just I don't know, just you think of like a like a restaurant that.
Sells sweet space food space.
The advancements made in technology, science, and innovation have made it possible to create a new way of life on the Moon, one that is almost as normal as living in different places on Earth.
This community represents a new hope we.
Never heard of, new hope from I don't know what that's sounds familiar for the future of humanity, uh and all species on Earth. The lessons learned for this endeavor will undoubtedly have far reaching impacts on our understanding of space exploration, sustainability, and what it means to be a global citizen in the twenty first century.
Okay, first of all.
Shortly.
Lunar exploration so screams problematic on a couple of levels, Like we already know what happened with you know, just trying to go down to the bottom of the ocean to look at a shipwreck.
What could go wrong with this sort of hubrius fueled vanity project sending people to colonize the Moon, starting off in a double wide space trailer. What could go wrong?
Guys?
I can't imagine it. Just it feels really shortsighted and more just kind of talking till you get an idea. There certainly hasn't been any indication that they have actual plans, technological plans laid out for how this would actually be accomplished, you know, how this.
Could be achieved.
You know, irl, it just seems like a billionaire who wants to talk a big game.
Not to mention, he also has founded.
Something called Human to Number two Venus Foundation, which he started in January twenty twenty, which.
Also suggests that it would be a really.
Great idea to colonize Venus, which by the way, has a surface temperature of around eight hundred and sixty four degrees fahrenheit. But that's okay because we can suspend building structures in the air.
Right By colonizing Venus, humans are going to typically mean orbiting Venus or perhaps entering into the upper atmosphere. Yet the technology simply does not exist at this point. For the Moon, going back on everybody, check out our earlier episode on mysterious Holes for the Moon, in particular, for the future, Mirthers, you are going to have to live underground, and the big problem really money aside. Right, the dominant
religion of humans right now is money money? Aside from that weird religious constraint, uh, the the bigger logistical issue is how to justify what you described all the idea of returning resources, physical resources from the Moon to the Earth. And that is something that I would argue is first off, it's a net benefit if you can pull it off. Secondly, it is a justification under the theocracy of economy. And thirdly,
I don't know if you could do it. I don't know, like describe can you describe to us some resource on the Moon that is that is somehow valuable at justify the transport logistics there, just to.
See that's what Yeah, no, no, that's what we were good.
We've always talked about is how expensive it is, how much it adds to the weight of these voyages, and how much weight every last you know, pound matter, right, So you have to truly justify every single thing you bring on one of these space flights, and like what are they going to bring back? I mean, you know, I guess it's almost like he's suggesting setting up manufacturing on the Moon of stuff that could just as easily
be manufactured on Earth. So wouldn't this moon colony just be kind of siphoning resources from Earth just so they could say they're building stuff on the Moon to then ship back to Earth, because like, yeah, please, Well.
The ideal, the current thinking that seems to be the most popular consensus here. The current thinking is in contradiction to this ocean gate plan because the current thinking has been for many decades, from theoretical to practical application, the concept of establishing the Moon as a beachhead sort of the human normality for the rest of the Solar system. Right, So when you find resources, you build resources. You don't
waste money sending them back to Earth. What you do is use that opportunity, use that surface area, those subterranean rabbit holes as as a compound or a factory to build Solar system traversing crafts.
Right, a beachhead, yes.
So right, but we know there are major deposits of helium three and some of earth minerals, Like that stuff is there, and I am, I don't know. I imagine maybe you could build end product things that you would need, you know, scandium or yuttrium for or something, and then you ship those back because you don't have to pay the terrace. Hey, if the Moon's anything. It's a free trade.
Yeah, nice reference. Check out our Freeports episode. All so you can conceivably you can build out logistics such that those would not need to be shipped back. It really depends on how you return those to Earth. If returning to Earth you do so, it's a long journey back, right, Shout out to our future space truckers. You also might just dump it out in some point NEMO. That's the only affordable way to do it. You can't target these landing of these resources.
I don't know.
You know, years ago there was one evening where we were talking about this, and I cannot remember which specific episode Conspiracy Realists forgive me here, but we noted the inevitable civic and social outcome of an establishment on the Moon.
As soon as it becomes self sufficient, it will become its own thing, not beholden to government, not beholden to a corporate So, if you happen to be the guy in charge at Ocean Gate listening to this now, if you happen to be the next Henry Kissinger, I would assume that you are already clocking the idea that you need to make sure this lunar colony is not self sufficient.
There is a website, project moonhut dot org that has a pretty nifty graphic. Would let's kind kind of scroll through time, like up to twenty forty six or all the way up to twenty sixty three, and it sort of changes that shows you these the various paths of the trajectory of like you know, voyages to and from returning things, how many people will potentially be living on
the Moon, the size of this park. And in twenty forty six, let's say, Phase three marks the establishment of the Extended Stay Facility, which functions as a mini city on the Moon with a capacity of up to five hundred and seventy eight people. Regular transportation of goods and services between the Moon and Earth has become normalized. The lesson than learned from the previous phases have paved the way for accelerated development, and there are now seventy two least spaces within the facility.
It's still on.
Any of these infographics doesn't really tell you what they're what the manufacturing is of. And I'm with you, Matt on the idea of there are certainly deposits could be, but are those not things that are available on Earth like any and they not be synthesized.
Is that what is the.
Benefit of mining those there and then going through the process of having to ship them back.
Well, the rare earth, you know, minerals and the things that we use for a lot of our smart technology, a lot of our newer faster stuff aren't well. It's deposits are are being searched for all the time, right, and they're fought over, right.
That's what I'm saying. There's a supply chain issue. It's very they're very sought after. It's like very in demand
interaction point. The primary, the primary speed bump, you would call it objectively, is environmental regulation because it turns out that there are IDENTI resources or I guess there are identified mother loads of these various rare earth materials, but the process of extracting them here on Earth is inarguably damaging to the environment for life on Earth as it is currently understood.
Well, if you think about it really long term, right, we will run out of those resources at some point if you're going hundreds of years in the future, especially at the rates that we're going through, stuff like lithium ion batteries, like it's insane how fast we're going through
those things now that they're in everything. But then you take that a little bit further and you realize, Yeah, if there were I don't know, thousands of tons even just thousands of tons or hundreds of thousands of tons of this stuff up on the Moon and you could get access to it, you are going to be, you know, like one of these people who started a family, like the Rockefellers or some you know, somebody who got a hold of some stuff, and you're like, oh, man, But
there's also helium three, which is a main thing that people have been talking about on the Moon for a long time, which goes right back to potentially new forms of nuclear energy, right, which is a major thing which if you could have a moon base where you've got helium three to create potentially fusion reactors, you could then, as Ben was saying, use that as the jumping point to all the other places in the stars, right that we would want to travel to if we could build
these engines that were strong enough, powerful enough, and could last long enough to actually get a ship somewhere far far away.
I have a question, why hasn't the indigenous population of the Moon done the same thing with Earth already, you mean on.
The far side.
Yeah, oh no, man, there's just there's just checking us out still, it's a long, long study.
They're like, it might be worth it to move this water.
It does sound to me though, like the primary thinking behind this is like, let's just mine the he out of another planet once we've depleted ours. Let's just take this mentality, this out into the universe and wreak the same havoc on other celestial bodies that we have done so efficiently here on our planet.
My favorite thing, and this is just a fear of mind, which is not actually based in science, but the fear that mining would be so ubiquitous at some point on the Moon and so much of this, you know, all of these various resources would be taken away, that we make a minor change to the Moon's mass just at the very threshold of where it could actually affect the orbit. But it's almost impossible.
That's probably just interesting to think about, though, but I don't know. It certainly does feel like from the mind of a you know, a business minded multi millionaire, if not billionaire, that's.
Exactly what we're talking about.
There's no benevolence here, like thinking about preserving the human.
Race at large.
It's more of a like, how can we, you know, exploit these other floating rocks. So I don't know that's it for me for this one. Didn't mean to end it on such a bummer, but it is kind of a bummer because unfortunately the people that I don't First of all, I do think that he's like put the cart before the horse. The guy's also fifty eight years old, and I don't know that he has the groundwork laid to see this plan through before he himself, you know, buys the farm.
But we'll see.
Maybe I'm wrong, And it's certainly something that a lot of other people smarter, much much smarter than I are thinking about.
We also know what Elon Musk's plan down.
To say that he's whatever smarter being I don't know, there's lots of different kinds of smarts.
His plan to colonize Mars.
So I don't know it's gonna be Mars, gonna be the Moon, He's gonna be Venus.
Who can I add one more thing here? Please, just if you are interested in this stuff. In moon colonization, there are a bunch of movies and books and all kinds of stuff to read about that. But the movie add Astra has a really cool envisioning of how the Moon could have a functional base that includes manufacturing and includes military stuff.
It's really interesting.
Oh also check out our earlier episode interview with our power familias Martial Brain, wherein he maps out the social the social concerns about establishing a long term colony on Mars, which may apply generally to any non Terran based society.
Well, we'll take a quick break here worth from our sponsor and be back with more Strange News.
And we have returned. You know, folks, one of the pickles about the Strange News program is that there are so many stories in the world, and we're right there with you. We know that just like Japanese, these Japanese local political candidates, every story is fighting for press. There are plenty of cults, such plenty of cult news such that we may need to get a full examination of that in the future. Before we begin the second act
of our Strange News segments. Let's see we mentioned spies. Oh, I thought this would be a particular interest to you guys. The Malaysian National Registration Department has officially told Malaysian nationals that they cannot name their kids Bodo, Evil or Skibbety. What no scidity as a first name has become an issue in Malaysia.
How about that?
No Skibbity, Skimmity.
Yeah, so we wanted to let you know. If you're a Malaysian national listening tonight, there are other names, but also fight the power right if your name is Givity, if you're naming your child s Givity, let us know because we want good news. A lot of what we explore is often disturbing and troubling news. And so one thing for any true crime student that may not have hit your news in the United States, there is a serial killer who just got apprehended in the nation of Kenya.
Let's just give you the story from Reuters on fifteen July. We are recording this on the evening of seventeen July, which is a Wednesday. A suspected serial killer, they say, has been arrested in Kenya following the discovery of several bodies at Akwari and Nairobi, with police saying on Monday he confessed to killing forty two different women, including his wife. Forty two different people. He's thirty three years old. Collins Jumasi.
You can hear a little bit of reporting on this in outfits like New York Times or BBC Global News. Full name Collins Jumasi Kalusha. He confessed to having lured, murdered and disposed almost fifty women, including his former spouse, at a local dump site in a neighborhood called Macruro So when he was when he had committed these evil deeds. Afterwards he put the remains in bags and he had
been doing this since twenty twenty two. He was apprehended in the wee hours of the morning, watching a football championship at a local bar. And before we do anything else, had you guys heard about this story.
I'm sure it clocked.
This is the first I've heard of it and it is new to me.
This is troubling because Kenya has been in the news in recent years for accusations of active serial murderers. We can go to a statement by Mohammed Amin, who is the director of the Police Department's Directorate of Criminal Investigations, and he says they got the confession, the confession is clean. They're still investigating the motive behind the killings. Kenya, for context, is a nation of about fifty five million people and other countries in that region. There's been a lot of
social unrest of late. There were protests about tax hikes that turned deadly. The corruption has radicalized some people. And the troubling thing is whenever you hear about student run movements in a lot of countries, they're used as proxy warfare territory. You always have to wonder, you know, if there's the Cia or Wagner with her hand in the cookie jar there, Uh, there are protests aimed at unseeding
the current president. Women and female identifying individuals in Kenya have long been trying to call attention to an accelerating wave of femicide and gender based violence that is occurring in Kenya. It's similar to you guys, remember you guys, remember the stories about Latin America, Mexico and Central America in particular with the murders of women by drug cartels and cults.
Well, there was the podcast series The.
By Oz. You know, he had a big hand in it.
It's a harrowing Yes, absolutely heard those stories.
So one of the questions here is what happens next as we record this evening, the authorities assure the public that they are attempting to identify the bodies they have found.
They have not.
Located forty two distinct cadavers. Instead, they have the confession of this guy who says that he specifically murdered forty
two women. What we're also seeing now as the fallout, is that the locals, the public doesn't trust the authorities, and you know, perhaps with validity one conspiracy I guess you could call it, or conspiratorial thought that has sprang up in the interim here is the idea that the police are closing out cases right, perhaps maybe falsely reporting confessions or pushing the murderer to confess to things that
never actually happened. And this is very similar to the approvable case of Henry Lee Lucas, who definitely did not kill three hundred people because he was provably not in the physical location when those murders occurred. And with here, I'd like to go to you met to maybe with your experience as an executive producer and some tenderfoot and monster investigations, is it possible in your opinion that the local law enforcement may be opportunistic here or is there validity to that concern.
I don't know enough about it to make a judgment call there, but potentially, yeah, if there are crooked law enforcement officers anywhere, and there are often, is there some kind of you know, interaction between some group that's generating a lot of money and they're doing it illegally, especially if it's you know, through drugs or guns or just some other kind of Even if it's violence, human trafficking, sex work, stuff like that, there's often a law enforcement component.
So I mean, perhaps perhaps not impossible, right, and I appreciate that. Here's what we know for sure now. According to Kenyan police, nine bodies were found, not forty two nine, and they were found only after the relative. This is the official explanation. They were found only after the relative
of a missing person. A missing woman said she had dreamed of something, so like a psychic investigator, she instructed the officials to search the dump site and without getting to graphic, these bodies were brutalized in horrific ways, and starting gosh, just last Friday, as we record, they began finding the sacks in which these bodies were thrown. The victims were between eighteen and thirty bodies in various stages.
Of decomposition, and the.
Police say, I don't know, let's pause there before we go, what do we think about the idea of someone having a dream or some sort of psychic intuition to launch an investigation? And we skeptical are we hearing it out?
I mean, I always go back to our interview with Russell targ about you know, third Eye spies and you know the program that he headed up as that was funded by the government, and the idea that you could teach people to enhance their kind of pre cognitive kind of abilities. So that conversation really sold me to a degree on the possibility of this as a thing.
I recently saw the movie Long Legs.
Not to give anything away, but there is a character who has some form of precognition, and there's a scene where she's sort of tested on that precognitive ability. And I believe there's a fine line between intuition and psychic abilities, but I think it's a spectrum.
So here, personally, I do think it's possible.
I'm less likely to believe in that side of it
and more in somebody either had intuition or knowledge. But that's just you know, because if you can have intuition about a situation, feel weird about somebody you talk to, but you're not sure, so you bring it up to an officer somewhere someday, and you're like, I don't know about this, but I would probably check this area because just and you just tell that person, because you don't want to get involved at all, You tell that law enforcement officer perhaps, Yeah, I don't know, I just have
a feeling.
Right.
Everybody read the book that we mentioned frequently in a few years back, The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, Right, the idea of intuition there, And what I especially like about the points here is that the provable cases I can cite that I can prove, those provable cases that appear to appear to propose psychic powers as an inspiration or a lead in a murder or disappearance, the only ones I can prove are the ones that later turned out to be local law enforcement finding a different way
to explain a different way to like support or rationalize technically illegal stuff they did.
Got you case, you know, like searching a particular area when there's no cause to or maybe even no warrant to, but there's a big search party or something like.
That, violating entrapment rules. Things like that. You know, it's that is far more common, and again just one entity saying that. Also for any le eos in the audience, you know that meet me here doc. You know that is anathema to an investigation claiming esp or dreams or claaravoyance. It is very high risk, to the point where it may be a career in the move just to say it.
And the thing is though, here what's happened is nine people are provably dead, nine innocent women are dead, and the person who is alleged to have murdered these people says that there were forty two people he murdered. Furthermore, police officials did not say that this psychic led them
to the suspect. In specific, they found a mobile phone belonging to one of the victims and they did what they would call a forensic analysis, the same kind of thing that's happening in Langley with the Yes, I have to say it, the alleged attempted assassin of Donald J. Trump, right, Thomas Matthew Crooks phone is in Langley right now, along with all his other comms. And they're going through it. And so in Kenya, the police said that this guy they arrested at that bar, he led them to a
single room rental like a flophouse rental room. It was about one hundred meters away from this local dump site. And there they also found in this rental room, eight smartphones, two pairs of underwear, a machete, a pink handbag, the ID cards of six men and two women. In the ID cards of those six men, I think are going to be a subject of a particular interest going forward, and guys don't. I don't really know how we end
this other than platforming and amplifying the facts here. You know, we talked a little bit in an episode or previous strange previous strange news. We talked about the murders in Austin, Texas, or the deaths in Austin, Texas which the public seems to increasingly believe, or the work of a serial killer. And Kenya, this arrest came just like less than a year, like six months after thirty one women were killed in that country in a single month and launched nationwide protests.
There's always a context. It's never a vacuum.
I don't know now, and I just want to say to you, I mean, I'm not saying that I think this particular case that there were psychic abilities at play. I just am saying, through various conversations with different people, including that target interview and the things that I've looked into since, I do believe that there is the possibility of the existence of such abilities. I don't know you
know what that looks like in law enforcement. I just do think that whether anomalists or whatever they might be, I think it's out there in some capacity.
So thank you for saying that.
No, because as we all know, we don't talked about it much on air, but my family has some personal background claims of that nature, and we want to hear from you.
Folks.
Stay safe out there. Let us know what your take is on the idea of psychic intervention or other you know, conventionally inexplicable intervention in law enforcement and in crime invest negation. Tell us what's happening in your neck of the global woods. We're going to pause for a word from our sponsor and then we'll return with more strange news.
And we've returned, and there are several weird things that people should be looking at and thinking about that have happened recently in the news that are just extra we're not really going to focus on today. The first one is, I guys, I think this maybe deserves a full episode. This Instagram influencer from Brazil. Her name is kat Torres.
She just got sentenced to eight years in prison for human trafficking and slavery because she would she would invite young vulnerable women over from Brazil and other places and have them work as like in home assistance and all shares and stuff like that. And then you know, do the old take their passports, threaten them with violence, threaten them with all kinds of.
Well, she have to call it the old.
Why But we've mentioned this so many times.
Reported on like I mean, I remember seeing for the first time in a Vice documentary probably ten years ago, just about some of these like literal organizations that do this where they stake the passports and keep people hostage and force them into sex work or slave labor or what have you.
That's she ended up forcing several of them into sex work. And you know, it's like, if you don't give me this amount of money every month, then you can't live in the house or whatever, so you'll have to sleep on the street.
And it's just it's an awful, awful story.
But I think it's worth maybe a full episode because it's it's kind of long, there are a lot of details and this person, this is a person who was allegedly, according to BBC, hanging out with like Leonardo DiCaprio and other people who are very high up in those echelons. Leo DiCaprio hanging out with a young Instagram model. That's a whole other story. And again something we've mentioned.
Man, I know you've mentioned that on the show before, all right.
But that's a story worth looking at if you have time this week. Here's another one. This is an announcement that the United States Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced on July twelfth, that's Friday, July twelfth, twenty twenty four. Here it is they've arrested and charged a seven person group of alleged violent criminals. They're referring to as quote, the Fentinyl Robbery Gang Okay, yeah, or
the FRG. Kind of a lame name, I think if you asked us, but that's kind of what they did. So they just named it what it is.
Right.
Note, by the way, and this is something that US Attorney's Office says, indictments are only allegations. All persons charged are presumed to be innocent unless and until they're found guilty.
In fine, true, it's true, it is true.
I appreciate you saying.
That it is true.
And if you want to find the names of seven people, you can easily head on over to the US Attorney's Office of the Middle District of Pennsylvania or any news outlet. You'll find the names of all seven people. They range in age from twenty three to fifty and several men, several women. And here's what they're charged with. The superseding indictment includes one conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance resulting in death and serious bodily injury.
Happy yeah.
Two two counts of distributing fentanyl resulting in death in serious bodily injury. Three, two counts of brandishing firearms in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. Four kidnapping, and on top of it all, aggravated identity theft after they were doing all that stuff, right, It's weird how that one comes after all, that, but okay.
As opposed to super chill identity theft, this.
Is yeah, yeah, that's an interesting term, but yes, this According to this indictment, the group was trafficking drugs and weapons, and they were using dating websites to connect with individuals who were interested in hiring sex workers. So that's a weird thing, dating websites with people interested in hiring sex workers. I guess there's a cross pollination there, or I didn't realize that that existed. I thought that those were separate things.
But okay, that's what they were doing. And once they found somebody who was interested, right, a victim for them, members and associates would arrange to go to the victim's location wherever they were, with the intent to rob that victim of all kinds of things cash, phones, computers, firearms so that they could traffic those again ID so, any kind of identification documents, credit and debit cards, drugs, and anything else basically of value that they could take from
that person. Here is where it starts to get crazy. Then it gets scary to me. The victim would be offered some kind of drugs. Usually it was cocaine, at least according to several people who survived their encounters with this group. That cocaine, though, would be laced with fentanyl, So if somebody one of these victims partook in that substance, it would have a very debilitating effect on that person
pretty quickly. If the person refused the drugs, according to the indictment, they would administer it to them like some kind of ventanyl laced substance to that person forcibly, or they use the word surreptitiously, you know, secretly. Now here's the worst part. If a victim took those drugs and was not incapacitated or not incapacitated quickly enough, somebody who was already with that victim, probably in a house or in an apartment somewhere, would allow the others to come in.
So unlock a door, open a door, a window, whatever it was. They would allow a home invasion robbery to occur with several other members of this group to come in, and according to the indictment, they would hold people at gunpoint or you know, with others some other kind of weapon, and they would also use violent means such as threatening the person, beating that person, or they again use the term aggravated.
Assault son brandishing and exactly anybody who's esl here. The term brandishing is just the fancy English word for showing a firearmy a weapon and waving it around. It is not the same thing as firing. It's not the same thing as hitting someone with the butt of a firearm.
Absolutely, and sometimes it's not the same as holding it. It's like you said, Ben, show it. I've got one, right, It's just the.
Threat, basically, it's the implication.
There you go, thank you a little bit of levity here. But this is horrible because this indictment alleges that there were dozens and dozens of crimes committed across seven states in the US.
I mean, I think it gives me the most sinking feeling about this. This is like every flavor of taking advantage of a human being. This US is like every type of crime that we fear. As a homeowner, I'm scared of someone trying to come into my home and take my stuff. As maybe a person who is dated, you're always a little bit wary of someone not being
who they say they are. The depths of betrayal and depravity and just absolute manipulation here are really unlike anything I've ever really heard of in one go all for the purposes of enriching themselves, you know, yes, like it's Jesu Louise. The level of brazenness, I think is what's taking me aback, you.
Know, Oh for sure, it's horrifying. As I was saying, guys, just don't want to drive this home. Dozens of crimes across seven states, so we're talking. FBI was involved very quickly with this case. There were also four known overdose deaths because of the fentanyl that was in the drugs that was administered to victims, one in New Hampshire and three in Pennsylvania. And this is an ongoing FBI investigation as well as like the US Marshall Service, all of
the various law enforcement agencies from those seven states. Everybody's involved trying to find anyone any more people besides these seven that are currently arrested and charged who were taking part in this in some kind of organized way. And that's going to include people who either bought guns or drugs from this group. So watch your back if you're out there, the FBI is coming. According to the FBI, you can there's a phone number you can call. Well,
we'll put it out here. Do you have some information, call five seven zero three four four two four four and let the FBI know if you're comfortable doing that. Yikes, And the announcement that we're pulling all this information from you can find on Justice dot gov and just search for seven charged in wide ranging conspiracy resulting in the
death of four victims. Guys, I don't have a ton more on this because there's not a lot known besides the fact that, at least according to more of that indictment that we didn't read, the entirety of this group of people was operating out of a residence in a place called garden Or, Maine. And we looked at a map just to check out where that is. I mean, I don't know enough about Maine to even say where it is.
A little up north.
Yeah, it looks like it's between Scranton and Hartford, Connecticut.
I don't know.
That's what I'm seeing north of New York.
We go.
We also, one thing I really appreciate about you bringing this story to our fellow conspiracy realist, Matt, is that points toward a larger trend which is occurring as we record and as we hear this our fellow listeners playing along at home. Fentanyl is being exceptionally and successfully weaponized because of the nature of the substance right because of the minuscule amount of the substance required to put someone at death's door or inside the threshold of the afterlife,
it is an extremely effective vector for bad actors. I would be careful who you trust, and no judgment here, folks in terms of your you know, your local plug or however we're supposed to say it on air.
But I would be very careful.
Yeah, oh for sure.
And I mean we've talked about this before, but I had a pretty close family member who appears to have purchased some tainted when that's how he overdosed and died on fentanyl. Yeah, I'm going to add a little bit more information here.
This coming from.
PBS wvia via NPR. It's all three of those all together.
They're saying that the case got broken open way back in April in Scranton when there was a victim who had a bunch of stuff stolen, including his air pods, and he did the old track the AirPods thing, and he found him at a nearby hotel and the suspects inside the room, whereas AirPods were also stole a bunch of bank cards that were connected to the big investigation, where they realized, Okay, we've got at least a group of our people and I don't have all the details here,
but they don't have all the details, but I guess that's how they connected all seven of those individuals who are currently arrested and indicted. And the second thing is several of the victims of this group were using meet Me Meet and Plenty of Fish, which are I guess two apps or services where you can meet people in the short term, and sometimes that can be for sex work.
I see.
Yeah, we've seen similar griffs in years past with things like Craigslist casual encounters, which was also low key. A couple of times it was a mrk recruitment situation, but we also see adult friend Finder would be another example. I think, Matt, what you're noting here. Another important point for everyone listening at home to know is that the good guys are often outnumbered, right because the good guys
play by the rules ostensibly. However, the good guys have one tremendous advantage, which is that one slip up can open a case wide right.
Yep.
One slip up can lead to justice. And what you've described here, what these journalists describe here, does very much sound like one slip up that hopefully will lead to justice for many people.
Oh certainly hope. So almoso.
I'm gonna put this in here too, because PBS is saying it. According to the indictment, one of those seven people was the person in charge with I think the most nefarious thing, arranging to meet with individual victims and then potentially going inside the places of residence and then unlocking a window or a door or something. Her name is Amanda Marie Correas. She was twenty nine years old at the time of the arrest. So that's a young person and a terrifying set of actions to do.
A lot of times, and is alive today.
Mm hm.
Well, if we were to say there is a moral or a takeaway from this disturbing tale, what would that takeaway be?
Oh, don't use dating sites in some just show here.
I don't know.
I mean, just gotta be careful who you let into your personal space, especially if you think potentially you're taking part in sex work or something.
You just gotta be I don't know.
Guys.
I think I may have mentioned that I had jury duty recently and I was not selected for the jury. But in the jury selection process they made it very clear that the case involved the defendants, who was a woman and two men were using dating apps to find people to then have the two dudes come in and rob the out of them.
So I think this is not an uncommon grift.
This version that you're describing here, Matt, though, is just probably the most elaborate and psychotic version that I've ever heard of.
But it was very clear.
They didn't tell you that exactly, but that's sort of they give you just enough information so you can kind of know, has something like this happened to me?
Do?
They were very interested in whether jurors, potential jurors had used dating apps for because that could potentially disqualify though if they had a negative experience or whatever.
It might have been. So it's a very care factor. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a very common vector because there is relatively little way relatively little in the way of verification of identity. Again, you know, look, we give the cops a hard time often due to conspiracies in which factions of law enforcement
have provably participated. But one thing we can say is that the success of predatory uses of these online interactions to identify and isolate victims, this is ten to ten what led to things like the safe meeting spots which you will see in you will see in law enforcement parking lots. You will also see, for example, things like safe parking spots in large private enterprises.
Dude, I didn't know what that was when I went to a QT last time and I saw a safe space everywhere, you know whatever.
It's just safe human trafficking to stop robberies.
Yeah, I don't know what does that mean exactly? This is new to me.
Basically, if you meet there, it's a place designed so that if you do choose to meet somebody that you don't know, if you bought something on Facebook, you can meet there and it is considerably safer than meeting at your place, and you know, even at wherever else.
I don't know.
I was going to say Walmart, and.
The companies are the companies are co signed on this, where they're basically saying this is like okay.
Yes, yeah, this is in that case. These are sort of what we call private initiatives. However, look, let's be honest sometimes you don't want to deal observed, which makes sense. It's not necessarily insidious in that regard. However, if you are in a situation where you are speaking with a stranger online who beat me here doc could be frecking anybody, then it is in your best interest to have a
public observable location for your initial interaction. And if the person on the other side of the creepy algorithm or the great pipes of the Internet, if they're not on board with that, you should consider that a flag, not necessarily saying they're a bad faith actor or up to shenanigans, but.
Why not make a different choice then? In that situation, it's the Internet.
You can go anywhere, check it with someone else. Isn't that what dating sites are all about?
You know?
Heish, Yeah, plenty of fish farmers, alies wipe left on the BS.
What are you gonna do? Meet me? You're gonna meet me?
Meet me.
When you first meet me, I thought it was maybe like a online thing for trading stakes, oh or super plugged in.
Or I will say, you know, I've done plenty of online dating, and I've been with the same person for about four years now, almost, But we met through online dating, but I've never once had a meet with someone where I didn't get a secondary social media of some kind in advance, whether it be Instagram or something where you could see a real history, not just the kind of stuff that a bot would create, where you can see, oh we have mutual friends.
Oh wow, you know you know like I mean.
But again, I know I'm not maybe the target audience for a scam like this. Perhaps I'm not looking for sex work. I'm trying to meet somebody, so I'm looking for shared interests, you know. I usually the chat period goes on for a good little bit before we meet up.
So I would just maybe encourage that if you are using dating apps to meet somebody, I would just say, offer up a secondary form of social medias and ask for the same in exchange, just to prove that you're dealing with someone that doesn't.
Mean you harm and as much as you can.
Do that solid advice there, And folks, we're here like we've been with ourselves the whole time. So most importantly we want to hear from you. Are you a Kenya national? Have you spent time in Kenya? What can you tell us about America's underground. What are your worst stories from the troubled road of falling in love online? Right and the course of true love never ran smooth. They used to say that, even before internet connections were a thing.
Oh hey, and let us know if you've got any poultry worker bird flu cases in your area. We noticed that Colorado just got four more, and we're trying to keep our eye on that bigger picture of bird flu right now, so let us know.
And stick around for the very end. We're give you a couple more stories we didn't get to for now we want to hear from you. We try to be easy to find online.
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