964: Miles Johnson | The Secret World of International Crime

964: Miles Johnson | The Secret World of International Crime

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: This episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show is brought to you by Nissan. Nissan SUVs. Have the capabilities to take your adventure to the next level. Learn more at nissanusa.com.

[00:00:09] Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show.

[00:00:12] Miles Johnson: It's an interesting spin on an old story. This is a guy who was a major criminal figure who very quickly rose to the absolute top of the boxing world. Most famous boxers, the whole world. He was really at the top. However he did that, yes, let's say it definitely coincided with the same time he was running a criminal group, crime and boxing, which has always had a relationship and, uh, dirty money being involved in boxing, but set in a very different place.

[00:00:39] Jordan Harbinger: 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, performers, even the occasional economic hitman, gold smuggler, four Star General or Fortune 500 CEO.

[00:01:06] And if you're new to the show or you wanna tell your friends about it. I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation and cyber warfare, crime and cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

[00:01:21] Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app. To get started, my guest today is an investigative reporter with The Financial Times in London who has written stories about Russian mercenaries, VIP Casino heists money laundering by the Italian Mafia, Vatican Financial Scandals and Covert Sanctions busting.

[00:01:38] Our conversation today is likewise all over the place. We talk about undercover, DEA busts has BAH cocaine trafficking to money laundering, to sanctions busting to Iranian hit squads, and more. So if you're into this sort of international intrigue type stuff, I think you'll dig this conversation. I'm not sure how much more I really need to sell it.

[00:01:56] Here we go with Miles Johnson and No, I know what you're thinking. He's British. Shouldn't he be known as kilometers Johnson? No, the Brits use Miles just like the US and uh, Liberia. We're all in good company. Enjoy.

[00:02:13] You've had such an interesting career, seemingly from the outside so far, man, like investigative reporter with the Financial Times in London. Some of the stories you've written about Russian mercenaries, VIP Casino Heists, I don't even know what Mayfair is. Is that a brand of casino? What is a Mayfair Casino heist?

[00:02:30] Yeah.

[00:02:30] Miles Johnson: So that might not travel so well. Mayfair is uh, sort of ultra fancy sort of luxury area in the center of London has always historically been the place where sort of money sort of arrives and um, it's just a sort of area where you get all these different characters. Got it. Lots of rich people of all different types, but lots of intrigue.

[00:02:49] So it's always an interesting place.

[00:02:51] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That checks out, I guess that tracks and, and money laundering by the Italian mafia. Vatican financial scandals. Covert sanctions busting. So there's a lot we can talk about in, in the book, which we'll link in the show notes. And by the way, listeners, if you buy the book using our links, it helps support the show, yada yada.

[00:03:06] The book focuses initially on how the DEA got its jurisdiction expanded to terrorism and financing, which I know that sounds like super in the weeds, but I was quite interesting. I didn't realize the DEA was sort of a hybrid from the outside looking in hybrid law enforcement agency plus intelligence agency kind of feel to it.

[00:03:26] You know, you think of them as just like, oh, there's a drug FBI, but it's like, well they're kind of like the drug CIA in a

[00:03:33] Miles Johnson: way. Yeah. So it was sort of a really interesting period of history to look at because although it's not that long ago, it is sort of post nine 11 and um, you know, the D e's been around, you know, for obviously a while, but, um, obviously everything changed.

[00:03:46] Post nine 11. There was a lot of. Pressure to sort of join up the different US agencies and, and your, your questions about why things were missed. Mm-Hmm. It basically led to this sort of through historical accident in a way. What is kind of, seems now like this kind of completely audacious experiment in law enforcement where they sort of said to the DA due to various US statute changes, like pretty much you can almost, not entirely, but almost go after anyone you want in the world.

[00:04:14] And so you suddenly had these, um, you know, guys who had grown up, uh, as drug cops on, you know, the streets of big American cities suddenly going after arms dealers and terror suspects and people all around the world doing these crazy sting operations. And so, uh, it was a sort of fascinating. Way into sort of what then later happened.

[00:04:33] 'cause they got him mixed up in all of these quite interesting investigations.

[00:04:37] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. They swing pretty hard. I, I didn't expect drug cops like we, you know, we're sort of calling them, which is not exactly the story, but I didn't expect drug cops to be chasing, I. For example, Syrian arms dealers. Can you make that connection for us?

[00:04:50] Because it's like, well, wait a minute, this is an arms dealer. Why are you chasing an arms dealer? You're supposed to be going after a heroin trafficker in Maryland. What are you doing?

[00:04:58] Miles Johnson: Yeah. So there's this sort of technical reason in, um, US law about how links to foreign terror organizations and drugs trafficking, but more sort of generally, it basically was a situation where they had a huge amount of sources.

[00:05:11] You know, the difference between the DEA and other sort of agencies is that they have a, this huge sort of foreign source network of criminals. You know, other agencies also will have that, but they kind of get into places which other people aren't really paying that much attention to. You know, it would be some sort of money launderer in West Africa who's working with cocaine traffickers, and they have a sort of undercover agent.

[00:05:32] He'll say, oh, you know, by the way, I've, I can also sell you some, uh, missile launches if you want, or something like that. They're like, oh, how's that? And they'll be like, oh, I know a guy. He's in. To Czech Republic and he can hook me up, and it sort of leads through these various stages into higher and higher levels of these sort of international criminal conspiracy.

[00:05:47] So. They get into, um, things like that, and they just have this sort of different view of the world, which did lead to a lot of clashes, you know, because people were like, what are you guys doing? You know, why are you getting involved in this stuff? It frankly was a question for them That

[00:06:00] Jordan Harbinger: makes sense. And I get that.

[00:06:02] Another agency might be like, Hey, what's the deal worthy arms trafficking people? But at the same time, what are you supposed to do if you're going after three tons of cocaine and someone's like, by the way, you want some RPGs, are you supposed to be like, well, now that you've brought that up, I have to switch you over to my partner, who's definitely not an under undercover agent at a different agency that has jurisdiction around these things.

[00:06:22] Nice. Knowing you, he'll be picking it up from here. I mean, it's like, what are you gonna do? Right? You have to act like a criminal and you can't just, it would seem foolish not to pick up that thread. Like we could either put 'em away for 50 years for arms trafficking, or we can just stick with the original idea that we had and get 'em for drugs only, or we can like get the whole thing and package it together.

[00:06:41] So I, I get where they're coming from. I mean. The point is to get rid of these guys, not to get a trophy for doing

[00:06:47] Miles Johnson: it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was also a different philosophy in a way where, you know, an intelligence agency isn't trying to build criminal cases. You know, they're not trying to build a case that can stand up in front of a judge.

[00:06:58] And so it's a sort of different approach and you know, that means that it was just this particular time and place where post nine 11 there was a lot of money going into, um, the DEA and they started to do these, you know, now some of them quite famous sting operations like Victor Boot, the Russian arms dealer who recently was swapped for, yeah, Brittany Griner, if you remember that.

[00:07:19] I do. You know, he was caught in a big famous DEA sting operation in a hotel in Thailand, and that did shock people at the time. You know, when that happened, people were like, what just happened? How did these guys do that? I think it's sort of, it definitely built from there. So it's this interesting backdrop to where we are now in the world because, you know, sort of, I think people now are more accustomed to the sort of interconnectedness and chaos of the world as it is right now with, you know, all of these different governments hooking up and you know, to people doing business with each other and you know, the kind of interplay between, you know, parts of the shadow economy and governments and, you know, sort of sanction governments and stuff.

[00:07:55] But back then I think it was, there was much more of a focus on terror. But by getting into those networks of sort of prelude to kind of the world where we see him now,

[00:08:03] Jordan Harbinger: why did, how did they get Victor Booth then? Was he also selling drugs along with it? 'cause that guy's an arms dealer, right? I know they call him the merchant of death, but that's like so unoriginal.

[00:08:13] This guy sells arms sort of famously right? To bad guys like Syria or maybe North Korea, whatever. I don't know. He just doesn't care. Sort of like African strongman. I was looking this guy up earlier and I was like, this is a guy with just no moral compass whatsoever. He just doesn't care that they're gonna slaughter civilians with this stuff.

[00:08:34] Like he, it's really, he knows it and just doesn't care. But was he also selling drugs? Is that how they got him? No,

[00:08:40] Miles Johnson: he was dealing with people who were connected to selling drugs. And so under the sort of statutes that came in, you know, if you are transacting with someone who is basically getting money from trafficking drugs, for example, a Latin American paramilitary group or something like that, who might wanna buy arms, then that comes under sort of us jurisdiction.

[00:09:01] That sort of opened up a lot of cases. Also, they're these sting operations where they would pose, you know, they're very controversial. They would pose as members of, you know, FARC for example, the Columbia paramilitary and, you know, go down a whole sort of business arrangement. And that's how they got other people at Sal Cassar, you know, the sort of Prince of Marbella he was called.

[00:09:19] But yeah, these were sort of these very aggressive law enforcement operations, which really, um, kind of surprised people. Yeah. I mean, we'll come to how things are now, but, um, you know, that was definitely a period of time, which I think at the time people didn't realize was it wasn't gonna last forever, put

[00:09:34] Jordan Harbinger: it that way.

[00:09:34] You mentioned that they use, I think in the book you said criminal impersonators or something, but that's just what, like an undercover agent posing his Fark or Hezbollah and Yeah. This fascinating stuff. I mean, that's a totally crazy position to be in. Imagine being like, well, I'm DEA, but I'm gonna pretend I'm in Hezbollah and like go to a meeting in Syria or Lebanon or whatever.

[00:09:56] I don't even know and meet with these people. I'm just. Super high stakes. Tell me about, you mentioned a name earlier that I didn't quite catch, but there's another guy in the book, Ali Fayyad. How did they get this guy? This guy is, this is pretty interesting.

[00:10:09] Miles Johnson: Yeah, so he was a pretty fascinating character.

[00:10:11] He was, um, 'cause of what both who he was and who he was working with and also sort of what happened after they got him. But he was, um, uh, Lebanese born arms trafficker who was living in Ukraine. So basically he was actually an advisor to Victor Jankovich the, um, Ukrainian, um, president who was deposed.

[00:10:33] You know, basically if we're flashing back, you know, back to he was the Russia aligned president. He was sort of, um, deposed, had the flee to Russia during the, the color revolution there. So he basically just after that, ended up getting, um, caught in this da sting where he was offering to sell Igla missile launches to Columbia paramilitaries, and it was in Prague.

[00:10:53] So they kind of, in combination with Czech police, they sort of, um, have to set up this whole deal. They get really nervous about, you know, because, you know, people in the DEA were concerned that, you know, they FIA had access to Interpol somehow he had someone on the inside. Obviously Interpol information spreads around lots of different countries and they were always paranoid that maybe it might leak, that they were doing an operation there.

[00:11:15] Then he, and they're worried he's gonna be up on a no fly list and eventually he gets that. It's this sort of like classic thing with a hotel room, which is all wired up with cameras and microphones and stuff and they arrest him. He's AWAI awaiting extradition. So he's in the Czech Republic awaiting extradition to the United States, and then a group of Czech citizens, one of which was his lawyer.

[00:11:37] Another, uh, one was his tra the lawyer's translator. They were on a trip to Lebanon and then they get kidnapped. So suddenly, uh, there's a situation where these unknown kidnappers at the time, no one knew who they were. Were basically saying, if you don't give us back fired. These guys aren't coming home.

[00:11:53] Wow. So it became suddenly a kind of international incident. Frequently that was a sort of, there were a lot of, uh, unintended or unknowable consequences from these sorts of dramatic operations.

[00:12:04] Jordan Harbinger: Gosh, these guys really are, are sort of fearless. If they're gonna go ahead and kidnap people in the, I guess, host country and say, yeah, we're just gonna kill these journalists or whatever, if you don't release this clearly guilty terrorist, I mean, they just don't care.

[00:12:19] It's sort of shocking, but it also shows you what we're dealing with as a civilization, right? We're just dealing with people who have, who don't care. Also, what's up with arms dealers in the Czech Republic? I feel like either it's a coincidence that none of those of those guys seem to be there. Is it just because it's sort of between the Eastern block and Western Europe?

[00:12:36] Is it just geography or is like, does the Czech Republic have something to do? I know they manufacture some weapons there, but you wouldn't think that'd be a requirement here in 2024 to be next to the factory? I

[00:12:48] Miles Johnson: think it's, um, you know, for historical reasons as you say, um, you know, sort of an indigenous industry there and, you know, stockpiles, um, potentially of, you know, obviously the sort of, um, after the full of the Soviet Union there were lots of stockpiles of kind of now redundant or unused munitions.

[00:13:05] So there's that sort of stuff too. But yeah, it is interesting. You know, there was obviously the famous incident of there was a factory which sort of mysteriously caught fire. There wasn't, which was, uh, linked to Russian intelligence. It seems to be like a lot of. Arms, arms, shenanigans going on

[00:13:19] Jordan Harbinger: there.

[00:13:19] Really? I didn't hear about that. So they just lit the factory. Why? Why were they supplying Ukraine or something like that? I can't

[00:13:26] Miles Johnson: remember the exact details. Uh, there's been some good work on it by, um, various outlets. I think Bell and Cat as well, but I think it might have been that they were shipping, it was a man who was shipping weapons to Georgia, I think.

[00:13:37] Ah, but don't hold me to that. But yeah, so, you know, it's this sort of weird world where you have these people who are acting, you know, effectively. No one knows exactly who they're working for. You know, in the case, you know, we mentioned about Fariad. You know, there was an interesting case where he was clearly important enough for five people to be kidnapped to get him released.

[00:13:57] If I get kidnapped, I don't think that's gonna happen. No. You know, it's like the average person doesn't get that sort of insurance policy, so. There is this sort of world, you know, which these sort of D operations tapped into of these. They're effectively sort of procurement agents. You know, they're doing lots of different things at the same time.

[00:14:14] They're working sometimes with governments, they're sometimes they're working under some sort of diplomatic cover. You know, some of them are sort of honorary councils for countries, you know, and so they have sort of diplomatic passports and you know, they can facilitate various things. They can move money around for people, they can procure weapons.

[00:14:31] You know, they, they're sort of complex and difficult to pin down because they don't really fit into the classic category of, you know, sort of gangster. They're weird facilitation agents, sort of shadowy figures, I have to

[00:14:43] Jordan Harbinger: say, and I know that this sounds a little bit horrible, but that's just gotta be such an interesting career to have.

[00:14:49] I know these are bad guys and whatnot, but I just think, man, what a fascinating lifestyle to procure weapons. For whoever and have a diplomatic passport and you're like the agricultural at attache for Zambia or, or in Zambia or whatever, and you're just like, yeah, I'm having meetings all the time, and what you're really doing is just doing.

[00:15:10] Crazy international intrigue. I mean, it just, morality aside, it's just gotta be such an, a weird lifestyle. I mean, who, who are your colleagues? Who do you talk to about a hard day at work? Nobody. Right? Like no one, no one can, you can't lean on anyone for this, it seems like.

[00:15:25] Yeah.

[00:15:26] Miles Johnson: I mean maybe there's some sort of secret Yeah.

[00:15:28] Ultra encrypted online support group or something.

[00:15:31] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That's a hell of a Discord server they got going. Yeah.

[00:15:35] Miles Johnson: Yeah. No, I mean, look, there's, some of these characters are, are involved in terrible things. But you know, I've spoken to, um, you know, sources and friends of mine who've dealt with these people who will say, you know, they're bad guys.

[00:15:48] But you know, they are very interesting people. They are very intelligent, they're sort of talented. They've turned their talents to a terrible thing, but they're clearly extremely able people, you know, and sort of just organizing. Pretty complicated things. Yeah. Arranging for shipments to move around the world and without getting caught.

[00:16:05] Not easy. Yeah.

[00:16:06] Jordan Harbinger: And also one of your parties speaks French, the other speaks Lebanese, Arabic. This other guy over here only speaks, uh, an African dialect of English and some, you know, local stuff. And you just have to sort of be fluent enough in all of those to make sure that nothing gets lost in the translation and everything runs smoothly.

[00:16:24] And you gotta do it without using a bank or Right. Or anything. Yeah. And it's just like unbelievable. You'd think it would be high tech, and we'll get to this in a minute, but it's actually quite low tech, right? You think like, oh, it's gonna be Bitcoin and this and that and the No, it's more like, well, we'll get to it in a minute.

[00:16:38] I don't wanna get ahead of myself here. Tell me how foreign governments and terror organizations like Hezbollah, who's been in the news recently, how do they use drug trafficking to buy weapons and launder money and stuff like this? First of all, I thought they got funding from Iran, so why do they need to do this at all anyway?

[00:16:57] Miles Johnson: Yeah, so that's a really good point. I mean, I mean, if you step back, you know, when you are a sanctioned government or you're a sanctioned sort of non-state actor, like a sort of Hezbollah is, you obviously just inherently can't just buy stuff. You can't use the banking system, you can't procure the things you need, especially if you are sort of, you know, involved in sort of military activity.

[00:17:20] You know, let's say you wanna buy night vision goggles and you know, the night vision goggles you can get from China or crap. And so you want to get the night vision goggles from the United States, and you need to figure out a way to get those. So you have to sort of just immediately, you have to start engaging in this sort of global shadow economy where you have to find these people, like these facilitation agents, you know, who can do stuff for you.

[00:17:41] You know, they might not be in any way ideologically motivated. It might just be purely business. You just basically, you, you just find a guy and you say, look, I'll pay you x to get me y In terms of the sort of specific financing, it's like. You know, these are complex organizations where they're often portrayed as being extremely hierarchical and sort of tightly controlled and disciplined.

[00:18:01] But of course there are sort of a multitude of sort of people in them and actions and different reasons for why people would start to engage in things connected with drug trafficking. So, you know, a more recent example would be, which has got more attention recently, is the Syrian government's involvement in CAPTA gun trading, you know?

[00:18:18] Oh yeah. Which is an amphetamine and it's like manufactured at absolutely mass, like industrial scale by the Syrian government. You know, the, the whole bunch of people were sanctioned and it goes up to the very top, you know, like the US and the UK last year, sanctioned Balad, you know, his cousin. So it is really like the inner circle who are involved in this stuff.

[00:18:37] And it's also connected to heah connected figures and has to be sort of moved. And this stuff ends up, you know, there was a massive seizure in Port Salerno in Naples. It was like a billion pills, you know, in 2020. And in that sanction though, last year, they said that the Syrian Tigan trade, I dunno how they quantify this, but the UK said that it was bigger than all of the Mexican cartels combined.

[00:18:59] So you have this situation where the, in that region, you know, you have people financing themselves through drugs because they have to in a way, because, you know, if you don't have access to the international, that's not to excuse it by the way, but I'm saying like, of course if you don't have access to the banking system and you can't sort of transfer money around very easily and you need to raise revenues for expensive things, you know, especially in the context of the book, it was during the Syrian civil War when Hezbollah got involved in a very, very different type of conflict than it was used to, which was extremely expensive.

[00:19:29] It was very interesting around the time the Syrian Civil War, a lot of these DEA investigations were picking up these sorts of weird cells of people, you know, who were basically kind of piggybacking off the, um, explosion, the European cocaine trade because they could basically, there's a huge amount of dirty money washing up in Europe and they can kind of launder it through Middle Eastern banks and then take a cart and make money that way.

[00:19:54] And then they were serving various purposes. So, you know, one of these cells who were in, which was in a really big DEA operation in 2016, um, in Paris, it was doing the drug money laundering. It was calling in on a daily basis to one of the most top Hezbollah financiers. A guy who's currently got a $10 million reward on his head from the US government.

[00:20:13] So they're like calling in, reporting in. Laundering all this cocaine drug, um, money and also procuring loads of weapons from Russia and Belarus. So they're sort of doing all of these things at the same time. So the reason why would be, you know, simply to raise funds like and circumvent sanctions. That's sort of a prime driver for that.

[00:20:31] But there's also other issues in any organization. You know, there's corruption, there's people kind of skimming off money or you know, there are people acting more autonomously. You know, that's always hard to sort of discern

[00:20:43] Jordan Harbinger: from the outside. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, the whole thing is so opaque. Hence the title of your book.

[00:20:48] I actually did a whole episode on CAPI Gun episode 8 64. This woman, Caroline Rose, who you may know, she's the one who I think is in part in charge of quantifying a lot of this stuff because that's like her area of research. And I remember vaguely, and so don't, don't call me on this, but I think I said, how do you do this?

[00:21:06] And one of the things she did was look at the capacities of the factories that they kind of know make it, and they just go, well, there's at least that much. It's just this huge amount because imagine if every Pfizer manufacturing plant in America was making methamphetamine. That adds up fast in Syria, smaller than America.

[00:21:24] But like Syria's got their domestic pharmaceutical trade, which it was I guess pretty good at before it all all fell apart. And they were just like, eh, instead of making this knockoff Tylenol for babies, let's just make CAPTA gun and sell it to the Gulf region. And they just did that with every factory that's basically still standing.

[00:21:43] And then that money goes to Bashar, all Assad's government so that he kept murder his own people basically. And it's funny you mention night vision goggles and Hezbollah because back in the nineties, and I've told the sh on this show before, I think back in the nineties, my daddy worked at Ford in Detroit and we have a huge, huge, huge Lebanese population in Detroit.

[00:22:03] And I think we actually at one point, maybe not still had the largest population of Arabs. Outside the Middle East in Dearborn, Michigan. And so, and we have tons of great Lebanese food, Arabic food. Tons of people live in your neighborhood. Tons of people work at Ford and GM and all that stuff from Lebanon.

[00:22:21] But one day my dad was like, oh, what's going on? And the FBI was in his office taking out this dude's computer that he worked with, asking everybody questions. And he's like, that guy, like this nice Lebanese dude. He was, you know, just kind of working here one or two years. They're like, yeah, he's been buying night vision Goggle, like military surplus or whatever, night vision and shipping them to Lebanon.

[00:22:45] And my dad's like, oh, is that illegal? And they're like, it is when they're being sent to Hezbollah, which is what he was doing. So he was just like working it forward. Wow. But part-time, either a procurement guy or a sympathizer at the very least of Hezbollah, and he was spending like thousands and thousands of dollars and he was using his work computer to do it because he was just not the brightest bulb in the box, I guess.

[00:23:06] And using the internet to do it. And they're like, okay, well we don't really need to ask. We don't need to dig too far to find this because all this network traffic is obviously monitored by Ford's IT department. So here he is talking unencrypted with like, you know, night vision suppliers and mailing it to Lebanon.

[00:23:21] My dad didn't fully understand why, but now that I'm an adult, I get that he was essentially trying to get around sanctions. 'cause Hezbollah can't just order those things to Lebanon themselves. They have to have Yeah. Third parties. And

[00:23:32] Miles Johnson: you see this, you know, this is a big thing now, especially post, um, you know, the invasion of Ukraine, you know?

[00:23:37] Mm-Hmm. With Russia. Russia's obviously now under, you know, has overtaken Iran as the most sanctioned government in the world. And, um, you know, to get the components Western made components in needs, it needs to find people to get them. So it needs to get, you know, American made microchips, you know, to put into precision guided missiles.

[00:23:54] And it has to get all of these types of industrial equipment, which are all sanctioned. And so, you know, there's been all these other cases now of sort of, um, these sorts of procurement cells for Russia trying to procure that stuff. And it's just sort of, um, a cycle. And eventually, you know, in, in the case of Iran, they figure out how to build this stuff themselves.

[00:24:11] You know, they'll, they'll get an example of something and reverse engineer, you know, how an engine works, you know, this thing with, um. Bell helicopters. You know, I think there was, um, some historical reason dating back to the Shah of Iran where they had a whole bunch of bell helicopters post revolution.

[00:24:26] They just always used these kind of imitations of bell helicopters. But some of these cases involve people, you know, trying to fly a ton of coke on a private plane from the Dominican Republic to Belgium whilst also at the same time tried to procure bell helicopter parts. You know, just, it's a strange world where people are sort of wearing multiple hats.

[00:24:45] Jordan Harbinger: It'd be like cracking open an Amazon van where you're like, oh, batteries a spare remote for some sort of controller for video game system DVDs. Like, it's just so, it's like whatever you, whatever y'all need, and you can, you must be able to tell when you bust somebody who they're working for, because it's like you get caught with a, a bunch of cocaine.

[00:25:04] It's like, oh, he is a drug dealer. But then when he is caught with a bunch of cocaine in like some weird turbine for a Boeing 7 47, you're just like, okay, we need to call this up a couple of levels. 'cause. Normal people don't buy $30,000 fans made outta titanium or whatever. That's just not a thing.

[00:25:21] Miles Johnson: Yeah.

[00:25:21] I mean, look, that was a really interesting thing is in, um, the podcast that I recently did, um, the Hot Money, the New DAOs, there's this, um, episode, you know, which no spoilers, but I involves, uh, uh, sort of one of these kind of procurement agency's. Really interesting. She's a Lebanese woman who is caught in a sting operation in New York.

[00:25:38] And the thing which I found really interesting about looking through that case is that she's doing multiple things. She's saying, okay, you need to launder your cocaine money. You know, the undercover agent is basically, he's a DA undercover who's posing as a big time Latin American trafficker. And she's like, okay, any money you need to launder, I can do that, but can you do me a favor?

[00:25:56] Mm-Hmm, I need some weapons. You know, I really need to get hold of some, you know, all these sniper rifles and all this stuff. And you know, he's like, of course, you know, whatever you need, you know, I can get this and stuff like that. But the really interesting thing about that is that the near the end of the conversation, she's like, look, the thing we can really, really make money from if we wanna make billions here mm-Hmm.

[00:26:14] Is we need to get spare Boeing parts. That's the thing that we'll make tons of cash from, more than the drug money, more than the weapons, you know, if we really wanna get rich Boeing parts. And that's just sort of like insight into, I think, um, how the economics of this work, you know, where you have these choke points, you know, you can't, if you're a sanctioned government, it's very difficult to get, you can't just buy a kind of imitation Boeing part.

[00:26:38] You know, you have to have the real deal.

[00:26:39] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You probably don't wanna buy an imitation part for an airliner that you're gonna fly in your own country with your own people.

[00:26:45] Miles Johnson: Exactly. Exactly. So, um, yeah, it's just sort of, it definitely, it's exactly as you said, it's kind of a little bit like some sort of Amazon ban where Yeah.

[00:26:52] People are doing, and you have, and criminals meet criminals. You know, people in weird worlds meet other people, you know, that's frequently how. You know, law enforcement r the ODA, were doing these operations and they'd sort of move up the chain that someone would introduce someone to someone else and eventually before you know it, you're in a situation where, you know, you're talking to Yeah, an arms dealer in Prague or, or whatever.

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[00:30:04] This gal that you're just talking about, she was quite interesting. And the DEA guy Angel or whatever his, yeah. Pretend name was, that guy was really interesting. That was such an interesting guy. Yeah. Fantastic guy. Yeah, just a talented dude. And man, it just mu, it must be pretty damn exciting when you're having a conversation about sniper rifles and then somebody just drops in.

[00:30:22] Oh, and by the way, and you're like, oh, this person is essentially working for Iran. Or Hezbollah. Like, that's you just, you first, you think you're talking to like a medium arms dealer who's gonna just you're, you're like, oh, this is a crime. She's gonna get five years from being an, oh, wait a minute. Nope.

[00:30:39] Now we're into the intelligence world. Now we're into, it must just be hard to hide. The grin that's happening inside your brain when somebody brings up something like this, you know, over dessert and you're just like, oh, this is, this went from five years to 25 years prison sentence for this person. Yeah.

[00:30:55] I mean,

[00:30:56] Miles Johnson: that's what Angel, you know, angel says in the podcast, he says, um, you know, he couldn't help. He knew that there were cameras on him in this restaurant and he couldn't help but sort of smile to the camera, you know, to sort of give a little signal to himself. Yeah. Which I thought was like, is she not gonna see that?

[00:31:10] But, you know, it seems to work out, right? Yeah. He can just say,

[00:31:13] Jordan Harbinger: I like the sound of getting rich. You know? That's what I would've done. I love the sound of this. I like getting rich. Yeah. You know, and then she's like, great, you know, cheers. And you're just thinking, oh, you're gonna be so mad when you find out who I really am.

[00:31:24] Yeah, absolutely. And she pled guilty. She went to prison and what, what I don't get, man, and I'm sure you're in the same boat, is she gets released later. And then of course she vanishes. And I'm like, how do we let these people out? I mean, I know she served time in prison, but. It just, it sucks because what happens is when, if Iran doesn't like us, they arrest some baker who's on vacation in visiting grandma in Iran who hasn't done anything, and we're arresting arms dealers and letting them out after they've served their sentence.

[00:31:51] And I know that's like democratic values versus authoritarian, crappy, you know, theocratic regimes. But I don't know, it just, it's unfair. Right? It's unfair. That's all there is to it.

[00:32:03] Miles Johnson: Well, I mean, adjacent to that is sort of, uh, you know, I speak to a lot of people in law enforcement, you know, in, um, the US and, um Mm-Hmm.

[00:32:10] Europe. And, you know, one of the unifying themes where they say, especially more in Europe is that money laundering can actually be a really good risk reward sort of setup. Yeah. Because if you traffic, I don't know, call it 20 million euros worth of cocaine, you're going and you get caught, you're going to jail for a very long time.

[00:32:28] Right. You know, in any jurisdiction. If you launder the proceeds of 20 million euros worth of cocaine, you might do three years. Mm-Hmm. Four years. Typically you could be taking anything up to 20%, a 20% cut of that to launder the money, to transfer the money from one place to another. So it means that some of the people involved in these worlds, especially if they're calling money laundering charges, actually get very low sentences Right.

[00:32:52] In relation to the sort of stuff they're actually involved in. And that's just a sort of, uh, I don't know why exactly that is. I think it must relate to a sort of, um, typically a view of money laundering as not, not a victimless crime, but Mm-hmm. Very different to sort of, um, drugs

[00:33:07] Jordan Harbinger: trafficking. Right. It kind of looks like tax evasion as opposed to like, well this is a violent criminal.

[00:33:11] And it's like, well, okay, but the money they're laundering goes to the people who are using it to buy bombs and blow up people at shopping malls in another place. So that's not really the case anymore. Yeah. It's crazy to think about if you launder $20 million and you get 20%. You get a short sentence, you could be making a million dollars a year sitting in prison reading, and then you get out and you're just like, it's like you just did four years of a job.

[00:33:37] Other people would kill to have that salary. Right. And you've spent your time just catching up on books and Netflix or whatever in your Belgian prison. It's again, back to the unfair thing, um, Hezbollah in Syria, you mentioned that they were in a very expensive conflict. So Hezbollah is in Syria, and this is going on now, I think protecting Bashar Alad, so the dictator of Syria.

[00:34:00] So Hezbollah is in Lebanon. They are proxy of Iran and they're protecting a dictator in Syria. Why, what's happening there? In the

[00:34:06] Miles Johnson: simplest sense? I mean obviously that, uh, Bashar Assad is an Allo White, you know, sort a Shiite. But, um, most importantly, um, if Syria were to fall and to be replaced, you know, the Assad regime was to be replaced by some new government, which was potentially allied with the West or was hostile to Iran.

[00:34:24] You're sort of cutting off the bridge between, um, Iran and Lebanon and Hezbollah. So that's like a really, really strategically important, that's a sort of existential issue effectively. So, um, okay. That's really, um, the driving factor there. I mean, of course, you know, that's not the stated. Aim, you know, there would be other reasons, you know, for it was very much status.

[00:34:46] They were fighting Sunni, um, extremists or, you know, salafi, you know, people like isis, you know, and they were, it's basically protecting Shiites in, um, in Syria. You know, at the end of the day, uh, Syria is really, you know, strategically important for a number of countries. You know, that's why that civil war was just so, obviously this human cost was horrific and it was just, um, an extremely complex sort of multipolar conflict with all of these different countries having a sort of, um, stake in it.

[00:35:13] Jordan Harbinger: It sort of sounds like Bosnia in complexity, right? There's all these different sub malicious fighting, and then everyone around them is like, well, we kinda want this side to win, so we're gonna arm these dudes. And then external forces come in. Arm other people and set up, and then every neighbor's like, well, I don't want this spilling over my border, so I'm gonna start striking the side that's getting close to me or has it out for me.

[00:35:35] Like Turkey, Russia. You've got different Iranian militias in there. You got ISIS in there, the Syrian governments in there, the US has some. Troops nearby there, training other troops and forces. It's just, it's a huge mess. I know that that's not over over, but is it essentially sort of a win for Alad at this point?

[00:35:54] Miles Johnson: Yeah, very much so. I mean, um, he is in place, he is, um, you know, there so pockets of the country, which under his control, but that conflict is effectively, um, over in that sense. You know, that's why, you know, in the current situation we're in now, you know, Iran, it wasn't always a sure thing by any means. You know, his, I spoke to a lot of, um, experts and academics about the conflict, you know, which is unbelievably complex.

[00:36:15] And you know, I think it's interesting to look at the way the historiography has developed in terms of seeing how, you know, there was a narrative at the tar at some point where it was like almost like he's gonna fall and it's inevitable. And now there are some scholars who saw of that said that he wasn't ever really that much in risk, depends on your interpretation.

[00:36:32] But now, yeah, he's very much there. He's sort of to a certain extent being, um, rehabilitated in some quarters. You know, it's sort of been accepted into the Arab League and, um. It's awful. But, um, yeah, people's attention has moved to elsewhere. Yeah.

[00:36:47] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. I wanna point out that it is very interesting that Hezbollah loves to argue that they're very principled and they're defending Islam and Arabs against Israel, but they were more than happy to go kill Muslim children in Syria to protect a dictator that is also murdering his own population.

[00:37:02] They didn't have any qualms throwing all of their resources at that particular cause.

[00:37:07] Miles Johnson: Well, that was a, that was a super, that was controversial, to say the least. Really? Yeah. But critics, I mean, you know, there were, um, some people who were very vocal in their criticism who had even, I mean, yeah, it's a much more difficult expedition to justify than, um, you know, fighting Israel, for example.

[00:37:23] So, um, but mm-hmm. Every organization, wherever it is, you know, these sorts of, um, you know, paramilitary style organizations, terrorist groups, they sort of, you know, they evolve, they change, they get involved in things which, um, you know, just like the militants themselves, you know, people, I. You know, I think there's always, we have a tendency to view people as sort of static in their lives.

[00:37:42] Um, and I think people's reasons for doing things change. They might be doing the same thing, but the reason for them doing it changes over their life. Um, and both in the lifetime of organization and also the lifetime of someone in that organization. You know, people might do things when they're 20 with sort of ideological fervor, and then for when they're 40, just kind of still be involved, but doing it for a very different reason.

[00:38:04] It might be for personal enrichment or just self-protection or just raw politics. And, um, yeah, I think that evolution of these types of organizations always difficult to, um, capture and easy to overlook. We have a tendency to view them as sort of static entities.

[00:38:18] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that is a good point. I mean, if you look at dictators like Fidel Castro, right?

[00:38:22] You're like this revolutionary, and then you look and you're like, no, this guy is just an oligarch. Chief oligarch of, of Cuba at this point, you know, and, but he wasn't always like that. I'm sure if you caught him when he was 19 years old, he would've talked your ear off about communist revolution and making everybody equal.

[00:38:37] And then it's just like, eh, that's not gonna work, but I can have a Rolls Royce. Tell me about the super facilitators and this car scheme about how they were, they're kind of laundering money, moving cars around. This is, I think, Hezbollah drug finance in Europe. I know I'm skipping around, but I I warned

[00:38:51] Miles Johnson: you.

[00:38:52] Yeah, so I mean, it's just another example of one of these schemes is that as you sort of, um, you touched on earlier, there is this sort of, uh, assumption I think amongst a lot of people. And I also had this assumption, um, before I started looking at this in more detail, that money laundering is high tech in some way.

[00:39:08] And actually a lot of the money laundering schemes involve sort of fairly, kind of complex in their logistics, but effectively simple mechanisms of transferring value from one place to another in the world. And usually by transforming, you know, one technique is transforming cash into something else, shipping it somewhere and then transferring it back into cash.

[00:39:31] And so a really good way to do that. And this was a scheme that the DA got very, um, involved in sort of, uh, investigating. Um, back around, I think it was sort of around 2008, 2009, um, eventually actually led to like a pretty big settlement with a Lebanese bank, but it was, yeah, it was buying up cars in cash in the United States, shipping them to West Africa and then selling them in West Africa.

[00:39:56] So you have these car lots, you have like satellite images of these car lots, which are just empty spaces. And then within sort of a couple of years, there are just millions. I mean, maybe not millions, you know, really thousands and thousands of cars as far as I could see. That was a way of transferring this value.

[00:40:12] You know, just didn't, it's a very effective way to move large amounts of money in a way, which you just could not do. If you were trying to sort of send that through the banking system at the moment, you would try to put that into an account, it would be flagged, so sure. It was, uh, pretty, uh. Simple but effective

[00:40:27] Jordan Harbinger: scheme.

[00:40:28] You think though, man, it's gotta sting a little bit because you lose so much value if you're buying a bunch of new cars and then you're just parking it. I mean, you immediately, like the, the cliche is you drive it off the lot and it loses a sub double digit percentage of its value. And if you're doing that times tens of thousands and then you don't necessarily have anywhere to put the car to sell the car to turn it back into cash.

[00:40:49] It's like, oh man. But I guess if you're selling drugs, you just, the markup is fine and you don't care. And the margins are huge

[00:40:55] Miles Johnson: and there's leakage. You know, I think you accept when you're trying to launder money, uh, you accept you're gonna have to, it's gonna cost you 10%, 20%, sometimes even more depending on the jurisdiction I found like diving into this stuff, you know, one of the things I found interesting was, um, you look at these money launderers and they have different rates for different countries.

[00:41:12] So in Europe they'll say like, oh, in Germany, yeah, sure, I'll charge you whatever, 5%. 'cause it's easy to work in Germany, you know, Germany, there's a lot of use of cash still. But in France, France is difficult. France, I'm gonna charge you 15 or 20%. You know, there's various different, so it's a market, a criminal market rate, sort of, which is set by the market just on sort of basically general perceptions amongst this group of people who are engaged in that, of how risky and how difficult it is.

[00:41:39] And I found that really interesting. But I mean, one of the things which, uh, so we learned for example, during the, the podcast was, um, that, you know, the, the price is going, the rate which is being charged is going down. Really? Yeah. In Europe, as in why that's a really, yeah. But why, why would that be? It's a really interesting question.

[00:41:53] And you know, the, these people who work in law enforcement, they say because now there's so much drugs, money in Europe that basically there's so much demand. Basically people are laundering a lot more, the capacity of these laundering networks has gone up and they're sort of new entrance into the market and they sort of buy market share.

[00:42:10] It's like any other service, you know, they sort of like introductory offer, I'll launder your money to, you know, Dubai for 1% this time instead of the normal five or something like that. And so it sort of shows something else about what's going on in the sort of, um, criminal economy through just like the rate which is being charged.

[00:42:29] But the cars, you know, that was a, that was an important scheme, but the sort of sense it has this sort of nature of it where people are extremely innovative. You know, it's, they, they come up with new ruse and new schemes to sort of launder money all the time. You know, there's always some new, um, things.

[00:42:46] There's a constantly evolving marketplace. It's just sort of, it's not something which is traditionally viewed through the lens of business school studies or something, you know, in terms of, um, the way in people running these operations. But. Again, it's not to celebrate it, but it's just interesting parallel sort of economy where people are trying to innovate just like anywhere else.

[00:43:04] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Shadow economy. I, I did an episode several years ago, episode 6 77, with this journalist Sam Cooper who talks about Chinese buying real estate and Canada and moving money around and stuff like that. And he mentioned often that the cash doesn't have to move because you'll have somebody in one country who essentially says, okay, let me call my cousin who owns a laundromat over in Vancouver.

[00:43:24] And the cousin's like, yeah, I've got $3 million laying on the floor of my laundromat right now that, that somebody brought over in like several duffle bags, you know, or a van or whatever. And then the cousin's like, okay, great. I'll release this $3 million to you, your family here in China, less 5% for our fee.

[00:43:42] 'cause I was like, how are they moving vans and truckloads literally of a hundred dollars bills from China to the US or nor from Syria to Canada. I mean, who knows? And the answer is they just don't have to. They have these sort of. Really low tech. Trust based systems. So there's one called Alah. Do you know anything about this?

[00:44:02] It's like an Arabic sort of thing.

[00:44:05] Miles Johnson: Yeah, that's a really, really important um, ALAH or alah kind Oflike systems, exactly as you describe, where the cash doesn't actually have to physically move a really critical part of how this all sort of functions. And for me, I found that really. Hard to get my head round at first.

[00:44:21] Um, just as you're saying, you're like, how does that work? What do you mean? You're saying the money doesn't move? That's a critical part of, um, uh, drug money laundering, um, around the world, you know, because, and it's a face vs like this sort of informal banking system where Mm-Hmm. There are corresponding trades, you know, in the same way in sort of a clearing house, like a financial clearing house,

[00:44:39] you

[00:44:39] Miles Johnson: would net off trades.

[00:44:40] You know, it's like someone wants to sort of, um, do one thing on one side of the network and then that corresponds with a customer on the other side of the network who wants to do the opposite thing. And so they can kind of deposit money or take out money and it means that, you know, it doesn't actually have to move.

[00:44:54] And that makes it really, really, really difficult to trace the money. Yeah. There's no transaction records. Like you can't, um, you know, there'll be a ledger probably somewhere, but, you know, it's, um, extremely difficult for law enforcement once the money goes into that system. It's, uh, it's gone. Could come out anywhere.

[00:45:08] It's

[00:45:08] Jordan Harbinger: gone. Yeah, it is. So, it's so interesting. 'cause again, I know like money laundering. All right, we're gonna use this cryptocurrency. We're gonna use Monero. It's untraceable, it's encrypted, yada yada. And then we're gonna move it to these, no, we're gonna use something that existed before. Banks existed before HACH, well before electronic transfer, before there was any sort of bank that we used by anybody but the King of England or whatever.

[00:45:31] We were transferring money for centuries by scratching it into, I don't know, papyrus with a reed. And that means that this guy has like three shekels on account here, and he can spend 'em however he wants. But you can do that now with. Probably tens of millions of dollars relatively safely and reliably, which just, yeah, it's like mind blowing.

[00:45:50] I would never, I would never trust that. So I send your cousin this money and I'm never gonna see it again. And you just promise me that it's all good. Yeah. And you're in another country. I

[00:45:59] Miles Johnson: mean, that's it. They have various sort of, you know, trust base, you know, even just dropping off the money. 'cause really, you know, there'll be a network of couriers, you know, so, you know, it's like the guy who's really running the network isn't touching the money so much.

[00:46:10] You know, he'll, there'll be a sort of, um, people who go to collect the money, so you know that someone will call up. And frequently, you know, in the European cocaine trade, for example, a cartel will have their money launderer in place in Europe, and their buyer will then just be saying, I call this number.

[00:46:26] Then they'll be like, hi. You know, they'll give a fake name and they'll say, meet me here, and you have to drop. You know, a pretty large amount of cash, um, with them. And so just to trust in that situation, they frequently have systems of, you know, they'll have a bank note and they'll have the serial number of the bank note and they'll give that in advance.

[00:46:42] And you have to basically provide that serial number to show you are the actual person. Oh, wow. That's a really frequently used, um, system as some sort of guarantee. But it's this interesting sort of paradox where these networks are sort of facilitated by technology in a way where like now in the modern age, you can do stuff as a crime boss, which you definitely couldn't do 30 years ago.

[00:47:03] You know, traditionally criminal organizations are rooted in like a territory, like a home

[00:47:08] Jordan Harbinger: turf Yeah. Sicily or whatever.

[00:47:10] Miles Johnson: And that's all what gives them their strength. But you know, you now have these more modern types of networks which are much more rootless and stateless and can be based in different parts of the world.

[00:47:18] And you can, because of like encrypted communications and smartphones and stuff, you can run stuff. With this technology, but paradoxically, the stuff which enables them to get really big and do stuff which they couldn't do before is a huge weakness. Yeah. 'cause obviously you, you've had in these cases in Europe where they crack into these networks and suddenly see absolutely everything that, um, these guys are doing.

[00:47:38] So keeping it simple. Just moving cash physically or writing notes on a piece of paper and handing them to someone, the lowest tech option becomes the sort of lowest risk way of running these organizations. So,

[00:47:51] Jordan Harbinger: um, you mentioned the technology, the encrypted phone system. I think it was called En Crow Chat, that law enforcement ends up breaking this.

[00:47:58] Honestly, though, it seems like the name gives it away because. Let law enforcement encroach on all the criminals business. And I'm thinking like, you should have seen that coming guys. Come on, encroach that. Am I missing the cleverness here or was it just like, uh, this was doomed to

[00:48:11] Miles Johnson: fail? These were companies that were advertising to their client base, which obviously were serious organized criminals, and they were very much sort of signaling the only reason why you'd want to use this service if you are a serious, organized criminal.

[00:48:24] You know, so sort of, they're basically like telegraphing to the world. Like we are providing a service, um, for these guys. And they're still unpicking these cases. There's um, you know, there were other platforms. There was one called Sky ECC, which was a huge, um, platform in Europe and just last week there was this crazy case in, um, the United States really relating to this, um, attempted, uh, I dunno if you saw this, it was this Iranian drugs trafficker used one of these encrypted, um, platforms to order a Hell's Angel in Canada to go and murder some dissidents Iranian distance living in the United States.

[00:48:59] Wow. This was all just done on these, you know, encrypted networks and it was done on behest, according to the indictment by the US Department of Justice. It was done on the behest of Iran's Intelligence Services. So they're sort of using a top drug trafficker in Iran to try to kill people abroad through Hell's Angels using encrypted messaging platforms.

[00:49:17] That's the sort of stuff which wasn't happening 20 years ago, if you know what I mean.

[00:49:20] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, of course. That guy just went from murder for hire to terrorists and is probably going to have a tougher time. Defending that in court, I'm guessing. I don't think you can say, my client didn't know that his clients who'd paid him to murder somebody were foreign agents.

[00:49:37] I don't think that flies too well in court. I don't know.

[00:49:40] Miles Johnson: TBDI dunno. Yeah, it is actually TBD, um, but it's sort of, um, very bizarre. You know, you get these very bizarre connections, um, now, you know, between Yeah. For example, hell's Angels and Iranian spies, like why are they talking to each other? It's, um, yeah,

[00:49:54] Jordan Harbinger: surreal.

[00:49:55] It is disturbing that these crime bosses and terrorist organizations can hire an assassin, basically, like they order a pizza. You mentioned in the, I think it was the book of the podcast where. It's just like a couple of text messages and somebody's like, who needs to go to sleep? And it's like, here's the guy.

[00:50:09] We don't know why. We don't care why. Here's what his address is and here's what you're gonna get. And the guy's like, all right, I'll just go kill this person. And that I know nothing about. That's really disturbing.

[00:50:18] Miles Johnson: It is really disturbing. And I mean, it's something which, you know, I think it got a lot of attention.

[00:50:21] You know, there were things in the past, recent past where, you know, there was sort of, um, online, you know, forums or like the dark web silk or something where people could try and, yeah. Silk Road for example, where people could try and order contract killings and stuff like that. But as far as I'm aware, that never.

[00:50:35] Nothing ever really happened. Right. You know, whereas in these instances, I mean, this isn't like a public forum where it can be done. But yeah, there really were cases where people were just ordering, as you say, murders like you would order a pizza, you know, and from anywhere in the world. And it's sort of, I always thought, you know, potentially, I.

[00:50:51] That was somewhat of the explanation between this, um, behind this kind of jump in these sorts of, um, murders in Europe, drug related murders. Because maybe if you are just ordering something on a smartphone, you are not really paying as much attention to it as you normally would or understanding the severity of what you are.

[00:51:09] I'm not in any way excusing them again, but yeah, maybe they just, it's almost gamified or something. They're just sort of sending messages to people, ordering people to do stuff from thousands of miles away. They feel much more, um,

[00:51:19] Jordan Harbinger: invulnerable. I think so. And also if you're an old school mafia guy and you wanna kill somebody, you have to send like your cousin to go and do it and they're connected to you and if something happens to them, it's bad.

[00:51:29] And then people are gonna be sad and upset and, and angry and question you. But now if you're sending some random biker who you've never met, who can't be traced back to you very easily, unless you know the CIA is watching or the FBI. Who cares, right? Oh, he got shot trying to kill that guy. Fine, whatever.

[00:51:46] We sent him like 50 grand. That's no skin off our nose or whatever it was. That's no skin off our nose. Just find another idiot who's gonna say yes to the same contract and try again. Who? I don't care what's for lunch, right? So the calculus of like, we might get caught doing this. Tommy might get injured doing this, mom's gonna cry if he gets shot.

[00:52:03] You know, like all that is gone. All that's out the window. Absolutely.

[00:52:07] Miles Johnson: I think that's a really important point. I think it basically, it creates plausible deniability. In a way, which you wouldn't have traditionally, you know, you just wouldn't be able to. And that's for anyone who's using these services. You know, the case of that Hell's Angel thing, you know, the Iranian state allegedly.

[00:52:21] Or if it's like just other crime bosses, you can, you can do stuff where the downside for you is much lower, clearly as you're saying. You know, it's, um, if it can't be traced back to you very easily, and if you don't even know the person who's doing it, so you don't care about them, then the cost goes down.

[00:52:36] Mm-Hmm. And I think, yeah, that's played a big, big role. So it's just sort of, yeah, there's definitely a sort of technological factor in there, um, which has sort of accelerated some of these things. You always

[00:52:44] Jordan Harbinger: hear about the Netherlands being one of the richest and most stable countries in Western Europe or in the world really.

[00:52:49] But now, and this isn't, I guess just the Netherlands, but it sort of focused on the Rotterdam cocaine trade. Mm. And now it seems like there's more and more drugs and there's more and more violent crime. There's more and more murders and assassinations as drug kingpins basically try to tighten their control of Europe's cocaine market, which again, principally flows through the port at Rotterdam.

[00:53:08] It seems like European law enforcement and, and I'm wondering what your take is, it seems like European law enforcement with like their unarmed cops in many places, are they ill-equipped to handle this level of violence and this threat to stability? Or are they adapting well because it's like they're just not used to this?

[00:53:25] Miles Johnson: It's a good question. I mean, I think in an international context, the number of murders in Europe is super low still. Yeah. Even in like Holland and stuff, you know, that it's more that the style of violence has been very shocking and some of the things that have happened, you know, for example the murders of, um, journalists and lawyers and it's sort of much more of an attack on like civil society and that's really, really shocking in terms of absolute numbers.

[00:53:48] You know, it's way lower than um, you know, like for example, a large, just a large American city for obvious reasons. Things like availability of firearms and stuff like that. In terms of their response, you know, I think. Yeah, European law enforcement has had to really, really, really catch up because there were things happening sort of four or five years ago, which shocked everyone.

[00:54:10] You know, I think, you know, stuff your, your listeners might have heard of, you know, like for example, the Irish Kenahan cartel, the feud they got engaged in, in Dublin after there was an attempt on, um, the son Daniel Khan's life. And, you know, this was a sort of feud which went on for years. There were 18 people I think were murdered.

[00:54:26] There were sort of 40 attempts on, um, people's lives stuff, which had never been seen on the streets of European City where hit men were being contracted and flown in from abroad to sort of like, take our rivals. That was stuff which meant that yes, there were elements of, um, the approach that had to change for your European law enforcement, and, um, they did make, you know, it, it has been complex.

[00:54:47] It's been really difficult because, you know, one of the things which is a big factor on this is that a lot of these European crime bosses were not in Europe. They were in Dubai, for example, and there was not an extradition agreement with Dubai, so you could be ordering your murders on your phone and then it would take a very long time to sort of solve what actually happened there, especially before they cracked these networks.

[00:55:07] And you are also in a country where you can't be extradited from. There was a huge challenge and hurdle for European law enforcement, but I mean, more you, they have made progress. You know, they have got some big people, but there's still people who are big, who are out there.

[00:55:23] Jordan Harbinger: This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, miles Johnson.

[00:55:26] We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by AG one. Taking care of your health isn't always easy, but at least it should be simple. That's why for the last, I don't even know, like over 10 years now, a quarter of my life, basically, I've been drinking ag one almost every single day. It's just one scoop mixed in water once a day, every day, ensuring that I'm fully, uh, locked in, engaging in podcast interviews with some of the brightest minds out there with no shortage of whatever green vitamins they put in there.

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[00:58:13] Yeah, I did an episode about this episode eight 60 with Mitchell Prothero who talks about the cocaine trade in Europe. I. He mentioned there was one guy, I think he was Albanian or something like that, and he's in a prison and essentially they have like missiles mounted on top of the prison because he was like, yeah, I'm gonna have.

[00:58:30] I'm gonna get a helicopter rescue and they're gonna rrp g the roof. And it was normally, if a prisoner says that, it's like, Hey, shut up and eat your breakfast. But they're like, oh, this guy actually is kind of credible. Like he could pull off having an A helicopter come in with a guy with an RPG that blows a hole in the roof and then like gets him outta here.

[00:58:46] So I. We need to be ready to shoot down a helicopter. It's just like, what, where are we? This sounds like an active war zone. Yeah.

[00:58:54] Miles Johnson: I mean it's um, I think that might've been really Anta. Yes, that's who it was. That is really unbelievably shocking stuff, you know, and he is, you know, as, um, Mitch further is a, in a high security, uh, compound.

[00:59:06] You know, because he's seen as so dangerous. But, uh, you know, that that's something which I think leads to this adjustment. You know, people, um, I think anyone who thought it wasn't a problem before, um, these things started to happen, I think probably realizes that, uh, you can't deal with these complex organized criminal networks in the same way you would, you deal with like a local gag.

[00:59:23] Right. But yeah, people, people were definitely completely shocked by the brazenness. It's, it is really the brazenness of it all. You know, it's just, it's just in the podcast, you know, we speak to a lot of law enforcement people who, you know, they point out, they're just like, it's not smart. If you're a criminal to murder people, it's extremely bad for business.

[00:59:38] You know, you, the moment you start killing people and, you know, hiring hit men and having shootouts and stuff like that, law enforcement, the state has to focus on you. There's no excuse for the government to not go after you then. All of these guys in different contexts, you know, be it in Ireland or in the Netherlands, or you know, in other countries, they have sort of effectively made a decision where they're like, we don't care.

[01:00:01] You know, we're not gonna get caught. We can do this and we can be, you know, we're kind of far away. You know, and that was just, that was the brazenness of that was pretty shocking. I. Anyone before would've, who had a sort of business to protect, would've not made those same decisions. And that's a sort of generational shift.

[01:00:16] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You would think. And it's, it's a scary one, right? Because it's, it's no longer like, oh, we gotta keep things quiet. We don't wanna get civilians caught up in this. Now it's just like, go blow up the whole thing that that guy's in, and then who cares? 'cause we're not gonna get caught and we don't give a crap.

[01:00:28] Right? So it's almost like. Become terrorism in many ways, or like adjacent to terrorism. They might not have political goals, but the reckless disregard for everything around them is kind of scary. And it seems like you can't really clamp down on this with local police resources. You really need like a an FBI or or a DEA to be like, okay, we're dismantling this and we've got, you need like the, what was that task force that took down Al Capone, right?

[01:00:57] The Untouchables. You kind of need like untouchables to take these guys down because the reason they came up with that group back in whatever the Al Capone days is, because the cops were like, what do you want us to do? They're threatening our families, the threatening the judges. We can't. And so they were like, all right, we need cops who just don't care and are just gonna go after these guys, even if they're gonna get killed doing it.

[01:01:15] And, and I think that was kind of the story behind that. And you really need somebody, you need a task force like that, except it's gotta be a hell of a lot larger. 'cause you're not just going after Al Capone, you're going after like. Taghi and 18 of his closest competitors in one area. Yeah, it's crazy.

[01:01:30] Miles Johnson: Absolutely. Yeah. No, it needs to be international and you know, you need to get, you know, that's what they did. They basically, um, they got the Americans involved, they got the DA involved, you know, there were multiple different law enforcement agencies across Europe sort are working together increasingly sharing intelligence and, you know, they did manage to get some of these guys.

[01:01:48] Um, but yeah, that said, some of them are still at large. Sure. That's with the combined sort of might of all of these governments, you know, like I'm like loathed to criticize, you know, these, you, I think the law enforcement effort has been, they've done a very good job in very, very difficult circumstances.

[01:02:04] A very, very, very difficult thing to do. But it is fascinating for me that in this modern age that you can be a sort of fugitive or you can have you sanctioned and you can, you know, and have all of the attention from all of these governments in the US Treasury and stuff, and you can still be out there.

[01:02:21] Somehow you have for a year or so, you've evaded capture. I find that kind of

[01:02:25] Jordan Harbinger: mind boggling. I feel like you need nation state resources to do that though I'm, again, I'm no expert, but if, if you're connected to Iran and you're Jordan Harbinger one day, but then tomorrow I am Mike Johnson, it's gonna be hard to catch me because I've got a totally legit passport with a fake backstory, a mailing address, property, a bunch of money and other resources at my disposal, right?

[01:02:46] So it probably gets a lot easier if you're not just some like fugitive who's got a pocket full of cash, who's trying to avoid getting caught. I think facial recognition, I. May change some of this because change your identity all you want, man. But if you don't have a brand new chin and cheeks and nose and lips and forehead and whatever else, and eyes, you know, that stuff's getting harder to fool.

[01:03:07] You can walk through an airport and you think you're safe and they're like, oh, our new firmware update makes it so we know that that guy is that drug trafficker who looks totally different, but it's definitely him according to the computer. Let's arrest him and take a blood sample. Oh look, we got this guy who's been on the run for 20 years.

[01:03:23] Like that's gonna happen at some point.

[01:03:25] Miles Johnson: Yeah. But then I guess also the other thing is if you've got the backing of a state who's protecting you, you need to ensure that you are still useful to that state. Right? Yeah. You know, because there's, there'll be a point perhaps when they're just like. Do we really care about this guy anymore?

[01:03:39] Yeah. You know, and especially if, if you are on the run, you can't run your criminal operation anymore. You are extremely hot, so you can't talk to people, you can't move money around. You might be extremely rich, but you can't get access to any of that money. You will eventually run out of money to pay people off or pay your friends in your host country and then what happens?

[01:03:58] Yeah,

[01:03:59] Jordan Harbinger: I agree. I can't imagine living like this. You talk about this guy Sammy Issa, and he has all these quirks, like he never leaves through the same door. He went in and I'm like, imagine every day you have to walk in the front door. You go out the back door, you gotta change clothes when you're in there.

[01:04:12] So you gotta bring the clothes with, it's like you're just light. You whole life is just stress. You're just worried about getting shot or arrested every second of the day.

[01:04:19] Miles Johnson: Oh, unbelievably so, yeah. I mean, no, I mean, it must, I can't even imagine the amount of discipline it must take and how exhausting that must be.

[01:04:26] And eventually how, I think anyone would just eventually just get tired and just be like, yeah, I just can't do this anymore. No. Or they would be, um, captured or killed. I mean, that's why, you know, I find these stories when there's these cases and you can get really good insight into the lives that these people are living, you know, frequently.

[01:04:44] You know, a lot of the evidence and stuff I was working with was, um, wiretap and environmental intercept evidence and stuff, which was. Mixed with like surveillance photos and like phone messages. You get a really like, kind of granular insight Yeah. Into the day to day of some of these characters. And you know, you see the paranoia, you see the, you know, the only time you know the case of, um, the mafia guy in the book, um, chasing shadows.

[01:05:10] You know, he, he doesn't have anyone really to torture you apart from his girlfriend. The only place he talks to her is in her kitchen. So he comes home, she lives in this apartment. He comes home from work, you know, his work, quote unquote, you know, which is drugs, trafficking, you know, sort of, uh, he comes back, he's like, oh, this guy, such an idiot.

[01:05:27] He's screwed up this thing with his payment, or he hasn't, you know, booked the right thing for the guy from the cartel in that, um, Rome, you know, there's an environmental intercept that's just capturing all of these conversations. And so. You kind of get a little bit of an insight into the paranoia and eventual desperation.

[01:05:42] You know, when things go wrong, how, just how claustrophobic that world must be. You know, where you just, you can't do anything. It

[01:05:49] Jordan Harbinger: would be hard to live, live well, even in a place like Dubai, which doesn't extradite, because now anybody who does business with you, if you're sanctioned, also becomes a criminal.

[01:05:58] So it's not like you can just find, oh, I'm gonna just use a cutout for this. It's like, no, anybody, you're just radioactive. You can't use a branch of a bank that is in another country because that branch is a subsidiary of another bank that has a location in New York. And they're like, we're not gonna get our shit frozen for this yets.

[01:06:16] No way. So you are just untouchable. Unless you have like two or three really, really good cutouts that are very deniable, that's gotta get expensive. I mean, you gotta have people who are like, like I'm taking a lot of risk dealing with you. Everything is 50% more expensive and that means everything is more expensive 'cause somebody's gonna get in real

[01:06:36] Miles Johnson: trouble.

[01:06:36] I mean, also, I mean, I think as people, you used to have a lot of, let's say, you know, you are a crime boss, you had a lot of money stashed away at various different things. You know, it could be in art in Singapore, it could be in crypto, it could be. Properties in Turkey or whatever. The moment you are on the run and the moment you are no longer there to sort of run the day-to-day operations, people will start to steal from you.

[01:06:57] Sure. They'll be like, oh yeah, he's not gonna mind if I just take this thing I suppose to be looking after for him. You know, no one's ever gonna know it's, by its nature, hidden wealth, you know, it can't be, it's meant to be obscured. It's not gonna be in their name. It's might be movable property, you know?

[01:07:12] So there's a lot of risks at that point when um, you become sanctioned, you become so hot, you can't do anything anymore. You can't run your organization anymore. Perhaps, you know, people also stop fearing you as much because these, these people can't retire it frequently. You know, one of the things we were talking about, the, the sort of the brazenness and the brutality of some of the things that they were doing, it sort of reflects the sort of mentality I think of, uh, there's no exit plan.

[01:07:36] Mm-Hmm. Seemingly for these people. 'cause if they were rationally planning an exit, they would not be. Doing horrific things like ordering murders, um, all across Europe or whatever. Right. It kind of reflects a mentality of almost like they just have to ride it through to the end. Yeah. Because once they stop, you know, I think they're multiple, you know, they become vulnerable.

[01:07:52] That's

[01:07:53] Jordan Harbinger: a good point. I guess it's all just like, I'm gonna die in this game, so I gotta do what I can, whatever I can to survive. Until then, and it's just like, as a normie, I can't get behind that, right? Like, I can't, I would never, none. Nobody in their right mind would ever do that. And I guess that's why the dream for most organized criminals, right, is to get into legitimate business and then maybe have your kids run that, because you're always gonna be a piece of crap who's gonna go to jail or die.

[01:08:20] But like, maybe your son can be a guy who owns a manufacturing plant or an import export business that isn't just gonna end up splattered all over the pavement for no good reason. The dying wish would be to just like, maybe have a generational exit, but it's not gonna be for you.

[01:08:36] Miles Johnson: Absolutely. I mean, yeah, that's, um, in the work I've done on, uh, the Collabion Mafia, the Endang guitar, you know, um, it's relatively well known, um, in Italy and amongst the sort of the police in Italy and experts on that stuff, that they're the younger generation who've gone to do MBAs.

[01:08:52] Their fathers are crime bosses. They've been sent to do MBAs and some of them in pretty prestigious universities. But then the question is, is that to go legit or is it to, um, you know, bring those skills into the family business or to transform the family business. But then, you know, there's also that interesting sort of like classic tale of, you know, in the case of, um, the Han Cartel, which I'm sure your listeners, um, will know about, you know, um, the Irish crime family who were sort of very prominent figures in the European cocaine market.

[01:09:21] That was a case of a father who built a criminal empire. And his son, you know, plausibly could have gone legit. There was something where he had this sort of. Clearly he, well, he continued in, in crime, um, and is now sanctioned, but he then at the same time became a boxing promoter and he was promoting Tyson Fury and became a sort of celebrity almost.

[01:09:42] And, uh, there's this, this sort of duality, this tension there in a character where you want to be accepted as a public figure and a legitimate person. You know, this is a guy who hired lawyers to, you know, threaten journalists to sue them. If they had connected him with crime, he would have PR consultants and all this stuff.

[01:10:01] But at the same time, he's running a criminal empire, right? So, yeah. And those two things are not going to be able to be compatible for forever. So, uh, I think, you know, there's, there's a sort of interesting psychological aspect of that, of like, why, why someone, maybe it's just part of their identity, but why, if someone had the option of going legitimate, why they wouldn't.

[01:10:22] Take that.

[01:10:23] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This is an interesting sort of aside, right, because boxing has always been, it's always got this little underbelly of like dirty fights, dirty money, underground, this unsanctioned stuff, and they're always trying to move away from that. So when you have an organized criminal who's becoming a big time boxing promoter and getting a lot of attention because essentially he's overpaying for fighters because he's using criminal, criminal proceeds allegedly to do that, that makes everybody kind of be like, oh we can, we worked so hard to get away from this crap and here's this mafia guy essentially money laundering.

[01:10:54] What was he doing? He is like paying his fighters more money than they were actually winning from the fights. So he was essentially gonna lose money on every fighter, but it doesn't matter because if you're using that to wash dirty money, you don't care if you lose 10 or 20% on the fighter, right? On the fight or the fighter because you can afford to do that.

[01:11:12] It's the cost of doing business. And I guess this got uncovered in a lawsuit 'cause the litigator was a former prosecutor, so he was like, wait a minute, just doing the math here. This looks like money laundering. And that was. That was kinda the beginning of the end for this kid, this Kenahan kid. Yeah, I

[01:11:25] Miles Johnson: mean that's the allegations.

[01:11:26] I mean, at least you know, what can be said is that, you know, this is a guy who was a, a major criminal figure who very quickly rose to the absolute top of the boxing world. You know, like to the very pinnacle he was hanging out with people like Bob Arum, you know, who you know is a boxing Hall of fame member, promoted Muhammad Ali.

[01:11:45] You know, he was, uh, promoting Tyson Fury, one of the, you know, most famous boxers in the whole, what he was really at the top, you know, so it's, it kind of shows like however he did that. Yes. Let's say it definitely coincided with the same time he was running a, um, criminal group. Is an interesting spin on an, as you say, on an old story, it's a 21st century kind of version of, um, that story of, you know, sort of crime and boxing, which has always had a relationship and, um, dirty money being involved in boxing, but said in a very different place than, um, you know, Dubai.

[01:12:15] Uh, yeah. But,

[01:12:16] Jordan Harbinger: uh, people are probably wondering why we keep mentioning Dubai, but it does seem like a lot of these weird characters congregate in Dubai, and it's like one of the guys on your podcast was saying, oh, it's like a mix of Manhattan, Beverly Hills and Miami. What does he mean by that? Yeah,

[01:12:29] Miles Johnson: so Dubai, he says it's like that because, you know, Dubai is a place, um, you know, for people who I'm sure your listeners know, but for people who don't, you know, it's part of the United Arab Emirates.

[01:12:39] It doesn't have, unlike its neighbors natural resources, wealth, and so the kind of the entire economy has been based on attracting kind of finance and real estate and sort of creating a tourist destination. So it has this huge skyscrapers, which make it a bit like Manhattan in that sense. In terms of its model, you know, it's, it's become, in 1980s it was a very different place, but, you know, sort of grown up into this metropolis, I guess, where, you know, there's a lot of luxury.

[01:13:08] Everything is a very, sort of this bling aspect to it where they have these islands which are shaped, you know, like, you know, well the shape of a palm, and they have these sort of, you know, luxury real estate developments on that. They attracts a lot of money from around the world. It's well known for not having particularly stringent anti-money laundering concerns, you know?

[01:13:29] Mm-Hmm. So people bring in money, unexplained wealth from all around the world and kind of park it in Dubai. And because it has this sort of luxury element to it, it has, you know, salt Bays restaurant or whatever, and it has, you know, these like what's called a seven star hotel, which doesn't even exist or something.

[01:13:44] You, it has, um, all of these other things, people will come from around the world to be there and that creates this weird, I. You know, the way I describe it in the podcast, sort of the Star Wars cantina of, um, sort of strange characters in the Middle East, where you, you'll have like a soccer player, you'll have a hedge fund manager, you'll have an arms dealer, you'll have a drugs trafficker, you'll have an Instagram influencer, and they're all sort of sitting in the same restaurant taking selfies or whatever.

[01:14:11] And it's, um, this very bizarre melting pot of, um, this sort of like collision of multiple things like international and like financial

[01:14:19] Jordan Harbinger: forces. I've got some friends who work in Dubai and various industries and, and my own group of friends who work in Dubai are also kind of like the Star Wars cantina.

[01:14:27] It'll be like a hairdresser who went there because the money's better. A masseuse who went there 'cause the money's better. And another person's like. Yeah, I'm former CIA and that's all I'm gonna tell you. And you're like, okay. And then there's another person who's like a personal protection specialist and he is like, yeah, my clients are also members of what you would call the Star Wars cantina, right?

[01:14:43] Like a Pakistani scam call center owner, or somebody investigating Chinese gangsters running crypto fraud scams, or Indian mafia guys, or people who can't go back to Afghanistan because of the Taliban. Absolutely. But they're somehow really rich. And I'm like, okay, that doesn't seem legit at all. So you see that and the expert you had on, man, he had such a good explanation, he said something like Dubai is the brackish inlet where the salty waters of criminality meet with the fresh water of legitimate business, which sounds like a great recipe for money laundering and pretty much everything else that you normally don't want in your country.

[01:15:18] Yeah, I mean that, that

[01:15:19] Miles Johnson: was a fantastic, um, uh, his name's Matthew Page. Um, he's, uh, worked at the Carnegie Endowment and, um, he's a very interesting guy. He used to work for the US government and now sort of writes about kleptocracy and so did this fantastic report on Dubai, where again, his description, as you said, is perfect.

[01:15:35] You know, it's a sort of place where dirty money and clean money can kind of come together and just sort of like merge. And no one really, you know, no really asks any questions. And, um, it's very modern. It's a very modern phenomenon. It's something where he, he said to me something really interesting I thought, which was also about like what he called global elite formation.

[01:15:54] Mm-Hmm. You know, where historically. If you were someone who was sort of wanted to, could be a crime boss, you know, or whatever, but someone who had a lot of money and wanted their kids to sort of join the global elite somehow in the past, maybe, you know, a hundred years ago, you might have sent them to, you know, Yale or Oxford or something.

[01:16:11] Mm-Hmm. And they would've got a degree. And you know, now there's this sort of weird new style of elite formation where people go to Dubai and places like that and take Instagram selfies of themselves and restaurants, you know, but

[01:16:23] it's

[01:16:24] Miles Johnson: a sort of status is conferred by wealth in a different way in that environment.

[01:16:28] And it's, it's sort of changing the way, um, which sort of like status elites, global, elite status

[01:16:33] Jordan Harbinger: sort of functions. I know a couple of people who track, for example, Iranian Ayatollah's family's Instagrams. I know this is very niche, but it'll be like, which is ironic because some of the photos that they share, it's like two girls dressed in basically something that looks like dental floss and they're at a club and it's like, who's that?

[01:16:53] Those are the grand Ayatollah's great granddaughters or granddaughters. And you're like the ones that look literally like showgirls and are just doing kissy face to the camera with a bottle of champagne. Their grandpa is this super conservative theocratic authoritarian in Iran. It's like, yeah, really shocking.

[01:17:10] And of course

[01:17:10] Miles Johnson: they're in Dubai. I haven't seen that. Is that, are they in Dubai?

[01:17:13] Jordan Harbinger: Sometimes London when they're partying, but sometimes Dubai and a lot of the Russian oligarchs kids are in Dubai as well. There was one sort of famous gaff, I don't remember whose daughter this was, but it was, she posted something that was like, no war.

[01:17:28] And it was like, Hey, do you know how daddy pays for your villa and the French Alps when you go skiing with your friends? Dumbass. Yes. He starts wars and sells weapons to countries, so maybe take that post out. She took it down. But people, and you know, her photos are all just her partying all over the world and it's like, yeah, your daddy's a bad man.

[01:17:44] It sounds

[01:17:45] Miles Johnson: like an interesting niche. Yeah. I wrote piece last year about, um, if G Zen, the Wagner guy's family. Wow. And we kind of did a bunch of digging on it. It was interesting because we basically saw that they, they, although though he had been sanctioned for quite a long time before the Russia's invasion of Ukraine, his family had basically just been living this life of luxury in Europe.

[01:18:05] You know, going, they were, his daughters were like, show jumping. They had this stable of horses, show ponies or whatever, and they were competing in all these competitions and the Mediterranean and stuff like that. And like, you know, his youngest daughter competed in an event in Spain on the eve of the evasion.

[01:18:20] And then obviously like rushed back out, rushed to Russia. But yeah, it was an interesting insight into how, you know, that's an important point in terms of, um, these sorts of people we're talking about, you know, in terms of like law enforcement act action against them, or sanctions or whatever. You know, it's, it gets quite complicated with families, you know, there are people who argue that if someone will say, okay, I might go to jail, but my kids will have millions of dollars, that's a trade I'm worth making.

[01:18:45] I. You would say, um, that if you don't seize that wealth somehow, you know, is that just an incentive to kind of commit crime or do whatever? Yeah, and there are other people who'd say, you know, the families are distinct. You know, there are these legal battles which are going on. Zen's mom, who I think is last time I said 86 or maybe 87, she, uh, attempted to overturn the European Union sanctions against her.

[01:19:09] You know, so she was sanctioned by the European Union and she said, look, he's my son, but I don't have anything to do with him. My son may be the most famous war in the whole world. I don't have anything to do with him. And, uh, she did succeed. I think it's a tricky legal issue and there's a tricky moral issue about what you do about that.

[01:19:26] I do

[01:19:27] Jordan Harbinger: feel bad for somebody like that if she's really like, yo, I disowned that guy 'cause he's a terrible person, and now I can't like go grocery shopping. That sucks. But if she's just lying, then well. Screw her too, I guess. Yeah, I mean we,

[01:19:38] Miles Johnson: in that same piece, we looked at that. I mean, she, uh, did not appear to have disowned him by any means.

[01:19:44] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay. Well then she's just a piece of crap. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Well, I hope she, you know, all those people get theirs at some point. Maybe not all but many. I mean, he got blown up in a plane crash. I'm sure she had a bad day at that point and now she can't do anything about it either.

[01:19:57] So who knows, man, this conversation was all over the place. Super interesting discussion of a lot of complex problems. Miles, thank you for coming on the show.

[01:20:05] Miles Johnson: Thank you so much for having me.

[01:20:09] Jordan Harbinger: You are about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Desmond Shum, a Chinese billionaire who did business in the highest circles of the Chinese Communist Party.

[01:20:17] A

[01:20:18] Miles Johnson: red aristocracy. A red aristo. They are by bloodline. So when you are born, you're born in a different sessional hospital from the rest of the country. No money can buy you into their session, so they'll go to a different private school, kindergarten, different primary school, different secondary school.

[01:20:35] They have farms dedicated only grow for them. And then the car they ride in have a separate license plate. We drive in the bike lane, we drive in the bus lane. It's the loyalty and the aristocrats of the medieval times.

[01:20:50] Jordan Harbinger: Your wife, she gets an exit ban from China and then she disappears and this is the part that is just twilight zone bizarre.

[01:20:59] You've been calling her for four years. Her mom's been calling her every day for four years. You write this book, suddenly she calls you on the phone from the number that had been dead for four years. What the hell is going on?

[01:21:14] Miles Johnson: About a year and a half after her disappearance, I was in London talking to this friend.

[01:21:19] We were having coffee together. He looked me in the eyes. He said, you know, they will never let her out. And then he said, like a matter of factly, if they let her out, they're gonna give her a shut down a spine. She will come out as a zombie. Really, the state can do something like that. And they will do something like that.

[01:21:35] You

[01:21:36] Jordan Harbinger: were friendly with many people in Xi Jinping's Inner Circle. How do you assess his character? He sees

[01:21:41] Miles Johnson: himself as an emperor to rejuvenate a dynasty. That's what he want to do. That is the, I think, for everybody, including Chinese. In China, that's the most dangerous thing because he is re-engineering the entire country in every dimension where it's gonna end.

[01:22:02] That's the most

[01:22:03] Jordan Harbinger: dangerous thing. To hear how it all came crashing down, how his wife vanished, and how he escaped abroad. Check out episode 6 84 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. I found it interesting. He said that money laundering is always connected to another crime. I mean, now it sort of seems obvious, right?

[01:22:20] Because what are you laundering the money from if it's not another crime? But it's always connected to human trafficking, weapons trafficking, drugs, trafficking. It never happens in a vacuum. So if you track the money. You start to really find out where the real quote, unquote real crime is happening as far as the DEA and cocaine and the money in Europe and the Middle East Man Europe.

[01:22:38] Now, as you know from my episode eight 60 with Mitch Prothero, the European cocaine market, more of a market than the United States and not policed as much. And not enforced as much and shorter sentences for drug offenders. 'cause they're not really on this whole war on drugs tip. So they are really getting hit with it.

[01:22:55] And it'll be interesting to see how Europe deals with this cocaine flood that's coming in. And by the way, I, I was wondering about the terrorism angle. This stuff is just not ideological drug dealers. They don't care about Iran's fundamentalist Islam or fascist nonsense. They don't care about the Ayatollahs.

[01:23:11] This is just business. But having nation state banking and money laundering, money transfer resources, it means you can move billions of dollars instead of merely millions or hundreds of thousands. And it smooths out the bottleneck of a key part of the business. So that's what makes for strange bedfellows, right?

[01:23:27] You get these like super conservative ISIS level, or at least Hezbollah slash Al-Qaeda level terrorist operatives. And they are right. Not even eating certain ti, they won't eat pork, but they will happily transfer a bunch of weapons and or drugs because they just don't care. It's just business. It has nothing to do with religion that takes a backseat.

[01:23:47] We in the west, unfortunately, we'll catch these killers, some of these hit squads or some of these other people that try and murder dissidents abroad. So we'll grab these guys, throw 'em in jail, and then some Belgian aid worker gets arrested in Iran on BS charges and we gotta trade 'em out. So I don't really know how this is gonna end up being a win for us ever.

[01:24:05] Can we ever really win against crooked regimes that engage in hostage diplomacy? I don't know if we can. And it sucks because of course, the other choices, we stop sending aid workers to places under the control of terrible regimes. And it's not the AYA who can't get medical care, right? It's the people in Iran or rural Iran that don't have any power in the situation, that can't get food or medical care.

[01:24:25] So. It's really just such a loss for the people under these regimes. Uh, but hey, one caveat that I always give, Iran is an amazing place. The people are amazing, they're talented, and they are always, always, always the biggest victims of the regime. There's a reason these hit squads mostly kill Iranians.

[01:24:41] They're going after their own people because their own people are the biggest threat to their crazy kooky regime that they got over there in the first place. And once the people of Iran end up freeing themselves, which is what it's gonna look like, has to happen. I am excited for the potential of that country in that region.

[01:24:57] It's just, uh, well, don't get me started. Uh, I'll, I'll be the first one on a plane over to visit Iran when the AI tollers are either being hoisted on light posts or being lowered into the ground in a box, all things Miles Johnson will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com. The AI chat bot on the website can help you as well.

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[01:26:24] I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. I. And together we host a weekly True Crime podcast called The Prosecutors. In every episode, we bring our unique perspective as full-time prosecutors to the most famous and debated true crime mysteries, whether it's Maura Murray, Scott Peterson, or the Delphi Murders. Brett and I dig deep to bring you details you won't hear anywhere else.

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