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 not They.
Call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. We are digitally live here in our studio at HQ in the fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia. It's a nice Friday, nice Friday, energy freezing cold, freezing cold, I mean, says we.
You know, any listeners out there in like New York.
Of Philadelphia, get out of here. We're the talk of a last Yeah.
We come from the land of the ice and snow, you guys, babies, So.
We also love traveling. We were talking about what we're doing this weekend travel plans as we approach the end of what humans call the calendar year. Thought experiment. You guys, if you had a chance to travel to your dream country, just imagine whatever your dream country is. You don't have to pay for the ticket. You've got a place to stay. You don't even have to pay for food. However, instead of asking for financial payment, your benefactors are saying, we
need you to do a different sort of compensation. We'd like a little bit of crime.
Ooh, crime is the secret ingredient. I do a crime for.
All of that depends on the crime, right, I don't know.
I'm open.
Yeah, how salacious are we talking?
Yeah? Like there's a gradient.
Right.
If you were, for instance, offered this Fausti embargain and they said you need to kill someone for us, a lot of people would say, no, it's just complicated.
And depends on what kind of food we're talking about, you know, I think, is it fancy? Is it fine dining? I kill for a Michelin star?
Oh man, we're on record.
Yeah no no, no, no, no, no no no.
Also, I learned Michelin. Why Michelin is arguably corrupt. I don't know if it's a future episode, but there are no Micheline rated restaurants in New Orleans because New Orleans hasn't invited Michelin, and they only go to cities where they're vampire rules.
Interesting, Yeah, we only just got Micheline Guide here in Atlanta.
Really yeah, like this year.
Oh my god, I saw there's a there's a food joint over here by our offices, and there's a pizza place that has a Michelin starred chef.
It may well also be there's like this this like slightly downgraded demarcation called the bib gormand sort of like a consolation prize kind of you don't actually get a star, but it's sort of like a recommended kind of situation.
So we walked down the street to let you know a little bit about the inner workings of Michelan.
We're talking about the Michelin Guide to Crime.
Yes, it's that's your dream country. That leads us to tonight's episode, What would you do in the wide world of crime Tourism? Here are the facts. All right, we just got out of kind of out of an election season here in the United States. You may have read about it. It was somewhat of a deal. Yeah, somewhat of a deal. And one thing that I think we've all noticed is that during election season people start to
scope in on very specific issues. It's going to be stuff like the economy, maybe a culture war, thing of some sort and then always the perennial hit the beatles of stuff to complain about during an election.
Crime well, Ben, I mean, you point out here that according to the FBI, crime actually up during the Biden administration. I, based on the rhetoric, really didn't know what to believe because both sides were saying, you know, we made crime go down. And it's really, first of all, hard to kind of take credit directly for that as the presidents. As we know, a lot of things presidents take credit for are not things directly. There are things that happened four years earlier exactly well, I mean.
And what the hell does crime is up or crime is down? Even me?
I gotta be honest, it's like the Dow Jones. I used to think trying to do positive affirmations. I turn on the radio, you know, in the early evening when I woke up, and then I would just say, if the Dow is up, that means it's going to be.
A good day, because it's kind of like the spiritual doo as well, Buck Satani Phil rules. It's also like like are we in a bull or a bear crime market?
You know, exactly right, are you bullish on crime? Are you bearish well? According to a guy named Jeffrey H. Anderson writing for the Telegraph, it is correct the FBI revised their stats, and crime depends on how you define it rose during the Biden administration from five point eight million what they call violent victimizations in twenty nineteen to
six point six million in twenty twenty two. And I really appreciate that note where we say, you know, the president might take credit for good stuff, they might dodge bad things, but often they're not the person in charge of all the factors driving crime.
Not to mention that the rhetoric of a political campaign is so fraught that it's really hard to take just about anything anyone says.
At face value. Think about what happened in those years twenty nineteen, Sure, the giant lockdown COVID nineteen. Everybody is not hanging out with everybody.
Else, the proliferation of protest exactly.
And then then everybody's hanging out with each other again.
Hey, let's do some crimes.
Has forgot all the home training? Just walking in public is still like people are still getting their sea legs here in twenty twenty four. So just a helpful PSA for anybody bud who has is personally struggling with navigating public spaces. Don't stop in the middle. Don't stop in the middle of anyone. No, walk to the right, pass to the left.
Yeah, do not slow down on the left ever. If you're driving a car, if you're walking, h it doesn't matter.
We will find you.
Oh my, we know your license plate every time.
And if you stopped while you were listening to this and you're in the middle of a hallway, please please please just scoot one direction or another, just a scooch. Don't make us come way. Okay, I got sorry, So we know, do not come what dreams may come. So the uh, the idea here is again it's a metric,
it's a methodology thing. How do you measure it. If we say, if we take simple assault out of the equation, that's the least serious crime category that still counts as violent and really non violent drug related crimes, right right, Yeah, If we take out well the stuff that is like that that's least likely to be treated as a felony, we still notice a thirty seven percent increase in violent crime from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty two. It doesn't rise in all of the same areas at the same rate.
We know that there seem to be, at least per our buddy Jeffrey, there seemed to be a more pronounced rise in urban areas, which is honestly likely just a function of more people being in the same place. Yes, that's the main thing, you know.
Especially in the cities where the ratio between have a bunch and have almost nothing.
Is paraded in front of your face all the time and you don't have that stuff, but you are forced to live elbow to elbow with these folks who are way more well off than you.
Yeah, it's nuts, and you can It really stands out to people who are not from the US when they go to one of the big cities here, there's such opulence, these amazing buildings, these huge empty skyscrapers. They're empty at night, but the people on the streets can't sleep in them, even though the heat's on, even though it's a safe place away from the you know, the horrors of crime visited on the unhoused. Let me get off this soapbox.
I mean, the point is the United States is becoming less safe if you look at these statistics, especially in the cities. It's also important for us to say, who is this Jeffrey guy? Anyway, why are we listening to jeff He was the director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the US DOJ Department of Justice for several years, so he's more likely than the average person to have their stats correct. Now he's the president of something called the American Main Street Initiative.
Well, that's cool. I like the idea of that, but it does sound pretty generous, it's really vague.
Well, another related stat is that crime is also up in certain parts of the world.
Yes, yes, I want to make one more point before we blow this up to the world level. Just specific for this story, we checked out a press conference that was based out of Los Angeles, and I had a bunch of different people there speaking, some district attorneys, some like sheriffs and things like that. Yeah, and it was it was striking to see how the people that are just underneath the mayor level talking about how crime is down. Now, everybody, crime is down, but it is way up in very
specific areas. But crime is down.
Which is why you hear these sort of one hand clapping statements from analysts. There's a headline I think that's from the Marshall Project or something. They said, Yes, violent crime is up, but it's also.
Downright in very important places, it's down, but it's also way way up.
So it's kind of like, how do you want to shape the statistics?
How do I stop my head from spinning?
Question? Oh yeah, exorcism related crime, yeah, those are on the rock. Well, okay, good, Yeah, so this takes us to like you're saying the global scale again, we see the same paradoxical thing. Crime is skyrocketing in some areas and it's actually not as bad in other areas. Often, when it's skyrockets in a lot of countries, if we're being honest, it's due to war the consequences thereof, or government instability.
Boom shout outs previous episodes recent Yes.
Yeah, meandmar laos Middle East, South America. We discussed these issues. We also found even Bhutan got touched and noll. This is from our show Ridiculous History sixty minutes just ran a piece after us. All right, no happiness on people leaving Bhutan for more opportunity.
Ah, okay, things are a little static. They're based entirely on happiness.
Yeah, right, they're worried. They're worried about, you know, larger regional instability. It's a huge factor in crime. And of course, without sounding too woo wooe about it, we do have to point out you're probably going to see more crime emerge in parts of the world the next few decades as widespread migration is triggered by climate disasters. Might happen in the US too. Don't buy a house in Florida
to day. I mean, it's it's doomy and gloomy, right, But some parts of the world seriously have always been safer than others, and the study of crime and peace becomes a study of waxing and waning patterns. I think it's fair for us to say, like we're we're not hitting some hard political point. Most of the time, when people commit a crime, it's because they don't have another opportunity to do something.
There you go rare, It's true.
But then on a I guess organizational level, that changes. And like the people below the organizers are the top tier individuals in those organized crime units, and I guess they are being taken advantage of because of their have not status.
Right, what will you do to earn your bones to be a made man? What will you do to keep your family safe? These are old questions, very sinister ones. We could argue they're exacerbated by technology because increased global trade, a smaller world, more communications tech, it's paved the way for new kinds of crime, or it's really thrown some high octane gas on the bonfires of other crime.
Well, it seems to me too, like with that level of exposure to everything that's going on all over the world, there's more opportunity for people to feel like they aren't living the.
Lives they would like, right right. And then also to the point about halves and have nots Now, with social media, you see a lot of halves. You see a lot more than you might have ordinarily, So perhaps there's a psychological why not me fact.
That's what I'm getting at for sure. But also we do know that a lot of that stuff that you're seeing is curated, and just because people have does not necessarily mean they're happy.
No, are you kidding me? Have you seen all the This is evil? But I love the compilation clips you could see of people in very heavy influencer areas and parts of China or in parts of California or New England where it's clear they want you to think it's their car, but it's just some car that's parked, and then they get caught like standing on there with the selfie. You know.
Well in the rental services way back in the day, we were trying to figure out how so many people that were getting it was even Facebook days. Yeah, how are all these young kids in these mansions out in California. Yes, and they're literally renting a house for a day or something and doing a photo shoot that lasts all day long and then it keeps their content going for a year.
Or also renting a supercar for a few hours, which we did on car stuff. And I'm still mad at accounting. You should have let us do it.
I think so few people read past the headline aka research. Is this person absolutely full of crap? Or are they what they say they are? But it doesn't matter because you still get stung by seeing that. That is the reaction. It's a visceral, immediate reaction.
One hundred percent. And then we see all these things is leading into something we discussed in a previous Strange News program. It's been in the headlines a lot in the United States lately. What happens when crime goes on the road? What is crime tourism?
Are you not going to do the most death lyric?
Oh? Yes, shout out to most Death from his album Black on Both Sides, where he noted in his song got which is a classic, you should check it out, he says, there's a hunger in the streets and it's hard to defeat. And some steal for fun, but more steel to eat. Cats don't sleep, they'll roll up in your passenger seat, right. There's a universal law whether Richard poor for some life is a game for more life is war?
Oh dude, Ben, y'all don't even know. Ben put me on all the best rap only MC stuff.
We're in Atlanta. You would have found it.
No, Yeah, Ben, it's true. You've got really good taste in that kind of stuff. But we are going to dig into exactly what crime tourism is after a quick break. Here's where it gets crazy. What is crime tourism? This is not a trick question.
It's what it sounds like, touring going as in going to a different place or a different region or country for the purposes of committing crimes. It's not to be confused with dark tourism, which is the semi creepy thing where you go to places that are known for unclean events.
Sure, haunted places, war zone, dangerous places, exactly.
Okay, So just from my reference, when I personally first encountered this idea of crime tourism, I thought, and maybe I'm wrong, I thought about a place like maybe Thailand or a place where it's known for and I don't know why. I thought about sex work and drugs. That's what I thought about. Where it's a little where there's you can get away with it more easily or something, or it's just more open. There's a culture that's more open in one specific place, was.
It Thailand were talking about recently where there was literally like a crime office park of some kinds.
Oh yeah, and they kidnapped Thaie and Philippine nationals. Yeah, and it's it's rough, literally.
A crime office park, I mean, totally untouched by the law.
But I'll tell you I think about that though, guys. It's because of popular culture, like things like the Hangover movies and stuff like that that I know when I encountered those movies, I had already heard about that stuff. But going to a different country for crime. And I'm putting that in quotes, but like it's other stuff.
Yes, well, and we're going to talk about like some of the different groups. But I was talking to you guys off air about the Albanians that has become kind of this new stand in or replacement for like the Mob in shows like what would you say, movies like Taken, Take Barry Hank and those guys, Like the Albanian organized crime depictions have really kind of skyrocketed in pop culture for good reason. They are serious business.
And we'd love to go to Albania one day, but will we'll be careful. We might have to go in a group, get some muscle.
I'm good.
Okay, Well that's because you'll be doing crime touring in other places. Sure I suppose. Yeah.
We did the Me and Myar episode. Betty. You were like, I don't know if they'll let us in anymore. I was like, you want to go to me and Mary, you know.
And we're going to talk about several different groups. We are going to focus a little bit on South America. But I do want to just say that you mentioned the rhetoric around this kind of stuff, the idea they're bringing crime, they're rapist blah.
Blah blah blah.
We do not want to support that notion. It is not the goal here, and that is not I think what the stats bear out. We're just talking about some examples that have been written about pretty extensively, but there are all kinds of groups doing this sort of thing.
Well said, Well said, because crime tourism is a tactic or it's a tool kit. And when you hear law enforcement say, you know, specifically the South American or this Albanian group, they're talking about what affects their jurisdiction directly crime tourism. The differentiation here between visiting say a place with less rule of law to commit sexual crimes or to engage in drug trafficking. Stuff like that, Oh tails
all the time, right. The difference here between the crime tourism we're talking about and that kind of stuff is level of organization. So these guys are amateur.
You're also talking about individuals going to a country so they can get a child bride or whatever, you know, disgusting terms, sorry, just you know what it means, or a place where sex work is more accessible. You know, that's its own kind of crime tourism, but not what we're talking about. They were talking about the flip side of that.
Yeah, this is crime is a job. Yeah, not crime is a vacation. Maybe that's the that's brutal, but that's probably the best way to put it right exactly. Okay, we know the score. A group of criminals arrives in a foreign country as tourists also different from any kind of like they don't fall under the Espionage Act. They're not doing crime for a government or anything like that, but they are working for something that's kind of like almost a government in its own home country.
Well, and they're also individuals who are not on the radar of any organization that would be monitoring for people coming in or out of a country.
And the more we look into things like cartels like in Mexico, for example, they practically are the government.
And many at a certain levels. Yeah, unfortunately, that is correct, and that's why a lot of the recent reporting here in the United States orbits around the idea of criminals from South America, even though, as we pointed out, the phenomenon is not isolated to a single cohesive group nor region.
I mentioned the show that I just started watching the Taylor Sheridan show starring Sylvester Stallone called I Believe King of Tulsa, where Stallone plays a mobster who gets out of prison. There isn't a place for him within the organization in New York, so they send him to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where there is very little organized if any organized crime presence, to set up shop. That is another example of kind of what this could look.
Like, right, yeah, to expand the brand, to franchise out in the world of crime. And also to that point about the arguments or the really the racism raised about immigration here, We've got to remember some of the most dangerous South and Central American immigrants were sucking created by the United States. What is often the case MS thirteen, you know, is the most prominent example. But these are kids who grew up sometimes undocumented in parts of California,
and they were in very bad neighborhoods. They had to protect themselves. We talked about this in the previous episode. So they become gangs, and then the US deports or in this case, exports gang culture back to these places, and then they come back as well. It's the cycle that Uncle Sam created.
Another example, it would be killing terrorist leaders whose followers or children then take up that cause and it's like a kill bill type situation.
It's one big school of the Americas.
There, it is. I like that. Let's expand the franchise. I mean, you know, like we said, the Mafia has sent people abroad, the Yaquaza have, triads have and all three of those are still doing it to some extent. But if we look at South American groups from crime tourism, what we're looking at is something called South American Theft Groups or SADIG, which is I think not as cool of a name as they could have picked.
No, Yeah, we get SATIG before GTA six.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, and this is fairly new, a fairly new term I guess that has come around since roughly well like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. But the SATG is specifically referring to one group that they discovered, right that was found we're going to talk about. It was actually prosecuted and functioning, and now they've got this name that is essentially a generic term for anything that would function like the way.
Yeah, so jewel thieves, grand theft, auto enthusiast, art thieves, just straight up you know, be an.
E guys home invasion like professional like home invasion at scale.
But not violent at least from what we've seen. It's not breaking into the repeat.
They do their homework.
They do their homework, and that they make sure that the crimes are under like ten k as well. We'll get to that. It's a thing to make sure they're not triggering certain you know, red flags within the Department of Treasure.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a stealth mission for any gamers out there.
But add up enough of them. You know, each individual one might not be that, but add enough of them and then send all that stuff back home.
You're talking serious money. And they're a morphous These groups can pop up and disappear pretty easily. They're not all created equal. There are different levels of expertise and especially primarily due to how they set up their business model and frankly, what their fences are willing to mess with. So, for example, the FEDS were for a time and still are intensely concerned with jewel thieves from Ecuador, Colombia and Peru.
Because they're small and they're valuably it's incredibly dense. It's a literal good bang for your buck, right, Yeah, the FBI talks about it. You can read about on their website. Special Agent Noel gill gil Hey shout out fellinol.
There you go. He says. He's speaking from Miami, where he runs the South American Theft Group Task Force, and he says, look, these guys do their homework. This isn't
a convenience store robbery or a corner store robbery. They know to your point, Now, these guys are walking around with a quarter million dollars, they're potential victims a half million, even one million dollars in gems and jewelry because you know what, like we said in the Epstein stuff, having a bag of loose dime is just entering the wrong kind of life. Absolutely, it really is. Yeah.
I mean it's like it's like you got the loose diamonds and the different fake passports all on the secret drawer, right right.
I always imagine if I've got, like, especially back in the day, if I was walking around with like above one hundred dollars, oh, I felt like I was a target.
You're gonna say, felt like a real big shot.
Well yeah, oh it's both. So like I was scared to carry around one hundred bucks for a long especially when I was young, like first starting out with a job and now like I'm imagining that the loose diamonds.
Back, it transforms your perspective. I could see young Matt Frederick walking around with one hundred dollars bill and going, I cannot trust the peasants.
I know.
And to that point, I'm always a little blown away by some of these folks who just have the blingiest of blings, you know, massive carrot in their ears. It's insane, you know, and they do get got sometimes, yes, yikes.
I mean also, I don't know, you guys know, I have a very trouble stance with jewelry in general. But it's a physical revulsion, I believe. Yes, yeah, it's very it's very serious. But uh but yeah, I always always
wonder that too, you know. And I hate to say it, but when I hear a story of a prominent celebrity who went to a wild party by themselves without security, knowing they would run into someone that they either performatively or sincerely have a problem with, and they managed to act surprised, like, oh no, the guy I already hated showed up with a gang and they robbed me God.
I just saw some videos an interview. I think I may have been on the Breakfast Clubs, an interview with some like ty Reese or somebody that's super famous and popular, and he was just talking about how he never buys
actual jewelry anymore, like real diamonds. He buys it all online for like one hundred bucks and it looks like an iced out things real and it's because it kept getting lost stolen, and he was just losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry every year because it just disappears. So yeah, so it's just like I go on, and I mean.
And again, arguably you could say the same thing about other status symbols like really fancy wriskwatch exactly right, it's just a different kind of jewelry. So this task group, this FBI group hunting these jewel thieves, they've met with some success, and it's mainly because they were doing things that some nonprofit groups would have a big problem with.
They're getting informants, and their informants are saying, Okay, I think it's you know, this guy might know something, and then they say, all right, well, let's just find a reason to arrest him. We don't have anything, any hard evidence that will allow us to arrest them on suspicion of being part of this international jewel heist crew. But let's see if their visa is still current.
There you go.
It's kind of I don't know, it's controversial, but they are getting results, and.
They're doing this in an effort to like have a fishing expedition kind of the whole on them. They're leveraging that hopes that maybe they can make a deal and get some intel on the bigger picture one hundred percent.
But there is a serious visa loophole that we're going to get into later in this episode that ends up throwing. It puts a hamper on this tactic specifically because a lot of times they were here fully illegally, yes, within a very specific window.
Yeah, and they catch them on they might even wait until day ninety one, right, go, That's what I don't do. But so we know. Also, it's not a new practice, like you were saying, Matt, We've got the new term for it. But the FBI believe some form of this tactic, especially from South America, has been active since back in the nineteen eighties, and they have they say, okay, here are the four broad categories that help us or observations that help us define what SATG is right.
They've been operating in the US for more than thirty years and most members are here in the country illegally.
Many of the groups are made up of people from the same place, not the same country, guys like the same town, the same part of town.
Yeah, the same neighborhood. And this is an advantage because it means they have deep bonds, the very close knit you know, the word for it would be clickish in another in another way, which makes them extremely difficult to infiltrate. That's where you start seeing kind of honeypot tactics being deployed. Oh yeah, the friend the spouse enter into an amorous situationship with day use that correctly. I think you did okay with you know, with a mistress, a partner, a girlfriend,
a boyfriend, whatever it takes. That's how they bust in. But even when they do get that infiltration, they get that visibility and that information. The cruis are extremely mobile, which means they can just ghost stuff's bad in Nassau County Boom, hello, Birmingham. I think they look for the most the wealthiest cities, so I don't if Birmingham makes the list. Sorry.
Well, that's the thing about America, man, you go to any city, there's at least a few there's going to be a couple of little pockets of people that are way too wealthy for that area. I mean, here in Atlanta, well what we want to get into. But there's just some places where you're just driving, everything feels normal and then all of a sudden, you go, where the hell am I.
Same in Birmingham. Actually, there's some parts of Birmingham, Alabama. I lived there for a bit up in the hills that looks like in like Alabama, Hollywood Hills.
Oh, very affluent area, even oh gosh, more rural areas. When I was driving, I always try to drive back roads, and it was heading up and back from Knoxville. I'm not going to say where, but there were a couple places in rural Tennessee where I thought, oh, this is just a compound in the woods and it's opulent, and I don't I'm sure that I am on camera driving by this bro.
We did an episode on The Amish recently. We had a great email from a listener talking about how they are all about that money and they probably are hoarding cash and have all of this crazy property and real estate and livestock and stuff. I mean, even like the homage are could be considered affluent af you know, by some of these organizations. I wonder if there's been any crime tourism into the Amish communities that we should look into.
The talk about tight knit.
Though, Yeah, not a lot of ps fives to loot though a good point.
I don't know, man. I would go for the I would go for the live stock. I would go for the horses. You get the right horse. Do you guys know how much horse semen sells for?
Dude?
I think I maybe mentioned on the show once I covered when I was working for public radio. I went to a horse auction and it wasn't for actual horses, it was for horse semen, and they went. I don't even remember what it got.
It got.
It's just so much work to get it out of there.
You know you're doing it at the wrong way. Then strengthen your wrist, buddy, Yeah, it's all about how you get into the play. Like whatever the horse version of Shahda is. You know, lights and candles so that's advice from us. Yeah, there's also a lot of horse related crime anyway, So we know that these groups have been honing their game for decades now. The FBI has been honing their game as well. There's a very complicated cat
and mouse situation afoot. If you do infiltrate these gangs, you're gonna be using asymmetric means, and if they notice that they got made, then they'll vanish to a different city. And the entire time they're highly skilled. Shout out to Operation Cut and Run, which is where the FBI had to bust some of these jewel thieves were talking about earlier.
Right, And another case is you'll see automobile theft, violent assaults, all the hits. The patterns do seem to really be quite similar across various groups. You might have someone breach the border without documentation, but a lot of times you'll see someone else entering legally with a visa just to overstay it until they get apprehended. But to your point, Matt, sometimes there are also examples of people taking advantage of legal loopholes.
Yeah, do we want to talk about the visa thing for a little bit.
Oh yeah, let's get into that. This is something we learned when we talked about a very specific crime tourism ring that was broken up back in August of twenty twenty.
Four, the car rental guys.
And it's the car rental guys. Okay, well, let's get into this really quickly. The FBI, in partnership with a huge task force out in California, made a pretty massive bust back in August of twenty twenty four of a crime ring that included sixty two criminal cases, one hundred and thirty defendants who got named in those cases, and six hundred search warrants that ended up getting acted upon.
And so it's a pretty big network they get. And it was all based around this car rental company ran by this guy named Juan Carlos Sola Duran and it was called the Drive Power Network.
Okay, and his girlfriend was the partner.
Yes, like ten years younger than him at the time. They were the ring leaders essentially, is what was thought at least through that time, and all.
The perfect term, by the way, because when you think of like a ring leader, this is a criminal kind of ring, like a small close knit group that are infiltrating a larger system and taking advantage of it.
Even the financial and criminal passage is a ring because yeh, he goes back to Chile, the people go back to Chiles, and a lot of these guys are from Chile.
Yeah, yeah, that's actually something we should point out.
This.
A lot of this reporting that at least we did in that Strange News episode was about this Chilean group and that's where some of the terminology came from. And so this car rental company existed right in the United States, run by a group of people. What would happen is they would scout homes like individual homes, and they would find out when people are on vacation, when people's schedules are basically them away from the house, and they would send in folks would come from Chile on a special
type of visa. Yes, this is the loophole that we were talking about before, and Ben, this is the e s TA visa or the Electronics System for Travel Authorization visa, which allows anybody to come into the United States for ninety days if you are from specific countries.
And a really Latin America.
Well, and I would imagine given the temperature of policy where things are headed right now, things like this are likely going to be attempted at least to be phased out. Well, I don't know, I wonder, I just want it's because it's tough. It's tough to figure out a fair way to stop that, like to plug that loophole without punishing
innocent people. Right, it's true, but it does seem like the incoming administration doesn't care so much about punishing innocent people if they're not from here in the first place. It just seems like the attitude is all.
It's going to be interesting to listen back to this in a year.
Yes, So just to finish this out, guys, this this specialized program which is a part of the visa waiver program.
Right, so you're not actually getting a visa.
Exactly right, It's not really a visa. It is this specialized esta automated system where you can come in for business or travel for ninety days. You don't actually get a visa. It's almost like, I mean, you do have to fill out paperwork.
Yeah, you have to. You have to be in the system somehow. But a lot of other countries also do this. Their main thing is that time limit. Yes, after ninety days a government will start to say so what are we.
What is what are we doing here?
I mentioned the whole you know, attitude towards this kind of stuff because I seem to remember when there was a conversation about the Haitian immigrant population, right, a lot of them work here on some sort of special you know, kind of visa, short term visa like this, and there was a lot of talk from the right, you know, saying this, they shouldn't have been here in the first place, et cetera. These types of loopholes need to be closed.
Yeah, it's just how do you close them in a fair and equitable way. We also know, just for like more global comparison before you get back to the United States, the United States is notoriously difficult to immigrate to in the first place. The lottery system is just kind of whack it do, to be honest. But the but the thing we have to remember is that other countries, we're in a glass planet situation. Other countries are very difficult too.
If you land in the United Kingdom, I think they still do this, Like you fly into Heathrow and they don't just want you to prove who you are and to pass customs and all that you have to give them a specific address of where you're staying, so they know that you just.
Don't win, because then it's like, how can they even track you down anyone?
Right? Uh, oh, he's at a red roof in somewhere. Now, red roof in, that's my address.
Do you guys remember the dude who wrote on his application that he's here to steal jewels and maseratis. Yeah, but no worries. He's at the red roof Now he's one.
It's cool school, it's cooled. So just to finish that part up, they come in through this specialized visa program. Once they're in, they if they are like a part of this group or if they know about this specific car rental place, they would go there, get a luxury vehicle and it may be a little older, but it's still a Mercedes, like an eight Mercedes or something. So they can take that vehicle into the upscale neighborhoods and blend in right, park that vehicle on a side street.
They've got well, they don't have to scope anything out, and they've got a target that they're going for.
Correct, It's like what would you do for a free trip? Exactly?
So they go in, they toss the house, get the important things, and in best case scenario, they get out before the homeowner or anyone even knows they were there.
Best case scenario for them.
That's what I mean. But so for this thing to function the way it is supposed to according to everyone in that's how it works. But the way that they actually end up getting caught is several homeowners like this one guy that they describe in the press conference, came home and he as he's arriving back home from the grocery store, he sees an idling like luxury suv right
outside his home, walks into his house. As soon as he looks at it, he realizes his whole house has been tossed and two guys are coming out just trying to leave through the front door where he's standing.
Yeah whoa.
He manages to tackle one of the guys and subdue him. That guy gets arrested, the other guy gets away in the suv. But through interrogation of the guy that he stopped, they put some of these pieces together and they realized, oh, this is this isn't just a one off.
This is like a thing I would imagine. It's probably a bit of a no no as well for them to like murder the homeowners.
Yeah, that's not good for business, like the and the reason too. Before it sounds like we're just picking on Chilean nationals, because they did find the vast majority of the folks in this situation in Ventura County were Chilean at least the operators. They had a great system, nice car, but not too nice so you can blend in with the fancy neighborhood doing too much violence. First off, it's a trigger right for local law and then also the
federalies when somebody does get caught. That gives law enforcement the opportunity to go back and look at seemingly unrelated crimes and notice the commonalities in terms of mo and in terms of how wait do you guys notice the same car rental company is popping up and all of these things just in the footnotes of the investigation.
I know. Well, then they sent undercover agents into that rental place to try and get cars, and they were turned away and they're like, oh no, you're not on the list based special lists.
Yeah. Then we talked about in our Strange News segment. Then we talked about how similar it is when you walk into a restaurant that's clearly a front and they're just sort of surprised that you want a pizza from the pizza place.
You're gonna order the lobster.
Right, And you never know if it's a code, like have you just asked to be disappeared out to the remote Pacific Northwest? Yeah?
Like the vacuum cleaner stay exactly.
Yeah. And with this we're seeing, we're seeing this bigger pattern at play. What do you think should we take a break for a word from our sponsors and find out more about these Chile and grime rings? I think we might Okay, good because if you said no, I don't know what we would have done. And we have returned all right. So why Chile? Why is Chile often the origin point for a lot of these grifts. Well, it's because Chile is the only country in Latin America
where you might not even need an ESTA. If you're from Chile, you automatically get a ninety day tourist visa.
Oh yeah, is that? Though? What's our coziness with Chile?
Have you ever been? No? It's cool, man, sure.
But why do we care like as a country, like, why are we giving them a pass in this way.
Yeah, it might go back to the Pinochet regime, right, the US was in bed with that. Yeah, it's it's difficult. That's a really good question. But they have this, they have this exception. And again, this is not a dang on the good people of Chile. If you've been there, it's it's a beautiful place. The capital is amazing. It's a weird looking country too, because you know you're trying to strip. It's just that one side of the mountain range. We should go to Chile after this episode.
I don't have a picture of Peru in my head. Is Peru similar along the side or is that? Is that just Chile? Am I just completely?
Chile is the one that's deaf, the one Chili is so weirdly thin and long that you might not even clock it on map. Yeah, let's see, let's you zoom in.
Sorry, I just I have to blow my map because I like my brain. You guys have. I don't know, Ben, I know you have a mind for geography.
I do not just fake credit there.
Oh yeah, dude, totally yep, Okay, I see what you're talking about.
Ben, Chile will stretch across like if we laid it across the Atlantic. It would connect Europe and the US.
That's insane.
I mean it's so narrow, but it's so narrow. Yeah. So anyway, we know there are multiple factors leading to this exception, and the US has a lot of bilateral, one to one kind of relationships with countries. We were talking about that brief time for about a year when the US was temporarily okay.
With Cuba, right and then not again?
Did not another another toxic relationship, you know what I mean. Cuba needs to have an alert on their phone that says, don't text the US back.
It's complicated.
Yeah, even if you've had a couple of drinks, don't worry.
I think I mentioned that my kid and their mom during that very brief window got to bop over to Cuba for a minute, and that you.
Almost went yeah yeah. Uh. We were just looking at that because we were trying to figure out just in talking without looking it up, like how long was Cuba opened?
Because months?
Right, But it made such an impact the moment that it was open and we were all everybody was like, oh wow, it's open again, and it was what do we say? It was like May to June. Yeah, So May and then wrapped around the year to June.
Okay, so a little over comparatively very short when those kind of decisions get made, and even stranger for it to be rescinded.
What led to the rescending They just weren't playing nice with the I mean like, I just like it's just just in such a big move and then to walk it back they had been done something.
The Trump administration.
Yeah, okay, that makes a little bit of sense. There was sort of a xenophobic mentality maybe would lead to walking those kinds of things back.
Yeah, maybe security concerns too, but it's yeah, Havana syndrome as well. Shout out to O'Brien's still number one person to talk to you with that. We should ask him about that, And if you hang out with Jackie Miles, ask them as well.
Havana Nana and Jonathan Strickland, which and Jonathan Strickland from Tech Stuff and brain Stuff.
We might talk to him about it soon.
Forward thinking and ridiculous history, ridiculous history. Oh yeah, we're big fans of the quist are there? So anyway, because of this, it's not that criminals in Chile are necessarily super villains or any smarter than the average cad than the Americas. It's because they have the opportunity to exercise this kind of stuff.
Oh and these are a they're very nature crimes of opportunity, even outside of this right, Yeah, crimes of outside of this loophole.
Yeah, well prepared opportunity. There's a great article in Vanity Fair came out just a couple of years back. A journalist named Mark Wartman starts tracing out another example of this complex cat and mouse game when he goes to Nassau County and speaks with Detective Jeseus Baniya, who is, as this journalist interviews him, he is in media arrests in the middle of a multi month attempt to catch this master burglar crew for a person for people strong.
Yeah, this seems I mean wow, talk about insulated.
That's where it feels like everyone has their speciality. There's a bagman, the back man, yeah, of course, and and there's the there's the getaway driver. There's probably like.
I think it's got you gotta lead foot, buddy, what in a good way? In a good way. It's a complement. You're a badass driver.
I think it means is.
Bobbin and weaving.
Bro, We'll get you some fingerless gloves I'm in and a badass scorpion jacket, yes, which I do have. Uh, And then we need a face, and then we would need Dylan.
You're the face.
Well, Dalan, give me the face as well. Dylan's well, that's true, but I could totally see you. You know what, you can rochambo for him?
So what's better than one face too?
So the face?
They called him the Janics crew. So anyway, this guy, but he he has identified the leader of this high screw, a guy named Brian Herrera Maldonado. And this person is a kid. He's twenty four years old.
Crazy, twenty four years old. He is one of the most wanted burglars in the New York City metro area.
We're talking about Nasau County, guys. This is Maldonado.
Yeah, and it's also kaching right, average incomes so high that no one's going to correct their pronunciations.
Well, and Mania told the writer from Vanity Fair that the gang came from South America specifically to commit crime, and they did a real good job. They were very good at doing crimes.
Yeah, breaking into at least one hundred homes across the country, not the county. The gang made off with cash, jewelry, electronics, wristwatches, designer clothes, handbags, you know, red bottom shoes, whatever, from straight up mansions, the kind of places that are known to have their own like private security or the kind of places where I will be sensitive about saying this, the kind of places where nine to one one shows up on time.
That's true, yep.
And they still they got away with it because, like you were saying, there, they've got great observation skills. They case a joint just like you would see in a crime film. They don't just know when someone's away from their domicile, you know, for how long? Yeah, how far away have they traveled? Where they're at?
That's exactly right. What is their window? You always say, Ben, and I completely agree. Don't be a dumb dumb don't post about where you are on vacation. No, and for how you know what I mean? That's that's privileged information that can absolutely be actionable by people trying to.
Do you harm. Yeah, that's why. And you see it with celebrities too, That's why. Usually what a or often when a celebrities social media manager posts something it's after it is after exactly. Yeah.
I tend to do that as well, you know, save up some things and then post it when I get home. But I do. Sometimes I'll post a little story if I'm on a trip, but it's usually there's someone home still.
Yeah, there we go, people sitting right, Yeah.
Yeah. Do you guys remember the story we did in Strange News about the hidden camera across the street. Yeah, it was found. It was they just put it down some leaves. Basically, somebody riding a bike just dropped it and then left.
And then that was for casing of joints.
Right, it appears that that's what it was. Casing a joint to find out that information you're talking about when they leave, when they come back, all that stuffes.
That requires a long game of observation. Yes, to have good data that is actually able, and it's so easy to do that.
You could drop a camera with a pedestrian, with someone on a bike, that's a little tougher depending on how public the thoroughfare is, like how likely a stranger is to be there. That's what makes the cult is actifficult, for instance, Boom. But another way around that is just something that looks like a work van. Another thing that's very easy, just get some kind of pizza company's brand and just temporarily affix it to a car. It's like, no, he's supposed.
To be here.
It is funny too, because these are very similar tactics to what might be used by the FBI in case like a Rico type situation, you know, like in the Sopranos.
I'm telling you, these folks learn from each other, They take the methods that the other sides using that works, and then they do it.
Dude.
And speaking of that, one other thing, just connecting these strange news stories, the other one about the robbery crew that was going through or the burglary crew that was going through with devices that can disable the Wi Fi cameras. So like if you did have sophisticated folks like Maldonado's gang that had some kind of tech where just wherever they roam, they're gonna you know, none of the cameras are gonna function properly. That's pretty dangerous.
Because your home camera system is on your Wi Fi and if it's not protected, you know, in a pretty robust way, someone can very easily get access to all of that stuff.
And it's also not to scare anyone, but check on your your internet security because it's also stupid easy. It is trivial to find those devices or even make them on your own if you like cool weekend projects.
Exactly what's that little tiny device called the flipper flippers zero.
Which is like a thing that you can buy.
I get ads for that everywhere I go online. Now it's like, yeah, hey, don't you want a couple of weeks?
Well, also, that's an all in one toolkit, but it is.
What's the legal justification for the existence or something like that as a project?
Penetration testing testing, That's exactly what it.
Was, thank you.
Yeah, but that's also anybody in that kind of field or an enthusiast for that stuff will point out the Flipper is someone overpriced and it doesn't do any It has more toys than usual in the same device, but it doesn't do anything you couldn't well.
You couldn't do just with a little bit of know how in a laptop.
Yeah, yeah, with the right equipment, Yeah, with the right radio equipment. So anyway, check out our episodes on that stuff. Bania says. Maldonado's gang is bigger than this one county. He says. The activities are bigger than even Maldonado's gang. They go, yeah, these four guys go around the country, but then this crew is just one of dozens that
he's chasing every year because it works like selling. Yeah, or you could, you know, you could even do a kind of three card monte of internet travel and say, Okay, I don't want to come, yeah, I don't want to get clocked for some reason going straight from Chile to the US. So maybe I go to a second country for a second, and then I come in from there, and I'm just on the way back to Chile, you know, and thought I might stop out and see the Statue of Liberty or maybe upstate New.
York, because you're still a Chilean citizen, right, so you come on right in.
And now you just happen to be walking by the street.
And surely they're not traveling with this ill gotten booty on their persons. They're shipping it, they're smuggling it in some other ways, or they're like fencing it even in the country before they.
Get back, fencing in the country. Sending the money, because sending the money below certain thresholds, Like we're talking about, sending the money is usually going to be easier than sending the tangible object. Absolutely, you steal the Lamberg declaire that kind of stuff, right, They are going to ask you, Yeah, you can't just have loose Lamborghinis.
They sink ships.
Apparently, yes, so loose diamonds, loose Lamborghini And he's that's the kind of stuff customs will look twice at. Oh yeah, you know, not that we've been in that situation, but you can find similar stories in cities across the United States. There's the story from twenty twenty two when San Diego neighborhoods were rocked by this proliferation of pro level, high end burglaries. And the weird thing is the detective in that case, Justin Cole, is pretty much saying the same
stuff that Detective Bonia is saying. A continent away.
Yep, hmm, he had this to say. The intelligence says they're primarily Chilean nationals. They're coming here on a tourist visa program. They're involved in all types of crimes, not just residential burglaries. They do pickpocket crime, break into vehicles, steal credit cards, anything. They can do to make as
much money as possible before they go back. And again, it's quotes like this that would make it really easy for someone to be like, they're exporting their criminals, they're coming into our country, all of that, and interpret this in some sort of xenophobic kind of way. But I think it's important to remember that the reporting and the people who have been caught, that's what we're talking about here. But we do know, as you mentioned, Ben, this is
coming from all kinds of parts of the world. This is an old tactic, more than thirty years old. Oh yeah, yeah, it very much is. And look, there were more than sixty burglaries in the San Diego County alone by twenty twenty two. They were all linked to a single group, and they all happen in the fancy pants neighborhoods. And just like the other detectives, Detective Cole sees a larger pattern at play and is starting to say, hold on,
why does this match similar burglaries in southern California? Hang on, why does this match stuff in the Midwest. Imagine that stomach dropping moment when you keep going east and you keep seeing this. It's this matching m right, like the types of victims being selected, the types of the way that they're casing the joints, etc.
Well, yeah, we saw in here it's den for Colorado, Houston, Texas, like literally all across the United States.
Would you guys agree with when of course we're talking about like if you're rich like this, maybe you have private security and all that, but there is sort of in certain parts of the country there's maybe a little bit of blissful ignorance around these types of situations where it's like, oh, we're untouchable because we're in the safe neighborhood.
So that's why I kept saying these feel like crimes of opportunity because there are people who maybe aren't expecting to get robbed, or there isn't that crime element that already exists in these parts of the country.
And then there are the other questions about level of sophistication. Have these crime rings, like other crime rings, evolved to the point where they can take request which can happen right if you have the right defense.
Some celebrities got hit and I think and we oh when we talked about before it was footballers.
In the UK. Yes, there's some great articles about that. Those in some cases those maybe South American nationals suspected, but then are also the Eastern Europeans.
M hmmm, yeah, and Abanians.
But it's so true. It is that kind of thing. You notice somebody that has a lot of wealth or flaunts wealth a little bit, and they just get on a bunch of different radars. You just have to get on the wrong radar.
And yeah, and the other, which is why I never tell anybody your financial stuff ever, you know what I mean.
There's always someone out there waiting to take you down a peg, you know, and you just don't want to be a mark.
Don't be a mark. Don't make yourself a mark. Don't mark yourself. Another question about the sophistication and the capabilities here would be have they have these rings? Some of them evolved to the point where they have their own internal rubric, like have they case something and then stepped away because they thought, yeah, yeah, which I think is I think that speaks to intelligence.
Intelligence patience, right, Yeah, it is a high level of long game kind of cons right.
And you know, if anybody listening who's in law enforcement related fields, obviously this is a high level of view. But you'll already see how tricky this becomes. Even once someone is apprehended. As we like to say, down here, one monkey doesn't stop the show, right, the complex interactions, the laws from multiple countries along with deportation or extradition policies. This is a mountain of paperwork, right, and people are
already overworked, especially going back to that bilateral thing. The US has different bilateral agreements with all kinds of countries extradition type stuff, right, right, right, you know it's there's a case recently. I don't know if we'll get to it next week. This this guy had been discovered. Like we're talking about faking your death or pseudo side. This guy had been discovered after faking his death entirely to
ghost his family. He manufactured a kayak accident. He's living in Uzbekistan and there's no way they're going to get him.
Yeah, he said, I won't tell you exactly where I am and I'm not coming home.
But it's definitely beist. By the way, Like, the US is very good at finding people across the world, but usually we'll play by international norms unless they think someone's a high value target and they're willing to take the geopolitical hit.
As soon as Bekistan, the who Borat hates.
Because he's from Kazakhstan.
Yeah, and then talking trash about thebex potassium.
I would love to go to Zbekistan. The stands are tough though, seriously, But anyway, and you know, we see how it's difficult to stamp this out. You're playing whack a mole, right with people who can disappear, with moles that can disappear at any time. So I gotta tell you, I don't know about you, guys, but I think it's pretty unlikely that this grift will end anytime soon due to the difficulty of plugging that loophole.
We'll just change it up.
Yeah, Yeah, they'll just change it up. They'll just modify the tactics. And you know, I love the point we made earlier when we talked about how this can be red meat for maybe bad faith actors, but immigration. We've got to remember the vast number of immigrants, not just in the US but everywhere in the US, in particular, documented or undocumented. They're not criminals. They're moving because not necessarily because they want it to, because they have to, right,
And I think that's important. Please keep that mind in our future episode on the Darien Gap. We are going to do that right, yes, okay, hopefully, And there's no proof that immigration creates crime. Sorry, that's just that's part of it, at least here in the US.
Yeah, the people we're talking about here are on a mission to do crime right. It is not These are not tourists. Actually, these are not actually people who are coming over for work. They're literally coming over for the crimes.
Yeah, the crime is their work, right, and then they don't necessarily have long time plans to settle down and live in the US. They're getting the bag and then they're going back and its shift change and someone else comes in.
It just goes straight into one of those international banks we've talked about that is really good at looking the other words.
Criminal friendly, yes, non judgment whomever those banks may be.
Folks. Also, before we end, you know, this is usually when we say we want to hear your thoughts. We know there's a very sensitive issue to a lot of people. We know this touch is on deep conspiracy and crime, and we know that people have probably had personal interactions with some level of this, whether via law enforcement or
someone diasper. You know, before you do any of that before we close tonight, we wanted to take a moment and remember our our leader for a long time, the founder of How Stuff Works, Marshall bringing the Third.
Yeah, we just got news that he passed away this week as we're recording, and we had not we had not heard that our boss, who also you know who has been our boss, gosh since two thousand and six, two thousand and seven. She just texted us as we're recording. It's just really sad.
Well, and I never met the guy, but I mean from the moment that I walked in the door at How Stuff Works, the guy I just absolutely loomed large. And we did have him on an episode one.
Yeah, that was a part of the future of life on Mars.
That's exactly right. But I know for y'all, I mean, he was a staple in the office for for a long time.
Oh gosh, we have I appreciate that. We have so many stories which just absolutely adored and looked up to mister Brain. As a matter of fact, the only problem I ever had with uh with Marshall Brain was that he didn't he didn't officially get the PhD to be doctor Brain. And I spent years in this opportunity. I spent years trying to convince him how cool that would be. But brilliant man, renaissance man, so much about everything and
will be will be sorely missed. He's the reason we're doing this now.
Absolutely, And I'm sure a lot of people who met him through he's a professor at North Carolina University.
In North Carolina State.
North Carolina State, And yeah, I'm sure his students. Anybody who's somehow interacting with him probably remembers.
That dude, he's the one who taught us the world is both understandable and worth understanding.
Yeap.
Hats off to you, Marshall brain.
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