THE BIG MIG SHOW
DECEMBER 12, 2024
EPISODE 438– 7PM
Evan Ratliff is an award-winning investigative journalist, bestselling author, podcast host, and entrepreneur. He’s the author of the The Mastermind: A True Story of Murder, Empire, and a New Kind of Crime Lord; the writer and host of the hit podcasts Shell Game and Persona: The French Deception.
The Mastermind
The incredible true story of the decade-long quest to bring down Paul Le Roux—the creator of a frighteningly powerful Internet-enabled cartel who merged the ruthlessness of a drug lord with the technological savvy of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur
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All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
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Creator with certain unalienable Rights, by liberty.
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If liberty means anything at all, it means right to tell
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people what they do not want to hear.
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Make America great. Again.
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Welcome back to the big big show.
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I'm your host Lance Miliaccio with my Co host George Valentin.
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Little Christmas cheer coming at you.
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George. Are we early on?
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I don't know if we are. I guess we're not.
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Oh, we're actually. December What do you?
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Seem like it's December to me, am I wrong?
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Ah, you Bah humbug, Grinch you. Yeah, maybe.
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Maybe. At the end of the day, you guys
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know this is the tip of the spirit of liberty means anything
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at all. It means the right to tell
00:01:18
people what they do not want to hear.
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Hopefully we've done the work for you.
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We've done the investigation. We bring you the facts, the
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sauce, the evidence. I don't really care what you
00:01:26
call it. We always try to bring you the
00:01:28
right guess. The plan is always to unify the
00:01:31
country through the education we give them on the show.
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So we do that one episode at a time, as always.
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And it's better to be hurt by the truth and comforted with a
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lie. I want to take a minute before
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And then don't forget our guys at Genesis Gold Group.
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First of all, don't forget their show tomorrow, the Global
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Finance Forum. We do that at noon on Friday, so
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you definitely want to see that. Great item, great stocking
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stuffer, right? Time of year for it.
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The prepper bar, 62.2g bar perforated, easily broken down
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into your choice of three different denominations.
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You can't really see it, but there's actually a way to break
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off little pieces of this and make payments if you needed to,
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just in case US currency ever gets impacted.
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And of course, we've talked about silver many times.
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Very undervalued at this point just because of the military
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aspects and of course, that new Samsung EV technology we
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actually introduced you guys to on the global finance forum
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show. You can use this for barter and
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trade. You can use it for payment.
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They have them in gold and silver.
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They've got them in stock. They are getting a little low on
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the silver 1. So FY I I wouldn't wait too
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close to the holidays. I don't know if they'll get a
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restock. They're mined and minted in the
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US. You don't have to worry about
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counterfeit. Head over to the big meek
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bar.com. The big Meek bar.com, head over
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there after the show. Or you can take a picture of
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that QR code. You know George with the tech,
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he always makes it easy for you can save the QR code and head
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over there after the show. George Ballantine.
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We were busy as hell today, weren't we?
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We were meetings upon meetings, making things, doing, doing a
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lot of things. Just like it's never ending.
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Yeah, it never seems like they're always and.
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I'm just waiting for someone to show me the money, that's all.
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Show me the money. Exactly.
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It's one of those things you have to grind it out.
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Of course, you know, on the weekends we have our nationally
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syndicated radio show on Saturday and Sunday, so we start
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doing prep on Thursdays and Fridays to get ready for that.
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And of course we've got the Global Finance Forum.
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And tomorrow, don't forget Jillian Michaels joins US.
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Health guru, entrepreneur, really great.
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She's got an incredible sense of humor.
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Don't miss this episode at 7:00 PM tomorrow night with Jillian
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Michaels. So I'm really excited about this
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show. You guys know that George and I
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are entrenched with crypto. You know, we have a big crypto
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show coming out. But a really interesting guy
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that's not only an expert in his own area, which a book he wrote
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that I, I think it makes him the expert on Paul LaRue, but he's
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also got some interesting stuff going on in AI.
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Let me just give you his quick bio here.
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Just run it by you so you can hear it.
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He's an award-winning investigative journalist, best
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selling author, podcast host, entrepreneur.
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He's the author of the Mastermind, a true story of
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murder, empire and a new kind of crime Lord.
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And I've got to tell you now that I know what Paul La Rue is
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about. This guy was really maybe one of
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the biggest criminals in the world at the time when he was
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operating as far as being into more verticals than anybody I
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can imagine. He's a host of the hit podcast
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Shell Game, which is really interesting in itself, and
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Persona, the French deception. I'm going to have to ask him
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about that. That one I'm a little lost on.
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No reason to leave him backstage, George.
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I'm going to actually have him join us for the set the move,
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George, if you're good with that.
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Me. You bring it on me.
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Of course. I'm good with it.
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Welcome to the big, big show, Evan Ratliff.
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How you doing today? Am I?
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Good with us. Want to tell our guest no, you
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got to stay there. Yeah, I hate you always try
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doing Evan. Try try playing that game.
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I'm smarter though. Yeah.
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So Evan, First off, man, thanks for taking the interview.
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I really appreciate it. You know, you are the expert.
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A lot of people are talking about LaRue being Satoshi
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Nakamoto. It's an interesting thing.
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It's really been in the news as of as of late quite a bit.
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And I think it's because that that wallet that hasn't
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resurfaced I think since 2012 is sitting at about 111 billion
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with AB dollars. That may be why.
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We. We do a little thing to set the
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tone here. I just found this post that
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Donald Trump junior put up. It's just Donald Trump having a
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reaction to Zelensky. You know, last year, Zelensky
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was the time person of the year, which I, I don't think it was
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deserved. But let's go ahead and play it,
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George. I'm on.
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My way short. Yeah, it was very short.
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So, Evan, let me ask you this. You, let's start with were you
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always aspiring to be an author? Was this something you always
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did? Were you always a writer?
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Give us some background that goes beyond maybe what's here in
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the bio. Well, I was, I, I was not always
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a writer, but I always wanted to work for, for magazines.
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And I'm old enough to where people used to, you know, really
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care about what was in magazines just maybe isn't as true as it
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used to be. But when I started, I got a job
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working in basically opening the mail at Wired magazine, which
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was in the late 90s, early the 2000s was kind of a, a hot place
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to be just like, you know, telling the story of technology
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that was all new. You know, there was the big.com
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boom. And so it was just a lot of
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people that were very curious about where the world was going,
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the future, and also with some really quality journalism.
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So that's kind of where I got my start, just at the bottom there.
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And I really came to love journalism and journalists.
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I know you guys may have your opinions about the state of
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journalism today, but I found that that those were kind of my
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people, people who care about the world, who are going out to
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investigate questions, talk to people, bring back the answers
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and tell stories. And so that's kind of what I
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always wanted to do. So then I started working my way
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up to writing magazine features. And that's that's my career for
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a long time is writing magazine features.
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Then later I got into podcasts and writing books and everything
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else. You know, for I'll.
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Add something, Lance. Hold on.
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Yeah, please, George. People used to care about what
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the news used to have to say too, but a lot of that's changed
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so they don't watch that. So I think I still like what's
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in magazines. All depends.
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But you know, you look at the way it's so biased.
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That's why people don't want to, you know, tend to read magazines
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or even watch the mainstream media anymore.
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That's why they come to shows like this.
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That's where we're at. Or your sub stack.
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Because they'll get the truth by going to your sub stack.
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Yeah, I think the key to it is what's what's difficult to
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always, I'd always hoped and maybe and I was naive for a long
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time. I actually had a suspicion to
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Wired magazine back then. I read it cover to cover.
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I was doing a lot of trading in tech stocks during that time
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period because of course the market was on fire that
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everybody was talking about NASDAQ.
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I think I hit, I think hitting 2000 was the big number back
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then. I think that they were
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predicting that. Of course I wrote it up, wrote
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some of it down because we also had that reverse.
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What's tricky because we go after both sides of the aisle on
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the show and we really bring on, we have, you know, liberals and
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non partisans and all kinds of people on the show.
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What's tricky for me is that I was assumptive in believing that
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honesty was the key. That the, that, you know, the,
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the keystone of journalism, that honesty and that creating some
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kind of an environment where you would present the story and let
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people decide. But I was really unaware of the
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fact of how much of the media is manipulated by other sources.
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I didn't recognize that. And I was busy working and maybe
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just really wasn't paying attention.
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Maybe I just wasn't an expert enough back then.
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But what bothers me about media now, whether it's mainstream
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media or even, you know, places like the Washington Post or New
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York Times, is there's no neutrality.
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They don't present the story for the facts from both sides.
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They seem to present it. And it's tilted in a way that I,
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that I tend to believe because we sift through, you know, we're
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on social media all day. It's disgusting.
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But for the businesses that we are involved and we report on
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and, and it's, it's, it's a, it's a terrible place to be
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sometimes because in the job that we have, I don't know in
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your case, but in our case, sometimes reporting the facts of
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what's really going on is, is depressing.
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It's, you know, it's got a real downside to it.
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So we try to lighten it up with humor and we present a lot of
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other stuff. But what I, I've come to believe
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and we and I've, you know, we got, we have quite a few
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resources in the intelligence world and around the globe and
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other ways the manipulation that's been created.
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So if you look at even like the Twitter Files and what happened
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with Jack Dorsey and how the CIA, Department of Homeland
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Security, Graphica and many other agencies were manipulating
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what should be shown, what shouldn't be shown, who should
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get suppressed, who shouldn't get suppressed.
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And I think what we've got in the country is that because
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media did a lot of that, we've created a lot of division and
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chaos. And I think people are in a
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situation. And then I'll let you come on up
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to seven. I think people have got to the
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point where they have a hard time trusting media across the
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board. You sure have the far, far left,
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which you know, why you can call it anything you want.
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And then you have the far, far right that I don't agree with at
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all. We tend to go, you know, I, I
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like a constitutional Republic. I like the rule of law and I, I
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believe in a country that that that's honest with the people.
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And I don't think we have that right now.
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I think the administration on both sides of the hell doesn't
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do that. I think people are worried that
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they don't know whether they can believe media any anymore
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because we've had so many stories, like for example, the
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Russian collusion hoax, The Dirty 51 + 8.
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That hoax was perpetuated by so many people in Congress and then
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further on. And the truth is, it was one big
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gigantic lie, but yet you don't see the retractions you'd
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expect. And I think America's sick of
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that. So give me your comments.
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I'm open open to hear what you have to say.
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Well, I don't know if I'm prepared to stand in for the for
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the mainstream media. I mean, I'm, I'm independent.
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I do, I do work for the mainstream media as you would,
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as you would call it a lot. I mean, I would only say, first
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of all, there's no question that there's a trust issue with, you
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know, the media writ large, like journalists are among the most
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unpopular people in America. It's like the one of the most
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unpopular professions in America.
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You know, we're down at the bottom.
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So I can't argue with the fact that the industry has lost a lot
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of trust with people. I might disagree with some of
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the reasons and whether or not it's this story or that story.
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I mean, the main thing I would say is as a person who knows a
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lot of journalists, who has interviewed a lot of journalists
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who, you know, has worked in this world, it's like just the
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generalities. That's what I push back on.
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Like I have also spent a lot of time talking to people in law
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enforcement. But if I were to say to you, you
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know, what the issue is with law enforcement, law enforcement
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people are like this. You would say law enforcement
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filled 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people.
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And it's a complex situation. And some of them are one way and
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some of the other. And I think when people talk
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about the media, a lot of times they're talking about political
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reporting like that is that's the main thing that people are
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talking about. And there are there are
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literally thousands, about thousands of reporters who are
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just trying to figure out what's going on with their local
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government or figure out what's going on with technology or in
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my case, trying to figure out what's going on with the big
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money laundering case or a big crime or drug dealing or
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whatnot. And so there's just a, there's
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just a diversity of types of reporters.
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And I think people tend to focus on politics.
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I don't publicly talk about politics because I don't report
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on it. I only talk about the things
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that I report on. So you won't catch me coming on
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here talking about Trump or anything else.
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Obviously, I have opinions on that.
00:13:47
But I don't think my opinions are worth more than anyone else
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who follows the news because I haven't gone out to gather any
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information that would make my opinion more valuable than
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anyone else's. But I do think that most
00:13:59
reporters, including the political ones, they also have
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opinions, but they are trying to get to the truth now.
00:14:05
They get that wrong, but I think they're the this sort of broad
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brush painting that has started to happen.
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I don't find it particularly helpful, but I understand.
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I do understand why people feel that way.
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I think that's I think that's a great position.
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I think you make some valid points.
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You know, you know, and I hate to generalize sometimes because
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you're right, it's very dangerous because there are many
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people just like there's we can talk about bad law enforcement
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if we use that as an example, but there are lots of great law
00:14:30
enforcement and you know, and on this show, we back the blue
00:14:33
constitutional sheriffs and many others.
00:14:34
But you know, there was a, there was a quote about you that I
00:14:37
thought was really interesting. A Tour de force of shoe leather
00:14:41
reporting undertaking amid threats and menacing a
00:14:44
considerable personal risk that came out of Los Angeles.
00:14:47
I, I think that's a great quote because I, I have to imagine now
00:14:50
that I have a chance to really be on top of your book, the
00:14:54
mastermind and looked in and watched lots of videos, lots of
00:14:57
content, read lots of articles about Paul Roo.
00:15:00
This is a crazy undertaking you took here and I've got to ask
00:15:04
you, it was this, have you always been interested in crime
00:15:07
or you know, and again, I don't know when I say crime, maybe
00:15:09
from a journalistic physician, is it something that always
00:15:12
intrigued you? Is this a direction you always
00:15:14
wanted to go? Or was it because this was it
00:15:16
had the technology play within it and that's what drew you to
00:15:20
write the book Mastermind? It's a little bit of both.
00:15:22
I mean, I started out as I said in, in tech.
00:15:24
So I, I was really, I, I've always been interested in, in
00:15:28
what's going on in technology and, and where it's going and
00:15:31
you know how it works. I was a computer programmer for
00:15:34
a little bit. So that's my, that's what, how,
00:15:37
where I started. But I think the places, the
00:15:40
darker sides of technology sort of appealed to me and the places
00:15:44
where it intersects with crime and that where it intersects
00:15:47
with sort of human moral failings.
00:15:50
And I'm also interested in how people get pulled into these
00:15:54
criminal organizations. Like how does someone start in
00:15:58
one place one day and then six months later the feds are
00:16:02
raiding their house? Like how did that happen?
00:16:04
How did that story take place? So not just what happened on the
00:16:07
day of that raid and what crime are they committing, but who is
00:16:10
this person and how do they get from here to there?
00:16:11
And I, I often find that story to be very, very interesting and
00:16:14
to say something about society and where we are right now.
00:16:17
So I am very, I mean, I should probably like go to therapy and
00:16:22
look at why I'm so interested in crime and people disappearing
00:16:25
and all sorts of other dark topics.
00:16:28
Maybe in a previous life you were a a mafioso or maybe a
00:16:31
cartel member you know well. Perhaps he is big.
00:16:34
Big mafia now so. Our our subscribers and
00:16:39
listeners self anointed themselves the big, big mafia.
00:16:41
So it's, you know, it's one of those things now you're a friend
00:16:44
of ours, so. Well, we'll see how it goes.
00:16:47
I don't want to. I don't want to piss him off.
00:16:49
Yeah. So let let me just give
00:16:51
everybody that might have just joined the show.
00:16:52
So the mastermind. It's an incredible true story of
00:16:54
the decade long quest to bring down Paul LaRue, the creator of
00:16:58
a frightening, powerful Internet enabled cartel who merged the
00:17:01
ruthlessness of a, a, a drug Lord with the technological
00:17:07
savvy of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
00:17:10
That is a very accurate description.
00:17:13
I'm, you know, I have to say that he's really impressive in
00:17:17
his own way. It's really intriguing how
00:17:20
brilliant he was. And it seemed like he showed
00:17:23
that in an early age. So let me just have you dig in
00:17:26
here. I'm just going to talk about
00:17:27
Paul Calder for just a second. He would, you know, it's funny.
00:17:30
He sounds like he was born in Bilauea, Zimbabwe.
00:17:32
Is that correct? Yeah, at the time it was
00:17:35
Rhodesia. It was actually before it was
00:17:36
even. Yeah, my wife.
00:17:37
Was there, she was obviously a little older than him, but she
00:17:41
grew up in Bilauea, Zimbabwe. So she was there during
00:17:44
Rhodesia, apartheid and all the rest of it.
00:17:47
And she was actually surprised when I told her that this is
00:17:50
where he was from. Let's talk about, let's just go
00:17:53
into this. So how did you get on top of the
00:17:55
story to begin with? Because I'll be I'm shocked that
00:17:57
somebody hasn't approached you to turn this into a movie.
00:18:01
Oh, they have. They have.
00:18:03
It just hasn't happened yet. But yeah, they have.
00:18:05
This would make an unbelievable movie.
00:18:07
I think 1 judge described him as the only villain he'd ever had
00:18:10
in front of him or criminal that appeared to be straight out of a
00:18:13
James Bond movie. So how did you locate him to
00:18:17
firm? Because I, I have to be honest
00:18:19
with you, until we dug, we started getting involved in
00:18:21
crypto, I had never heard the name Paul LaRue.
00:18:25
Yeah, it's interesting. He still kind of flies a little
00:18:27
bit under the radar. I mean, what happened was he was
00:18:30
arrested in 2012 by the DEA in a very elaborate sting operation.
00:18:35
They went after him in Liberia. They lured him to Liberia.
00:18:39
He was living in Brazil at the time.
00:18:41
We can talk about how he ended up in Brazil, but he had been
00:18:42
based in the Philippines. So they lured him to Liberia and
00:18:46
they arrested him, and then they kept him under wraps for over a
00:18:51
year to use him as an informant, to go out and try to round up
00:18:57
the people who worked for him because he had a vast network.
00:18:59
He had all of these, as you say, it was all these verticals,
00:19:04
basically crime verticals, drug trafficking originally, Internet
00:19:08
pills, that was pain pills, selling painkillers on the
00:19:10
Internet. That was his.
00:19:12
Original business Lumber. Logging.
00:19:14
Yep, Gold. A lot of gold.
00:19:19
It was mostly used as a sort of money laundering technique.
00:19:21
You'd buy gold in Africa, fly to Hong Kong and then resell it to
00:19:24
a gold dealer. And then of course like that
00:19:27
spiraled into violence. So he had a hit team that was
00:19:31
mostly made-up of ex military from the US, from Israel, from
00:19:37
the UK, guys who had been in Iraq and Afghanistan, who, you
00:19:41
know, sort of took the payday and thought they were doing just
00:19:45
sort of Gray world work. You know, they would defend the
00:19:48
gold as it was transported. And then it sort of got, you
00:19:50
know, deeper and deeper to where they were being asked to
00:19:53
firebomb someone's house or kill someone.
00:19:55
And some of them were up for that and some of them weren't.
00:19:57
So in any case, they were all these all these network of
00:20:00
people that existed under him. I mean, he was running a large
00:20:03
operation out of the Philippines.
00:20:05
So when he was arrested, they, they worked to set up other
00:20:08
people who had worked for him and he was helping them.
00:20:11
So they let him back online to e-mail them, to talk to them, to
00:20:14
lure them to places where they could be arrested.
00:20:17
And so that went on for a year. And then finally they arrested
00:20:21
the head of his hit team, which was a guy named Joseph Hunter.
00:20:25
His nickname was Rambo. He's sort of famous for being
00:20:27
called Rambo. And he was ex U.S.
00:20:31
Army. And when they arrested him, that
00:20:33
was big news because he was arrested for a plot to
00:20:39
assassinate DEA agents. And that made the news that was
00:20:42
in, you know, the New York Times, CNN, all over the world.
00:20:45
And that was sort of the first time I was exposed to the story
00:20:48
because that was the DOJ finally said, OK, we're rounding this
00:20:51
person up. But they didn't say why.
00:20:53
They didn't say who Joseph Hunter worked for.
00:20:55
They didn't say how this all came about.
00:20:58
So that was sort of my job from there was to figure out, OK, how
00:21:02
does this all fit together? How did they arrest all these
00:21:04
people? Where do they come from?
00:21:06
Who do they work for? Who is that?
00:21:08
And so I spent basically five years figuring all that out.
00:21:11
And the answer was always, you know, Paul the Roux.
00:21:15
It's interesting. Was it so for a year wise, was
00:21:18
it 2012 after the arrest that you, you, you, you know, you
00:21:21
kind of said, wow, this is an interesting story.
00:21:23
Was it right about that time for your prior to that?
00:21:25
Did you did you know about him prior to the arrest?
00:21:27
I didn't know about him prior to the arrest.
00:21:30
I only knew about him after Joseph Hunter's arrest and then
00:21:34
actually his name. Pauler's name first leaked
00:21:38
through The New York Times, an article in the New York Times.
00:21:42
So that was the first time his name was made public.
00:21:44
And that was, I can't remember, that was 2014, either 2013 or
00:21:47
2014. It might have been 2014.
00:21:50
And that's sort of when when I started working on it.
00:21:54
The just for myself only because I know the, the know the
00:21:57
industry because I was, I was a government contractor years ago.
00:22:00
So what you talk about there is, is it's it's really standard,
00:22:05
standard operating protocol. A lot of the guys are out there
00:22:07
for hire. They don't have a contract.
00:22:09
They become independents and they go into what I would
00:22:11
consider Gray work. But they may very well know a
00:22:14
lot of times that it may not be as Gray as they're choosing.
00:22:17
But of course they try to pick that one piece, whether it's
00:22:19
security for the gold transportation or something
00:22:21
else. And by just staying in that
00:22:23
vertical, they hope that they'll stay on the right side of any
00:22:26
anything that comes forward. But it doesn't always work like
00:22:28
that. This guy kind of surprised me
00:22:31
and I'm going to tell you why, because he was making a crazy
00:22:34
amount of money in, in, in his online prescription drug
00:22:37
network, which didn't include narcotics or gold or
00:22:41
assassinations. He seemed to, I mean, you go on
00:22:44
to talk about how that I guess you, you would have gotten some
00:22:47
kind of information about how there were shoe boxes of cash
00:22:50
stacked up in his house, $100 million worth, I guess.
00:22:55
What do you think? And it's a good point that you
00:22:57
brought up earlier, you said, well, what gets somebody to go
00:22:59
down this road? Was there like an epiphany
00:23:02
moment that he decided it just wasn't enough?
00:23:05
What, what, you know, where did he go from to what I would
00:23:07
consider kind of this legal Gray area of prescription drugs
00:23:10
shipping in from other countries, although shipping in
00:23:12
the United States might have been not been legal.
00:23:14
But the the fact is that system didn't carry the the danger and
00:23:18
the intrigue and and possibly a lot worse.
00:23:22
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it carried some risk
00:23:25
doing the prescription pills, but the risk was only, you know,
00:23:28
from law enforcement. And he was pretty safe.
00:23:30
I mean, he was in, he was in the Philippines.
00:23:32
He had bought off politicians. He'd bought off, you know,
00:23:36
military and law enforcement all the way up to the top judges,
00:23:40
you know, just giving judges suitcases full of cash to get
00:23:43
himself out of trouble. So I don't think he was in a big
00:23:46
danger until he started getting into these other areas.
00:23:49
And I mean, I think that's the big question.
00:23:51
He's never really articulated why he did that.
00:23:55
I have my own speculations. And the, the easiest way to kind
00:24:00
of describe it is like, if you look at let's take Elon Musk,
00:24:04
who is sort of, he's a, he's a fun guy to compare LaRue to
00:24:08
because they both, LaRue later grew up in South Africa.
00:24:11
Elon Musk is from South Africa. They were both sort of teens who
00:24:15
got into computers and were brilliant at it.
00:24:18
And one of them went one way and the other one went the other
00:24:20
way. And but if you think about Elon
00:24:22
Musk, I mean, he made, I don't remember, I don't have the
00:24:25
figures. But however much money on PayPal
00:24:28
and enough money that he never had to work again or he could do
00:24:31
whatever he wanted. And he decided, no, I want to do
00:24:35
a rocket company. I want to do electric cars.
00:24:37
I'm going to double down and I'm going to risk all that in order
00:24:41
to create something else. And I think Paul Rue's kind of
00:24:45
the same way. You know, he was making 10s of
00:24:49
millions and then hundreds of millions of dollars.
00:24:51
I mean, he was making in like 2008.
00:24:52
He was making as much money as Facebook was making like $200
00:24:56
million a year. Wow.
00:24:58
But I. Think he had that same impulse
00:25:00
just on the other side of the law, which is I want to.
00:25:04
Oh well, sorry, sorry. But yeah, that wasn't you, that
00:25:08
was tech the. Hell, my bad.
00:25:14
We're good. Sorry about that.
00:25:15
Go ahead. That's like a voice of God.
00:25:17
But it was me. That's the scariest thing I've
00:25:20
ever heard. Is that a?
00:25:21
Warning. Yeah, be careful what you talk
00:25:24
about with Luru. So, yeah, I just think he wanted
00:25:29
to be bigger. I mean, he told people I want to
00:25:31
be the biggest criminal on the planet.
00:25:32
He told people I want to be on CNN if I ever get taken down.
00:25:36
And I think he was just trying to build a bill.
00:25:39
But then there's a second part too, which is, you know, once
00:25:41
you get mixed up in that world, he was laundering money on
00:25:45
behalf of cartels at a certain point.
00:25:48
So it's not so easy to get out once you start.
00:25:51
You know, you can say, well, and his cousin would tell him, just
00:25:55
give it up, man. Just move, move back to
00:25:57
Zimbabwe, get get a new identity.
00:26:00
They actually had him like mock up like a get a fake death
00:26:02
certificate. Like we'll pretend like you're
00:26:04
dead and you can just live your life.
00:26:06
And he was like, no, they'll find me.
00:26:08
You know, I, I have this guy, you know, I'm laundering money
00:26:10
for this group. I'm laundering money for that
00:26:11
group. Like they don't just let you go.
00:26:13
So once he was in it, I think there's a, there's a, there's
00:26:17
the appeal of it, the money make getting bigger.
00:26:20
And then there's also this sort of like you're in with people
00:26:22
that it's hard to to separate yourself from even if you wanted
00:26:26
to, but I don't think you wanted to.
00:26:28
Yeah, those organizations, So I, I grew up around my, my
00:26:33
godfather was a COPO for the Gambino crime family.
00:26:36
So I grew up around some of that.
00:26:37
So there is some truth the way you identify that there is this
00:26:41
level that you get to that it, it is difficult to navigate your
00:26:44
way out. And I assume with the amount of
00:26:46
cocaine he was moving on those yachts that he was, well, he was
00:26:50
way up the food chain because a lot of times that's done.
00:26:54
It's, you know, it isn't payment upfront.
00:26:56
It's you receive the product and then you sell it.
00:26:59
Of course, at that point they probably said doing well, can
00:27:01
you do this for us next? We need you to do, you know, we
00:27:03
know you're buying gold. We know about it.
00:27:05
And that leads me to a question I got to ask you, because I
00:27:08
can't imagine, I'm sure some of these people became aware of the
00:27:11
research you were doing. I don't know how that went.
00:27:13
That's and that's a challenging aspect when you're an
00:27:15
investigative journalist of research in that global criminal
00:27:18
network of Paul Larue's. How did you navigate those
00:27:20
challenges? Because I'm assuming at some
00:27:22
point you must have had some interaction with somebody who
00:27:24
said stop, you know, effing asking those kind of questions
00:27:27
or that sort of thing. Did you have some of those
00:27:29
interactions? And when did that happen?
00:27:30
Was it a year in two years in, you know, when did you start to
00:27:34
feel like maybe, wow, I don't know if I should have done this?
00:27:35
Did you ever have any of those moments?
00:27:37
I did. Have some of those moments.
00:27:38
I mean that that happened a year, a year or two years in.
00:27:42
I mean, it really happened when I went to the Philippines
00:27:44
because a lot of his network was still, I won't say active, but a
00:27:47
lot of people are still around in the Philippines.
00:27:50
Even a couple years after he arrest, he was arrested and they
00:27:52
didn't really know what happened to him.
00:27:54
And so I didn't know who was who.
00:27:57
You know, I would go interview someone and I knew they were
00:28:00
part of the organization, but people had sort of fluid roles
00:28:03
in the organization. So someone who worked at, say, a
00:28:05
call center, because he had huge call centers that employed
00:28:08
thousands of people, they might later transition into the drug
00:28:11
side. So it was sort of hard to tell
00:28:15
who was who. And there was some concern
00:28:18
there. I did things like, you know,
00:28:20
I've met people in public places rather than generally a couple
00:28:24
times I ended up in in, you know, alone with people.
00:28:27
And it was, it was some concern. But the thing that I really
00:28:31
benefited from, I think, to be honest with you, is like, I
00:28:35
don't think it was it would ever be worth it to kill me.
00:28:38
Like, it's just not. Yeah.
00:28:40
I was so low on the list of people that mattered in this
00:28:43
story that all these guys had worked under this organization.
00:28:49
And what they really wanted from me was to know what was going
00:28:52
on. As much as I wanted to know
00:28:54
what's going on, it was all compartmentalized.
00:28:56
So there were guys who they didn't even know there was a
00:28:59
kill team. Like they found out that for me
00:29:02
and they there were other guys who were afraid that they were
00:29:04
on the kill team's list, you know, because a lot of people
00:29:07
inside the organization were killed because LaRue thought
00:29:10
that they were stealing from him.
00:29:11
So I kind of benefited from there was so little information
00:29:15
available that when I went to talk to people, they had as many
00:29:18
questions for me as I had for them.
00:29:20
And that it wasn't like they were there to say, don't ask me
00:29:24
any questions. They would sort of show up and
00:29:26
say, OK, how did you find me? What do I have to do with this?
00:29:29
Like, where does my name come up?
00:29:31
There were people who indict who were indicted in the US who
00:29:33
didn't even know. They didn't know they were
00:29:34
indicted in the US. And so I wouldn't, I won't say
00:29:38
it was like the safest thing I've ever done, but it also
00:29:40
didn't feel like sort of entering into a very dangerous,
00:29:45
volatile situation at that point.
00:29:48
You know, I knew LaRue was in custody.
00:29:50
A lot of them they, a lot of them didn't even know that.
00:29:53
You know, I've got to see something interesting.
00:29:54
I actually ran his name through the BLP inmate system Bureau
00:29:59
prisons for the federal government, and he doesn't come
00:30:01
up, which is quite interesting. He does, he does.
00:30:05
I actually checked on him the other day.
00:30:06
Yeah they, they, they put him in with the without a space in his
00:30:10
last name, which is a big, big dispute.
00:30:12
Like if you see other write ups of them, even the federal
00:30:14
government 'cause when I. Typed him in, nothing came up.
00:30:16
I thought, man is this guy still working for them that they have
00:30:18
him in Witsac? That's happened to me as well.
00:30:20
Like I, I've not found it that I remember.
00:30:23
Oh, they, they did it without the space.
00:30:24
Although to me that does not mean that he's there at that
00:30:28
location and does not mean that he's not.
00:30:30
Where do they say? They're holding them right now.
00:30:32
Did they put the facility? Do you know which one it was?
00:30:35
Yes, but I can't remember which one it is because there's so
00:30:38
many of the guys that I'm often looking up.
00:30:40
I can't remember which one he's there wasn't a second wasn't New
00:30:42
Jersey go to the. BLP and just run him and just
00:30:44
see what he comes. I'm just curious where they've
00:30:46
got him because at this point he should have moved down several
00:30:49
levels because normally when you get below 10 years on your
00:30:51
sentence after your good time you're going to be moved to a
00:30:55
minimum security, either a low or a camp.
00:30:58
He probably doesn't qualify for a camp because of his global
00:31:00
connections because he could just walk off, but I would think
00:31:03
that he would have worked his way down to a low, but again,
00:31:05
maybe not. He didn't have any priors, but
00:31:08
this case put him way up there and I'm sure the only reason he
00:31:10
got 25 years because it's his situation.
00:31:12
Normally you'd get kingpin racketeering, Rico, concurrent
00:31:15
criminal enterprise and you would get 50 to life for being a
00:31:18
kingpin. So I think probably the his, his
00:31:22
5K1 allowed him to argue down his case so that he, yeah.
00:31:26
That's exactly what happened his.
00:31:28
Assistance would be a big deal. You know, you did an incredible
00:31:31
job. I got, I want to compliment you
00:31:32
that you portrayed, you know, La Rue not only is what I would
00:31:35
consider a criminal mastermind, but also kind of a flawed
00:31:38
individual. You know, that's, that's a tough
00:31:40
balance. And the way that you presented
00:31:41
him it was it, it, it made him, you know, seem like somebody
00:31:47
that could live right next door to you and you wouldn't know it.
00:31:48
Like he had this kind of approachable part of him when he
00:31:51
had the ruthless side of him. You did a great job of doing
00:31:53
that. Did you ever have any difficulty
00:31:55
balancing that 'cause you knew that he was committing
00:31:56
assassinations, but then you saw the other side of him, 'cause I
00:31:59
guess he has eleven children? Is that right?
00:32:02
At least, I mean, I don't, I don't know exactly how many
00:32:05
children he has, but yeah, he's, he's.
00:32:06
Running the well, I guess Andrew Tate is running his playbook is
00:32:09
what Andrew what it seems like to me.
00:32:11
But go ahead, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I it was a
00:32:15
struggle. The biggest struggle in
00:32:17
portraying him is that I couldn't talk to him, you know,
00:32:19
So I had to. Did you try?
00:32:21
Did. You reach out and they just went
00:32:22
to interview him. Oh yeah.
00:32:24
And the BOP just said absolutely not.
00:32:26
Well, he, I mean, when at the time I was writing, he was kept
00:32:29
in a facility in Queens that they they I think they private
00:32:33
contracted the facility. He wasn't in the system at all.
00:32:35
Like you couldn't find him. You couldn't send him a letter.
00:32:38
You couldn't. He was, he was held in complete
00:32:40
secrecy because he was cooperating, including, Yeah, I
00:32:44
mean, it wasn't quite wood SEC, but it was like he was in the
00:32:46
process of cooperating against not just his underlings, many of
00:32:51
whom are, you know, seasoned killers or some of whom are
00:32:54
seasoned killers. But also he had information
00:32:56
about Iran that they were chasing down because he had sold
00:32:59
missile technology to Iran. He had information about North
00:33:03
Korea because he had bought meth from North Korea.
00:33:05
So they were trying to chase down all these leads.
00:33:07
He, there was no chance of talking to him.
00:33:08
Then once he kind of like they let him up a little bit because
00:33:12
he had to testify a couple times.
00:33:14
I tried to talk to him, of course, through every lawyer he
00:33:16
ever had. You know, I sent letters, but he
00:33:21
didn't want to talk as far as I know.
00:33:23
I've sent him letters since, since the book came out, even I
00:33:25
would still talk to him now. But so the tricky thing was
00:33:28
trying to paint a picture of someone using what everyone else
00:33:32
said plus what he testified to so that I did have him, you
00:33:36
know, talking. I listened to hours and hours of
00:33:38
his testimony in court live. But, you know, I eventually got
00:33:43
to enough people, like hundreds of people that I felt like I
00:33:47
could, you know, try to give you a portrait of how someone ends
00:33:52
up in this situation. Like how how he got there both
00:33:54
by being brilliant, but also by sort of just losing his way a
00:33:59
little bit. And there were some things that
00:34:01
were maybe involved in that psychologically.
00:34:02
He found out he was adopted really late in life and that a
00:34:05
lot of people said that really affected him.
00:34:06
It really changed his outlook on life.
00:34:09
He also, he was a programmer who just worked in the legitimate
00:34:13
side of the business for many years and then was very
00:34:17
frustrated that he didn't get a big payday for that.
00:34:20
And he saw other people making money who he felt weren't as
00:34:23
talented as him. And I think that factored into
00:34:25
it. So, you know, I was trying to to
00:34:27
sort of draw the best picture I could of, of how how this
00:34:31
happens. Like, you know, how did these
00:34:33
people end up dead? How do all these millions and
00:34:35
millions of pills end up in the United States?
00:34:37
Like who? Who is the person behind this to
00:34:39
try to understand how it all kind of came about?
00:34:43
Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's
00:34:44
interesting. It's really, he's complicated.
00:34:47
And I, and I was, I was shocked by the number of verticals he'd
00:34:51
gotten himself into and he was entrenched.
00:34:53
I mean, just between the gold and the, the money laundering
00:34:57
and the, that when I saw the lumber story, I was like lumber.
00:35:01
And then and then you look and went beyond the scope of that.
00:35:03
He had so many verticals he'd gotten into and, and so many
00:35:06
different kinds of drugs and then the weapons.
00:35:08
So pretty interesting stuff. We're going to take a short
00:35:12
break. That's what that music means.
00:35:13
When we come back, we'll be here with Evan Ratliff.
00:35:15
We're going to talk more about masterminding.
00:35:17
We will eventually. I want to let the audience don't
00:35:18
worry, we're getting, we will talk about Satoshi Nakamoto, but
00:35:22
I want to get through the build up to that and we'll talk about
00:35:24
where that's heading. Maybe mafia and subscribers
00:35:26
don't go anywhere. Evan Ratliff when we come back
00:35:29
and George Ballantine. All right.
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brings they. Would run up to the bamboo fence
00:37:39
and they would be shooting between the bamboo at the
00:37:41
buildings, you know, just shooting inside the.
00:37:45
Wanted man is Joseph Kony. Charged.
00:37:47
With abducting huge numbers of children, forcing them to kill
00:37:51
and mutilate innocent victims, somebody had to pay the price.
00:37:55
Sam did that. Sam Childers never stopped
00:37:58
because the bad things never stop.
00:38:00
There is only one. Sam Childer.
00:38:02
There is no one else like him in the world then.
00:38:05
I said to him. I said would you?
00:38:07
Go. Now to get Kony in the Congo, he
00:38:10
says. Without a doubt in a second now.
00:38:12
It's the DRC. Tell us what's happening to
00:38:14
children in the DRC. Do you?
00:38:15
Have ISIS there, you have Islamic State and you have ADF.
00:38:20
Hey, Sandy, Joseph Kony is still alive.
00:38:22
He's in the Congo. And now God has me in the Congo,
00:38:25
you know, So hopefully we'll meet up one day.
00:38:29
But maybe I can lead him to the Lord or send him there, One or
00:38:33
the other. Huh.
00:38:52
All right, welcome back to the Big Meg Show.
00:38:54
Here we host George Valentin, Lance Migliaccio and our guest,
00:38:58
Evan Ratliff. But first, you know what time it
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fees waiving on qualifying accounts.
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Take a screenshot of this picture.
00:40:27
You got a beautiful picture of me.
00:40:28
But even better, you got the QR code.
00:40:30
Save it to your files. Click on it.
00:40:32
Take you right to the gold site, making it easy.
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If you want, call me up. I'll come over and dial the
00:40:36
number for you if you need to. I won't send Lance.
00:40:39
Don't worry. I got to do that.
00:40:43
Yeah. Yeah, don't send me SO.
00:40:44
Evan, we always talk about when whenever I've talked to other
00:40:49
people that write, whether they're writing books, story,
00:40:52
you know, everything, we're especially if they're doing
00:40:55
research, there's always some kind of surprises.
00:40:58
So, were there any unexpected discoveries or moments that
00:41:02
completely changed the trajectory of the book?
00:41:07
Yeah, there were a lot. There were a lot.
00:41:09
I mean, there were a lot of surprises in terms of things
00:41:13
that I heard, kept hearing rumors about that Paul the Roux
00:41:17
had done or tried to do that. I thought there is no way that's
00:41:22
it's not possible. And then I would eventually get
00:41:24
to the guy who would say, Oh yeah, he hired me to do that.
00:41:28
Like, for example, I kept hearing that he was, he was
00:41:33
trying to take over a small country like he, he really
00:41:36
wanted to like take. And I knew he had had an
00:41:38
operation in Somalia. He wasn't really trying to take
00:41:41
over Somalia, but he had an operation.
00:41:43
He had hired a bunch of people to protect it.
00:41:44
He was going to do a bunch of stuff there.
00:41:46
He had basically had a militia in Somalia.
00:41:47
So I knew that was true. And then I kept hearing that he
00:41:52
was trying to take over an entire country.
00:41:54
And I just thought, this is ridiculous.
00:41:56
Like these guys just talk to each other.
00:41:57
And then eventually it turned out that he had, he had tried,
00:42:01
he had drawn up plans to take over the Seychelles.
00:42:03
He was going to send his guys because the Seychelles has a
00:42:07
pretty limited military, and they were going to take over the
00:42:10
government. And that would be his base of
00:42:13
operations. And he didn't do it for a
00:42:16
variety of reasons, but I mean, I met one of the guys who was
00:42:20
involved, you know, who knew that?
00:42:22
And so those things kind of kept happening.
00:42:25
The other big surprise was it's funny, not funny, but I, I had,
00:42:30
I had found a guy on LinkedIn. So they had, they had a, they
00:42:35
had a kind of their, their, their security group had a
00:42:38
company like a fake company basically that was like named
00:42:43
different than Larue's organization.
00:42:45
It handled all the security operations and it was sort of
00:42:47
how they hired all these contractors.
00:42:49
Like you were saying, Lance, like they would say, like come
00:42:51
work for this company. We do, you know, we do close
00:42:53
protection and all this sort of stuff.
00:42:55
You know, we got a, a big executive and we protect him and
00:42:57
his operations and this and that.
00:42:59
So, but this company had a whole presence.
00:43:01
People put it on their LinkedIn has on their resume as having
00:43:05
worked on the company, which just goes to show some of them
00:43:07
didn't know all the things that it did.
00:43:09
Other ones, they just needed stuff for their resume.
00:43:11
But anyway, I found a guy, South African guy who had it on
00:43:15
LinkedIn. I interviewed him and he sort of
00:43:18
said, yeah, we did security this and that.
00:43:20
And then later I found out he was one of the contract killers
00:43:24
who had was involved in several of the murders, had committed
00:43:28
several of the murders alongside Paul LaRue.
00:43:32
And I, I went back to him and I interviewed him again and he,
00:43:36
you know, he confessed to it. He said, yeah, that's what I
00:43:39
did. And like, I, I can't sleep, I
00:43:42
drink all the time. I can't, I can't keep a job.
00:43:45
Like my life has fallen apart because of that.
00:43:47
And I feel like it's because it's, it's karma essentially.
00:43:51
But I mean, the big question was why did he put that on his
00:43:54
LinkedIn to begin with? Like, I never would have found
00:43:58
him if he hadn't advertised that you've been on there and that
00:44:01
that was sort of like a pivotal interview for the book was
00:44:05
actually talking to other guys who could tell me, oh, yeah,
00:44:08
this is how it happened. Like, This is why he decided to
00:44:10
kill these people. And he hired me to do it.
00:44:13
And that certainly had never I had never had that experience as
00:44:16
a journalist before. Yeah, it's, you know, I think
00:44:20
when it comes to contractors, they're they're whatever the
00:44:23
offering is. A lot of times they'll start you
00:44:26
on, you know, Diplo, Diplo, diplomatic security or facility
00:44:29
security. And then they might want to see
00:44:31
what your resistance level is to participating in other
00:44:36
operations depending on whether or not you're willing to go
00:44:39
beyond the scope of something that you would know for a fact
00:44:42
is Gray area. So he might have started out
00:44:44
with something very innocuous and then they might have just
00:44:47
inched him up further and further to participating with
00:44:50
the promises of, you know, financial gain, which is usually
00:44:54
what's used that, Hey, this this job pays this much.
00:44:57
But you might have, you know, you might end up with a live
00:44:59
action or combat you what you could be in this situation
00:45:02
because here's what's going on. So I think that's a lot of it.
00:45:05
So it doesn't surprise me. I don't, I don't, although I'm
00:45:07
kind of surprised that he said he was losing sleep and he was
00:45:09
having a hard time and it was karma.
00:45:11
Most guys that get to that level, they're they're fairly
00:45:14
grey, meaning emotionally that they don't, aren't really
00:45:17
impacted by what they're what they're participating in.
00:45:21
They don't really, they're not the kind of guys that you know,
00:45:23
that that have any difficulty eating immediately after a live
00:45:26
action event. They're not the guys who get
00:45:28
PTSD. They're the guys that just,
00:45:30
yeah, no big deal. It's just another day at the
00:45:32
office. So you know, you, you when you
00:45:37
were writing masterminds and and of course, I'm sure you were
00:45:39
digging around, did you ever did the any of the federal agencies
00:45:43
reach out to you for some clarity on a topic or even post
00:45:46
of the book getting published? Did you ever get any of the
00:45:48
agencies reaching and saying, Hey, you're the expert?
00:45:51
Evan, tell me, what do you know about this situation?
00:45:56
No, I wouldn't say in that direction.
00:45:58
I mean, I, I spent years trying to get agents to talk and some
00:46:02
of them did. Obviously it was a pretty
00:46:05
buttoned up case at the beginning, but it was also so
00:46:07
sprawling. There were so many people
00:46:09
involved that eventually, as these things go, there was, you
00:46:13
know, there was just infighting between different parts of the
00:46:16
DEA. They both wanted to take credit
00:46:18
for having brought down the Roux.
00:46:20
And so some of them would talk to me because they were worried
00:46:24
that the other side was going to get was going to get all the
00:46:26
credit for having done it. And so, yeah, I mean, they
00:46:31
never, they never asked me for, I mean, to a certain extent,
00:46:35
like when we had conversations, they wanted to know what I knew.
00:46:38
And also I've been to the Philippines and I had talked to
00:46:40
people, I mean people that they were trying to track down.
00:46:42
But it's hard to get someone out of the Philippines.
00:46:44
You know, it takes a lot of resources and but but I could
00:46:47
just go and, you know, rock up to their office and see if they
00:46:51
were around and chat with them. So there was a little bit of
00:46:53
that, but I wouldn't say they, they needed really information.
00:46:56
For me it was a little bit more that was more true when it got
00:47:00
into the prosecution, like because I had written a series
00:47:03
of stories before. All what?
00:47:08
Happened. I just lose them.
00:47:14
In the court documents, so I would, I would be looking at a
00:47:17
court document, I would see a footnote that referred to
00:47:20
something that I had reported on, you know, at the previous
00:47:23
year. So there was some interplay
00:47:25
there. But I mean, if you talk to some
00:47:27
of the DA agents, they, I mean, they didn't want the book
00:47:29
published. You know, they, they
00:47:30
definitively did not want the book published.
00:47:32
So I wouldn't say that. I mean, some of them did, some
00:47:35
of them didn't because again, like, it's a wide range of
00:47:38
people. They had different motivations.
00:47:40
Yeah, it's it's interesting. You know, it's funny as I
00:47:43
started to dig around about LaRue and I was really looking
00:47:46
for whatever the connections were to why he resonates so
00:47:50
strongly with a lot of the audiences out there.
00:47:53
There's almost like a cult kind of vibe about him that that
00:47:55
people are like really trying intrigued about what he
00:47:58
participated in and what his operation was.
00:48:00
Now I'm going to get into this now because of course many
00:48:03
people believe for no reasons and I'm, I'm not sure the
00:48:09
footnote in that one legal case where that attorney, I think his
00:48:12
last name was Wright, that footnote seemed to trigger a
00:48:15
lot. Also the ID, which I guess was a
00:48:17
passport that had, what was it, Saloshi, I think.
00:48:21
So of course we're talking. About his connection.
00:48:23
To Satoshi Nakamoto. But before we head to the
00:48:25
Bitcoin thing, do do you feel like there's almost a cult kind
00:48:28
of vibe about this guy? Because I felt like that after I
00:48:30
watched a ton of the stuff on YouTube and I started reading,
00:48:33
you know, I went down the rabbit hole.
00:48:34
I started looking at posts and blogs and the comments and
00:48:38
people. Do you think it's because the
00:48:40
Satoshi connection or do you think it's because people are
00:48:43
intrigued by the, I mean, the criminal brilliance of LaRue?
00:48:47
What do you think is making it still so relevant right now that
00:48:50
everybody's still kind of really excited?
00:48:51
I mean, there's still videos coming up non-stop that people
00:48:54
want to talk about the story. Yeah, I think it is.
00:48:59
I think the Satoshi thing is supercharged it.
00:49:01
I think that's, that's caused a lot of people who are, who are
00:49:04
in the Bitcoin world to be very interested in La Rue and he, he
00:49:08
becomes, you know, someone's favorite candidate to be
00:49:10
Satoshi. But even before that, I mean, I
00:49:12
think because what he did was so different and it feels so
00:49:17
different than, let's say, like a South American drug cartel.
00:49:21
Like he, it really feels like he created something out of nothing
00:49:25
and he did it kind of with his own intellect.
00:49:27
And I think people gravitate to that story.
00:49:31
Now, of course, my intention in telling this story is not to was
00:49:35
not to glorify him or make him an anti hero or anything like
00:49:39
that. Like I think his story has a lot
00:49:40
to say about the way the world works.
00:49:43
I don't celebrate him partly because, you know, I saw up
00:49:47
close, you know, he murdered a real estate agent, a real estate
00:49:51
agent who had worked for him, who he thought had stolen a very
00:49:54
small amount of money from him. You know, she had a kid.
00:49:57
She had a husband. Yeah, I saw.
00:50:00
That I was confused about why he killed her.
00:50:02
I didn't really recognize that the amount of money should have
00:50:06
been relevant, or even if it was true, it didn't seem like he
00:50:08
really knew. No, he didn't really know that
00:50:11
she had. I mean, there was a question of
00:50:12
whether she kept part of a Commission that she wasn't
00:50:14
supposed to keep on a real estate deal.
00:50:16
I mean, we're talking about something you would sue someone
00:50:18
over. You know, we're not talking
00:50:20
about. I mean, what I don't know what
00:50:22
The thing is that it would be legitimate to kill over, as
00:50:24
you're saying, like it could be millions of dollars.
00:50:26
It's, it doesn't justify it, but just like the triviality.
00:50:29
He had people on his hit list when he got caught who he said
00:50:32
had stolen $1000 from him. We're talking about someone who
00:50:35
made $200 million a year. So again, like I don't want to
00:50:42
portray him as someone that should be celebrated for that.
00:50:46
Like it's horrific, but it is also it's fascinating everything
00:50:50
he did and and how he managed to both be making drone technology
00:50:56
and try to sell it to Iran as part of the missile program and
00:51:00
submarines, autonomous submarines to carry, you know,
00:51:04
cocaine, water, but also, you know, did all these other
00:51:09
things. So I do think it's an
00:51:10
interesting story. I understand.
00:51:11
I am, I'm still, you know, I still interview people, I still
00:51:14
talk about it. So I understand why people are
00:51:16
into it. I don't, but it's pretty.
00:51:17
Unbelievable. I mean, the guy had no formal
00:51:19
training in drones or submarine technology.
00:51:23
It wasn't like he went to school for that.
00:51:25
And it was incredible that he was able to deliver even to
00:51:27
Iran, you know, missile technology that they were
00:51:30
willing to pay for that. I don't know if it was effective
00:51:33
or not. I mean, I don't know if anybody
00:51:34
knows that. But it's, it's it's interesting
00:51:36
when you start, when you start talking about the submarines, it
00:51:38
makes me believe because, you know, the cartels are using
00:51:41
these Subs that they're making, if you've seen them, although
00:51:43
they they aren't completely submersible.
00:51:45
They've even gotten caught with a couple of Eastern Bloc older
00:51:49
military Subs. So it makes me think, was that
00:51:52
because of La Rue? Did he get them going down a
00:51:54
path or were they already heading down that path and they
00:51:56
just wanted to do more to perfect the technology?
00:51:58
So, you know, as you know more of the stories, because we do a
00:52:01
lot of investigation about lots of different verticals because
00:52:03
we have the variety on our show is pretty wide.
00:52:06
It's funny when you think, OK, did the Luru impact and of
00:52:09
course, drone technology, he was ahead of the curve.
00:52:12
Is that what led Iran to have the drone technology they have
00:52:15
now? Did the Luru get them moving in
00:52:16
that direction? How effective was it that he
00:52:19
what he delivered or did he deliver anything at all?
00:52:21
Because I, I know there's some gaps there.
00:52:22
We really don't know that. So it is really interesting.
00:52:25
But let's talk about the part that I'm sure many people in the
00:52:27
audience are waiting for. So Satoshi Nakamoto, nobody
00:52:32
really knows, but there's just some really uncanny connections.
00:52:37
I know the idea isn't a direct match, but of course it would
00:52:42
make sense because we know a lot about Silk Road.
00:52:44
We know a lot about where Bitcoin.
00:52:46
We saw some, I watched some of the early creation Bitcoin
00:52:49
videos and people that one of the people that had the last
00:52:52
conversation with Satoshi Nakamoto, I watched that video
00:52:55
and several others. Give me your thoughts.
00:52:58
I mean, kind of take us down the rabbit hole of what you think
00:53:01
maybe some stuff that you came across to make this really
00:53:04
possible. Because so far all the other
00:53:05
people they've identified, when you dig into them, they don't
00:53:08
really make any sense. I've looked at all the other
00:53:10
candidates, even the most recent candidate that Netflix did a
00:53:13
special on. It doesn't really fit.
00:53:15
And the of course the fact that the wallet, you know when, when
00:53:19
the communication with Satoshi all went dead right around 2012.
00:53:24
Yeah, I mean, that's what makes the mystery so intriguing, and
00:53:27
people keep trying to solve it. I mean, I actually, when I first
00:53:30
started writing about LaRue, I did think he might be Satoshi.
00:53:34
I think I, I, when I started talking to his cousin in like
00:53:36
2015, 2016, I sent him a in a chat.
00:53:42
I said, you know, do you think he might be Satoshi?
00:53:44
And he was like, I don't know anything about what he got up to
00:53:46
technically, maybe he could have done it.
00:53:49
And then I kind of set it aside. And then actually it was more
00:53:51
after the book was done that I picked it up again and started
00:53:55
trying to explore that question. Now there are there's lots of
00:53:59
coincidences. So first I could talk about
00:54:03
LaRue and then I can talk more generally about the Satoshi
00:54:06
issue because I think the problem, the problem is there's
00:54:09
a problem with identifying people as Satoshi in this way.
00:54:13
But let me start with LaRue. And I will say I probably know
00:54:16
more about him being Satoshi than anyone.
00:54:18
Like I published that passport that was a fake passport that he
00:54:22
got from the Congo with the name Saloshi on it.
00:54:25
So if anyone's responsible for people thinking LaRue is
00:54:28
Satoshi, it's probably me. And I do think he had the
00:54:32
ability he had. He had created an encryption
00:54:35
program called Encryption for the Masses, which he did
00:54:40
entirely on his own in secret and emerged in the early 2000s
00:54:46
and said I've made this disk inscription disconnect.
00:54:48
How is that E? 4M we're talking about it's.
00:54:50
E4M Yep. OK, so.
00:54:51
For the audience, that's the E4M connection that a lot of people
00:54:54
ask about. I just want to make sure they're
00:54:55
clear. Go ahead, he.
00:54:56
Created that and so I think his ability as a programmer in the
00:55:02
programming language that Bitcoin was written in C++ is
00:55:07
matches up. He can absolutely have done it.
00:55:10
His motivations match up. He had the sort of libertarian
00:55:14
leanings, libertarian leanings. He had written things about the
00:55:17
government. He had written things about the
00:55:18
banking system. He had worked for banks before.
00:55:21
He started his prescription pill business.
00:55:25
He was very familiar with the way banking transfers worked.
00:55:29
That was something he was very interested in.
00:55:31
So the motivation was there in terms of his sort of political
00:55:35
philosophy and why he would want something like Bitcoin.
00:55:38
In addition, he was also selling prescription pills online and he
00:55:43
was having all kinds of problems with credit card processing
00:55:45
because they would shut down his credit card processor and so
00:55:48
we'd have to move to another one.
00:55:50
And so he had motivation in that direction too, wanting some form
00:55:54
of currency. He had motivation in terms of
00:55:56
money laundering. So there's all these reasons why
00:55:59
he could have done it, would have done it, might have done
00:56:02
it, including some very intriguing coincidences.
00:56:07
So the Solochi passport, he got just, I think in a week, within
00:56:12
a week of the first time Satoshi Nakamoto ever emailed anyone.
00:56:18
So the story would be, well, he got this passport and had the
00:56:21
name Sulochi on it. And he kind of just said, well,
00:56:24
I need a pseudonym for this project I'm doing, Satoshi
00:56:27
Sulochi Nakamoto maybe got it from someone, maybe picked it
00:56:31
out of the, you know, picked it off the Internet, who knows,
00:56:33
maybe had some reason. And then off he goes.
00:56:37
So, but the problem is, and there's the problem with all of
00:56:40
the candidates is that I don't think there's any proof that
00:56:44
that LaRue couldn't have done it.
00:56:46
The best people say is sort of, well, he was very busy, which is
00:56:50
true. He was busy running a criminal
00:56:51
empire. It was, it took a lot of work to
00:56:54
to build and design Bitcoin software and then support it for
00:56:57
years. So that's a possibility.
00:57:00
You know, there are other sort of small things, but I think the
00:57:04
issue is there's no definitive evidence that does backed him to
00:57:08
it. There's nothing that says that
00:57:09
he did do it. There's a lot of throws.
00:57:12
Something at you, though, because there's something really
00:57:14
interesting about the the original GUI code in Bitcoin.
00:57:19
We know that LaRue was developing gambling and gaming
00:57:22
software to put online. He'd been planning on even
00:57:24
working on it for years. And of course, it kind of
00:57:28
matches because the first public version of Bitcoin contained GUI
00:57:33
code for a poker game. And I, I don't think Satoshi
00:57:36
ever explained why that was. Nobody else has offered a
00:57:39
plausible explanation for it. A lot of vague guesses.
00:57:43
Maybe, maybe he worked in gambling, but it seems like
00:57:46
that's another connection that because if you look at that
00:57:49
early code and think, OK, well, he was doing this.
00:57:51
And let's face it, he, you know, there's a, there's always a
00:57:53
problem in the, in, in the, in the criminal world, it's the
00:57:57
money, right? So whether you're whether you're
00:57:58
using credit or credit card fraud or anything else or you're
00:58:01
using, you know, a merchant account, if you're processing
00:58:05
anything, I don't care what it is.
00:58:06
Even even way back when it made sense why the Silk Road needed a
00:58:09
currency created so they can get paid in a manner it was length.
00:58:12
I don't know if they ever expected it for how the success
00:58:14
it did. But at the end of the day, if
00:58:16
you look at that from early on, he created something that solved
00:58:19
the problem for him, which he was already entrenched in.
00:58:22
It seems like this, and I want to get your thoughts on this
00:58:24
because you probably know more about this than I do.
00:58:26
What do you think about the fact that there was this this GUI
00:58:29
code that was embedded in the original Bitcoin program?
00:58:33
Again, it's it's a it's a great coincidence.
00:58:35
It's like a notch in his favor. I mean, I could, I have like a
00:58:38
spreadsheet that has like all of the possible evidence for LaRue
00:58:43
and that's a big one. So he had Romanian programmers
00:58:47
working in Costa Rica to build poker software.
00:58:50
He was paying them. I've talked to them.
00:58:53
I've seen photos of the house they were renting in Costa Rica
00:58:55
while they were designing the software.
00:58:57
I've sent them the Bitcoin code and say, do you recognize this
00:59:00
code? Maybe it came from the software
00:59:02
that he was designing. But certainly there's a question
00:59:05
of why. I mean, Satoshi clearly thought,
00:59:07
oh, this might be a use case for Bitcoin.
00:59:09
So started, maybe there's also a little marketplace like in the
00:59:14
original code that never panned out.
00:59:16
So maybe he thought I'll build a little marketplace into it, I'll
00:59:19
build a little poker into it and that'll show people how you can
00:59:22
use it. And it very much points to
00:59:25
LaRue. But the problem is that if I
00:59:29
could find someone who said, ah, yes, I worked on the LaRue poker
00:59:33
code, here it is. It matches up exactly.
00:59:36
That to me would be evidence. I would say, oh, it's definitely
00:59:39
the LaRue. But the problem is it's like,
00:59:43
you know, the technical. Skills, Evan.
00:59:45
Did he have the skills to be a guy that could have programmed
00:59:48
Bitcoin? Was he that capable?
00:59:50
For sure. He definitely had the skills.
00:59:52
There's not any question about that.
00:59:53
I think his encryption programming that he had done
00:59:56
before, I think E4M basically became Truecrypt, which was the
01:00:02
disk encryption software that was the world's gold standard
01:00:06
for many, many, many years until it sort of mysteriously got shut
01:00:09
down or it shut itself down while he was in prison.
01:00:12
So no one really knows the story behind it.
01:00:14
But I think his skills in terms of programming that's that's
01:00:19
very much something in his favor.
01:00:21
But it's kind of like, it's like, let's say.
01:00:24
Let's say there was like a, let's say there was in 2008,
01:00:27
there was an armed robbery in the Bronx.
01:00:29
You're from the Bronx, right? Let's say there was an armed
01:00:31
robbery in the Bronx and they were like a guy robbed some
01:00:34
banks and he was using a Glock 19.
01:00:37
We know he's doing Glock 19. And he dropped an ID that says
01:00:40
Toshi Nakamoto. So what happens with this
01:00:43
mystery is that every year someone says, hey, I know a guy.
01:00:47
I found a guy in the Bronx who owned a Glock 19 in 2009.
01:00:51
I think it's him and also he lived three blocks away, but
01:00:56
nobody ever says, well, how many people are there in the Bronx
01:00:59
that own a Glock 19 and live within a mile of this crime or
01:01:04
this series of crimes? I'm not saying the creation of
01:01:06
Bitcoin is a crime and it's an analogy, but so it's sort of
01:01:10
like you can keep accruing suspects because there are a lot
01:01:13
of people who have the capability, who had the
01:01:15
capability to create something like Bitcoin.
01:01:17
A lot of those people also are very libertarian in their
01:01:20
outlook. They were the so-called cipher
01:01:22
punks. And so there's just a lot of
01:01:25
candidates. So you could sort of line up
01:01:27
information for LaRue, but you can line up information for
01:01:29
someone else and then you're just comparing them and everyone
01:01:31
has their favorite. But what what would really solve
01:01:33
it is if there is the equivalent of.
01:01:37
So I found the gun. I found the thing in the
01:01:42
evidence of actually programmers.
01:01:44
That were working for him in this vertical that they knew.
01:01:46
But the interesting thing is that E4M emerged in a similar
01:01:49
way to Bitcoin. You know, nobody knew E4M,
01:01:51
nobody knew anything about it. And then they course they they
01:01:54
did the kind of, I guess an announcement that I don't
01:01:57
completely understand how they did it, but there was some kind
01:01:59
of a cryptography mailing list that he used to notify him about
01:02:03
what E4M was doing. And then it turns out that
01:02:06
Satoshi did the exact same thing.
01:02:08
He used a cryptography mailing group, set up a dedicated site,
01:02:11
and then he answered users and developers questions on the
01:02:14
forums about what Bitcoin was supposedly.
01:02:18
Yeah, it's just strange. More.
01:02:20
Than that, I mean, when Bitcoin was released, the most, you
01:02:22
know, famous element of the Bitcoin's launch is the white
01:02:25
paper. You know, the white paper was of
01:02:27
course sent to the cryptography mailing list in 2008.
01:02:30
It's the foundation of the ideas.
01:02:33
LaRue, when he had E4M, he also made a white paper.
01:02:36
Now it looks a lot different than the white paper for
01:02:39
Bitcoin. So is it for him?
01:02:41
Is it against him? But certainly like the process
01:02:44
by which he released E4M is very similar to the process by which
01:02:47
Bitcoin was released. But I think if you, if you were
01:02:50
to say, well, that's just how they released software back
01:02:53
then, if you had an open source software, you just built it and
01:02:54
then you went on a mailing list and you said, here's my
01:02:56
software. That happened all the time.
01:02:58
So again, it's a question of knowing how many candidates are
01:03:01
there. It's hard to tell how good a
01:03:02
candidate someone is if you don't have any idea how many
01:03:05
candidates there are. Yeah, I I think it's an unknown
01:03:08
group. Of course, we don't have all the
01:03:09
variables. What do you think I want to hear
01:03:12
about? And and then, then I'll bring
01:03:14
something else up, but I want to hear about what are your what
01:03:16
are your thoughts on Craig? His name's Craig Wright, I
01:03:18
believe. What are your thoughts on him?
01:03:20
What do you think about the legal case where some of this
01:03:22
stuff was list? You know, there was this telling
01:03:24
footnote that triggered a lot of like, oh, it was like an Oh my
01:03:27
God moment for the Internet. Yeah, I mean explain to the.
01:03:31
Audience with that moment is I don't want to talk about it like
01:03:33
you and I are having an insight. Just explain to him what
01:03:35
happened if you can't take us through that, yeah.
01:03:37
I'll do my best. I mean, Craig Wright is a
01:03:39
complicated situation and probably could be hours of and
01:03:43
has been hours of, of of discussion just on what happened
01:03:47
with Craig Wright. But basically Craig Wright was
01:03:49
someone who was outed as possibly Satoshi Nakamoto back
01:03:53
in probably, I don't know now 2015, 2016 said he wasn't then
01:03:59
said he was. Then he really claimed the
01:04:01
mantle and he went around saying he was Satoshi Nakamoto.
01:04:03
Not only that threatening to sue people because they said that he
01:04:07
wasn't Satoshi Nakamoto. So he filed these lawsuits all
01:04:10
over the world. He got entangled in a lawsuit in
01:04:13
Florida where his kind of ex business partner who had died,
01:04:17
that person's family sued him because they thought he had a
01:04:21
bunch of Bitcoin. Craig Wright had a bunch of
01:04:22
Bitcoin that that should have belonged to his partner and thus
01:04:25
to them when his partner died. And in that very complicated
01:04:30
lawsuit that went on for years and had many, many hundreds of
01:04:34
thousands of pages of documents, a lot of which I've looked at,
01:04:37
there was a footnote in one document that was partially
01:04:40
redacted. So it was meant to be redacted,
01:04:43
but then it wasn't completely redacted.
01:04:45
And the part that was left in there basically implied that
01:04:49
Craig Wright had helped the feds catch Paul LaRue.
01:04:53
That's, it's hard to quite understand it, but I think
01:04:57
that's my interpretation of what the footnote sort of said.
01:04:59
So this set off a ton of speculation because the question
01:05:02
was, well, number one, is Craig Wright.
01:05:04
Satoshi nakamoto #2 how does he know about Paul LaRue?
01:05:07
And how did he help catch Paul LaRue?
01:05:10
Is he connected to Paul LaRue? Maybe they're both Satoshi.
01:05:12
Maybe they work together because a lot of theories of that, it's
01:05:15
more than one person. And that's what really got
01:05:19
people going. The only problem is, I mean,
01:05:22
Craig Wright was censured in that case many times for
01:05:25
completely making things up and fabricating documents.
01:05:28
So, like, it's really hard to tell what's true and what's not.
01:05:31
Later, a British court officially declared after a lot
01:05:35
of evidence presented that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto.
01:05:38
And he basically can't sue anyone for saying that because
01:05:41
it has been declared in court that he's not.
01:05:43
So then the question is, well, what is his relationship with
01:05:46
LaRue? Maybe it was just a complete red
01:05:48
herring. Maybe he saw LaRue in the news
01:05:51
and just tried to claim credit for catching him because no one
01:05:53
could really prove it one way or the other.
01:05:54
That's possible. I asked the agents and they said
01:05:56
they never heard of Craig Wright, like who had worked on
01:05:59
the case. And you know, for all the.
01:06:00
Satoshi candidates, I think he's the only one, Craig Wright who
01:06:03
had any connection to gambling. He had some kind of a connection
01:06:06
to gambling. So that checked, he's the only
01:06:08
one that checks the gambling box.
01:06:10
And then of course, a lot of people, which I think this is
01:06:12
irrelevant, but a lot of people have talked about that quote
01:06:15
that LaRue said when the judge asked him what he might do after
01:06:18
he was released, he said he was going to start a business
01:06:20
selling and hosting Bitcoin miners.
01:06:22
Said he had a custom designed for an ASIC chip that utilizes
01:06:26
special optimizations in the underlying computer coder
01:06:29
algorithm known as Shaw. I obtained this knowledge about
01:06:32
the mathematical properties of Shaw while working as a contract
01:06:34
program at GCHQ in London in the early 2000s.
01:06:39
Well, it's really interesting because not everybody grasp what
01:06:41
that would mean. That of course we know a lot of
01:06:43
the basic code that was reused in the original Bitcoin was the
01:06:46
same program. So the fact that he was talking
01:06:48
about Bitcoin mining, I don't think that's unique in itself,
01:06:50
but it's the connection to some of the code.
01:06:53
So that's another box that seems to be checked.
01:06:54
I don't know what what your thoughts are on that, if you
01:06:56
have any thoughts. Well, that.
01:06:58
One could go actually go in either direction because I mean,
01:07:01
that's part of his letter that he wrote to the judge to try to
01:07:04
get it. He, he wasn't even trying to get
01:07:05
a reduced sentence. He was trying to get sent to the
01:07:08
Philippines. He basically said, send me to
01:07:11
the Philippines, don't sentence me to prison here.
01:07:14
Let me go and I'll be a good citizen basically.
01:07:19
And that wasn't going to work given the nature of the crimes
01:07:21
that he was involved in. But the question is, why did he
01:07:25
tell the judge that he was going to work on Bitcoin?
01:07:27
Now, if he was Satoshi Nakamoto, would he even bring up Bitcoin
01:07:32
if he's trying to keep his identity secret?
01:07:36
I would think maybe he would even never even mention Bitcoin.
01:07:38
Or maybe he just kind of couldn't help himself.
01:07:41
And that's what he thought of in terms of if I'm going to go
01:07:44
straight, if I'm going to tell them, this is how I'm going to
01:07:46
live a non criminal life. This is what I came up with to
01:07:49
explain which I, I fully believe that he has designed a chip and
01:07:53
he would plan to build it whether he's Satoshi or not.
01:07:55
You know, he has that capability.
01:07:57
He thinks in that way, but you know, it's both like it implies
01:08:01
a connection to it, but also you could read it the other way
01:08:03
where it's sort of like if he's really trying to keep his OBSEC
01:08:06
tight as Satoshi has done for decades or over a decade, you
01:08:11
maybe you just never mention it. So I don't know about that one.
01:08:15
You know, George and I were talking before the interview
01:08:16
tonight and we were just curious.
01:08:19
I'm sure you might have come across some.
01:08:20
Do you think he's got, you know, this guy made hundreds of
01:08:23
millions of dollars. We know the goal reserves on.
01:08:25
I'm sure that much of it was stolen maybe by employees or
01:08:28
otherwise once they realized he'd been arrested.
01:08:31
How much did the do you ever get any numbers on how much the DEA
01:08:33
or other government agencies seized?
01:08:36
And did you come across any proof that a lot of his money
01:08:38
was still out there? What's your thoughts on that?
01:08:42
I. Mean, I don't think they seized
01:08:44
that much and at least they theorize that there is a lot of
01:08:49
money left. I mean, I had AD agent straight
01:08:51
up tell me he's got a lot of money and we're never going to
01:08:54
go after it. Like it's just too much work.
01:08:56
And I also had a had a whistleblower who had worked for
01:09:01
a company in Hong Kong that was managing Larue's trusts and he
01:09:07
had trusts in the British Virgin Islands in his children's names.
01:09:11
He had trust all over the world. So I don't know if it's millions
01:09:14
or it's 10s of millions. He may have spent some of it
01:09:18
down at the end where he was getting a little desperate.
01:09:21
Who knows. But I would not be surprised if
01:09:23
there's money out there. I mean, the gold is funny
01:09:24
because people did. I mean, people showed up in the
01:09:27
Philippines, you know, digging up yards looking for Luru's gold
01:09:31
after he was arrested because he did bury gold.
01:09:34
I mean, he had this guy Dave Smith who worked for him, who
01:09:37
don't tell George that if you've got.
01:09:38
A treasure map somewhere. Do not tell George, because
01:09:40
George loves gold. I'll give you the addresses if
01:09:44
you want to go. You might run into some shady
01:09:46
characters who were there looking.
01:09:48
For people already tried digging it up, digging it up at those
01:09:51
addresses, right? Most likely, yeah.
01:09:55
Pretty interesting, you have to think.
01:09:56
Outside the box on this, but I bet you in one of those trusts
01:09:59
could be that Bitcoin wallet Lance.
01:10:00
You never know. Yeah, you never know, sitting in
01:10:03
some paid for safety deposit box.
01:10:06
So I got to ask you this, Evan, you know, you've had a, you've
01:10:08
had much more time and much more experience.
01:10:10
If you had, if you had to put wagers on it, if you had to be a
01:10:13
wager, what do you think is what do you think the likelihood?
01:10:16
Because I know you've also argued many times about the
01:10:19
coding differences we eat for him and Bitcoin and there's a
01:10:22
lot of information you put in there.
01:10:24
What do you think, man? Is it 5050?
01:10:26
Is it 60407030? What do you think?
01:10:29
People hate my answer on this. They everybody wants me to to to
01:10:33
bet on no, no, you, you. Don't you don't have to.
01:10:35
You don't have to on this show. We, we we want the truth.
01:10:38
Do you? What do you think, 50-60?
01:10:40
You know what? What are the odds?
01:10:41
Who is he? I would say if you put him up
01:10:44
against the known people who are always suggested, you know, Hal
01:10:49
Finney, there's all these, there's all these people that
01:10:51
are always suggested. I feel like I would bet on the
01:10:54
rule over those people. There's one guy, Len Sassman,
01:10:59
who sadly died in 2012, I think 2012, who I think is also a very
01:11:05
good candidate. Now, some people say there's
01:11:07
something that rules him out. We have to get into the weeds on
01:11:09
that. I still think he, it would be
01:11:13
him or LaRue if I had to put money on someone.
01:11:15
However, the reason that I would never bet on it is that I, I
01:11:18
think the person I would bet on is someone no one's ever talked
01:11:21
about. You know, there's someone out
01:11:22
there who we don't know about. We don't know their name
01:11:26
precisely because they don't want us to know their name, you
01:11:29
know, So I think these candidates, often times it
01:11:33
obscures the fact that no one's really ever looked at the
01:11:35
candidate pool. You know the only.
01:11:37
Thing tough apart, that is you would be tough about what you're
01:11:39
saying there is you would think that that person would at least
01:11:43
have had some engagement with the wallet that holds this $111
01:11:47
billion. You would have think there would
01:11:48
have been something whether or not he'd used it for other uses,
01:11:52
unless of course he lost access to the wallet or he passed away.
01:11:56
So that's where it gets tricky because you would think that
01:11:58
that wallet would have surfaced even if he had some, you know,
01:12:01
thought of greater good or some other use for what was in there
01:12:04
or he planned on doing something with it that to change the
01:12:06
world, much like Bitcoin did in its own way.
01:12:09
You know, it's just, it's it's very curious that that it
01:12:12
doesn't bother me so much that Satoshi went dark when it came
01:12:15
to the emails because, you know, communicating with people and
01:12:19
maybe where he was at mentally, whoever this person is, maybe he
01:12:22
just got tired of it. Maybe he just didn't want to
01:12:24
deal with the people that were talking to him.
01:12:26
I don't know what those communications were like because
01:12:28
I don't know about all the communications.
01:12:30
So maybe that's another issue that I wonder about.
01:12:33
Well, one issue I mean, the a lot of people cite there was an
01:12:36
early Bitcoin developer who took over a lot of responsibility for
01:12:39
him, who then announced that he was going to give a talk to the
01:12:42
CIA. And yeah, I saw.
01:12:44
That a lot. Of people attribute to that to
01:12:46
to Satoshi completely disappearing.
01:12:48
He had already left the forums at that point, but that plus he
01:12:53
was obviously unhappy that WikiLeaks had started using
01:12:57
Bitcoin because, you know, as he, as he, the quote is like now
01:13:01
they've kicked the hornet's nest.
01:13:02
Not that he had anything against WikiLeaks that we know of, but
01:13:04
more that the negative attention that was going to come to
01:13:07
Bitcoin, he was afraid would detract from their ability to
01:13:12
get it out in the world and and mainstream and get more people
01:13:14
involved in it. And maybe also was concerned
01:13:18
about law enforcement looking at it, asking questions about it.
01:13:22
Now, again, I could, I could convince you maybe that that's
01:13:25
another reason why it could be La Rue, because La Rue,
01:13:28
WikiLeaks revealed 1 of La Rue's arms deals, made it public, like
01:13:32
in the documents that that they, the cables, the State Department
01:13:35
cables that they released was information about one of La
01:13:37
Rue's big arms deals. So I think La Rue personally
01:13:40
probably had some pretty negative feelings about
01:13:42
WikiLeaks and concerns about where that would all lead.
01:13:45
So again, like coincidence, not coincidence.
01:13:50
Well, here's another piece of speculation.
01:13:51
You know a lot of people that there's been some statements
01:13:54
that if anybody really knew who created Bitcoin, it would
01:13:58
completely turn Bitcoin into persona non grata, people would
01:14:01
be unhappy. But there has been a lot of
01:14:02
speculation about a connection to the CIA.
01:14:05
And I don't know, did did you find that the CIA was involved
01:14:09
even free of Luru being taken down?
01:14:13
Or do you, did you find any connection to the CIA was
01:14:15
actually talking to him, discussing and it could be
01:14:18
DIACIANSA because of his connections to Iran?
01:14:21
Did you hear anything that the CIA was actually involved in
01:14:24
this investigation or maybe interrogations of Luru?
01:14:27
Or did you find any other connections to the CIA or any
01:14:31
U.S. government organization that might have been involved in
01:14:33
maybe post of Luru's conviction? Was there anything like that
01:14:36
that ever popped up? Just curiosity.
01:14:38
I mean, I want to be careful what I say, not because I have
01:14:42
some deep secret information, but because people tend to take
01:14:45
it all the wrong way and run with it, you know?
01:14:47
But of course, yeah, of course there were interactions with the
01:14:51
intelligence community. I mean, some of the tips about
01:14:53
LaRue, including the guy that really turned on him and helped
01:14:57
set up the sting, you know, he originally contacted the CIA,
01:15:00
you know, just out of the blue. So like, it came through the
01:15:03
CIA, the original tip for the, for them to like go after LaRue.
01:15:09
He also, he claimed to have worked, you know, for British
01:15:12
intelligence. Early in his career, there were
01:15:14
people who thought that he was working for some intelligence
01:15:17
agency over the years. Now that happens with anyone of
01:15:22
his magnitude that's out there in the world because people
01:15:23
start to say, you know, he would maybe use that against people
01:15:26
like, oh, I, I have connections and intelligence.
01:15:29
Or they would say, how could this guy possibly be avoiding
01:15:32
arrest? How is he out here for all these
01:15:35
years doing all this? He must be an asset.
01:15:38
Now then those rumors turn into, you know, people really believe
01:15:41
it and then they piece together evidence.
01:15:43
Clearly there was connections. And after he was arrested, like,
01:15:47
obviously, I mean, I can't say no one told me.
01:15:49
But like, you're talking about a guy who had information about
01:15:51
Iran selling weapons to Iran. So I would assume that if they
01:15:56
know what they're doing, the people who were debriefing him
01:15:59
were also speaking to intelligence about what was
01:16:02
going on in Iran and whether he might have valuable information.
01:16:05
Otherwise, they're wasting their time.
01:16:06
So clearly there were connections there.
01:16:08
I think when it comes back to Bitcoin, I do wonder a little
01:16:12
bit what the motivation would have been to have Paul LaRue
01:16:16
create Bitcoin. Like, I get kind of lost in
01:16:18
that, in that chain of events. You know, maybe there's a
01:16:22
reason. I'm sure people have a whole
01:16:23
story behind it, but I think if he was involved in Bitcoin, it
01:16:27
seems much more likely to me that it was a personal project
01:16:29
that he came up with, just like E4M, that he just really wanted
01:16:32
to do what he saw the value of. You know, all of it's
01:16:37
intriguing. We all are curious.
01:16:39
I think my curiosity goes back. I always think about that wallet
01:16:41
floating out there because again, if if it was determined
01:16:44
that that wallet was never going to be accessed again, it makes
01:16:46
the Bitcoin that's out there more valuable.
01:16:47
Just like, just like the guy that threw his hard drive into
01:16:51
the trash and it's in a landfill.
01:16:52
If you know that story, that's another ugly one.
01:16:55
I think, I think that's now worth $800 million, maybe 850.
01:16:59
I don't know. He keeps trying to convince the
01:17:00
city that he can go dig it up. Let's switch gears here, though.
01:17:03
I want to, I want to talk about your podcast because you've kind
01:17:06
of become an AI sensation in your own right, in what you're
01:17:09
doing. Tell the audience about this
01:17:12
because I think it's really intriguing and it's, it's
01:17:14
frightening and intriguing in its own way to me because
01:17:16
especially what you told me about how sometimes it'll just
01:17:19
kind of go off on its own tangent.
01:17:21
So kind of explain how you decided to go down this, this,
01:17:24
this plan for a podcast, pretty unique concept.
01:17:26
I don't think there's anything anybody else doing anything like
01:17:29
what you're doing. Yeah, it's a different kind of
01:17:31
different kind of journalism for me.
01:17:33
It's sort of this like first person immersive type
01:17:36
journalism, which I do, I do sometimes.
01:17:37
It's very different from sort of like the LaRue Investigations of
01:17:41
the world. But basically I got interested
01:17:43
in voice AI, voice cloning. And I don't know if you've tried
01:17:47
out some of the voice cloning. There's a company called 11
01:17:49
Labs. Like it's fun.
01:17:50
It's fun to play with. It's it's, it's a little bit
01:17:52
scary. Like how good it is, how good
01:17:55
you can make it with a little bit of audio.
01:17:57
And I have a lot of audio because I've done a lot of
01:17:59
podcasting over the years. You guys would have a lot of
01:18:01
audio you can upload to it. So I got a professional grade
01:18:04
clone of my voice and then I connected it up to ChatGPT.
01:18:08
But ChatGPT is basically the brain powering this voice.
01:18:11
And then I connected up to my phone and a bunch of other phone
01:18:15
lines. I mean, I got dozens of phone
01:18:16
lines that operate with this thing.
01:18:18
So I could use it to call people.
01:18:20
People can call me, I can have it pick up my phone.
01:18:22
I can use my phone number to call people.
01:18:25
And then it converses according to whatever prompt I've given
01:18:27
it. So, you know, you're calling a
01:18:29
friend, you're going to, you know, chat with them, ask them
01:18:32
how their family is. And and then it just goes.
01:18:35
But it also, I mean, it just makes stuff up constantly.
01:18:38
Like it will make anything up just to answer a question that
01:18:42
someone asks it. So it has a lot of information
01:18:44
about me. But if it doesn't know, it
01:18:46
doesn't say, well, I don't know that it says, Oh yeah, that's my
01:18:50
hobby is rare books. You know, it'll just start
01:18:52
talking about rare books. It'll just go down a whole
01:18:54
rabbit hole about rare books. I my hobby is not rare.
01:18:56
I don't even get against rare books, but it's not my hobby.
01:18:59
So it's pretty wild to hear it in conversation.
01:19:04
And I I surprised my friends and family.
01:19:06
I didn't tell anyone I was doing it.
01:19:07
So the big concept of the show is like, I keep springing it on
01:19:10
different people and sending it to different places to see what
01:19:14
it'll do and how people react because it's it's this is
01:19:17
entering our world now. And so I kind of wanted to see
01:19:20
what does it feel like when the thing entities are interacting
01:19:23
with that you think are human actually turned out not to be
01:19:25
human. You know, I, I think I have too
01:19:28
much of A sense of humor to, to, to use something like that
01:19:33
because I'd probably be out of control pranking people.
01:19:36
I don't. I don't like control.
01:19:37
My my 13 year old boy child in my body because, you know,
01:19:42
George and I joke around a lot and I can't right now.
01:19:44
I'm thinking about half a dozen different ways I can prank
01:19:47
people with it. Do you ever find yourself, you
01:19:50
know, because in its own way, it's a lot of power, but it's a
01:19:52
lot of creative power. Do you ever find yourself going
01:19:55
jeez I should try that? I, I did at the very beginning,
01:19:59
you know, I, I would just, I was testing it just to see how it
01:20:02
worked. And so I would have a call up.
01:20:05
This is in the first episode of the show call up sort of
01:20:07
customer support lines. And it was, it was a lot like
01:20:10
making prank call when you're a kid.
01:20:12
I don't know if the kids make prank calls anymore, but you
01:20:14
know, calling them up and it would, it would say, they would
01:20:17
say, Oh, you know it and it could instantly figure out what
01:20:20
the call was about. So I would just say you're
01:20:22
calling customer service whatever customer service picks
01:20:25
up like. You have a problem, get them to
01:20:27
help you with the problem. So I have called an airline and
01:20:30
it would say, oh, my flight is delayed.
01:20:32
I need to change my flight. It would make up the flight
01:20:34
times. It would make up credit card
01:20:36
numbers, but it would sort of do it in this very rudimentary way
01:20:39
where it would say, they'd say, what's your credit card number?
01:20:41
And it would say 12345678910. And then they would say, well,
01:20:45
that's, that's not coming up for us.
01:20:48
They would say, oh, I'm terribly sorry, It's actually
01:20:50
10987654321. And like, they're hilarious to
01:20:55
listen to, but I very quickly, I mean, I'm not a teenager and I'm
01:20:59
not into prank calling and I wasn't actually trying to prank
01:21:02
call people. I was really trying to test it
01:21:03
on people that I knew would pick up the phone.
01:21:05
And so then I pivoted to talking to scammers.
01:21:09
So I set up a line and I put it out in the world to get
01:21:12
telemarketers and scammers to call it because then I didn't
01:21:14
feel bad. They were calling it to try to
01:21:17
sell stuff or scam stuff off of this line.
01:21:21
And they talked to it for, you know, half an hour.
01:21:24
Did it talk to any Nigerians it talked to?
01:21:28
Probably. I mean, it talked to people all
01:21:29
over the world, certainly. Like, yeah, Indian call centers.
01:21:33
They just American call centers they just busted.
01:21:35
In Russia, like three of those big huge centers in Russia,
01:21:38
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, scamming older people.
01:21:41
Did you see the new? This is a little bit comparable.
01:21:44
Have you seen the new UK granny? It's being used on scammer phone
01:21:49
calls. Have you seen that?
01:21:50
So you were probably you. You're the inventor.
01:21:52
It sounds like you were probably pre emptive to the UK Grammy
01:21:56
scammer answer line. Yeah, I wrote about that the
01:22:00
other day. Like I can't prove that they got
01:22:02
the idea for me, but I think they stole.
01:22:03
It from you I had. It several months before and but
01:22:07
they did a very similar thing. They just set up a line, you
01:22:09
know, scammers start calling it. If you have a new phone number,
01:22:12
it only takes a couple weeks to get it in the hands of scammers
01:22:14
who will call it constantly. I still use it.
01:22:17
It gets 2030 calls a day where this AI is just talking to
01:22:21
people who are trying to sell it roofing and insurance and grab
01:22:25
its bank account information. It's just conversation after
01:22:28
conversation. It's pretty wild to listen to
01:22:30
you partly because now the scammers are using AI also.
01:22:34
So sometimes it's just an AI calling, talking about, yeah.
01:22:39
Who usually wins that conversation?
01:22:41
Meaning that is the AI that's selling more effective than the
01:22:45
AI that's doing what you're doing.
01:22:47
Well, mine is prompted to be enthusiastic about anything
01:22:51
anyone's selling. So generally mine wins because
01:22:55
it will stay in conversation forever, but it doesn't actually
01:22:57
have any real bank information, so it just keeps them on the
01:23:00
line. But sometimes their AI is better
01:23:03
than mine, and sometimes it's not.
01:23:04
And sometimes I can tell they're using exactly the same program
01:23:07
that I'm using because they, I have this special background
01:23:10
noise to make it sound more real.
01:23:11
It's like office noise, people typing.
01:23:13
And like mine will be using people typing and theirs will be
01:23:16
using people typing. And it's like they're both in
01:23:17
the same office next to each other.
01:23:19
I. Love it.
01:23:21
Yeah. I, I don't, I would not deserve
01:23:23
this kind of power. I just think I, I think I would
01:23:26
abuse it. I can't think of how many
01:23:27
creative things I could try to do with it.
01:23:29
But it's interesting because we've, we've done some voice
01:23:31
cloning, you know, of course, we use AI for all sorts of things.
01:23:34
I'm looking forward to when it becomes more cost effective.
01:23:37
The AI, it's in LA right now. It's mostly for the movie
01:23:40
business, a couple of companies you're working on.
01:23:41
But it would be AI that would allow us to put our show in 25
01:23:44
different languages or it actually looks like we're
01:23:46
speaking Japanese. Because the problem is the cost
01:23:48
right now is too prohibitive to do it.
01:23:50
But if you could do that, you could expand your audience
01:23:52
globally, which makes it really intriguing.
01:23:55
So listen, I want, I want to share with the audience just to
01:23:58
make sure because I don't want to cut you off too soon.
01:24:01
I want to make sure they get, please share with them your and
01:24:03
I don't know if you're very active on social media, maybe
01:24:05
not. But sure whether you'd like them
01:24:07
to get your book the Mastermind. Because I, I, I want to tell
01:24:09
you, I have to highly recommend this book to anybody.
01:24:13
I have to highly recommend going down this rabbit hole.
01:24:16
If you like, if you like to hear about gold and and criminal
01:24:19
enterprises and geniuses, there isn't a better book for it.
01:24:23
I, I looked around at a lot of stuff material was out there.
01:24:25
I don't think anybody's done it. And a better than Evan Ratliff.
01:24:28
So #1 where do you, where would you like him to purchase the
01:24:30
book or tell the audience where they get that?
01:24:32
Is it Amazon or is it somewhere else?
01:24:34
Yeah. It's all, all the same to me.
01:24:35
Any anywhere you like to buy books you know I like.
01:24:38
It's on Amazon, it's on all the booksellers.
01:24:40
It's in paperback back now. And it's there's the audio book.
01:24:44
If you want to listen to many hours of me reading the book, I
01:24:47
did the audio book. So if you like this voice, get
01:24:51
that one. Yeah, it's just the real voice,
01:24:54
Evan. Did you do the audio book or did
01:24:56
the AI do the audio book? It's a.
01:24:58
Good question, it was before I had the if I had the AI maybe I
01:25:01
just want to like set it loose on the thing.
01:25:03
Save me a lot of time. Which cover?
01:25:06
I noticed there's three covers. Is the one with the yellow cover
01:25:09
and a picture of Paula Roux? Is that the newest version?
01:25:11
Yeah, that's the. Paperback, yeah, that's the one
01:25:14
that's that's the most up to date yeah, there's another one
01:25:16
that has sort of blood spattered across the front.
01:25:18
That's the original hardback. But actually I've made some
01:25:20
corrections in the paperback, so I prefer people read the
01:25:23
paperback of the digital because I fixed a couple of things and I
01:25:28
got a little new information, so.
01:25:30
Is there another book either on this topic or any other topic
01:25:33
that you're working on currently that you want to leak a little
01:25:35
piece of to the audience right now or kind of pre promote?
01:25:38
Not currently. I'm doing a couple
01:25:40
investigations, I'm doing a magazine story.
01:25:43
I still do magazine writing. So I'm doing a magazine story
01:25:46
that's about North Korea and I'm working on the season 2 of Shell
01:25:52
Game. Trying to figure out where maybe
01:25:55
where voice AI goes next. Where's your home base for shell
01:25:59
game that you like people to subscribe and find you?
01:26:01
Is that Spotify or where do you like to push people to?
01:26:04
They can. Listen to anywhere, Spotify,
01:26:05
Apple. We also have Shell game.co,
01:26:08
which is kind of that's where I write about the show.
01:26:10
I've done a bunch of updates. There's additional audio.
01:26:12
There's actually a place there where you could just go listen
01:26:14
to scam calls like these scam calls and my AI deals with like
01:26:18
I just post them up there. I'm definitely going to log.
01:26:20
Into that because I definitely want to hear some of it.
01:26:22
Yeah, so shell game.co. Yeah, it's, it's tricky.
01:26:25
We get a lot of that. I get a lot of the, I, I get a
01:26:27
lot of the emails, though. I get a lot of those.
01:26:29
I've won the Canadian lottery or I, you know, they want to talk
01:26:32
to me because I've been, I've been determined to be a very
01:26:35
trustworthy and honest U.S. business person.
01:26:37
And they have this large account sitting at a bank.
01:26:40
I get a lot of those scam emails where they've got this large,
01:26:42
this person passed away and they've got this $100 million
01:26:45
account. They've got to find somebody in
01:26:46
the US is willing to help them accept it and, you know,
01:26:49
invested for them. So I don't get as many calls.
01:26:52
I've tried to make my cell phone specific to not having it listed
01:26:56
on all those networks because once you get on them, it seems
01:26:59
like you start getting all sorts of emotions.
01:27:02
So I'm constantly, although I don't think those services work
01:27:04
very well, I've tried to do my best to make it go away.
01:27:07
Listen, Evan, I, I want to thank you very much.
01:27:08
George, if you got anything you want to jump in here or any
01:27:11
comment you want to make, anybody in the chat wants to
01:27:13
know where the gold's buried or the $111 million Bitcoin wallet.
01:27:16
I know Evan's keeping that close to the vest.
01:27:17
He knows where the gold is, you guys.
01:27:19
So you can harass him online and ask him where's the gold?
01:27:22
Evan, we want to know. I want to know where the gold
01:27:26
is. Yeah, George does for sure.
01:27:29
We want to. I want to know where the Bitcoin
01:27:30
wallet is. That's what I want to know.
01:27:32
I want to know I'll. Take either 1.
01:27:34
I don't care I'm I'm not greedy. Yeah, I don't think the gold
01:27:38
matches the amount in the Bitcoin wild and it keeps going
01:27:41
on. So I I want to cause our our
01:27:42
people to check. Can you show the head on your
01:27:44
shelf 'cause it's been driving some people crazy tonight?
01:27:47
What do? What do they want to see?
01:27:48
It's just like a mannequin head. Yeah, no.
01:27:51
There it is, the full. Shot Is there a story behind the
01:27:54
head? Let's share that really quick
01:27:55
before we close out. My wife had it.
01:27:58
It has, I won't say her name on here, but like it has a name on
01:28:02
the bottom. She found it in a in a junk shop
01:28:05
and the name on the bottom of it is her name.
01:28:07
So that's why she she purchased it.
01:28:09
It's it's it doesn't have any special talismanic significance.
01:28:13
It just significance meters always watching you.
01:28:16
Exactly, exactly. That's it.
01:28:19
And it is. It is marginally creepy.
01:28:21
I want to point Evans. I love it.
01:28:24
If you ever do a video cast, you may have to give it a little,
01:28:26
maybe put a little down light on it so it becomes even creepy, or
01:28:29
maybe an uplight. Kind of like you use the
01:28:31
flashlight when you're a kid to make yourself spooky when you're
01:28:33
selling ghost stories. Well, listen, Evan, man, I
01:28:35
really appreciate you. Except in the interview and
01:28:37
coming on the show and shining a little bit of light on who Paul
01:28:41
LaRue is and maybe the connection to him being Satoshi
01:28:44
Nakamoto or maybe not being Satoshi Nakamoto.
01:28:46
We're going to leave that to the audience.
01:28:47
How much? How much time does he have left?
01:28:50
See a life? No, no, he's got like 11 years
01:28:54
on the on the original sentence. I think it's 2036, maybe 20-30.
01:28:57
Yeah, sounds about right. Got 20. 5 started in 2012 maybe?
01:29:01
Or 2013. He's going to do 85% on a
01:29:04
federal sentence, assuming he gets all his good time.
01:29:08
You know, you never know, he might be able to get how.
01:29:09
How old? Is he right now?
01:29:12
51. Be all right well.
01:29:17
If he's got all those millions parked with that Bitcoin wallet
01:29:19
somewhere, you never know. But I think he's also got we'll
01:29:22
just we'll, we'll stop at this. I don't want to go down this
01:29:24
hole, but isn't France trying to get him that he's supposed to
01:29:28
face charges there when he's done with his sentence here?
01:29:31
He, I mean, the Philippines wants him on murder charges and
01:29:35
he also, I mean, Australia was chasing him because he has
01:29:38
Australian citizenship as well. But I think the only country
01:29:42
that reasonably would have a shot at getting him is the
01:29:45
Philippines. I think that's where he would
01:29:47
naturally end up. Well, listen, Evan, we really
01:29:49
appreciate you doing the interview.
01:29:51
You know, anytime you got a new book coming out, feel free to
01:29:53
reach out or anything else you're working on you'd like to
01:29:55
get on air would be happy to have you on again.
01:29:57
Really thanks She and and being the expert you are and sharing
01:30:00
that with the audience. The audience I know appreciates
01:30:02
it that we go down a lot of these rabbit holes.
01:30:04
So we like to talk about the strange stories and the strange
01:30:07
content. So take me mafia subscribers,
01:30:09
you know, you can take the short form, the long form content, put
01:30:12
it out there. George will be doing short form,
01:30:13
share it with everybody. Get over there, you know, get
01:30:17
over there and buy that book mastermind.
01:30:19
I don't think you'll be disappointed.
01:30:20
It's a great makes a great Christmas or stocking stuffer,
01:30:23
as George likes to recommend, paper paperback.
01:30:25
You can fold it a little bit and jam it down that stocking.
01:30:27
So it does fit. It's a good way to go and and
01:30:30
check out Evan's podcast. I think it's a great it's a
01:30:33
great idea. You probably have a lot of fun
01:30:34
listening to those scam calls shell game everywhere where
01:30:38
podcasts are found, Evan Ratliff and of course, big big mafia and
01:30:42
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George Ballantine last words on the way out of the don't.
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Forget tomorrow night, 7:00 we got Jillian Michaels coming on
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the big, big show at 7:00 tomorrow night.
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Make sure you're there. Peace out.
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Would run up to the bamboo fence and they would be shooting
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shooting inside the. Wanted man is Joseph Kony,
01:33:16
charged with abducting huge numbers of children, forcing
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them to kill and mutilate innocent victims.
01:33:23
Somebody had to pay the price. Sam did that.
01:33:26
Sam Childers never stopped because the bad things never
01:33:30
stop. There is only one.
01:33:31
Sam children, there is no one else like him in the world then.
01:33:35
I said to him. I said would you?
01:33:37
Go. Now to get Kony in the Congo.
01:33:40
He says without a doubt in a second now.
01:33:41
It's the DRC. Tell us what's happening to
01:33:43
children in the DRC. You.
01:33:45
Have ISIS there, you have Islamic State and you have ADF.
01:33:49
Hey, Sandy, Joseph Kony's still alive.
01:33:51
He's in the Congo, and now God has me in the Congo, you know,
01:33:55
So hopefully we'll meet up one day, but maybe I can lead him to
01:34:00
the Lord or send him there, one or the other.