Nic McKinley, Ex-CIA: The Digital Age of Trafficking - Protecting Our Children

In this episode, Nick McKinley discusses the critical issue of human trafficking, emphasizing the stark differences between kidnapping and trafficking. He highlights the modern methods traffickers use to exploit children, particularly through social media and online platforms. McKinley shares insights into the mission of Deliver Fund, which leverages technology to combat trafficking and support law enforcement. The conversation also touches on the legal landscape, the influence of lobbyists, and the economic impact of trafficking. McKinley urges parents to take proactive measures to protect their children and emphasizes the importance of community involvement in the fight against trafficking.

Takeaways

* Human trafficking is often misunderstood as kidnapping, but it primarily occurs online.
* The majority of child abductions are familial, not stranger abductions.
* Traffickers exploit children through social media, posing as peers to gain trust.
* Parents should be vigilant about their children's online interactions and social media use.
* Deliver Fund uses technology to assist law enforcement in combating trafficking.
* There is a need for stricter regulations on social media platforms to protect children.
* Lobbyists for the pornography industry significantly influence legislation related to trafficking.
* The economic impact of trafficking is substantial, affecting countless lives.
* Community involvement and awareness are crucial in the fight against trafficking.
* Education and training on trafficking are essential for both law enforcement and the public.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

All right, folks, I've got Nick McKinley back by popular demand, I'll say. So many have asked for him to come back on. I have a bunch of questions, different topics that you all have asked for me to get in the hands of Nick so that he can talk on this episode today. So I'm fired up for this one. Every time I get to talk to Nick, I leave so inspired and just informed as a dad of four young kids, right? So I do want to say you completely opened my eyes with this difference of kidnapping versus trafficking, which we're going to get into today. Um, but let's start off next. So you, you did this incredible, you're a PJ and then go in and do this, these incredible assignments around the world for the CIA. And some major thing happened. It was so major that it got you so important that it got you to start Deliver Fund. I'm going to leave this to you. Tell us about the whole thing. Give us the story.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06

The Cliff Notes version is that I was in a place ending in Stan. I was in what is largely considered the most dangerous city in the world. At the time, we were conducting intelligence operations, counterterrorism-focused operations, and myself and a Joint Special Operations Command counterpart, who was an intelligence collector, I came across or collected what I like to call smoking gun Intel on a human trafficker. And that was something that we were trying to figure out who cares about this issue and where do we like, where do we send this Intel, right? If you get narcotics information, especially if it connects to the homeland, that's very simple to be like, Hey, DEA, here's some information, right? I mean, it's you get some, I don't know, white collar crime information coming out of wall street. Hey, FBI, here's some information, right? I mean, it's very, very simple. Yeah. Who's got the ball in the human trafficking issue? And what I learned through that process was that one, There was nobody at the CIA was collecting on this issue. It wasn't something that the CIA was concerned with. That's not because the CIA is bad. It's because politicians have just said, this is not one of your mandates. And there wasn't anybody really hyper-focused on this issue. There was a trafficking in persons office at the Department of State, but it was primarily a research arm. There wasn't anybody actually going after traffickers there. And so I started doing more research and learned that dollar for dollar, the largest human trafficking market is the United States of America. And that's kind of the crossroads that I came to is like, well, I got to do something about this, or I got to at least try to do something about this. And so my general thesis was that I could take the counterterrorism methodologies and the use of technology that I had learned through almost 20 years of the war on terror. And I could pivot those to counter human trafficking and to helping US law enforcement. And so that's what I did. And that was just over 10 years ago. And we've been more successful than I could have imagined and continuing to fight the good fight every day.

SPEAKER_01: 3:21

That's incredible. What's the difference between trafficking

SPEAKER_00: 3:28

and kidnapping? Yeah. online and having conversations with them online it's not that abductions don't happen um it they're just very rare so non-familial uh uh or non-familial abductions in the United States are so rare that when you look at the data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is the best data that exists on this, in 2022, they had 27,644 total missing child cases, right? So 27,644. Okay. Total

SPEAKER_01: 4:25

missing child. Got

SPEAKER_00: 4:27

it. 98 of those cases were stranger abductions.

SPEAKER_01: 4:32

Get out, no way, 98, not 98%, 98. 98,

SPEAKER_00: 4:41

less than half of 1%. So if you, right, so that's- Oh my gosh. That's 0.035%. So if you look at the population of the United States as a whole, you know, There's roughly 72 million children in the United States. Okay. So if you actually look at that, there's less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of a child being abducted by a stranger.

SPEAKER_02: 5:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 5:20

Your child has almost a higher percentage chance of being struck by lightning than they do being abducted by a stranger. What happens, right? So the threat that we're looking for, it's not that that's not a threat. Right. It's just extremely rare. Yeah. So what is the threat that we actually have to look at? And that's the threat that the internet and social media platforms pose to our kids. So it used to be before the internet that a predator could only manipulate or traffic the children that they could that they had physical access to. What the internet has done is not only allowed you and I to have this conversation between Atlanta and Whitefish, Montana, it allows us, or it allows the predators to access every single child on earth with an internet connection and a smartphone.

UNKNOWN: 6:18

It's true.

SPEAKER_00: 6:19

So it's, it's opened up the hunting ground for the predator. And so that's, that's modern human trafficking. And so when you have parents have these incredible locks on their doors and guard dogs and dads are like, I'm in the gym and I got all these guns and I got these guns and I'm going to protect my kids. It's like, well, yeah. Meanwhile, your daughter is in her room after she's mad at you for not letting her wear the mini skirt to school. Um, texting with a human trafficker on a phone that you don't even know she has. Wow. That's the reality of human trafficking in America today.

SPEAKER_01: 6:54

Okay. So what do they do? What do they do? And then online, are they on Facebook friending you? And then like, what, what's the,

SPEAKER_00: 7:01

yeah. Um, you just aged yourself. I don't think, uh, kids use Facebook for doing anything except talking to their grandparents. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, it's my space. Uh, no, they're on, I mean, half the people listening to this are probably like, what's my space. Uh, so, uh, yeah, you know, it, they're in my space. Uh, and before that they were listening to their eight tracks, the, uh, uh, and you're laughing cause I know you had them. So, uh, What they do is, you know, they're on Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, you know, all the platforms that the kids are on. And what they do is they just appear to be another kid, usually. You know, appear to be a 16-year-old boy who is targeting 14-year-old girls. That's it. Just starting conversations. And that's just it. Starting conversations, getting them to, you know, getting them to trust them and then manipulate them over a period of, Days, weeks, months. We've even seen, though it's rare, where they'll continue the conversation for a period of years and get them to trust them. Usually they'll try to either get them involved romantically or, you know, trying to pay them money and give them gifts or just trying to whatever their vulnerability is, they're trying to solve that vulnerability. And then what they do is they they Get them to send, say, a nude photo that they can now use to extort them or they get them to do something that they will regret. And then once they do that, they use that as a handle to control that. Okay. So it's what we like to call a virtual home invasion. It's happening right through your internet connection.

SPEAKER_01: 9:04

virtual home invasion and the kids, do they even know this is happening? The 14 year old girl?

SPEAKER_00: 9:12

Not at all. Um, they, they usually have no idea this is happening. Uh, and even until, until it's absolutely too late. And so for, for these, these young people, they, they'll just continue to comply, right? It'll be like, Hey, send me a photo. Now I'll send me more photos or I'm going to use this photo. I'm going to put this photo on social media and I'm going to send it to all your friends. I'm going to send it to your parents and your grandparents and your pastor and your coach and blah, blah, right? So they're just trying to extort them. And so, well, give me some more photos and this will stop. Like, okay, well now I want you to give me some money. And so they'll just continue doing that until they're like, okay, well now I want you to meet me at the McDonald's. That's three blocks from your house. And then once they agree to do that and they actually show up, Then it's all over.

SPEAKER_01: 10:05

Meaning they're taken.

SPEAKER_00: 10:06

Yeah. Meaning that at that point, the, the trafficker usually, uh, you know, they get in the traffickers car and, uh, and from there they shoot them up with, uh, high levels of narcotics. Uh, they get them addicted to those narcotics pretty quick and then they'll, uh, and then they just start selling them. And then if the, if the girl doesn't do what they want, then they just withhold the narcotics. And we've even had cases, there's many cases around the country where it's been a young girl. Her parents thought that she was at basketball practice after school, but she was actually being trafficked after school. And then she would go back to her parents' house during the day. Her parents knew that she was hanging out with some people who were no good, but they didn't know that she was literally being trafficked out of their own house.

SPEAKER_01: 10:53

And the trafficking is for sex or for work or for

SPEAKER_00: 10:58

both? No, it is primarily for commercial sex.

SPEAKER_01: 11:03

What's a girl like, like with basketball, she's the parents think she's a basketball. What? And she's out being in traffic. Is she like taken to a home and then like men show up at that or what does the model look like?

SPEAKER_00: 11:14

So it could be anything. It could be, they take her to a hotel, they take her to a home. Like they're, they're basically booking appointments for her, um, for whatever period of hours they have her. And then, you know, so if, if they've got full control of her, they're booking, they're appointments for her 16 to 18 hours a day, uh, seven days a week. If they are, if they don't have full control over her, then they're, you know, they're not booking, uh, they're, they're booking her for the hours that they have her. And, and every time it's, oh, you know, um, you, I had photos before, but now I have, now they've got video of these men abusing her. And now we're going to put this video on the internet. And so, yeah, they'll, they'll, they'll basically just continually extort these, these young girls until they've just destroyed them and have them completely under control.

SPEAKER_01: 12:09

And then is it happening with boys too?

SPEAKER_00: 12:13

It is. It's, it's not as, it's a little more rare, but it absolutely is happening with young boys as well.

SPEAKER_01: 12:20

All right. What do we, what does somebody look out for?

SPEAKER_00: 12:25

So you're not going to see this unless you're in on it or you're actually monitoring your kids' communications or something like that. So the best thing that parents can do is just don't let your kids have social media. Don't let them have a phone and don't let them have social media. My kids know that they don't get a phone until we feel like they need one or they get their driver's license. They... Like the risk is just not worth the reward. Just don't let your kids on social media. And the parents who think that, oh, no, I can control this. I can understand. It's like you're so naive. That's like, you know, that's like going away for the weekend and leaving a bunch of alcohol and being like, oh, my my kids would never touch the alcohol. My kids would never throw a party. My kids. Right. And it's always the parents who say my kids would never who we end up getting the calls from law enforcement about. Uh, and, and it's, yeah, it, it, so the, the point here is that, um, you're not going to see it. There's all kinds of conspiracy theories. Heck we could do a whole four hour episode just on the conspiracy theories of the, like the water bottle on the car that, um, is going around the internet or the zip tie on the door handle. Yeah. Yeah. And it just it just makes it worse. And I'm sorry to the 42 year old mom of three who is, you know, really thinking that she still looks the way that she did when she was 22. But that no, there's not a human trafficker following you around Whole Foods after you got your mani peni.

SPEAKER_02: 14:17

Like,

SPEAKER_00: 14:17

that's just not the situation when it comes to the fight against human trafficking. You're not the product the human trafficker is looking for, but your daughter is. And And no, they're not following you around frigging Target while trying to abduct your daughter. They don't have to do that. They're talking with her online. They manipulate her over a period of weeks to months to then get her to come to them. That's the way that human trafficking works in the US. And so as an organization that has more human trafficking data than any organization in existence, we have the data to show us how human trafficking works and what these human trafficking cases look like. And we've been involved in hundreds and hundreds of cases over the last 10 years. And it's never a zip tie on the door handle. It's always... a child who gets contacted online

SPEAKER_01: 15:20

wow so key phrase they're trying to get the child to come to them

SPEAKER_00: 15:26

yes yes absolutely that's essentially if anybody's abducting anybody it's the child abducting themselves uh and and either running away or um you know going to go meet a trafficker and they think it's just going to be a temporary thing and obviously that that's anything You

SPEAKER_01: 15:46

can also be trafficked and still live in your house.

SPEAKER_00: 15:51

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:54

That was the girl, the basketball girl. What

SPEAKER_00: 15:58

else is that like? We had a trafficking case of a young girl who was going to an extremely expensive private school. So a family of, of considerable means. And she was being, you know, parents were just kind of checked out. And so she was actually being trafficked. She was showing up to school every day. Everybody knew something was wrong with her, but nobody knew obviously what it was. And she was being trafficked every day, right after school.

SPEAKER_01: 16:29

In that same scenario, some man getting her, picking her up, take her to a place where she was, I mean, I hate even saying it, but she's like already

SPEAKER_00: 16:37

rented, rented by the, By the hour, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 16:42

Are the parents just busy and out living life and not even seeing? Or what does that

SPEAKER_00: 16:47

look like? Yeah, they knew something was wrong with their daughter. Oh, it must just be the angsty teenage years or whatever the case may be. But no, she was being trafficked.

SPEAKER_01: 16:58

Are there any new– I remember on episode 10, the two big ones you said for the boys were Minecraft and–

SPEAKER_00: 17:07

Roblox. Roblox.

SPEAKER_01: 17:07

What are any platform, any new platforms, any, any,

SPEAKER_00: 17:14

and Roblox Roblox for, for girls as well. No. And so anytime you have a platform that has a bunch of children on it, you're going to have predators, right? Pedophiles and, and, and human traffickers are going to gravitate to that platform. They go where the kids are. Yeah. It makes sense, right? If you're going to go fishing, you're going to go with fish are. And so these predators, when you have, you know, especially platforms that are child specific, they're going to go, they're going to go where the kids are.

SPEAKER_01: 17:44

Yeah. And their, their, their profile doesn't have a little sign on it that says I'm the trafficker.

SPEAKER_00: 17:52

No, in fact, their profile might be a 40 year old man who's posing as a, you know, as a 16 year old girl. That's a 14 year old girl.

SPEAKER_01: 18:04

This works. I mean, I could, I couldn't imagine anything more rewarding when you bring these people to justice, but holy cow. I mean, what is this along the way? This has got to be extremely frustrating or something.

SPEAKER_00: 18:19

I mean, it's definitely angering at the same point. We are at the same time. We have a, a lot of hope because we know why this happens. We know technology is the problem. And so what we do with the generosity of our donors and the donations that they give us is we build these technical platforms that then we provide this data and these technical platforms to law enforcement for free so that they can fight trafficking at the scale of the problem.

UNKNOWN: 18:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 18:52

That's, we're going to unpack that first. I want to, I want to learn a little bit more about the social media. So you said phone age 16, tell me about the social media. And then I want to go to go back to what you just said. What age are you letting your kids do social

SPEAKER_00: 19:05

media? I'm not. They will, they'll turn 18. And if they have a social, if they want to open a social media account as an adult, like that's a choice that they get to make. But while they are under my roof, they're not going to have social media, like full stop.

SPEAKER_01: 19:20

black it's just black and white like that's

SPEAKER_00: 19:23

it there is there is no pot that's like send putting your children on social media is like sending them to a prison and then being surprised that they come out as a criminal right there there is not a single study not even one that anybody can point to that shows any type of positive effect on children of social media it's only negative for children. It's only negative. The question is how much, right? So if you look at the suicide epidemic, you look at the self-esteem issues that young women are having, the body issues, just all the types of shaming that's happening online. You look at all the mental health issues and all of the mental health issues that the modern generation is having. They are all almost all tied to some type of internet issue, either too many video games or too much social media. I mean, we almost long for a day when too much TV is the problem, right? Wow. If suddenly kids were watching too much TV, that would be a step in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01: 20:44

In the right direction. Gosh,

SPEAKER_00: 20:46

it's

SPEAKER_01: 20:47

crazy. All right. Maybe we'll get there. All right. So the model, how does Deliver Fund support? How do you... locate these agencies need help. Let's go through the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00: 21:02

So what we do is we harvest massive amounts of data online. Um, we are currently our, our counter human trafficking databases is over, you know, over 5 billion data points. It's probably closer to seven at this point. Um, and what we do is we take that, uh, we take that data, And we apply various filters and AI to it to help make sense of, you know, what is commercial sex information and what is human trafficking related. Because when these girls, you know, they're not spending their time behind sewing machines. They're being sold for sex. That's what they're doing with them. Young boy, you know, 12-year-old boy gets trafficked off of an Xbox or off a conversation from an Xbox. They're not trafficking him so that they can force him to sew jeans. Unfortunately, it's commercial sex in nature is what they're doing with these children. And so what we do is we harvest data, advertising data off the open internet because they advertise these children. They try to make them look older than they are, but they advertise them on the open internet. on what appear to be escort sites, but that's not what they are. We all know that. And so as they advertise them, we harvest all that data in and then we look for signal within that data and provide that to law enforcement for free. And then we provide man hours and we have former detectives and intelligence analysts who actually build out these intelligence reports for law enforcement so that they can go target human traffickers better, faster, and in a way that is overall cheaper. That's

SPEAKER_01: 22:50

incredible. And all that's built out now. That's all going.

SPEAKER_00: 22:53

That's all going. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 22:56

Cool stuff on the horizon too, that we're going to get.

SPEAKER_00: 22:58

Yeah. We're, we're currently building out some biometrics, some, you know, very first purpose-built biometric tools for, you know, comparing missing children and, and trafficking victims where we're, we're still, we're still building out more and more tech, but yeah, what I described earlier is that is, that is in operation has been in operation for a number of years.

SPEAKER_01: 23:20

Okay. Let's talk a little bit about the law. Is the law on your side or is it a fight? Do you feel, or is it too early

SPEAKER_00: 23:29

to tell? The law is definitely on our side when it comes to this, right? There's so many laws that can be used to prevent the exploitation of children or to charge people with child exploitation, human trafficking. So law's on our side. In fact, I would actually make an argument that in most cases, we don't need better laws. What we need is better laws and better regulation around social media. So the fact that I can go stand up an Instagram account right now from my phone while we talk in probably the next three minutes and pretend that I'm a 14-year-old boy is like, that's the problem. And I don't understand why the social media companies allow that. There is not a single good argument, not even one, that anybody could come up with. And anybody listens to this and says they can come up with a good argument, let me know. Jeff, I'm sure you'd be happy to host us and we'll have a debate about it. But there's not a single good argument that anybody can come up with why a 47-year-old man should be able to get on a social media platform and pretend that they are a 14-year-old boy, pretend that they are a child. Not one good argument. There is no steel man there. There is no devil's advocate there. There is only bad. And anybody who does that is a bad person. There is no good person who says, you know what I think I'm going to do? I think I'm going to go stand up a account and I'm going to just, you know, pretend to be a young child and I'm going to go talk to other young children. There's no, there's, and it amazes me how people just don't understand that. And, and in my, the way I view this is there's a line in the sand and it is this simple. Try to, people try to complicate it and they try to make it, oh, there's gray area. You don't understand. No, no, there isn't. There's a line in the sand. And on one side of that line is the unapologetic prioritization of the protection of children. That's the side I'm on. And on the other side of that is the prioritization of the protection of predators and criminals. I have chosen my side. Everybody else needs to choose theirs. And I think that when people are starting to bring up these like, nuanced and hypothetical arguments for why somebody should be allowed to do this or that when it comes to the protection of predators and criminals, all those people are telling you is that they're in on that.

SPEAKER_02: 26:11

They're

SPEAKER_00: 26:12

in on it. They're the ones using the pornography and they don't want to have to show who they are. They don't want to validate their ID. The reason why they don't want to have every scene now, and I'm not saying that, you know, I personally think we should do a pornography, but I understand there's a, there's a constitutional right to speech. And so people get to do that, but there's no, there's no reason why there shouldn't have to be a proof of age verification and a proof of consent for those pornography actors and the the people who are against that there's only one reason why they're against that it's because they because they're users of that pornography and they want the younger stuff right um it's uh there's so the the parents who you know make money off of their instagram influencer children and don't want to have these age Um, you know, age verification and age restrictions on, you know, on children who could be influencers on Instagram. There's only one reason why they don't want to do that because those are trafficking their children, making money off of them. Um, I mean, this is, this is such a black and white issue. It's not really up for debate. And what's funny is when people debate this, all they're doing is telling people exactly what they're into. Um, you know, I see this all the time when I'll be doing a fundraiser or a talk for Deliver Fund or something like that, and I'll be talking about human trafficking. I'll be talking about how these young girls are sold for sex and all that. And inevitably, I'll have a man come up and be like, well, I mean, isn't that just the oldest profession in the world? I'm like, wait a minute. I was just talking about human trafficking of children this whole time, and you brought up prostitution. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 28:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 28:10

And I promise you, there are some people listening to this right now who are very confronted by the words that I'm saying. And to that, I say, good. Good. I'm glad. I hope you're getting uncomfortable. I hope your friends are getting uncomfortable. And I hope that that will actually motivate you to stop doing the things that you're doing and stop feeding money into the human trafficking market.

SPEAKER_01: 28:34

Yeah. That's what a message, man. That is awesome. I want to understand the model. Is it in DC? Is it the lobbyists? Why is meta used to be Facebook, right? So it's meta now and they got Instagram and they got WhatsApp and 3.2 billion active users a day. Why do they want 14-year-olds to be able to open an account because they can stop it very easily. They can stop it. Tomorrow. What lobbyists are in what pockets trying to do what? What's

SPEAKER_00: 29:15

going on with them? You're onto something there. And that's my general belief here is that, look, Mark Zuckerberg is not some evil guy, right? He's not some evil genius who put all this together so he can exploit kids, right? He's a super smart dude who managed to get lucky and figure out how to build a platform that made a ton of money that a lot of people used. And all of a sudden he had this massive scale problem. I actually don't fault him. I don't fault the folks at Meta. There's actually some great people at Meta that are trying their best to protect

SPEAKER_02: 29:49

kids.

SPEAKER_00: 29:50

They just have a... They have a scale problem. So why is it that they can do that? I'll tell you why. It's because your politicians allow it. Why is it that if I walk into my bank over here with$10,000 with really any amount of cash in a duffel bag and I say, hey, I want to deposit this, they're going to take the money, but the deposit is going to be held up for investigation. So why is it that that is the case, but somebody suspiciously opening an account and not having to show ID on an account, like that's not having to have a picture of who they really are or any of that, like that's not okay. So why is it that we protect our banks and we protect cash and our economic system more than we protect our children? I mean, we do, right? We have armed guards at our banks. Very few schools have armed guards, right? We have, I mean, you have to be very careful about what you say in a bank. You don't have to be careful about what you say to a child online. I mean, it just, it makes zero sense. And I think the reason here is that these companies have to compete, right? Meta has to compete with TikTok, has to compete with Snapchat and all that. So So what they're doing is they've got to have the numbers up. They got to keep their shareholders happy. They have to have all that. I actually blame the politicians because I think Meta would love nothing more. I don't know about TikTok, but Snapchat and all these platforms would probably love nothing more than just to have a blanket set of rules that everybody had to apply to. So if we just said, Hey, look, if you're a child under 14 years old, whatever the age is, You have to have proven parental consent in order to have one of these accounts. Or if you're under this age, you just can't have it, right? Just like we do with drinking, right? Your parents can't go buy you alcohol if you're under 21. They can't like be like, oh, I'm going to go ahead and sign off on the fact that I'm going to allow my child to drink. Right. We don't allow that. We don't allow children to buy tobacco. Even if the parents say they can buy tobacco, we don't allow that. I mean, it's still a violation of the law. We don't allow children to buy pornography. Even if the parents say they can buy pornography, we don't do that. So why don't we have something similar for the protection of our children? Just say, hey, all children are the age of 14 cannot have any social media accounts. And we're going to enforce that by making it so that you, social media companies, have to verify the identity of the people who are opening these accounts. I mean, you can do so much damage to so many people with a single social media account, and you can damage way more people and individual lives than you can by opening a fake bank account. So why is it that we require verification of ID, verification of identity in order to open a bank account where the only person you're going to hurt is the government? And yet we can have people open social media accounts with no verification of ID whatsoever. And in the age of AI, they don't even have to hire people to do that. I know. I mean, the smart programmers at these companies, they can build a system inside of a week that's going to solve that problem. Oh. And yeah, their accounts are going to go down and all that. But hey, we just solved the bot problem. We just made the whole platform more valuable. Yeah. I mean, there's no downside to doing that. It's nothing but upside. It's just that... Meta cannot be expected to do that if TikTok doesn't. If Apple doesn't, if Snapchat doesn't, if Google doesn't, they can't be expected to do that. And to me, that's the crux of the issue is that's where regulators just need to come in and just say, hey, you have to verify that this account is a real person and it's not a child.

SPEAKER_01: 34:05

Just like opening a bank account.

SPEAKER_00: 34:08

Correct. Like

SPEAKER_01: 34:08

you said before.

SPEAKER_00: 34:09

Same thing. Just like opening a bank account or opening up any other type of account in a regulated industry. And so that's the issue. And again, on one side is the unapologetic prioritization, the protection of children. On the other side is the prioritization, the protection of predators and criminals. And oftentimes that gets housed under the lens of, well, digital privacy. And so, no, it's like, look, if you aren't willing to give up a little bit of digital privacy to protect children from being raped, then shame on you. And you're probably part of the problem.

SPEAKER_01: 34:47

Yeah. And isn't it massive? Like, isn't it one of the second, I want to say I read or saw a stat, second arms trading? It's like the largest

SPEAKER_00: 34:56

global. Yeah, there's, you know, this is actually one of the bad things about the nonprofit world when it comes to the fight against human trafficking. They throw around all these statistics that are just not backed in good data. Number one illicit commodity in the world is narcotics. The number two isn't even close. Number two right now is illegal arms sales because anytime you have lots of wars going on, you're going to have lots of weapons moving. So that's just the case there. Number three is financial fraud. There's a lot of pig butchering scams, which there's a trafficking relation there, but that's overseas. Pig butchering scams, the finance fraud, the Nigerian prince who has all this gold who just wants to send it to you. You get those emails and you and I laugh, but they're sending those emails at a high scale because they pay off.

SPEAKER_01: 35:49

They

SPEAKER_00: 35:50

work. I know a guy. who I used to work with, who is this former Navy SEAL, who actually fell for one of those things and went to Africa with a bag with$175,000 cash in it and basically came home with no gold and no bag. Yeah. And so there's these dumb people who just really want this to be real. And so they're- you know, they're just devoid of all logic and are willing to, you know, take the risk that quite frankly, they know is probably wrong anyway. Um, so there's probably some type of psychological issue there that I don't really understand, but the point is, is that financial fraud is huge, huge, illicit, illicit industry, right? Um, stolen credit card information, that kind of stuff. Uh, and so there's a lot of these, and then human trafficking is usually like fourth or fifth, uh, depending on, on what's happening.

UNKNOWN: 36:51

Um,

SPEAKER_00: 36:51

And the working theory for a lot of these people was that, well, once you do drugs, they're metabolized and they're gone and the child can be sold multiple times is kind of the, you know, was kind of the working theory, which doesn't really hold water because you can't. Right. I mean, you can put a bunch of cocaine in a shipping container and leave it there for a year and it's probably worth more later. You can't just put a bunch of people in a shipping container and like not feed them and give them a place to use the restroom. And I mean, like people have overhead as any business owner knows. And so people are always the number one line item on any P&L and any business and illicit commodity businesses are no different. You also can't. right? You can't, you can sell people by the hour. There's a limit to scale. You can't sell them by the gram or by the pound, uh, right. Or by the kilo. And so you can't transport, you know, I mean, so on a, on a ounce to ounce basis, pound to pound basis, however you want to measure it, these other illicit commodities are, are way, um, are way more profitable and they're, they're bigger economies, but other than narcotics with, with fentanyl, I would, I would make an argument that there's no other illicit commodity market that hurts more people. Definitely that ruins more lives than narcotics would be number one. And the trafficking market would be number two because trafficking it's, it's ruining the life of the child. It's ruining the life of the trafficker, which like I mean, quite frankly, who cares? Bad people anyway. And then it's also ruining the life of the customer.

SPEAKER_01: 38:38

Wow. All right. Let's look at the person who's going. I'm going to use a hotel room for the example. So guys go in a hotel room to meet the girl who, let's say, is the high school basketball girl. That guy is paying for that service how?

SPEAKER_00: 38:56

Cash? No. Cash app? is the biggest one we see, um, is the use of cash app. Uh, he's, he's using Zelle. He's using Apple pay. Uh,

SPEAKER_01: 39:10

he's using

SPEAKER_00: 39:12

paying the trafficker, some LLC that they stood up or just Venmoing money directly to the trafficker. Um, right. Uh, or he's ordering an Uber and the, and the trafficker is an Uber driver and, you know, gives a hundred dollar tip, uh, or whatever the case may be. I mean, so there, there's so many, Yeah. Right. Right. And, um, she won't know it. And when he asks her to do some stuff for money, she'll do it. Like there's no such thing as this, this like escort, um, world. So like, let's just everybody devoid that myth right now. Um, so what you're talking about is either prostitution or human trafficking. Um, and they're both commercial sex related and when, and to the untrained eye, they, they look the same, but they're definitely not.

UNKNOWN: 40:27

Um,

SPEAKER_00: 40:27

And so this guy is going to this hotel room because he, he basically booked a date on an escort site and she's like, okay, meet me at this hotel at this room number. Or he brings her into his hotel or house or whatever the case is. And he thinks that she's a prostitute and this is a victimless crime and all that stuff. Well, first of all, there's no such thing as a victimless crime when it comes to prostitution. And that's a whole longer conversation. The second is that, about an 80% chance, um, depending on the platform that she's actually a victim of human trafficking and that, um, percent. Oh yeah. And that the person that he was communicating with wasn't actually her, it was her trafficker.

SPEAKER_01: 41:07

Right. Is

SPEAKER_00: 41:10

that so the

SPEAKER_01: 41:11

word, but I don't even like, I can't stand saying, is that like a pimp? Is that what that guy

SPEAKER_00: 41:16

is? Yeah. So, so a pimp is a human trafficker. There's no such thing as a pimp who is not a human trafficker. Um, Every single pimp is a human trafficker. Hopefully, like people hear me loud and clear, pimps are human traffickers. It's not some kind of business deal or any of that kind of stuff. So what we call a pimp or what used to call a pimp is a human trafficker.

SPEAKER_01: 41:40

Yeah. So the whole reason I wanted to get into this conversation was how do they actually measure this when they're given these statistics if a lot of people... are paying for these services and they're still on track, whether it's cash or can they track the cash app? Isn't

SPEAKER_00: 41:59

that- Oh yeah, so Cash App is an actual app called Cash App that you could download right now. And it's like Venmo or Apple Pay, right? You know, you can just, it's just a way to send money between people. It just happens to be the preferred platform for human traffickers.

SPEAKER_01: 42:19

Yeah, and in the description, The person buying and using the cash app isn't putting on their like for sex services with a traffic 14 year old. So how are we getting in there? Like what I'm ultimately getting at is I'm afraid this is even bigger than we think it is than what we're

SPEAKER_00: 42:39

measuring. It's significantly bigger than what we're measuring in terms of the economics of it and the people affected. I think it's very, it's a lot bigger. I don't think the economics though, like there are these, these rumors that it's$150 billion a year industry. If you look at where that, you know, how the math was done on the study that came up with that number, it's. It's a, it's just not a good number. That's why I don't use it. Like the math doesn't work,

SPEAKER_02: 43:12

but

SPEAKER_00: 43:13

regardless of if it's a$50 billion a year industry or$150 billion industry or a$5 billion a year industry, the point is, is that you have people who are making considerable amounts of money off the exploitation of other human beings. And that's got to stop. And industry has an incredible opportunity to do that. Like if, if, if cash app would answer my emails, um, we could help them, um, completely reduce, probably to almost near zero, the number of human traffickers and pornographers and the different people who are criminals that are using their platform. We could help them do that using data and automation. They literally wouldn't have to hire a single person. But Again, they want to have their numbers. They want to have these transactions going through so that they can get their, you know, their cut on the transaction. Visa, MasterCard, Discover Card, like all of these different logos that you've got on the cards in your wallet. American Express. They all have a role to play. The problem is, is they're not playing that role. And the major reason why they're not playing that role is because it costs money and the government hasn't mandated it. them to play that role. Why has the government now mandated them to play that role? Because they've got lobbyists that are whispering sweet nothings in the ear of these senators and congressmen who are keeping the government from telling them to play that role. So ultimately, this is the fault of the politicians.

SPEAKER_01: 44:50

Okay. And is it the lobbyists on the credit card side? Which lobbyists? I want to be real clear about this. Is it the lobbyists that are on the credit card side, the cash app side?

SPEAKER_00: 45:02

The number one set of lobbyists that are fighting this are the prostitution and pornography lobby. And the pornography lobby is extremely well-funded, extremely powerful. And it also makes you wonder, how does a lobbyist who works for the pornography industry get up every day, And like kiss his kids goodbye as he goes to work and be like, yeah, I can't wait to like get more filth on the internet. I mean, what kind of terrible human being do you, I mean, no doubt they're wealthy, but yeah, I, I hope they enjoy the money because hell's going to suck.

SPEAKER_01: 45:40

Yeah, at what expense? I didn't know that was a lobby arm. Wow, that division. It's

SPEAKER_00: 45:47

a huge lobby arm. Huge lobby arm. Yeah, what are you going to run into

SPEAKER_01: 45:52

somebody at a bar that goes, oh, I'm a pilot. Oh, nice to meet you. I'm a lobbyist for... I'm

SPEAKER_00: 45:57

a lobbyist for Pornhub. Yeah. I mean, like what, what a terrible human are you? Um, or the law firms that represent these organizations. It's like, wow, you get to choose your, your, your, your clients and you chose to represent Pornhub. Like, yeah, you're, you're a gross human. There's just no other way to say it.

SPEAKER_01: 46:18

Right. And they're strong. You said, and they're strong and they're well-funded.

SPEAKER_00: 46:21

Incredibly well, incredibly powerful and incredibly, um, incredibly well funded. But part of that reason is because of the people who are listening to you and I have this conversation, there's 1% of them, 1% of the men routinely buy prostitution services or what they think is prostitution services. 20% of the men statistically listening to this have a outright addiction to pornography. 40% of the men listening to this. So 40% of the men you know use pornography on a regular basis. That's what the statistics show. And so until men start behaving better, we're going to continue to get more and more problems. And it's not lost on me that the major majority of our politicians are men, right? Um, and the, you know, the, the use of, of, um, you know, commercial sex services, uh, amongst our, our political elite is well documented. Uh, and so, and it's not even enough to get them out of office. And so that's also for the constituency listening. Like you have somebody, I don't care if they are your favorite politician, they're caught using commercial sex services. They are caught commoditizing, you know, women and girls.

UNKNOWN: 47:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 47:52

They need to go.

SPEAKER_01: 47:53

They need to go.

SPEAKER_00: 47:55

And if anybody who doesn't think that's an ethics violation is telling you everything that you need to know about them.

SPEAKER_01: 48:02

That's right. That's it. Jeez. Is this, is this like, I mean, I hate to say it's like drugs, like you could be out there fighting it, but it just, it's growing faster than we can fight it. Do you get that feeling? I don't. Or do you feel like you're making a dent in it?

SPEAKER_00: 48:18

Oh, no, we're making a dent. So we have 100% conviction rate in the cases that we've been involved in that have gone to court. 100%? 100%. Most of them go to a plea deal just because the electronic evidence is so damning against the traffickers. Hopefully here in the next couple of years, we're going to have a tool that makes it a lot easier for law enforcement to target and find the customers as well. And as we get more and more laws changed, like Florida has, Texas has, this last session we just passed a law here in Montana where I believe it is a class, it's now a, I think it's now a class three felony if you are caught purchasing commercial services. So class three felony, I believe that means, and again, I might be wrong here, but I believe that means that if you are a doctor, lawyer, you know, a truck driver, anybody that requires a special license, like you will get your license pulled for for. purchasing commercial sex services. And those are, so we, we definitely need to increase the penalties federally. Uh, but there are no federal other than human trafficking. There are no federal, uh, statutes covering the commercial sex industry. It's all down to the States, which I'm fine with. We just need to have more and more States, uh, pass, pass better laws. If you're convicted of human trafficking in Texas is a great example. You get life in prison. And I'm okay with that because you know what that, you know what the human trafficking gets, victim gets, they get a life in a, in a mental health prison. That's right. You as the human trafficker created for them.

SPEAKER_01: 50:09

So how did they, how did they get that to pass in Texas? And why are we not passing that in other States then life in prison? That seems very fair.

SPEAKER_00: 50:17

Yeah, we've got it up here in Montana. Um, why are you guys doing that? Why are you not doing that in Georgia? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 50:23

Wow. So what can somebody do? What can somebody like me do to help this? To help you, really, to help you help trafficking?

SPEAKER_00: 50:33

So the number one thing that anybody can do to help us is to donate. Nobody likes going and asking for money, but everything that we give to law enforcement, we give to them for free because they don't have any money to pay for it. Cutting edge technologies that we build, all of this costs just as much money as it does for other companies. No, old Bezos doesn't give us a break on Amazon Web Services prices and we got to buy supercomputers and we got to buy all the same stuff that everybody else does. And so that's actually the number one way. The Number two way is to stop participating in the industries that facilitate trafficking. Right. And so if you're a parent, don't allow your like have a hard rule. Don't allow your child to have social media. I mean, it just is. And, and so do that. There are some new social media platforms coming out. There's one called up social, which we're really excited about because it's B it's a brand new one that's being built from the ground up and is algorithmically enhanced to make you put it down. It's to make you feel happy and put it down and you can't, you can't DM people in it and you can't, create comments. And if you can't DM and can't create comments, you can just, you can just spread happy vibes and right. Um, and so that's kind of the way that like, those are the new platforms that we're very excited about, but they're not out yet. Um, the other, uh, the existing social media platforms, like just don't allow your kids to be on them. And I know, um, How many parents are going to listen to that and be like, oh, well, you don't understand. Well, you know what? I work two jobs. My wife works full time. We got little kids. Yeah, we got the same parent issues as everybody else. We're not allowing the phone to be the babysitter. We're just not. And yeah, that's harder work. So what? The consequences of what comes out of these devices for children are incurable. So don't ever give them access to the disease in the first place.

SPEAKER_01: 52:51

Wow. That's a great word. Incurable. Okay. What goes on at schools? in and around trafficking? Are there any dangers? Is it public versus private or schools have immunity to any of this stuff?

SPEAKER_00: 53:14

I think, I think schools, so you do occasionally have boys who are going to schools. This tends to happen more at the high school level who family member, you know, dad, uncle, brother, whoever's a human trafficker. And they kind of are scouts for, You know, for them, but that's actually relatively rare. Schools, when it comes to trafficking, tend to be the safer places because that tends to be where, you know, authority figures, school resource officers or principals, teachers, whoever end up kind of picking up on on some bad things that are happening. Other kids. Right. So the trafficking happens in isolation. Right. And that's an important thing to understand. One of the very first things that traffickers do is they try to isolate children from their parents and from their, from their community and from their network. And so, so schools aren't near as much of a risk of trafficking as say, you know, I don't know, some, some other just kind of like random place, you know, my day was the mall, but I don't know what it is for kids these days, you know, it's primarily online. Yeah. And so again, trafficking trafficking trafficking starts that process starts online for the trafficker

SPEAKER_01: 54:34

starts online you know

SPEAKER_00: 54:36

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 54:36

you can't always see it like you said it doesn't always we're not always always seeing something happen but could there be behavior change in the kids

SPEAKER_00: 54:47

There absolutely will be behavior change in the kids. They'll start isolating themselves. Isolation is the biggest one. You might start seeing some substance abuse that was never there before, but for the most part, it's the isolation. There's something wrong with them. They're isolating themselves from their friends, from their siblings, from their parents. It's the isolation that you should be looking for.

SPEAKER_01: 55:11

Okay. So rather... Rather than go to team events or stuff like that, they want to isolation, like truly like bedroom, like be by themselves. Okay, so that's a big one to look out for. Are there certain backgrounds that this hits more than other backgrounds or socioeconomic or anything?

UNKNOWN: 55:36

No.

SPEAKER_00: 55:37

We, uh, it's any vulnerable child that that trafficker can get access to is that that's their target.

SPEAKER_02: 55:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 55:47

They don't care. Yeah. They don't care what their race is, what their, you know, upbringing is. Are they rich? Are they poor? Yeah. They don't care.

SPEAKER_01: 55:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 55:58

To them, it's just a product to be sold.

SPEAKER_01: 56:01

Product to be sold. Cause one of the examples you gave early on was a wealthy family.

SPEAKER_00: 56:05

Yeah. Very wealthy family. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 56:06

All right. Politically, any states... Is it a political issue at all? Is it red states? It better

SPEAKER_00: 56:16

not be. Unfortunately, trafficking does get thrown around politically, but I don't understand how it could be a political issue at all. There are states like Texas that are doing a great job. Up here in Montana, we're trying to catch up. Florida does a pretty darn good job as well. And then there are... California's got some decent legislation on the books. They've got a ways to go, but they're doing better than, say, Washington State. But it's not so much about the laws on the books as it is about law enforcement's capacity to enforce those laws. So if I have a law on the books, but I don't have any government money funding, say, a statewide human trafficking task force, or worse, the statewide human trafficking task force is just a bunch of NGOs who get together once a quarter and talk to each other. You don't have like actual law enforcement officers by the dozens in a human trafficking task force doing investigations like they have in Houston is a great example of the human trafficking rescue alliance. Then you don't really, you just don't really like who cares what the laws are. If law enforcement isn't being properly funded and equipped to enforce those laws.

SPEAKER_01: 57:30

That's right. Okay. So in summary, we're going to go from the top down how people can, how you, how deliver fund can benefit law enforcement agencies, how people can help deliver fun. So if you're a person out there and you want to donate deliver fund, you can go to deliver

SPEAKER_00: 57:47

fund. Absolutely. Deliver fund.org forward slash donate.

SPEAKER_01: 57:51

Okay. If you're in law enforcement of any type, I'm going to let you take over. Cause I don't know the call to action there. What do you say to law enforcement? officers

SPEAKER_00: 57:58

yeah to any law enforcement who might be listening who needs help with human trafficking cases or is just interested in learning more wants access to our technology platforms literally just go to deliverfund.org and click on the for law enforcement tab and we'll walk you through exactly what to do you'll contact us we'll verify that you actually are law enforcement like we'll have a human do that and then once we do that then we will send you usernames and logins and you and and then we'll be happy to Okay. And what about the guy at home who maybe already donated, but still wants to do

SPEAKER_01: 58:45

something, but he's not in law enforcement. Can

SPEAKER_00: 58:52

he do anything? Sure. Yeah. So, um, a couple of things that that person can do, uh, one learn what's real and what's not about human trafficking. So at deliver fund.org, we have a training page. If you click on that page, um, it'll say training for law enforcement, which obviously, you know, law enforcement walks through that process. And it says for, you know, for non-law enforcement, we have a human trafficking one-on-one course that you can just sign up for. Uh, we, we built it in such a way so that at the for employment purposes and for employment compliance purposes in all 50 states. So you get some actual continuing education out of that, which is good. And then, yeah, so get yourself trained. We have an app called Human Trafficking Safeguard that you can use to run phone numbers and email addresses to see if they're connected to commercial sex industry. And those are the tools that we're providing for the everyday civilian.

SPEAKER_01: 59:52

So if I get that app, can I export all contacts in my phone into that app and it will tell me? No,

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:01

because it's one by one. Apple won't let us do that. That is the number one... feature that we get requests for and that we've, we've gone round and round with Apple and Google. And because we would have to basically run all of those, we would have to export all of your contacts and we'd have to run them through an API call into our system and then send them back. And there's obviously a privacy violation there and downloading every single contact that somebody has.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:34

Yeah. Wow. But you could go one by one. If

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:38

you want to go one by one, you can absolutely do that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:43

And they would have had to been convicted of something for it to pop or what would

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:47

make it pop? No, all we're saying is that that phone number or email address is connected to a commercial sex advertisement on an escort site. That's all we're saying.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:57

Got it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:59

Got it. Right? We're not saying that. It is connected to an advertisement when that person had that number. We're not saying that it is human trafficking. It could be prostitution, could be a scam. We're just saying that that phone number is on a commercial sex advertisement that either is or is not true. Yeah. Yeah. Now we don't provide the actual commercial sex advertisement, but we do provide the name of the website where we found the phone number.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:26

Got it. Darn. That's cool. And you got a lot of stuff coming up too.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:30

Yeah, we've got more coming up that's going to make the fight a lot easier.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:34

Yeah, good. Well, I want to continue to support it and continue to get your message out. Well, thank you. I'm already letting you know that you're coming on next month and the month after.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:46

Awesome. Well, we really appreciate you helping us get the word out, and thanks for the opportunity.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:52

Yeah, thanks a lot. Appreciate your time today.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:56

All right. Have a good one, Jeff.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:57

See you, man. Thanks. Bye.