1330: Javier Leiva | Why We Obey: From Prank Calls to Fake Badges

1330: Javier Leiva | Why We Obey: From Prank Calls to Fake Badges

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Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers, even the occasional extreme athlete, real-life pirate, hacker, or Russian spy.

And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, China, North [00:01:00] Korea, crime and cults, and more, that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, Javier Leiva is back, and we're digging into one of the creepiest questions imaginable: How does a total stranger on the phone convince normal, functioning adults to strip search employees, destroy hotel rooms, stand outside naked in freezing weather, or obey some guy with a fake badge and a Walgreens-level Halloween costume?

This sounds impossible until you realize it happened over and over and over again. Fast food managers, hotel clerks, employees, victims, bystanders, people who woke up that morning with no plans to become the unpaid cast of America's dumbest authoritarian nightmare. Javier has investigated cases where the only weapon was a voice, a fake title, and the magic phrase, "This is part of an investigation."

And somehow, that was enough to turn workplaces into crime scenes and ordinary people into participants in something monstrous. Now, we'll talk about the infamous strip search scam that hit more than 70 fast food restaurants; PrankNet, basically [00:02:00] Jackass if everyone involved needed a prosecutor and a therapist; a disturbing rise in fake ICE agents using badges, threats, and confusion to rob, kidnap, and assault people.

But this is not just a freak show episode about, "Hey, look how gullible everybody is." That's the cheap takeaway, and frankly, it's wrong. The real question is: What happens when urgency, authority, isolation, fear, and just following procedure hijack your better judgment? By the end, you'll know the red flags, the scripts, and the one habit that can stop a manipulation attempt cold.

Here we go with Javier Leiva. Javier, your work lives in this creepy overlap between, like, scams, authority, humiliation, obedience, and before we get into the psychology, I'd love to get maybe a 60-second version of maybe the most unbelievable case that I saw This caller convinces normal people to just jump through hoops is an understatement, but do all this humiliating stuff.

Give us an overview of that, because we'll get into the psychology on this, and it's fascinating, because everybody who hears this goes, "That would never happen to me," and the truth is that it very well could. [00:03:00]

Javier Leiva: So look, I'm not a psychologist or anything like that. I'm not a expert on Milgram, but I stumbled upon this story that is pretty much a Milgram experiment on steroids, because this guy was calling fast food restaurants across the country pretending that he was a cop.

And what he would do is he would call the restaurant, he would talk to the manager and say, "Hey, one of your employees stole the purse from a customer, and now we could handle it two different ways, right? We could go pick up the employee and search him at the station, or you could just search him yourself and then be done with it."

And most of the time, the manager would just say, "No, we'll search him in our office," because it just sounds like the path of least resistance. And what sounds like something very simple takes hours and hours. He walks them through this elaborate process all the way to the point where the manager is not only checking their employee's [00:04:00] belongings in the office, they're asking them to, like, empty out their pockets, take off their pants, take off their shirts, strip down completely naked.

At one point, he's instructing the manager to make them do jumping jacks, bend over. One employee in Kentucky, and this is probably the most famous case of them all. Right outside Louisville, Kentucky, there was an 18-year-old girl, her name was Louise, and she was strip-searched in the back office. When the manager got busy, it's a Friday night, the restaurant, it's a McDonald's, the restaurant's humming, right?

The manager calls her fiancé, who doesn't even work there, to watch this woman and talk to this cop on the phone, and the fake cop proceeds to instruct this man to basically sexually assault this woman, and it's all caught on surveillance, right? And you're probably listening to this because I just told you the story in a couple minutes.

Jordan Harbinger: In one minute.

Javier Leiva: This [00:05:00] took hours. And in order to understand it, you almost have to watch it and listen to these calls yourself to realize, wow, I would have never fallen for that, but maybe I would, actually

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You know what this reminds me a little bit? My wife's cousin, this is years ago, she's living in San Francisco.

She gets a call from the police, and I forget what it was. It was like something like, "Your car has been used in a crime," some weird thing like that, "and you need to report to us to deal with it." And it was like little things like, "Do you know where your car is?" "Well, I park it on the street." "Okay. Do you know if it's still there?"

And it was like, "Oh, let me go look for it." And they're like, "No, no, no, that's fine. We just wanted to tell you all these..." And so they're getting her to go through this thing. It was like dot, dot, dot, transfer money for something. And it didn't make sense when she told us, but of course, when you're in the moment and you're on the phone, you're like hyperventilating.

So she goes in the elevator to get in the car, and I believe even to go and meet, quote-unquote, the detective somewhere, and the call drops because it's an elevator in a building in San Francisco. And when the call drops, she goes, "Wait a [00:06:00] second. Hang on." All these things that were on the outside of her consciousness waiting to get into her consciousness, which was taken up by the phone call, start pouring in, and she's like, "Hold on a sec."

So she calls Jen, my wife, and is like, "Let me run this by you real quick." And Jen's like, "Call the police. Call 911 and ask about this." And she calls 911, and they're like, "No, that is 1,000% a scam. A detective from SFPD is not calling you to tell you da, da, da." But when she tells us the story, my first thought is, "What are you, stupid?

Of course the police aren't going to ask you to go pay a fine in, I don't know, Bitcoin or whatever." But if you do it over 45 minutes and everything else seems like it's on the up and up. They knew I parked my car outside. You did tell them that, but you forgot already. You know, it's like all these little pieces.

These guys were pros. It wasn't even one guy. It was like the operator, quote-unquote, dispatcher transferred her to the detective, who transferred her back to the operator for a minute for some other reason, who transferred her back to the detective. You know, it was like one thing after another, so it's, "Oh, this has to be the police.

They have a phone [00:07:00] transfer system." And all... The guy sounded like a cop, and it was on a landline, and the caller ID even was spoofed and said San Francisco Police Department, which of course it was fake. It was just some dude's phone and maybe even a voice changer. So like all these little pieces, it's hard to say, "This...

I would never fall for this." You wouldn't if you were sitting at home right now listening to this and that call came in. But you would potentially if you were already distracted and all these other pieces were in place, right?

Javier Leiva: Yeah, well, I guarantee you that that, that elevator probably saved her because if that call weren't interrupted, she may have fallen for this.

And the reason is this is the con, right? because I interview a lot of con artists, I study a lot of con artists. What they do is they overwhelm you, they raise your sense of urgency, right? Which now you're bypassing all your common sense. Things that would normally make sense to us, we're not even thinking about that, right?

Because we're, like, in a state of alarm, right? And that's the con part, but then the interesting thing is that people [00:08:00] obey. We are programmed to obey authority, right? That cop from San Francisco, and he's speaking like a cop, we tend to do what they say, right? Because we're taught to respect authority, and we're not thinking that this is, like, a scam.

We're thinking that this is legit.

Jordan Harbinger: It's crazy to me. So the call starts with, what, a theft accusation. "Hey, there's a purse was stolen or money was stolen." I think that there was a drug variation on one of these, and the tone is corporate and legal. "Hey, this is part of an investigation." Not like, "Oh my God, you've got to do this right now."

It's very calm and has that gradual escalation. In your podcast, and I think also there was a Netflix documentary that you took part in, it was like, "Check the pockets, remove the item from the pocket, move to a private office." And then it was, "Remove this article of clothing. Remove this other article of clothing."

And that's the sexual assault, right? He didn't rape this woman on the premises. He basically undressed her, which is terrible and still sexual assault. I just want to give people context so they're not like, "How did somebody get forcibly [00:09:00] sexually assaulted during this?" And it's because it was essentially he undressed her.

Javier Leiva: Yeah, I mean, he undressed her. There was, like, spanking. There was, like, all kinds of stuff. Oh, God, I didn't know that. Yeah, I mean- That's crazy ... it's really sad, actually. I did the story on my podcast. I'm only listening to the audio, and it was very disturbing, right, to listen to the audio. But then when we did the Netflix documentary and then you see this stuff, man, it was disturbing for me and I knew this story.

And your listeners might even recognize this story because they turned it into a true story movie called Compliance based off of this incident, and this happened from 1992 to 2004.

Jordan Harbinger: I thought this was, like, a three-month spree of craziness. Over 12 years long? That's insane. And it

Javier Leiva: happened all across the country, McDonald's, Taco Bells, Hardee's, Applebee's.

It's funny, Jordan, that I went to Dairy Queen the other day with my family and to get ice cream, and I was- Got spanked ... at the drive-through. Yeah, you got spanked. I got spanked by the Dairy Queen guy. Yeah. [00:10:00] So I was at the drive-through and I looked through the window, and they actually had a... You know how they have, like, employee messages- Yeah, training posters

like- Yeah ... training posters? They had one that if you receive a call from the authorities, make sure this and that. They were training their employees. And I actually drove, when I was reporting on this, I had a road trip from North Carolina to Florida, and I was going to eat a lot of fast food anyway, right?

And so every time I went to a fast food restaurant, and I recorded this, I would ask the employees like, "Hey, have you heard about this stuff?" And a lot of them haven't, right? And that's how it worked because if something happened in Nebraska, they weren't connecting the dots in Oregon, right? These seemed very isolated incidents, but somebody was able to piece it all together and eventually they found the guy.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, so this was one guy? I just figured since it was going on for so long and so many people, this had to be a group of people doing it. Because these calls are, like, two or three hours long. This guy, did he not have a job? How do you spend this much time on the phone doing this?

Javier Leiva: Some people [00:11:00] think that he had a pay booth looking at the restaurant, watching it all unfold, and he wasn't always there.

But yeah, and actually I spoke with the detective that pieced this whole thing together. It was awesome police work, man, because they were working with very little at the time. Nowadays, you could track cell phones and there's so many ways to track people. But back in 1992 and 2004, it was a lot harder. It was, like, real police work that this guy had to do to, uh, get this guy.

Jordan Harbinger: So two to three hours, this sort of escalation ladder I guess you would call it. But what's crazy is it's multiple participants, right? It's not just the manager and one worker. It's like there's a coworker, and then they get their fiance involved. And some people question it like, "Hey, why do we have to do this?

This doesn't make sense." But then they just kept going along with it anyway.

Javier Leiva: You want to know what the craziest part is? That the managers are the ones facing the criminal prosecution because they're the ones obeying. They're going through with [00:12:00] this sick prank, and they're the ones going to jail. I talked to this guy, he was a manager I think at a Hardee's in Rapid City, South Dakota.

He got charged with two second-degree rape charges and one kidnapping charge for this incident that happened, and basically he got a call from law enforcement just like the restaurant in Kentucky. And he got this 19-year-old employee who was accused of stealing money from a customer, and he took her to the back room and they said that he kept the girl locked in his office against her will for two hours.

While this phone call's going through, and he ordered her to strip completely naked and made her run in place, do jumping jacks, and I talked to this guy and I asked him, like, "Why did you do this?" What were you thinking?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Javier Leiva: Yeah. You've got to imagine, this destroyed his life. He has a criminal record now.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, he's a sex offender too. I mean, this is not a shoplifting charge.

Javier Leiva: He's a sex offender.

Jordan Harbinger: You have to now explain why [00:13:00] you have two rape charges. I mean, you are never working anywhere again.

Javier Leiva: It cost him his job, his relationship, tons of money. I mean, like, he was destroyed from one phone call.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Here's the thing.

I understand how these escalation letters work, I understand persuasion, I understand all the psychological tactics because I've covered it on the show for the last 19 years. It's still, just like the audience listening to this right now, I still do not understand how someone was like, "It's okay for me to lock this 19-year-old girl up in my office, strip her naked, and make her exercise."

There's just got to be a point at which you go, "You know what? Arrest me for not complying with law enforcement. I am not making a 19-year-old girl strip naked in my office and do jumping jacks. You can come here and arrest me yourself, pal. You come here and arrest me. I will spend the weekend in jail before I do that."

But I also sort of intellectually understand why he did it, but I'm also just like, "But really though, man?" That's clearly where the judge and jury also landed, by the way.

Javier Leiva: It's really hard to, like, put yourself in their shoes.

Jordan Harbinger: At some point you've got to wake up and go, "I [00:14:00] am doing something that is completely insane.

I don't care who's saying it on the phone."

Javier Leiva: It's really hard to even sympathize with them or put yourself in their shoes because it just sounds so obscene, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, man.

Jordan Harbinger: Here's the thing. I- it does make me wonder, a lot of stuff with compliance is all about screening the right victims in.

Con artists, spammers, fraudsters, things like this. By the way, did you get to interview the guy who actually perpetrated all this by any chance?

Javier Leiva: I tried. Oh, there's a really creepy call at the end of one of my episodes where I called him, and I don't know if I was talking with him, but it was just the person answered and it was breathing heavily.

And like, I forget because I haven't listened to my episode in a long time, but it creeped me out, man. I got, like, chills.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, he's a creepy dude. So then it might've been him, because what are the odds another creep gets that same phone number? But what's crazy to me is, what I would be so curious about is did this guy call 50 Taco Bells before [00:15:00] he found one where they undress somebody and spank them in the office?

I would like to think that he had to do that.

Javier Leiva: I think that's a huge, important point that you're making, because it didn't work every time. It didn't work every time. We only know about the times when it did work. We don't know about the hundreds of other times that it didn't work, right? Not everyone complied.

That's important to note because, yeah, while some people fell for it, a lot of people were like, "No." Like you said earlier, "Come and arrest me because this makes no sense."

Jordan Harbinger: Send a uniformed officer to come and search this woman. She doesn't have to go there. I'm not going to do it because I'm a manager and she's an employee, and sh- or possibly a minor.

You send a cop here and do it. I'm not going to do your job for you. Get out of here. There's just so many things that could end this chain of compliance. One person, even the person who is in the lowest position of power, like if that 19-year-old girl was like, "If you touch me, I'm going to bite you and run out of here," it would've been like, "Yeah, maybe I'm in over my head," 30-year-old man- 29-year-old manager of [00:16:00] a Chuck E.

Cheese or whatever. One person just refusing anywhere in the chain could end something like this. Man, I guess walk us through the strip search scam like we're standing inside that McDonald's or that Taco Bell. What is the first normal-sounding request, and how does it escalate to something monstrous?

Because somebody just calling and saying, "Hey, she stole money. You need to search her." But it can't be, "Lock her in the office for two hours and get her to undress." Like, what are the steps here? Do you know?

Javier Leiva: It's interesting because there are, for this particular prank, there are no recorded conversations.

There's video surveillance. So a lot of the office videos, y- they don't record audio, but you see it happening. What they're doing is there's a lot of, "Hey." Honestly, I don't know exactly what was said, but I think the way it works is that I could tell you a joke and I could tell it to you really quick, right?

It could be set up, punchline, and we're done, right? But this joke goes on and [00:17:00] on, and eventually there's a punchline, right? So I think that's the trick, right? To make it last long enough that you don't see all the crazy thing that's happening, right? So at first it's, "Hey, she could be hiding something in one of her cavities."

And like, that's how it ends up.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So this, that's where the jumping jacks come in. If you make her do jumping jacks naked, it might fall out if it's in the... Oh my God, this is so crazy

Javier Leiva: And so you could start rationalizing how the jumping jacks happened and this and that, but what was said, who knows?

And this guy was, must have been incredibly convincing, because, like, for somebody to fall for that is-

Jordan Harbinger: Or you find the right person who's totally suggestible and a little bit stupid possibly. I mean, I hate to say that, but-

Javier Leiva: I hate to say it too, man. I just can't think about it any other way. And I hate to call anybody, especially a victim, stupid, but we're going to talk about some of these things that it just doesn't make sense.

Even there are some calls that we're going to talk about later that y- you could hear the [00:18:00] person questioning this whole thing, and then they still go along with it, which is nuts.

Jordan Harbinger: There's an interesting point at which other people get pulled in, like the fiance. And I'm curious why you think that increases compliance instead of that person coming in and going, "Whoa, knock it off.

We're out of here."

Javier Leiva: I think that there's the believability part of it, because I think that in that case when the fiance came in, if I recall correctly, he wasn't just talking to the officer. He was talking to McDonald's corporate, too. So, which implies that there was somebody also helping him make these calls, which makes it a little bit more believable.

If you have a woman being patched in saying, "Yeah, I think we're... Just check the surveillance, and for sure she took something." And it just seems a lot more believable.

Jordan Harbinger: That's true, and you've got that sort of hierarchy, right? I'm just the manager here. I could get fired because now they've got corporate on the line.

They're going to give the franchise owner stress, or if it's a corporate-owned spot, we're all going to get [00:19:00] fired. I can't have that. We might even get charged with something. So the Netflix doc, it makes, like you said, it makes you deeply uncomfortable because you're watching normal people do all this in real time.

I'm curious what the victims said afterwards. Did they give you any sort of indication of what was going through their heads while this was happening?

Javier Leiva: That was the biggest challenge making that Netflix documentary, because we want to hear from that victim, right? We want to hear from Louise, and she was just 19 years old when this happened, but she ultimately turned down the interview because this is, like, the worst thing that has ever happened to her.

She was humiliated. That's an understatement, right? She was violated. And even though she's a mom now, she's a professional, she has her own kids, it still felt raw enough that she did not want to be a part of it. We were able to have more headway with the managers, the perpetrators, than we were some of the victims.

A lot of the victims we don't know because the cases, when you do a FOIA [00:20:00] request, their names are blacked out, for good reason, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Makes your job so much harder, man. I mean, you've got all kinds of people that if you can find them, you've got to rely on their willingness to participate. It's just, you've got your work cut out for you.

Javier Leiva: If you have ever done a FOIA request or public records request, a lot of times before they send it to you, they redact everything, right? But they don't do a very good job. So even if you are looking at a police report, you could start contextualizing things and s- and you could narrow down who the victim is.

But then as a journalist, you have to ask yourself, "All right. Why are we telling this story? Are we trying to exploit this person's story? Should we respect that person's privacy?" And you weigh all that. But yeah, a lot of times we're able to figure it all out just because they make mistakes.

Jordan Harbinger: And even if it were, look at the Epstein files.

Javier Leiva: Exactly, even

Jordan Harbinger: the Epstein files. Yeah, exactly. "Oh, hey, uh, you know you can just click un-redact on the top of the document." "Oh my God, they're onto us."

Javier Leiva: There was one document that they were able to [00:21:00] copy and paste, and the stuff went through. But most of the time, most of the time when it's redacted, it's redacted.

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Now, back to Javier Leiva. So let's give people a little bit of a script. If somebody claiming to be the police calls your workplace or even you personally and says, "Hey, don't hang up, this is urgent," what are the next things that you should do immediately? Because it might actually be the police, but how do we sort of verify that this is not a scam?

Javier Leiva: I would say the same thing if somebody were calling you from your bank or your credit card company. I would say, "Hey, I'm going to call you [00:24:00] guys back." Look up the number for that police department and call them back and see if they're really them. I just don't think that you could just accept a call and believe it, right?

Some of these calls are really believable, too, because they don't come in cold. They do their research, and they might even say the employee's name, which leads you to believe that maybe they are the cops. Like, how would they know that? But that's because the guy, especially in this case, would scope out some of the restaurants, and he would learn the descriptions of the employees.

He would learn some of their names, which made the call even more believable. But just like any other scam, if you have any question, any doubt, say, "I'll call you right back," look up their number, call them back, and that would solve 99% of this. Yeah. I

Jordan Harbinger: think you're right. I think another good thing you can do is to break isolation essentially.

So my wife got scammed one time a long time ago, and I knew that something was wrong because I think I [00:25:00] was with her brother and a couple of our friends. All of us had missed calls from her, and we were like, "Oh my gosh." So I call her back, and she's like, "I just bought a stereo." And it was, like, this scam where the stereo was, like, a piece of crap, but it was, like, a fake brand and blah, blah.

This is years ago, and it still pisses me off because she was really sad. It wasn't even the money. She was just sad that somebody would do that to her. And she had tried to break the isolation, right? She's like, "I called Danielle. I called you. I called Mom. I called Dad. I called Glenn. I called Austin." It was like nobody answered the phone, and she's like, "Had I just talked to one of you guys-" I know I wouldn't have gotten all hyped up in the moment and bought this stupid thing.

And I was like, "Yeah, I probably would've said, 'Hey, hey, no, no, no. This guy can't take a PayPal. He's got to take cash. He's in a truck that is unmarked,'" or whatever. I don't remember the details, but it was like when I recounted it to her, she was like, "I'm so stupid," and she started crying. And I was like, "No, no, no.

You got scammed. This is his job. He's doing this every day."

Javier Leiva: He is much better at this than you are, right? He's a social engineer. We don't have those skills.

Jordan Harbinger: This guy is a predator, right? He's going after people, and that's exactly how this guy makes [00:26:00] money. So if you break the isolation, you might get somebody who goes, "Let me get this straight," because that's her cousin who's the call dropped in the elevator.

She called and was like, "I got this weird call from the police." And I was there, and I was like, "That sounds like a scam." And she's like, "Yeah, that was kinda like what this thing was niggling in the back of my head." And I was like, "Call the cops back." And she was like, "Oh, that's a good idea." So she just dialed basically 911, and they were like, "Oh, no.

No, no, no, no, no. That's not real." And then they called her back 100 times, and she didn't answer the phone. So you break that isolation. I don't know. Another one that's sort of very specific to this particular case would maybe refuse to do anything that involves anyone else. That's a little particular to this kind of case, but you not being a cop or any sort of authority, I guess this is specifically if you work somewhere, you just don't do anything that would involve acting as if you're a cop with respect to anybody in your workplace.

Javier Leiva: Well, it turns out that this guy, the suspect, his name is David Stewart, he was a want tobe cop. When they found him, his car had a bunch of fake [00:27:00] badges. He was a local correction officer, so he wanted to be a cop, but he wasn't a cop. So he was in that world. He was playing cop. For him, this was fun, and that's the thing.

This is so weird because y- you might be asking yourself, "What is this guy getting out of this?" He's not getting money. He's not scamming you. He's just getting off on some sort of power trip.

Jordan Harbinger: He wanted to be a cop. Imagine, if you will, all of the guys that did become cops that are exactly the same way as this guy and have that psycho streak where they get off on humiliating other people.

That could cause a lot of problems with law enforcement, and right now, a lot of cops are like, "Oh, yeah. That's like the so-and-so and so-and-so who I work with over there," because w- we have a lot of cops that listen to the show, and I often ask them privately, "Do you know anyone who does all the crazy, crappy, horrible things that we see on social media?"

And they're all like, "Yeah, there's one or two guys that we all would like to see gone and aren't gone because they're the chief's nephew or whatever." So yeah, let's talk about PrankNet, which is sort of similar, I [00:28:00] suppose. Tell us about this because there's, like, dozens and dozens of incidents.

Javier Leiva: Oh, man, this didn't go on quite as long as the McDonald's hoax scam that we just talked about, but this one went on from 2009 to 2011.

And PrankNet, I didn't know about these guys until I came across a story, but they just started out as, like, an internet Prank organization. Maybe they were inspired by, like, the Jerky Boys or, you know, something like that. You know, and I love a good prank "

Jordan Harbinger: Frank Rizzo, open your ears, jackass." You remember that one?

I mean, I loved- Yeah ... the Jerky Boys.

Javier Leiva: I love a good prank, man. It's just something really funny about hearing people fall for these things, right? They were harmless,

Jordan Harbinger: right? because they were making fun of themselves where they were like a really overly aggressive want tobe car salesman that had anger management problems.

They weren't getting people to spray all of their food supply with a fire extinguisher.

Javier Leiva: Even, like, the worst ones are still funny, and it sucks because I don't want to laugh at it [00:29:00] because they're laughing, and it seems funny, and what the person's doing is kinda funny, but it is completely diabolical and- You're talking about PrankNet

PrankNet. And here's the thing with them, the problem with pranks is that once you do a prank, you've got- the next prank you do has to be bigger than the last one. You can't just keep doing the same pranks, right? Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Getting them to throw out all their napkins is funny once, but you can't get them to do it again and again. You've got to get them to throw out their burger meat next time or, like, destroy the fryer with motor oil.

Javier Leiva: Yeah. PrankNet, it was an internet group, but it was led by this one guy who's known as Dex, and Dex is from Ontario, Canada, and he lives with his mom in the basement. Surprise,

Jordan Harbinger: surprise. Yeah.

Javier Leiva: And this guy, they would call hotel front desk pretending to be fire alarm technicians, hotel management, all kinds of stuff, and like I said, it was pretty funny, but one prank would take it further than the next one.

At one point, he's calling the hotel- And he's asking for room [00:30:00] 203. Let's- I'm just making that up. And he calls room 203, the guest picks up, and they're like, "Hey, there's a gas leak in the hotel and we don't have time to evacuate. We just need to create some airflow." And right away, they just created a sense of urgency, and this call could happen...

This doesn't happen, like, at 3:00 in the afternoon. This happens at 3:00 in the morning,

Jordan Harbinger: right? Right. I was going to say, I'm opening the window, yeah. What do I have to lose? I'm just opening the window.

Javier Leiva: Have you ever tried to open up a Hampton Inn window? Here's the problem. They don't open. They don't

Jordan Harbinger: open, so you make it open with a chair.

Is that where this is going?

Javier Leiva: Yeah, that's where it's going. They're like, "you've got to find something," and usually they would instruct them to go into the bathroom and grab the toilet cover, you know, like the porcelain toilet cover, and just smash the window. And you c- and they would record this. So unlike the pranks that we were talking about earlier, the McDonald's pranks, you could actually hear these pranks, and people would just smash the window, and they're like, "Wait a minute.

Is there something electronic in the room? Because that could just blow up." And they're like, "Yeah, the [00:31:00] TV." "Is it plugged in?" "Yeah." And they would grab the TV and just throw it out the window. And this would hap- I'm trying so

Jordan Harbinger: hard not to laugh because this is actually hilarious other than the fact that, look, this is traumatizing and property damage.

If I was watching a dramatic reenactment of this and it wasn't real, it would be really funny. This is like a Mark Wahlberg, Adam Sandler, I don't know, who's another? Like, these corny comedian comedy scenes where they're doing this and you're laughing. It's like Wedding Crashers bit, right?

Javier Leiva: Yeah, and it is funny.

I, it's hard not to laugh at this, but then you realize, wow, they just destroyed a lot of properties. One of their more popular pranks was the fire alarm scam, right? So that's the one that we just talked about where they would call the hotel, they would talk to the clerk, and somehow they would convince the clerk to pull the fire alarm.

So now you have the fire department coming. The guests are just scrambling all over the place, and that seems fairly [00:32:00] harmless, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Except for waking everybody up at 2:00 AM to go outside in a robe in the middle of winter, but yeah.

Javier Leiva: But they would step it up. Like I said, that was funny for a while, but now they're calling restaurants and they're saying, "Hey, we are calling from corporate.

We are doing a routine fire inspection, and we need you to look at the exhaust system, you know, the vent that's over the grill. And we just need you to look at a couple things." And they had done their research, so they knew exactly how to walk the manager through this exact fire retardant system.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, they're going to deploy the fire retardant in the kitchen and ruin every- Oh my God.

So

Javier Leiva: they're like, "Hey, press this button." And the manager would press this button. All of a sudden, shit would just start spraying everywhere, like chemicals. It's supposed to suppress the fire, and they're like- "Hey, did that get on you?" And they're like, "Yeah, that got on me." And he's like, "That's going to burn your skin.

You have to strip completely naked." And these managers would strip completely [00:33:00] naked. They would evacuate the entire restaurant, and they would do this over and over again. There was this one prank where they called the Hampton Inn in Nebraska, and they got them to set the fire alarm. But one of the guests, this is just somebody that's staying in the hotel, but he drove his truck through the lobby.

It was a semi-truck. He drove it- What? ... through the hotel lobby. Yeah. And- Oh my God ... remember the hotel gas leaks?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Javier Leiva: Yeah, well, they actually did it to an ESPN reporter who was staying at a Hampton Inn. She broke the window of her hotel room just to clear the air, and you could hear all this. You could hear this woman do this, and she's all groggy and she's not thinking straight.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God, I hate that I see the appeal of what they're doing because I really don't want to laugh at this kind of thing, but it's silly. It's so silly that it works. But yeah, it's harmful. I mean, you're destroying property. You're getting people to go outside with their clothes off in [00:34:00] winter. That's not good.

That's humiliating. They're ruining all this food. I don't know what happens when a fire retardant system sprays all over a fast food restaurant, but I'm going to guess $10,000 cleanup, uh, closed for a couple of days. Easily, right? And so this is an expensive ding in the revenue. Not to mention, if I'm eating at a local McDonald's and the fire suppression system goes off, I'm just never going to go there again because it's like, "What is going on with this place?"

So you lose my business permanently, right? And I haven't been to McDonald's in, like, a decade or something like that, but still, you know, like, it's not good. The whole thing is terrible, but I do understand why this is entertaining for a certain kind of, like, ne'er-do-well basement dweller. Because even there's a part of me that's, like, chuckling at this and then goes, "Oh, wait.

No, no, no. This is real. My bad." Yeah.

Javier Leiva: Yeah, you hate to laugh at it. This next example is like... They call this the apple cider prank, and so this is a multi-step prank, so a lot of things have to go right- Oh, okay ... for this prank to work. Okay? So [00:35:00] one of the Pranknet members, his name is James Markle, he called the Homewood Suites in Lexington, Kentucky, and he asked to call one of the guests.

And he called the room, and the guest picks up, and he told the guest that he's a doctor and that there was an outbreak of hepatitis C and that he needed a urine sample to test for the infection. And so he told the guest to pee in a cup and deliver it to the front desk. And then because he didn't want the guest to be embarrassed, he said, "Just write apple cider on the cup."

Oh, no. So the... God. So the guest delivers the urine, right, labeled apple cider, to the front desk. Now they call again. Now the front desk clerk picks up. And he says that they're running a taste test for a cider company And he tricks the clerk into drinking the guest's urine which is nuts.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, God. I started doing a [00:36:00] podcast about warning people about scams, and I feel like what we're doing is we're giving people ideas, and it's so not what I intended for this, but holy crap.

That's... Except for the person who drank urine, that's a pretty good prank. Geez. Oh, my God, I'm going to hell. Oh, my God. Oh, man. I'm feeling pretty bad about laughing.

Javier Leiva: Well, th- this one, remember, they don't just call and make this prank and it works 100% of the time, okay? because I'd spoke with one of the former Pranknet members.

Her name is Jeri Batsford, and she walked me through how this whole thing works, okay? So they would test out a prank. Most of the time it didn't work, and they would call another restaurant and perfect it until they got it just right. And for this one prank, they nailed it, man. They got it to work perfectly.

And so this happened in Manchester, New Hampshire at a KFC, okay? And just like we talked about earlier, they were checking the Ansul fire suppression system, which is [00:37:00] that same chemical spray we were talking about, and they tricked the KFC employees to pull the fire suppression system. It got all over the place.

It released this chemical mist, and they told the employee, "Hey, this mist is highly toxic. You're going to have to evacuate the building." They evacuated the KFC, and they told the two employees that this chemical would eat right through their clothes, right through their skin, and he said, "You need to go outside right away."

And it was freezing cold. It was like 36 degrees outside, okay? And he got them to strip naked. The shirts, pants, underwear, everything came off, and they told the woman, they said, "Hey, do you know how you get rid of a jellyfish sting? You pee on it." Yeah. "This works the exact same thing. We need to counteract the deadly toxins, the acid that's eating through your skin."

And he got these women to- [00:38:00] pee on each other in the parking lot, and it was humiliating. It was just terrible. I mean, to me that stops being funny, right? Because like now this is like trauma.

Jordan Harbinger: Now you're making me laugh by saying it's not funny. Authority, urgency, isolation, confusion, that's the manipulation toolkit.

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It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Javier Leiva. God, I would say edit this out, but I can't be the only one who's still picturing this and laughing a little. And then you realize it's a human doing this, and then you feel really bad. [00:42:00] God, I'm having such a crisis here because I totally get why this is tempting.

Like, if this was a sitcom situation this would be a funny thing to do. You, what you have to do is dehumanize people and make them not real outside of yourself. That's the person we're dealing with who's doing this. Because otherwise it's funny for a second, then you realize how awful it is. Like you said, it stops being funny.

The fire retardant system stuff alone, that can be irritating. Some of it has heavy metals, some of it might have forever chemicals in it, so it's not totally harmless. It's not something you want to breathe in. My uncle actually, he works at a paint shop, or worked at an automotive paint shop in Detroit, and somehow that thing got triggered.

I don't know, maybe it was a necessary use thereof. But a lot of the guys got sick with lung issues and had to take weeks and weeks off work because they just had non-stop dry or bloody cough. Because it's supposed to put out a fire, but when you inhale a bunch of it, it's in your lungs irritating the crap out of you, and there's no way to clean your lungs out. You've got to cough, and sometimes you've got to cough for [00:43:00] weeks and weeks and weeks. And some of these guys are like 55, 60 years old. What are you going to do? You take a bunch of weeks off work and cough up lu- Like, this is just terrible for you all the way around, aside from the humiliation that's happening, aside from the property damage and having to pay to have it remediated. Because you don't just pull this stuff, hose off your kitchen, and get back to cooking. You've got to have this professionally cleaned. It's super expensive, and I, I would imagine time-consuming.

Javier Leiva: Yeah, it is terrible, and these guys were never really caught. Here's the thing, what law did they break? First of all, it's an international-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I don't know It's just the power of suggestion.

Not

Javier Leiva: going to get pursued. Oh, I'm sure a good prosecutor could figure it out.

Jordan Harbinger: What they would get charged with is incitement, conspiracy, aiding and abetting, or end up as an accomplice with liability for the property destruction, vandalism, criminal mischief. And it would all be aggravated because the judge and the jury would hear this and go, "Oh, this isn't, 'Hey bro, spray paint that wall.'"

This is excessive, and so you're going to end up with malicious intent to [00:44:00] destroy property. You can do stuff like wire fraud or whatever when you use the internet or the mail or the systems to do things like that, and this is a throw the book at them by any means possible kind of thing, because it's really horrific

Javier Leiva: It's really terrible, uh, and especially this last one.

So the one that sticks out in my mind when people ask me about the story is this case, because it's the same deal, a hotel clerk, and I forgot where he was. It was, like, probably, uh, like, in the middle of nowhere. He gets a call, same whole fire alarm thing. He sets off the sprinklers. He gets, uh, the mist on him.

They get the hotel clerk. Now they switch from the phone from the lobby to now the clerk's cell phone, right? So now they could get him to walk around. They get him to check the building, this and that. They're like, "Hey, find an empty room." So he finds an empty room. He closes the door. They got him to undress.

They're like, "Hey, this chemical is really bad for you." And he's like, "Are [00:45:00] you serious, man? I don't even see it on me." He's doubting the entire thing. You could hear the call. He's just does not believe what these guys are telling him, but he does it anyway. Takes off his shirt, takes off his pants. They're like, "Your underwear."

And he's like, "The underwear? That doesn't make any sense." He's like, "You have to. This is life or death." He takes off his underwear, and they're like, "Sir, you need to check your anal cavity." And the guy was like, "This is ridiculous. This has to be a prank." But he does it anyways, and they got the guy to sodomize himself in a empty hotel room, which is nuts.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm surprised anybody even found out about that. Imagine filing this police report, "And then you did what?" "Yep, shove my fingers in my butt. That's what they told me to do." I mean, I might leave that part out, honestly. I don't know.

Javier Leiva: I wouldn't believe the story if I hadn't heard the actual prank call myself, and you hear it all unfold.

I don't like to victim shame at all, but- God, come on, man. Like- Yeah ... there has to be a little voice in your [00:46:00] head saying, "This is not true."

Jordan Harbinger: A- and even he said this has to be a prank. By the way, I want to clarify something. The reason we have all these recorded calls is because they're uploading them to the PrankNet forum or whatever for people to listen to, right?

Javier Leiva: People are listening to it live, they're laughing their asses off, they're suggesting. You could even hear Dax, he puts the clerk on mute and he's talking to his audience like, "Hey, what should I do? Look at this guy." And you hear it. A- and for them, they don't treat it as a joke. For them, this is a job. This is like an art form, trying to manipulate people to do the thing-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, he's almost like a Twitch streamer who's just like, "Hey, choose your own adventure.

What other horrible thing do I do to this person?" This is dystopian, man, when you think about it. Man, I d- can't remember exactly where I saw... It, it was some kind of horror or thriller movie. It might've been Black Mirror. Oh,

Javier Leiva: or Saw.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it wasn't Saw because I haven't seen those, because I just probably can't handle it, but I think it was Black Mirror, where this guy, he needed money and he went on a website called Dumb [00:47:00] Dummies or something like that, and you could go and people would be like, "Staple your hand to the table."

And then you could do it and you'd get 600 bucks, and people would be like, "All right, I'll staple my tongue to the table if you give me $5,000." And you see the meter going up a- and up, and it's like, "All right, you hit 5,000," and the dude has to do it live on the stream. And it's-- the point is it's this really dystopian thing.

It's not real, right? This is actually Black Mirror on Netflix. And this is kinda what that sounds like, except for the people who are getting tricked are not actually getting paid, and they're not aware of what's going on. There's nothing

Javier Leiva: in it for them.

Jordan Harbinger: But it's very similar in that somebody's doing this to these other people, and people are laughing at them at their expense, yet they think it's hilarious.

That's just one of those, where did you find this audience of degenerate, horrible people? Ugh. Like, all of them need to be on a list. That's just terrible. Were these guys improvising? It sounds like they were taking suggestions from the audience, but are they running structured scripts at all? Or is this something they practiced?

Javier Leiva: I think they're [00:48:00] improvised and, yeah, j- that former PrankNet member was telling me that they would practice this, they would fine-tune it. Yeah, some of it was improvised, obviously, because they had to be quick on their feet just in case the manager would throw them off, but they would get them right back on course and just drive the conversation.

And she told me it didn't work all the time. It didn't work all the time, but man, there's tons of these pranks. And they're offline now. I haven't been able-- And I even searched for Dax to see if there was any activity prior to this interview, just because I always wonder about him. I'm like, "How could you just stop doing this?"

Jordan Harbinger: That makes me wonder if he did or if he's just another- Doing it somewhere else that's on the dark web, it's harder to find. I don't know. Because he doesn't want to get caught. This is Jackass plus a felony factory, and it almost seems like the word prank kind of lets everybody minimize what's actually happening, if that makes sense, right?

"It's just a prank, bro." Yeah, you literally [00:49:00] have somebody who's getting charged with multiple sexual assaults, you destroyed $60,000 worth of property. That's a crime. You can call it a prank if you want to let your conscience go a little bit lighter. "We're just pranking people." Ding dong ditch is a prank.

Putting a kick me sign on someone's back is a prank. Maybe even tricking somebody into drinking something that's not apple cider, but probably not urine, I think that crosses the line. But when you're starting to do stuff like that, that's not a prank. You're telling yourself it is so that you don't feel like the criminal degenerate piece of crap that you are.

Javier Leiva: There's this one recording where somebody was in a hotel room, one of the hotel room guests, and you can hear this, right? You can hear the call. And he's super nervous because there's this gas leak in the hotel, and he breaks the window. You hear the glass break. And the wife is like, "What are you doing?"

He's, "I'm breaking the window. He just told me to." I can just imagine how odd that must have been for her. They're on vacation, and all of a sudden, all of a sudden her husband just grabs the toilet seat and just starts breaking the window of this hotel, which is nuts.

Jordan Harbinger: There's [00:50:00] urgency, there's confusion, the timing's in the middle of the night.

Y- you've got this fake authority. I would imagine the pranks got, like you said, more extreme because there's a performance element, because there's an audience. If you're just doing this on your own, you might get your kicks doing this a couple of times, having people, I don't know, throw the toilet paper roll out the window, and you're like, "Ha ha."

But when it's like, "Hey, I want to see more. I want to see something more extreme," it's kinda like terrorism. You can't just do this really lame-o, "Yeah, we burned a flag in the middle of Times Square." It's like, okay, what did that do?

Javier Leiva: Well, you're being cheered on by fans live in real time. The rush that these guys must have been feeling when it worked.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, exactly, especially when you have nothing else going in life because you live in your parents' basement somewhere in Ontario. So are there maybe, like, top three red flags that a weird call is actually a manipulation attempt? Is there anything like that?

Javier Leiva: When somebody causes a sense of urgency and that you bypass your logic, slow things down.[00:51:00]

Try to slow things down, just like your cousin or your friend, I forget who, was in the elevator. Have that elevator moment to slow it down, pause it, give yourself some time to think. Because when you're acting out of fear, you're making bad decisions, and I think just doing that, having that elevator moment, will save you a lot of grief.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting, because obedience might be partly about fear and partly about not wanting to be the problem or make a situation worse. And so yeah, if you think about it, if there's really a situation in which the police are calling you, five minutes before you call them back- Is not going to materially change the situation.

Now, I get that they try to use urgency to beat that, right? "There's a gas leak. You can't hang up and go to the front desk. This is a matter of life or death in an emergency." They try and get around that, but it's like, well, that's kind of the flag. You don't smell the gas. Maybe we hang up the phone and go, "Hey, wife," who's still sleeping, "I'm getting a call from somebody who says they're from the front desk and they say there's a gas leak and I need to break the window."

[00:52:00] "Jordan, call the front desk and make sure that..." "Oh, yeah. You know what? That's a good idea. I just didn't think about it because it's 3:00 in the morning and I'm half asleep."

Javier Leiva: And she's not in the moment like you

Jordan Harbinger: are. She's not caught up in it. So if you can sanity check this with somebody who's not been on the phone with the fake cop for 25 minutes, it's probably a really good way to break out of this stuff.

Javier Leiva: I think we need to make this more relatable to your audience because everybody listening probably wouldn't fall for this stuff because this stuff is insane and is probably the most extreme examples. But could you imagine you work in a corporate setting, you work for the CFO or something like that, and you get a deep fake call from your boss saying, "I need you to wire all this money."

Okay? This is the same thing that we're talking about.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay? This has happened to my mother-in-law.

Javier Leiva: This happens, right? And it's just not you throwing something out the window or urinating on yourself or whatever, but it is you transferring lots of funds over to some account that you don't need, and they do the same thing, man.

They do the same thing that Dex and all the Prank That guys do. They [00:53:00] create a sense of urgency. They do their research. They're your boss's voice, or they know some information that only somebody at your office would have, and you might fall for it. You know what I mean? So same thing. It's just like now it's in a corporate setting, right?

Jordan Harbinger: This happened to my mother-in-law. She got an email that was like, "Hey, update to the bank wire instructions," and she goes, "Huh. I just talked to them on the phone and they're updating their bank wire instructions? That's so weird." So she calls and goes, "Hey, I just wanted to make sure that... Because you just sent me two conflicting bank wire instructions.

You just sent me an update even though I just talked to you." And they were like, "We didn't update our banking information." She's like, "Oh, you're not at a totally separate credit union in a totally different state?" And they're like, "Oh my God, no." And they had found out who the right person was at her company to talk to about the wire, and she had just happened to get off the phone with that person.

If that timing hadn't been there, she probably would've gone, "Oh, okay. Well, they're updating their wiring instructions. I guess we'll just throw that in the system." That was her

Javier Leiva: elevator moment. You know what I mean? You just need that interruption, right, to [00:54:00] like-

Jordan Harbinger: The most useful takeaway is probably that context can at least temporarily override judgment.

It's not that people are just dumb. It's that with the right context, your judgment is not as good as you think it is if all of those other pieces are in place.

Javier Leiva: And the thing is that we're hardwired to trust people. We can't be that cynical that we go around the world thinking that everybody's going to be pranking us or trying to scam us.

For the most part, we accept things, right? I accept the person that built this house knew what they were doing. You just have to trust, right? But I think that just have that in the back of your mind that some people are looking to take advantage of you, and just have a healthy dose of skepticism.

Jordan Harbinger: I'd love to talk about something that's pretty apropos our current climate here, which is fake ICE agents.

So what's freaked me out about this whole thing is, politics aside, if somebody can just say they're law enforcement but doesn't actually have to show you a badge or an ID, that is a big deal. Because I keep thinking, what would [00:55:00] happen if masked men came to my porch and said, "Open the door," and I said, "Who are you?"

And they said, "ICE, but we're not going to show you a badge or ID." I am 50/50 on me just answering with bullets.

Javier Leiva: How would you know? This is not about politics. It's a legitimate question. How would you know? I have no idea.

Jordan Harbinger: I got my wife and kids in here. I'm not going to take a chance that you're actually ICE agents.

None of us are immigrants, so what are you doing on my porch? And the answer might be, I have it on Ring that they refused to identify themselves, and they were armed, so I made sure that they couldn't get in, and when they tried to kick my door in, I lit them up. And I don't know. If they turn out to be federal agents later, I feel like the jury might actually understand that I didn't know that, and they refused to actually demonstrate that they were, but I'm probably still going to go to prison or get shot.

So it's like a really weird dilemma that we're in if these guys are just not subject to the actual requirements of regular law enforcement.

Javier Leiva: And I get it. The official excuse for why they wear masks and don't identify themselves is that they recognize that what [00:56:00] they're doing could be very unpopular, and it's a very charged topic, and people could target them.

They could doxx them. They could find out where they live and who they're related to.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm sympathetic to that, but at some point you at least go, "Look- But what about their cops? "... here's my picture and an official ID and a number you can..." You can call 911 and say, "Is ICE at my door?" And if they say, "Yes," then it's a sanctioned operation.

It wouldn't be that hard to set this up.

Javier Leiva: It really wouldn't. But here's the thing. It's like, where does that argument end, right? Because police don't need to do this. They're out there showing their face all the time. They get harassed. Judges get harassed. Prosecutors get harassed. You and I in the media and the public, we get harassed.

Like, is everybody going to just wear a mask?

Jordan Harbinger: That's a really good point. I agree. I think it's almost like you're signing up for something here that's unfortunately part of the job. Yeah.

Javier Leiva: Exactly, and that sucks, right? And actually, I have a whole series on how to disappear, so if they want to unmask and learn how to actually disappear from the internet, there's plenty of ways to do that, right?

If you go on a people [00:57:00] search website and you type in a cop's name and you get their address-

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, geez. Don't give anybody ideas, man. Holy smoke. No, but I'm

Javier Leiva: saying delete your stuff from the internet. That's a better way of disappearing

Jordan Harbinger: There's a point where obedience becomes participation. There's also a point where podcasting becomes advertising.

That point is now. We'll be right back.

Don't forget about our newsletter, Wee Bit Wiser. The idea is to give you something specific, something practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships in under two minutes every Wednesday. If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out.

It's a great companion to the show. Jordanharbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with Javier Leiva. The police department should pay for, I don't know what you would call it, DeleteMe or whatever for cops because they're in a position where they should not easily be fo- I mean, I removed my house from, I think it was Google Street.

You can't look at it. You can't look at it. I made sure that [00:58:00] all of the photos that you can't just ask Google to delete are actually the property that was here before, so it's completely unrecognizable. And it's funny because I invited one of my daughter's friends over, and her parents are, like, these wealthy law partners or whatever, and our nanny is our friends.

And so the family asked my nanny, "Is it really safe for our kid to go over there?" And she's like, "Of course. Why?" And they were like, "I don't know. We looked at photos of the house on the internet, and it just doesn't look like a place where we would want our child." And our nanny was like, "Huh." So she looked it up, and she's like, "Do you know that this is what your house looks like on the internet?"

It's like when they were about to tear it down, the old property, and it's like this haunted house looking the place. Drive by, it's, it doesn't look like that anymore. And they came over, and they were laughing. They're like, "Yeah, it's slightly different than the photos on the internet because it was, yeah, it was an abandoned property, I think.

Well, the guy had passed away, right? So it was, like, empty for a few months. You can imagine what a place starts to look like after a while.

Javier Leiva: I got all my neighbors to blur out their images on Google Maps, so [00:59:00] yeah. And it's really easy. Just look up your address. You could do it on your phone. It takes a couple seconds, so I highly recommend it.

Jordan Harbinger: I also recommend that. That's a good recommendation of the week unofficially right there is blur your house. The thing is, there's almost just no really good reason for anybody to be able to see what the front of your house looks like. Yes, it would be great if your friends who've never been there could go, "Do I have the right place?"

But you know what? There's other ways around that, where they're calling you on the phone and contacting you. There's so much potential for misuse that it's just not good. So yeah, fake ICE agents, man. This is not a thing that happened once and the news overly covered it.

Javier Leiva: I thought it would be, actually.

When I first approached the story, I was like, "Okay, fake ICE agent," because I heard about this one story. It actually happened where I live in Raleigh, North Carolina. Some guy pretended to be an ICE agent, and he raped this woman. And I was like, "How often does this actually happen?" And it did not take me long.

I found case after case of people impersonating [01:00:00] ICE agents and doing all kinds of stuff, not just rape or violent crime, extortion, like, all kinds of stuff. And I was like, "You know what? This is perfect," right? Because with a mask, and you could go to a Bass Pro Shop and buy your ICE uniform, right? And you could pull off whatever you want because people respect authority.

People are afraid of authority, and they will most likely do what you say.

Jordan Harbinger: Especially people who are here illegally. Their entire feed is full of videos of people getting their ass beat in the street while sitting in their car after doing a job or cutting someone's lawn or walking around. They're going to assume that, "Oh, my number is up today."

That's just what this is. They're not going to think, "Oh, it's a fake badge, and the guy has zip ties and a fake document in English that I can't fully read because it's legalese that says I'm going to get deported and says ICE at the top." I'm a lawyer. I don't really fully understand ICE procedures Do you? As a normal person, do you understand what deportation procedures look like in the beginning?

I took classes on this exact thing and worked on [01:01:00] some of these, and I still don't remember/understand all of this.

Javier Leiva: I mean, they just don't even operate like any other law enforcement. According to the vice president, they have absolute immunity , so, like, what can't they do? You know what I'm saying? Like, they're a very unique slice of law enforcement that is just...

It's kind of alarming. Some of the cases were really silly. I found body cam footage of a real cop approaching a fake ICE agent in Orlando who had detained some undocumented immigrants. I guess in his mind, he was doing a good thing, right? He was pretending-

Jordan Harbinger: Right, so this is some vigilante idiot who's like, "I'm going to be ICE now."

Javier Leiva: "So I found some people who look undocumented to me, and I'm-" Oh my God "... going to hold them up some place and call the real police."

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, he called the police. Okay, so he's a bonehead. Yeah. He's a real bonehead.

Javier Leiva: Yeah, I said this stuff goes all over the place, right? But then you have some pretty sophisticated stuff.

There was this one guy, and this is really weird, Jordan, because I'm Hispanic. I [01:02:00] think this is really especially weird. The guy's name is Julio Garcia Barrera. Yeah. There are multiple cases that I found of Hispanics pretending to be ICE to scam other Hispanics.

Jordan Harbinger: And I think we all saw the video where the guy's like, "Are you a US citizen?"

And the guy's like, "You sound like you're not a US citizen." And the guy's, like, got a Spanish accent, and he's like, "Yeah, got me on that one." Yeah, he's got a thicker accent than the guy who's yelling at him. He's in his... He's like, "This is my driveway. You don't sound like you're from America." And the other guy's like, "You don't sound like you're from America."

And it turned out, yeah, like, one guy was from El Salvador, and the other guy was actually from Venezuela, and it's like, "Wait, wait, wait. You got the job with ICE, and you've been here, like, six months longer than me? What the heck is your problem, pal?"

Javier Leiva: So the trick is just to become an ICE agent, which we found out through my investigation is very easy, actually.

They're on a hiring spree, so.

Jordan Harbinger: Look, I'm going to get pushback from this, and I want to be really clear. #NotAllICEAgents, whatever, you know? But, and I heard this from somebody I know who is in ICE. Don't shoot the messenger. They [01:03:00] are hiring some of the dumbest people that have no business in law enforcement.

Again, I heard this from somebody in ICE who's like, "Yeah, we've hired these people, and they are so dumb. They would not make the bar for any law enforcement agency, especially this one, as of a year ago, and now there's a zillion of them

Javier Leiva: That's not just conjecture, man. I actually interviewed a reporter who has posted tons of negative stuff about ICE.

She went to an ICE hiring convention or whatever, like an expo, you know? And she got a job. She admittedly smokes pot, did a drug test. She passed all the checkpoints. She just passed and actually got a job offer, which was wild.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, and look, there's plenty, I'm sure, ICE agents out there, they take their job seriously, they're qualified, they care about the United States, they're not just throwing their weight around.

I think if you ask those people, they're probably the ones who will confirm the quickest that they have hired some of the dumbest low brain cell inbred people.

Javier Leiva: That must be really irritating, right? It's got to be [01:04:00] the worst. If you're a legitimate law enforcement person, you have 20 years of experience, and then they're literally lowering the bar to hire as many people as possible.

Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, there's a friend of mine who's, like, a middle-ranking officer in ICE. He's like, "I'm leaving," because he was in the military before, and he goes, "When I was in the military, you could join ICE or Border Protection, or you could join a federal agency or a local law enforcement agency." And he's like, "I chose this," because he cared about sort of the mission.

He talked to his buddies in the military who are getting out now, and basically, I feel bad saying this, but if you are the dumb guy in the platoon who they don't trust to hold grenades because you're going to blow everybody up, and you just can't figure out how to do anything, and you're basically getting low-key pushed out of the military for being too dumb, those guys all go to ICE because they can't get a job with the state police, the sheriff, any federal agents.

They don't qualify. They're, like, the guy that everybody goes, "God, how did you make it through life?" And unfortunately, like, those are the guys that are largely joining ICE right now. So my friends who are in ICE who have been there for a [01:05:00] while are like, "I can't be around this anymore. I just can't do it."

Javier Leiva: I would imagine it's like the old Police Academy movies.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's... And it's not political. Again, they're not like- No, no, no ... "I'm against all this." They're just like, "I can't work with people that can't refill a soda without making a mess. I just can't deal with this."

Javier Leiva: And like you said, we're not just making a blanket statement, all ICE agents. But going back to those Hispanics, so this guy, Julio Barrera, he would rob people at night in the same street corner.

He would shine a flashlight in their faces, and he would demand proof of citizenship, and he, he would threaten to deport them. And this other guy, Michael Ruiz, another Hispanic, would do the same thing. He got $58,000 from these Hispanic family. You know, he, he actually promised them, he's like, "Hey, I'm an ICE agent, so listen, I could either turn you in, or you could pay me all this money, and I could get you fake legal documents and, you know, avoid deportation."

And they would pay him all this money to avoid this stuff. Sure, this is a prank, but now you're [01:06:00] stealing these people's money.

Jordan Harbinger: No, this is criminal. There's nothing funny about this. These people should be- thrown in prison. This is actually just really terrible. You're going after some of the most vulnerable people in a society.

You're extorting their life savings out of them? Holy cow, shame on you doesn't cover it. Again, politics aside, if people can't tell real law enforcement from criminals with props, this is a massive public safety problem. Massive. So okay, someone says, "I'm ICE, come with me." Maybe you're undocumented or you're waiting for your green card in the mail.

What do you do? What do you say? What do you do?

Javier Leiva: I think you do what you said earlier, where it's just like demand some kind of proof, and they may or may not give it to you. There's a video that I found. There's this YouTuber actually who goes around. He was just driving around Houston, and he saw this guy dressed like ICE.

It was at night. He stopped this pickup truck, and he was questioning him over and over. He's like, "Show me your badge. Show me your badge." And he confronted the guy. Dude, that's kind of dangerous, right? Like, confront [01:07:00] a guy that may or may not be ICE. I don't recommend that.

Jordan Harbinger: Best case scenario, he's ICE and he's really annoyed with you.

Worst case scenario, he's just a criminal pretending to be a federal law enforcement agent, and you might be messing with somebody you don't want to mess with.

Javier Leiva: It's like you're in between a hard, uh, a rock and a hard place when you're in this situation. I say as little as possible. I don't know, man. It's just not a good place to be.

Jordan Harbinger: I can't give legal advice, but I'll throw in something that a good lawyer, if they've, where there was one here, would probably tell you to do. You ask for an ID. If they pick you specifically, if they're coming after you specifically, you look for a warrant. If they refuse that, it doesn't matter anyways.

You ask, "Am I detained? Am I being detained?" Anybody who's seen Breaking Bad knows that scene, right? "Am I being detained?" Verify this independently. If you have to call 911 and you say, "Look, there's a guy who says he's an ICE agent. He won't show me his badge, he won't show me his warrant. Can you send an officer?"

I've asked the San Jose police. I didn't do an exhaustive study of this, but I asked the San Jose police what would happen, and they said, "Yeah, we'd probably send an officer over there because they should be involving us in [01:08:00] this kind of stuff anyways." So if a cop comes and that guy runs away because the police are there, that wasn't a real ICE agent, right?

A real ICE agent will talk to the cops and go, "We have the authority to be here. We have the authority to do this." Don't rely on any provided contact info. If this guy gives you a Vistaprint business card that says ICE and gives you a number, don't call that number. Literally, just call 911. They will happily transfer you.

Don't worry, "Oh, it's not a real emergency." No, I've called 911 for less, okay? They will transfer you to the appropriate department. You do not have to comply with these people until they identify themselves and you verify independently, and you can tell them that's what you're doing. "Hey, look, you've seen the news.

This is a problem. I'm calling 911 to verify that you're actually ICE." Sure, they might get mad. So what? At least you're not then getting kidnapped and thrown into a trunk by an actual criminal. You know what? Let them sweat that one a little bit. Obviously, complying with them blindly is not going to do you that much good anyways, so I would say you go ahead and you make sure that you're complying with real law enforcement before you end up in a [01:09:00] basement somewhere Again, not legal advice, just hopefully common sense that people can remember and that not everybody knows they have the right to do.

You have the right to make sure that you are being legally detained by an actual police officer.

Javier Leiva: That was really good, actually. Good advice. I wonder if you would even have time to make a call like that.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's a good point. If they're throwing you down on the ground, you don't have time to do that.

But if they're tapping on your window like, "Hey, get out of the car, we're ICE," you can say, "How do I know? Can you show me an ID and a badge?" And if they go, "No, I don't have to do that," you just call 911. And yeah, they might try to break your car window, and then you tell them, "I have masked men breaking into my car."

That's what you tell them. You don't say, "I think they might be cops, but I'm not sure," and they won't tell... No, you just tell them you've got a masked man breaking into your car, because that's all you really know. Like I said before, if I end up with masked men on my doorstep that say that they're law enforcement, I'm not taking your word for it.

You look like every other criminal to me. I'm calling 911 and saying, "I have masked men on my porch threatening to kick the door in, and I don't understand who they are, and they're not identifying themselves." That's all I really [01:10:00] know. So yeah, if they're throwing you on the ground, you don't have time to deal with this.

But yeah, if they're trying to get you to open your car door and comply, you can call 911, and you s- you tell them, "There's masked men outside my car trying to extract me." You'll hear sirens in a few minutes. So yeah, make these guys identify themselves. And best thing is, if they're not ICE, they're out of there if you called 911 and the police are on the way.

They're not going to screw around with that. They'd be crazy to do that. And then maybe you found a group of criminals kidnapping people, which is a little bit of a better find than most of us are used to. I think if they really are ICE and the cops come, they're just going to identify themselves, and then we're right back where you started anyways.

So you can make these guys'... You can bruise these guys' egos by not complying right away. I think that's the least of your concerns. Javier, thank you very much, man. I appreciate this. I love talking about stuff like this. I love talking about the compliance and the psychology behind it and, and more importantly, what people can do. Because the takeaway's not never cooperate. It's always verify independently, slow things down, don't outsource your [01:11:00] conscience or your common sense to someone else's voice.

Javier Leiva: Thank you, Jordan, man. This was so much fun. I always love talking with you because we end up, like, going down so many rabbit holes.

It's always fun, man.

Jordan Harbinger: Agree, man. Let's do it again sometime.

We're more connected than ever and somehow more vulnerable than we've ever been. Cyber Crisis author Eric Cole explains how AI-driven attackers, corporate scale scam operations, and aging systems have turned everyday tech into an open door.

JHS Trailer: Do you want to be 100% secure?

You want your family to be 100% secure? It's easy. Pack up your bags, sell everything, move to Pennsylvania, and become Amish. Because I'll tell you, I hacked a lot of things in my life. I have not been able to hack a candle and a horse and buggy. If you have no functionality or no benefit, you can be 100% secure.

And to give you a more realistic example, my smartphone. As soon as you add any functionality, you're decreasing security. Security and functionality are inverse. 100% security is zero functionality. What is the value and benefit? What [01:12:00] is the risk and exposure? Is the value worth the risk? If the value of benefit is worth the risk, do it.

If the value and benefit is not worth the risk, don't do it. And the reality is, and I always tell people, the most dangerous word on the internet is the F word. And it's not what you're thinking. The F word is free. Free is not free because all the times when you have a free app, you're basically allowing them to access your microphone or your camera or your pictures.

If they ask you and you say yes and you give them permission, that's actually an authorized app and it's allowed. And the reality is most people don't even realize when they install these apps, they're hitting yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and allowing access. If I want to make my smartphone 100% secure, smash it, burn it, throw it in a ditch, turn it off, and it'll be 100% secure.

It's actually freaking scary of how much you're being monitored and tracked with your phones that you don't even realize it.

Jordan Harbinger: Check out episode 1247 of The Jordan Harbinger Show with Eric Cole, and you'll start looking at your [01:13:00] phone, your home, and even the power grid very differently. Big thank you to Javier.

These stories, man, are horrifying because they don't require hypnosis or mind control or some sort of genius-level criminal mastermind. They just require stress, politeness, confusion, and one person pretending to be in charge. That's the part that should bother all of us because the lesson here is not, hey, people are all sheep.

It's that the wrong context can make smart people temporarily pretty stupid, especially when somebody creates urgency, isolates them, and wraps the whole thing in fake authority. So the next time somebody says, hey, don't hang up, don't tell anyone, you have to do this right now, I'm with law enforcement, your first job is not to comply.

Your first job is to slow the whole thing down and verify it through a channel that they don't control. Ask for ID, ask if you're being detained, call the agency directly using a number you find yourself, bring in another person, refuse anything involving humiliation, nudity, money, secrecy, or physical control, and remember, real authority can withstand verification.

Fake authority [01:14:00] needs panic. All things Javier Leiva will be on the website in the show notes. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about Six Minute Networking as well over at sixminutenetworking.com.

I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show was created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tadas Sidlauskas, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting.

In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who's interested in psychology, persuasion, true crime, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

And we'll see you next time.