Inside the Fight: Human Trafficking, Rescue Ops & Real Hope with Trent Steele

This week, Jeff and Carollynn welcome investigator and Anti-Predator Project co-founder Trent Steele for a powerful conversation about human trafficking in America. With deep insight from years of frontline experience, Trent shares how trafficking really happens, the surprising ways victims are lured, and what law enforcement and nonprofits are doing to rescue and restore lives.

From gut-wrenching rescue stories to the invisible chains that keep people trapped, this episode is emotional, eye-opening, and deeply hopeful. You'll also hear how Jeff and Trent first connected—and why this mission matters so much to Jeff’s comedy tour.

Warning: This episode discusses topics that may be emotionally intense, including human trafficking and exploitation. Listener discretion is advised.

Learn more or donate at antipredatorproject.org

https://www.instagram.com/anti_predator_org/

https://www.facebook.com/APPInvestigations/

Join us for Jeff Allen’s Celebrity Golf Classic, a two-day event packed with comedy, camaraderie, and a whole lot of competition, all for a great cause. June 29th - 30th at Westhaven Golf Club

Your ticket includes: Dinner reception + comedy show and full tournament play. Open to golfers of all skill levels and ages.

Bring your swing, your sense of humor, and your heart for a good cause.

To find out more, head over to jeffallencomedy.com

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:23:02
Speaker 1
Hi, guys. Welcome to. Who gave Jeff Allen a podcast. Yeah. That's you. Leave it with me, Carolyn Xavier. So, you know, we are usually so just excited and we're so excited for this guest today. But I have to tell you guys something important. This episode may include discussions of law enforcement operations and efforts to combat human trafficking.

00:00:23:02 - 00:00:25:08
Speaker 1
we're trying to avoid graphic and disturbing details.

00:00:25:08 - 00:00:37:09
Speaker 1
Some content may be really intense and really emotional, but please, if you can't, if you're too nervous to listen to it, go to the Anti-predator project.com or.org to donate.

00:00:37:09 - 00:01:11:10
Speaker 4
Trent Steele, is a dear friend of mine, whom I met of years ago. And he's a seasoned investigator and co-founder of the Anti-predator Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating human trafficking and sexual predators in the United States. With over a decade of experience, Trent has served as a credentialed federal investigator specializing in counterintelligence investigations involving personnel from the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, and the Department of State.

00:01:11:10 - 00:01:21:00
Speaker 4
He continues to remain active in the counterintelligence field as a government contractor. Please welcome my dear friend, Mr. Trent Steele.

00:01:21:02 - 00:01:21:23
Speaker 3
Thanks for having me.

00:01:21:23 - 00:01:26:00
Speaker 1
Okay. You and Jeff know each other from way back for a while.

00:01:26:02 - 00:01:26:17
Speaker 3
Absolutely.

00:01:26:19 - 00:01:27:03
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:01:27:06 - 00:01:29:22
Speaker 1
So how do you guys know each other? How did you guys meet?

00:01:30:00 - 00:01:47:10
Speaker 3
So. Oh, man. This is. You know what I remember specifically? It was, right in the middle of Covid because I was at my brother's house when I spoke to you. I was sitting in my brother's basement. When I spoke to you and Lenny on the phone for the first time. So the way we met is, I

00:01:47:10 - 00:02:02:08
Speaker 3
run, obviously I run a nonprofit. And one of the ways we were trying to fund the nonprofit is by starting this clothing line. And one of -- I’m a big comedy buff, I love comics. That's what I fall asleep to every night. So.

00:02:02:10 - 00:02:07:03
Speaker 2
So, yeah, that started weird. Yeah. Well, let me let me.

00:02:07:03 - 00:02:08:22
Speaker 4
Explain this, Lenny, calls me -

00:02:09:00 - 00:02:12:05
Speaker 2
He thought you would talk to Lenny. Yes, I talk to Lenny first. I emailed Lenny first.

00:02:12:05 - 00:02:25:05
Speaker 4
Lenny calls me and says, I gave this guy your number. You're going to want to talk to him. And I go, I am? And he goes, you are. So I figured 15 minutes. Maybe you don't blow you off the phone and that'll be it. And I think it was an hour and a half conversation.

00:02:25:05 - 00:02:28:08
Speaker 2
Yeah, we sat there. You had just come two hours.

00:02:28:08 - 00:02:32:19
Speaker 4
You had just come back from Mexico with the remains of a 14 year old girl.

00:02:32:19 - 00:02:35:16
Speaker 3
Yeah. We just got back from Mexico.

00:02:35:18 - 00:02:41:11
Speaker 4
And I remember asking you, what do you want from me? And you go well, we got this clothing line, and I go, look, I don't even take my own garbage out, so.

00:02:41:11 - 00:02:43:13
Speaker 2
Yeah. So that's.

00:02:43:13 - 00:03:00:16
Speaker 3
Well, and that's and that's how we met. And, you and then of all the people that I, that I call because we called and emailed a bunch of different people, Jeff was the only one that took the time to get back to us. That took the time to care, which talks a little bit about his character and where he stands in the world.

00:03:00:16 - 00:03:09:21
Speaker 3
So, and since then, you know, we've become friends. I love his comedy. I go to his shows when I can, I go with him when he's traveling around Florida. So.

00:03:10:00 - 00:03:11:07
Speaker 4
Yeah. You bring your shirt down?

00:03:11:08 - 00:03:12:04
Speaker 2
Yeah. We did.

00:03:12:06 - 00:03:12:12
Speaker 4
Well.

00:03:12:12 - 00:03:17:21
Speaker 3
And, Yeah, we did well in Tampa. And, Weirsdale? Naples? Naples? Weirsdale and Naples.

00:03:17:21 - 00:03:18:11
Speaker 4
Still? Yes.

00:03:18:11 - 00:03:19:02
Speaker 3
Right. Where's them?

00:03:19:06 - 00:03:37:21
Speaker 1
Well, I feel like Trent and Jeff. You guys both talk a lot about the anti-predator project, and you've been involved in it in years. And I hear you talk, Jeff. I hear you talk about it at the end of your show all the time. But for someone like me, I know nothing about the anti-predator project. I don't know about sex trafficking.

00:03:37:21 - 00:03:48:05
Speaker 1
I think we hear that all the time thrown around sex trafficking. So what exactly is sex trafficking? How does it happen and how did you get involved into it? And I know that's a big question.

00:03:48:07 - 00:04:15:07
Speaker 3
There's a lot there. So we'll start we'll start from the we'll start from the beginning. How did I get involved in it. So I, started working with children in foster care in 2011 ish. And, my job at the foster care agency was to work with kids that were aging out of foster care. So the teenagers that were 16, 17, and 18 teach them how to do all the adulting things, which my wife finds incredibly ironic because I don't do those things.

00:04:15:12 - 00:04:21:05
Speaker 2
So, so, when I, when I know exactly when, when.

00:04:21:05 - 00:04:29:09
Speaker 3
I told her what I was supposed to be doing at the foster care agency, she's like, they hired you to do what? I'm like, well, you know this. And she's like, well, best of luck to those kids.

00:04:29:11 - 00:04:33:03
Speaker 4
So that explains alot of government. It does, it does

00:04:33:05 - 00:04:39:20
Speaker 2
Can you do the job that really kind of work it out? Well, we're going to learn this thing as we go, right? Right.

00:04:39:20 - 00:04:46:17
Speaker 1
It's like there's all these kids, they're independent, amazing. They never put the toilet paper back on the roll. They don't take the trash out.

00:04:46:19 - 00:04:54:16
Speaker 3
She's like, you're gonna teach them how to balance a checkbook. I'm like, well, you know, she's like, you can barely add two plus two. I'm like, well, you know, we all have our challenges.

00:04:54:16 - 00:04:58:10
Speaker 2
Shut up. Everybody knows that’s six. Exactly. So that's how.

00:04:58:11 - 00:05:31:17
Speaker 3
That's what my job was. And, through working with them, I had the opportunity to meet some teenage girls who were human trafficking victims. And their stories were horrible. You know, I met one girl who's, it's a very famous case in Miami whose pimp made her tattoo her name or his name on her eyelids. At the Opa-locka flea market, I had another girl, whose pimp took an iron, coat hanger and heat it up in a fire and branded her with it.

00:05:31:18 - 00:05:33:22
Speaker 3
And their stories were. They were horrible. Right.

00:05:34:00 - 00:05:36:08
Speaker 1
How do they get from street to pimp?

00:05:36:10 - 00:06:04:05
Speaker 3
Well know. So it's it's it's very interesting. Right. And you know, recently I've had a whole new whole new take on this. So everybody always wants to say what does a human trafficking victim look like? Who's the most at risk of becoming a human trafficking victim? And the reality is, is it can happen to anybody. And and all it takes is for there to be one little thing missing out of that child's life or out of that person's life doesn't have to be a child.

00:06:04:07 - 00:06:21:11
Speaker 3
Whether it's, a child that comes from a broken home, whether it's a child that comes from a home who's got two parents, but the parents work all the time, and they completely ignore the child, whether it comes from a child who's in foster care and has nothing. All these traffickers do, right is they come in and they set up and they they fill a void.

00:06:21:13 - 00:06:47:13
Speaker 3
They give that person that child, that young adult, whatever it is they're missing. And it's and it's interesting. This past year, I've learned to look at it in a very, very powerful way. We travel the country with another organization called the International Association of Human Trafficking Investigators, and we, helped train law enforcement. And as part of that process, we bring survivors with us that, you know, or are now out of the life.

00:06:47:18 - 00:07:12:16
Speaker 3
And one of the things that this particular survivor does when we're talking with law enforcement at the end of these sessions, is she specifically calls out the males in the room and she says, listen, how many of you have daughters now raise their hand? And she's like, and then she starts calling them an individual. And she says, when was the last time you told your daughter you were proud of her?

00:07:12:18 - 00:07:28:02
Speaker 3
And the wheels start turning and you can see that, you know, they haven't. And she's like, I highly suggest that you walk out of this room when we're done here and call them and tell them you're proud of her, because if you don't, somebody else will. Right. And that's how this works.

00:07:28:06 - 00:07:29:03
Speaker 1
That's so powerful.

00:07:29:03 - 00:07:32:00
Speaker 3
That's how it works. And that's a very different way to look at it.

00:07:32:02 - 00:07:52:14
Speaker 4
Well, that's, you know, one of the things I talk about in my own show with my own marriage was I tell men all over the country, if you don't treat your wife with the love and respect she deserves, and you remember the. Because you did that when you met her. Someone will. Someone you'll see in her what you saw in her.

00:07:52:16 - 00:08:08:17
Speaker 4
Give her the attention that you should have been given her. And everybody's vulnerable to that. Yep. Absolutely. And I can see it with young girls. I mean, and that's, you know, the, the, the joke. And I don't want to, you know, in the middle of all of this, make a joke. But that was the thing when I got to college, you which you always find the girl with the daddy issues.

00:08:08:17 - 00:08:11:18
Speaker 3
Yeah. And you know, and that's, And that's how this works.

00:08:11:18 - 00:08:14:13
Speaker 1
I wish you didn’t call me out.

00:08:14:15 - 00:08:42:12
Speaker 3
But that's that's how it works, right? They fill that void. And that's why they talk about, like, the grooming process. Right? Where they buy them clothes, buying gifts, take them out, tell them how special they are, tell them how proud of them they are. And the thing that's interesting is the survivor specifically talks about how the thing that meant the most, and why it was hard for her to separate from her trafficker, is because he was the first man that ever told her that he was proud of her, and that meant a lot to her.

00:08:42:14 - 00:08:54:22
Speaker 3
So that's how this this happens. It's, the the traffickers step in and they fill in whatever gap. Whatever's missing in this individual's life. And that's how it happens.

00:08:55:00 - 00:09:06:11
Speaker 1
Which is so easy. And you're just saying that. And I'm like me at 14 on the streets of Los Angeles, no parents looking out. I could have easily fallen for that. A guy that comes in is like, oh, and you're this.

00:09:06:16 - 00:09:33:20
Speaker 4
Well, they're also driving. I was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I talked to them. You know, you're organization. And some woman came up with tears in her eyes. They just lost two girls at a Walmart in Lancaster. I mean, you talk of it's Amish country that's, you know. Yeah. And they're, they're seeking these people out. This is my take on it, because they're not street smart enough to understand, absolutely that when someone comes and says, hey, we need some directions, we need to absolutely, you know, absolutely.

00:09:33:20 - 00:09:35:19
Speaker 4
And they're that bold and brazen now.

00:09:35:21 - 00:09:55:15
Speaker 3
And it's getting it's getting worse. You know, it's it's interesting. Right? Because everybody says, well, what can we do, right. To help fight human trafficking? What can we do to help make it better? And and we've got the federal government and state government and local governments that have all these resources. But it seems like the problems are getting worse, which it is.

00:09:55:17 - 00:10:10:11
Speaker 3
And and it comes down to a couple of things. Number one, human trafficking globally is anywhere depending on on where you get your numbers is anywhere between 100 and $300 billion a year now, million billion dollars a year globally. It's it's.

00:10:10:12 - 00:10:12:05
Speaker 4
Larger than most countries GDP.

00:10:12:06 - 00:10:25:18
Speaker 3
It's it's it's the probably the largest GDP in the entire world. It just overtook, weapons trafficker. Weapons trafficking and drug trafficking is the most profitable crime.

00:10:25:20 - 00:10:28:00
Speaker 4
Yeah, well, just like any year.

00:10:28:02 - 00:10:51:16
Speaker 3
Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's ridiculous. And when you put it in a business terms. Right. And you talk about business wise and then you talk about the fact that people are killed every night in this country, over $50 in a gas station register. What are people willing to do to protect a $300 billion a year industry and a $300 billion a year industry that involves very powerful people?

00:10:51:18 - 00:11:15:18
Speaker 3
It involves politicians and involves judges. It involves dirty law enforcement. So, it's got a very big reach, right? So when you start putting it into those terms and you start talking about it, and then you start talking about how our government allocates funds, right? And I'll give you an example. I work with human trafficking task forces all over the country.

00:11:15:20 - 00:11:44:00
Speaker 3
And most of those task forces have maybe on the larger side, we'll have 15 or 20 members. But if you go to the drug trafficking task force, as you're talking, most of them have 60 to 100 members. It's about where our government is allocating the money. We have some fantastic women and men and women in law enforcement that are out here trying to get this done and trying to fight this battle, but they're fighting it with limited resources.

00:11:44:02 - 00:12:03:16
Speaker 3
They're fighting it with their hands tied behind their back. And it makes it, very tough. I've said this for a long time. If you want to see something, and this is very, a very unfortunate statement to have to make if you want to see any real change in the human trafficking space, something bad is going to have to happen to somebody important’s

00:12:03:18 - 00:12:12:10
Speaker 3
family member, child, loved one, something. And that's the unfortunate reality of it because then that'll get the funds reallocated. You know where they need to go.

00:12:12:10 - 00:12:20:16
Speaker 4
Well, you told me, I think I think you did. That Nashville, where I live, had one of the best anti-trafficking divisions.

00:12:20:16 - 00:12:21:10
Speaker 3
They did.

00:12:21:14 - 00:12:24:02
Speaker 4
And then when they did the defund the police.

00:12:24:04 - 00:12:25:00
Speaker 3
It went away.

00:12:25:05 - 00:12:31:23
Speaker 4
That was like one of the first cuts they make is in the trafficking. Yep. Went away and allocate resources elsewhere.

00:12:32:01 - 00:12:33:10
Speaker 3
Yep. That went away.

00:12:33:11 - 00:12:38:06
Speaker 1
Take it one step back. Forgive me. So you're working in foster cares?

00:12:38:08 - 00:12:43:04
Speaker 3
Oh, yeah. So let me get back I digressed. My adult A.D.D. got the best of me.

00:12:43:06 - 00:12:44:06
Speaker 4
Oh, well, that's it.

00:12:44:06 - 00:12:46:16
Speaker 1
So we keep trying to get Adderall to sponsor us.

00:12:46:17 - 00:12:51:08
Speaker 2
But they won't. And I got off. I got all these ideas, so.

00:12:51:09 - 00:12:52:15
Speaker 4
I'd be crushing it up in.

00:12:52:15 - 00:12:56:22
Speaker 2
Them. Wouldn’t be good. So anyway. Jeff's a

00:12:56:22 - 00:12:59:13
Speaker 1
little odd, but his spreadsheets

00:12:59:15 - 00:13:00:22
Speaker 2
PHENOMENAL

00:13:00:23 - 00:13:09:20
Speaker 3
We all have our talents. Like I told my wife. Yeah. Anyway, so, so I start working with these kids, and their stories are very disturbing. You know, it's the kind of stuff you.

00:13:09:21 - 00:13:14:09
Speaker 4
By the way, while you were teaching these adult skills that they ever look at you and go, what do you know?

00:13:14:11 - 00:13:17:09
Speaker 3
Oh, all the time. All the all the time.

00:13:17:11 - 00:13:20:10
Speaker 2
What makes you qualified? Yeah, exactly. Your wife called and said you can’t even balance a checkbook.

00:13:20:12 - 00:13:28:11
Speaker 3
Well, and the real answer is, I really don't know what makes me qualified other than I'm a think I might have been the only person that applied for the job.

00:13:30:07 - 00:13:32:11
Speaker 2
So,

00:13:32:13 - 00:13:55:14
Speaker 3
But I start working with these kids, and their stories start to impact me and I. And I'm going home every night, and I'm telling my wife, you know, and this is horrible what's happening, you know, and I, I started talking to some other friends of mine, and I start hearing about how horrible things are, and, and I'm like, man, there's got to be something that can be done about this.

00:13:55:16 - 00:14:23:15
Speaker 3
And so I knew some folks that had worked for the government and, started talking with them. And so I said, hey, guys, I think we can maybe do something about this. If we get everybody together, we have resources and we know people that can do something about this. So that's how this whole thing, came about is my impact from working in foster care and then getting the people around me in my life that are good people.

00:14:23:17 - 00:14:44:17
Speaker 3
And I'll. And I'll say this, I say it every time I can. I'm the lucky person that gets to sit here and have conversations like this with you guys. But I work with the best men and women in the world. These are people that have resumes that they could demand hundreds of thousands of dollars in the private sector, and they work for us.

00:14:44:19 - 00:14:48:21
Speaker 3
And I say work volunteer for us for free because they.

00:14:48:21 - 00:14:50:18
Speaker 1
Believe at the end of the day.

00:14:50:20 - 00:15:09:23
Speaker 3
Because they believe in our mission. And so them, and, and and what my team does, they're the ones who make this possible. I get to sit here and have the fun conversations. I get to sit here and laugh. These guys are the ones that make it possible. And it's. They help restore your faith in humanity, right?

00:15:10:03 - 00:15:27:07
Speaker 3
Right. Because you get to work with kids in foster care, and you hear about the horrible things that happen to them. You know, I one of the one of the cases I had was, an 11 year old girl whose mom would ride her around on the bus and sell her to men for drugs. That's how she was supporting her drug habit.

00:15:27:09 - 00:15:49:04
Speaker 3
And you hear about stuff like that, you hear about another girl who's who was raped by her own father, but he was worth millions of dollars. He was paying everybody in the family's bills. And the only reason that girl wound up in foster care is because when she went to the police to say she'd been raped. And, oh, by the way, she was pregnant, that the whole family said, listen, we just lost our our money train.

00:15:49:04 - 00:16:04:22
Speaker 3
We don't want you here at our house. So the girl had to go her own entire family dumped on her. Right? So you you see stuff like that, and then you hear all these horrible stories, and it's real easy to lose faith in humanity, and it's really easy to lose faith in the fact that there's good people left in the world.

00:16:05:00 - 00:16:19:22
Speaker 3
Then you run into folks like my team and you're like, man, there is still some good left in the world. There's still some people out here fighting to keep this world to be a better place. So, that's that's my spiel on my team. I sorry, I digressed again. That's all right.

00:16:19:22 - 00:16:40:09
Speaker 4
But one of the impressive things about you when we first met, again, we were talking about raising money for your, your organization, and you had said you'd gone to one of those big organizations in Miami to get them to do a fundraiser for you. And the first thing they said, you need to fire your board of directors. Yeah, right.

00:16:40:14 - 00:16:46:05
Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah. And I love the fact you go, “Nah.” And they go, well there, we're not going to raise money for anything. That's okay.

00:16:46:08 - 00:16:47:06
Speaker 3
So so.

00:16:47:06 - 00:16:50:06
Speaker 4
You are in a business that you need to really trust the people around you.

00:16:50:07 - 00:16:55:21
Speaker 3
100%. And the thing is, you know, my board has been with me from day one.

00:16:55:22 - 00:16:57:17
Speaker 1
And what year was day one?

00:16:57:23 - 00:17:23:17
Speaker 3
20? I it it's kind of funny because we actually got our, incorporation document on January 11th of 2012. But January 11th, randomly -- we didn't even plan this -- is National Human Trafficking Day, and that's the day that we actually got our incorporation paperwork from the state of Florida. Oh, which was pretty cool. Kind of a cool coincidence.

00:17:23:17 - 00:17:28:00
Speaker 4
Here on the Who Gave Jeff Allen a Podcast? podcast, we don't believe in coincidences

00:17:28:05 - 00:17:29:03
Speaker 2
That's right.

00:17:29:05 - 00:17:29:17
Speaker 3
That's right.

00:17:29:17 - 00:17:31:21
Speaker 4
We believe in divine appointment.

00:17:31:23 - 00:17:43:17
Speaker 3
That's right. And so when I, when we formed this, you know, I didn't know anything about, putting together a board for a nonprofit. I didn't know anything about nonprofit work.

00:17:43:19 - 00:17:47:00
Speaker 4
So I went I didn't know anything about foster kids or adulting.

00:17:47:00 - 00:17:48:10
Speaker 3
Exactly. Yeah.

00:17:48:12 - 00:17:50:08
Speaker 2
I -- you've made an amazing story.

00:17:50:08 - 00:18:10:13
Speaker 3
I've made a whole career out of learning as I go. Here. And, and I went I went out and found a whole bunch of people that just believed in our mission that were good people. And they've they've been good people, and they've been there since day one. They're not socialites. They're not out here playing the political game and doing this and doing that.

00:18:10:13 - 00:18:32:10
Speaker 3
And and one thing that that kills me about a lot of nonprofits, and this is the conversation that this guy and I had, he was a very prominent businessman. He's worth millions. And he had a couple of of things that he was. He said, well, he said well, your Board need to go out and raise more money for you. And I said, no, my board doesn't because my board's very loyal people.

00:18:32:10 - 00:18:48:14
Speaker 3
They're good people. They believe in our mission. And I would rather have people there that believe in our mission than people that are there just for their looks, just so they can say they're doing something for their community. The people that are on our board are fantastic. So that was number one. So I told him, I said, we're not replacing our board.

00:18:48:16 - 00:19:13:00
Speaker 3
Then he was like, well, you need to go out and tell the stories of all the families that you've helped and the things that you've done. And I said, here's your problem with that. I am not going to tell the story of somebody's worst days of their lives. The most embarrassing, most humiliating things that can happen to an individual.

00:19:13:02 - 00:19:36:10
Speaker 3
So I can raise a dollar. Because that makes me no better than the people that were exploiting them in the first place. I said, now, if any of the families that we've helped, any of the survivors that we've helped want us to tell their story, I'm happy to tell their story. The young lady that we helped from Mexico, I was just happy to she's asked me several times, Will you please help tell my story?

00:19:36:16 - 00:19:53:19
Speaker 3
So I'm happy to help give her a platform to tell the story. But unless somebody says, I want you to tell my story, that story is not for me to tell. Our job was to get them to a safe place, get them back to where they can have a happy life. My job is not to tell their story.

00:19:53:21 - 00:19:57:13
Speaker 3
Those horrible things didn't happen to me. They happened to them, right?

00:19:57:15 - 00:20:02:04
Speaker 1
And so sorry to interrupt. How does my process happen? Like a family contacts you guys.

00:20:02:06 - 00:20:10:07
Speaker 3
So it depends. We get referrals from law enforcement. We get referrals from family. We get referrals from our referrals.

00:20:10:07 - 00:20:12:03
Speaker 1
Like this is a missing person.

00:20:12:03 - 00:20:16:10
Speaker 3
And yeah, they'll call us or send us an email. But let's just.

00:20:16:10 - 00:20:25:22
Speaker 4
Use the girl from Mexico as an example. She wasn't she was picked up and, taken to Mexico against her will. Correct. When she was, what, age?

00:20:25:22 - 00:20:47:14
Speaker 3
16? 16. She ran away from home. And this is one of the things that we're trying when we travel the country, we train law enforcement. One of the things that we try to do is change the optics of how law enforcement view stuff and change the verbiage of how we talk about stuff, right? So, for instance, I use the word pimp.

00:20:47:16 - 00:21:08:16
Speaker 3
We try to get away from that word and replace it with the word trafficker, because pimp is a word that in that culture is something that's glorified, something that people look up to. So we don't use that word because we're not going to give these animals the satisfaction of saying, hey, I'm a pimp, I'm this, you know, so we use the word trafficker.

00:21:08:16 - 00:21:25:05
Speaker 3
We call them what they are. So that's one of the things that we're trying to do, change the verbiage and how we look at this. So when it comes to missing kids, one of the things we're trying to get rid of is the whole they're just a runaway thought right now, having worked in foster care, I will say this.

00:21:25:10 - 00:22:06:14
Speaker 3
It gets frustrating because you have kids that will runaway literally every other day and then come back and it gets old and it gets boring having to put them in the system and then take them out of the system and then put them so it gets old and it gets frustrating and I understand that. Yeah. However, statistics have been very clear for quite a while now that within about 48 hours of being on the street, somebody is going to approach a child and try to exploit them for something, whether it's for sex, whether it's for work, whether it's for a place to live, something they're going to try to exploit that child within about 48

00:22:06:14 - 00:22:25:16
Speaker 3
hours of being on the street. So essentially, from the time that child goes missing, the clock starts ticking on getting to them before the bad guys do. That's really what it becomes. So we try to change that verbiage, but once again, we can change the verbiage all we want to, and we can change the way we look at it.

00:22:25:18 - 00:22:52:03
Speaker 3
But until the politicians in the decision makers start allocating funds to help then nothing's ever going to change. And I'll give you an example. There's a law enforcement agency that we worked with in Arizona, and it's a large law enforcement agency in a large city that has a lot of ground to cover. Right. They had one detective that was assigned to do missing adults, missing children.

00:22:52:04 - 00:22:57:06
Speaker 3
I rode with him for one day. His phone rang 19 times with new cases.

00:22:57:08 - 00:22:57:19
Speaker 4
Holy cow

00:22:57:19 - 00:23:26:14
Speaker 3
Adults and children. How can we expect one individual right to be able to do all that work and do it effectively? But once again, our decision makers aren't allocating the money to go where it needs to go. So this little girl runs away from our home. She's 16 years old. Her dad was a drug addict, right? Her mom was dying of cancer, so things weren't good at home.

00:23:26:16 - 00:23:50:22
Speaker 3
She runs away, she's couch surfing. She runs into this guy at a party. This guy ends up sexually assaulting her, kidnaping her and taking her to Texas first. Okay. From Texas. She's held there, I believe, for, 3 or 4 months. And he finds out that she's pregnant. Well he doesn't want to go to jail in America for raping a minor.

00:23:51:00 - 00:24:15:22
Speaker 3
So he gets a hold of his mom, who is a ranking member of the Jalisco Cartel and has her doctor up some papers, and he takes her to Mexico, where he then holds her hostage for the next decade. He leaves the house and he literally locks the door behind her, behind him, and he has two kids with her via sexual assault over the next decade.

00:24:15:23 - 00:24:33:05
Speaker 3
And then the way she got to us is she reached out to us via Facebook, Facebook Messenger. And it was kind of weird because we get we get the crazies to come out of the woodwork. The CIA is controlling my mind all this. So we get.

00:24:33:07 - 00:24:35:08
Speaker 4
I'm sorry for sending that...

00:24:35:09 - 00:24:36:09
Speaker 2
So we get

00:24:36:09 - 00:24:40:12
Speaker 3
some wild stuff that comes in via our Facebook. So we kind.

00:24:40:16 - 00:24:43:06
Speaker 1
is there -- Pizzagate is real.

00:24:43:08 - 00:25:00:22
Speaker 3
And we get that stuff. We had a lady who reached out to us from Montana that said the CIA had implanted a chip in her brain and that, she was being forced virtually every night to go out and seek men for sex like it was.

00:25:01:00 - 00:25:01:08
Speaker 2
It was interesting.

00:25:01:14 - 00:25:04:14
Speaker 4
I’ve heard some odd rationale, but that one....

00:25:04:14 - 00:25:05:15
Speaker 1
Well. Schizophrenia.

00:25:05:17 - 00:25:24:23
Speaker 3
Even then we we try to write it down and verify it. So we were able to get that lady's name. And I actually called to the police department. It was in Bozeman, Montana, and I spoke with one of the officers out there. They all knew her name. She's a frequent flier. They had arrested her and frequently put her in the loony bin.

00:25:24:23 - 00:25:36:03
Speaker 3
At least 3 or 4 times in the last week. So they knew her name and I'd said, hey, I'm just calling to make sure she's okay. And they're like, no, she's okay. She's nuts, but she's okay. So but we get stuff like that all the time.

00:25:36:03 - 00:25:37:07
Speaker 4
But we tried to

00:25:37:09 - 00:25:38:20
Speaker 3
exactly -- probably.

00:25:38:22 - 00:25:39:15
Speaker 2
probably

00:25:39:16 - 00:26:13:06
Speaker 3
Probably. So we try to run everything down. So this girl reaches out to us via Facebook and says, hey, this is my name. She sends pictures. I'm being held in Mexico against my will. I want help, I need out, my family's in Florida. So she sent me her name and and her missing poster. And so I started making phone calls and I called Homeland Security because they had the case originally and they're like, yeah, no, that's a real case.

00:26:13:08 - 00:26:40:08
Speaker 3
It's still open, you know? So I'm like, well, maybe there's something to this. So I started corresponding with her via, Facebook Messenger and started asking her questions that only she would probably know from the case file, and she was able to answer all of them. So I'm like, well, I think we're onto something here. So we started getting the State Department involved and some other government agencies involved, to no avail.

00:26:40:10 - 00:27:00:04
Speaker 3
And what ended up eventually happening is I have folks in Mexico that assist me. And so I had our guys in Mexico make sure that she was at a safe house, and we ended up having to fly down to go and grab her. Then from the safe house.

00:27:00:06 - 00:27:01:19
Speaker 1
Was she able to get her children out?

00:27:02:00 - 00:27:29:10
Speaker 3
Yeah, we we got everybody back. And so the minute we land, I won't get into specifics, but the situation got interesting when we landed. And so we had her meet us at the safe house we had we sent her and Uber. Our guys escorted the Uber to the safe house. We ended up taking her back at two in the morning.

00:27:29:10 - 00:27:57:05
Speaker 3
The next day. And it was kind of interesting because our own government knowingly issued her a passport in the wrong name. Right? So we get to, we get to customs and because the passports issued in her name, her fake name in Mexico. And we get to customs and the CBP agents scanning all the, passports. She scans, alright he scans the two kids.

00:27:57:05 - 00:28:07:05
Speaker 3
Everything's okay, and he scans hers. And this guy's got the worst poker face in the world. And he pulls it aside, and he says, you've been selected for further screening.

00:28:07:07 - 00:28:08:07
Speaker 4
Oh,

00:28:08:09 - 00:28:40:22
Speaker 3
So we get sent to the timeout room, right where you can't have your cell phone and everything else. And so we're sitting there and and she says, well, what what do I tell them? I said, well, tell the truth. Tell them the truth. Tell them you know who you are and what we're doing here. And, so she goes up there and, she's up there for about 15, 20 minutes, and she comes back and she sits next to me and she says, they know that this isn't my real name.

00:28:41:00 - 00:28:42:16
Speaker 3
I said, I know that they know it's not your real name

00:28:42:16 - 00:28:44:19
Speaker 2
They see the passport.

00:28:44:21 - 00:29:05:00
Speaker 3
But they're like, they want to talk to you next, like alright I'll go talk to them. So I go up there and I talk to them and the CBP agents on the phone with somebody I can hear the conversation. And the guy asked me my name and, he's like, so I give it to him and all of a sudden from the other side of the phone, I hear.

00:29:05:02 - 00:29:08:01
Speaker 2
Is that Steele?

00:29:08:03 - 00:29:37:14
Speaker 3
Hand him the phone, hand him the phone. So hands me the phone and he says, I won't put his name out there. But he says, this is Special Agent so-and-so, with with, HSI. Is is she home? Is she here? I said, yes, sir. I said, she's standing about 15ft away from me. And, he says, well, I won't get into the explicitvies we’re being recorded.

00:29:37:16 - 00:29:58:14
Speaker 3
Long story short, he says, well done. And he says, hand the phone back to the guy that handed you the phone. Tell him to let you out of there and go home. And he says, but one question before you go, like, what is it? He’s like, why is her passport in a false name? I said sir, you're gonna have to take that up with the people that issued the passport.

00:29:58:16 - 00:30:05:03
Speaker 3
So we end up getting out of there. But it was it was actually divine intervention. Because if if he hadn't been on the phone.

00:30:05:05 - 00:30:05:12
Speaker 2
Right.

00:30:05:16 - 00:30:20:03
Speaker 3
Then I’m probably down at FDC being charged with smuggling. Absolutely. So it was divine intervention that we got her back. But she's she's doing well. She's got a new life now. She's going to school, she's got a job, the kids are in school.

00:30:20:05 - 00:30:21:21
Speaker 4
And then she shared her story.

00:30:21:21 - 00:30:24:19
Speaker 3
She’s sharing her story. It's a it's a great it's a great thing.

00:30:24:19 - 00:30:25:19
Speaker 4
Save lives. Yeah.

00:30:26:00 - 00:30:28:23
Speaker 3
It's a it's a great thing. So.

00:30:29:01 - 00:30:47:18
Speaker 1
I feel shamefully naive. I didn't realize that trafficking could happen like that. Like, oh, I'm just going to take this person for my own personal use. Like, in my mind, it's always like the Epstein islands of the world. And just. I never even considered like, oh, a pimp is a trafficker. I'm just so naive. And so it's I'm so ashamed to say.

00:30:47:18 - 00:30:49:00
Speaker 1
But I never even.

00:30:49:02 - 00:31:00:08
Speaker 4
It's a you and everybody else because it it's not your world. Well, that's what the lady in Lancaster. She was shocked in a little town. I mean, it was like that was what she kept saying. Our little town.

00:31:00:10 - 00:31:33:02
Speaker 3
It goes it goes back to what I said earlier. Right. It's an issue that unless it affects you personally or unless it is something that you're you're involved in your child got trafficked, something like that. Number one, it's a very uncomfortable topic for people to talk about. So they don't want to talk about it. Number two is there's this myth -- and I travel the country all the time, and I talk to people and and it doesn't matter where I go, I always run into several people --

00:31:33:03 - 00:31:53:00
Speaker 3
it doesn't happen here. That's that's not right. That's that's not a problem here. In fact, I did a I did another podcast with a bunch of guys out in New York, and the one guy really got combative with me and he says, listen, I've got --We were talking about internet safety with the kids, right? And he says-- listen, I've got a ten year old daughter, he’s like

00:31:53:02 - 00:32:23:14
Speaker 3
and what you're saying, he's like, I've looked at the numbers. It rarely happens. So I'm not taking my daughter's phone from her. He's like this. He's like, he's like he basically said, he's like, you're part of the problem out here. Scaring people, making people think this problem is worse than it is. So the issue is, is this you've got a lot of people that don't understand what's happening right in this country, and there's a lot of people that think that human trafficking is a developing nation problem, right?

00:32:23:14 - 00:32:27:19
Speaker 3
It happens in Mexico, happens in Africa, doesn't happen here in the United States.

00:32:27:19 - 00:32:34:14
Speaker 4
Well, I like the word slavery as well. Why? Because a lot of them are being enslaved into just work.

00:32:34:16 - 00:32:52:20
Speaker 3
Oh. It's modern day slavery. Yeah, it's 100% modern day slavery. And the reality is, if you go by the numbers, there's more people right now that are enslaved around the world than any other point in time in history. And so we have all these days, right, where we celebrate the ending of slavery and this and that.

00:32:52:22 - 00:32:58:23
Speaker 3
And not only is slavery not dead, it's the worst it's been globally in the history of our world.

00:32:58:23 - 00:32:59:14
Speaker 4
Right?

00:32:59:16 - 00:33:23:08
Speaker 3
And we just keep looking past it. And the only way for people to take it seriously, unfortunately, is for them to understand the brutal reality of this. The United States is one of the top three destinations in the world for human trafficking. Why? Because we have people here that can afford it. We have the buyers. It's just like a business.

00:33:23:10 - 00:33:40:00
Speaker 3
If you take the humanity out of it and you put it in business terms, these people are selling a product. If you're selling a product, you have to have the people that have the money to buy that product. Right here in the United States. We have the people that can buy that product. And that's why one of the reasons why we have this particular problem.

00:33:40:00 - 00:34:03:22
Speaker 4
Well, it's almost like with the you know, I remember the argument about, the cartels were saying, you know, if America didn't have such an appetite for drugs, we'd be out of business. So it's just a supply and demand thing. Absolutely. And I and I love the rationale. Again, human beings can rationalize anything. So I'm in the slavery business because there's a demand for it.

00:34:04:00 - 00:34:05:09
Speaker 4
I'm just providing a product.

00:34:05:13 - 00:34:32:19
Speaker 3
Absolutely. You know, and the drug cartels are masters of that. Right. So this is why human trafficking has become such a profitable crime, because you've got organized crime groups. Everybody from European organized crime to the South American drug cartels that have now realized the value in this. You bring a key of cocaine over the border. You sell that one time, you've got to go back and resupply.

00:34:32:21 - 00:34:54:00
Speaker 3
You bring a girl across the border or you're trafficking a girl. You can sell a human being 20, 30, 40 times in one night, and then you can turn around and do it the next night again, and the next night after that. So it's a product that they can sell multiple times. They have minimal risk and minimal exposure.

00:34:54:02 - 00:35:04:19
Speaker 3
And they've got a very lucrative customer base. And it's sad to have to put it in those types of business terms, but that's the reality of it.

00:35:04:20 - 00:35:26:13
Speaker 1
So in the scheme of like American prostitution, like we were talking about like the pimp trafficker, Florida level, how is their numbers on how many prostitutes are there willingly, by unfortunate circumstance, be it drugs, be it whatever, versus actually being trafficked and held.

00:35:26:13 - 00:35:27:01
Speaker 4
Against their.

00:35:27:01 - 00:35:36:03
Speaker 1
Will? I'm so dumb to think that I'm like, oh well, I could see that could have happened to me. I could have got hooked on drugs and then I couldn't pay for them. And then what else do I have to sell besides me?

00:35:36:05 - 00:35:36:15
Speaker 3
Well, here's.

00:35:36:16 - 00:35:44:23
Speaker 1
Thing I feel so ashamed that I was like, not victim blaming, but in a sense being like, well, you shouldn't got hooked on meth. Like it just.

00:35:45:01 - 00:36:11:17
Speaker 3
And that is an extremely honest answer. And there's a lot of people that feel that way. So there's a couple things, right? Number one, the reality is most trafficking victims go home every night. They're not chained to a bed. They're not held against their will. And when we talk about this, we talk about the invisible chains, right. The things that keep them there because everybody says, man, if they're not chained to a bed in the back room or to a pool in the back room, why don't they just leave?

00:36:11:19 - 00:36:30:15
Speaker 3
Well, because it's psychological warfare. Whether we talk about before, if you don't tell your child that you're proud of them, somebody else will. So what do these guys do? They reinforce. I'm the only one that ever loved you. I'm the only one that cares about you. I'm the only one that's ever going to really care about you, right?

00:36:30:17 - 00:36:43:15
Speaker 3
So they guilt them. But then the flip side of that is go ahead and leave you think I won't find you? Go ahead, walk out. I'll find you. I always know where you're at. And it's the other piece of that. The fear for their life.

00:36:43:15 - 00:36:44:04
Speaker 4
You're right.

00:36:44:05 - 00:36:45:02
Speaker 3
And so it.

00:36:45:02 - 00:36:47:06
Speaker 1
Sounds like fear for their children, which is.

00:36:47:06 - 00:37:20:01
Speaker 3
Depending on who you're working for, right? Yep. Absolutely. So they have all these different invisible chains that say, well, if I don't go back and do what this guy wants tonight or tomorrow, this is I'm going to disappoint him. Right? And that's maybe the hardest thing for people to wrap your mind around. And this is where working in foster care really kind of helped me understand this point of view, and why I think maybe some law enforcement don't understand it because it's hard unless you've had to look at it a different way.

00:37:20:03 - 00:37:47:01
Speaker 3
So when I was working in foster care, the one thing that I never understood is we would get these kids that were horrifically abused, broken bones, burns by their parents, but yet these same kids, when they would run away, would we'd always find them back at their mom and dad's house. And I had an older social worker sit me down once and say, you know, Trent, here's what you have to understand.

00:37:47:03 - 00:38:06:23
Speaker 3
Mom is always going to be mom, and dad is always going to be dad. And that's a hard thing to to wrap your mind around. The other thing is, you -- and I had a survivor tell me this -- because one of the things that we do is we take a lot of input from survivors to try to understand the psychology behind all this.

00:38:07:01 - 00:38:32:16
Speaker 3
And I had a survivor sit me down once and said, you know, she's like, I really appreciate your effort and I really appreciate she's like, but you have to get it out of your head that you're some savior that's going to walk into the room and save everybody's life. She's like, you have to understand something. These girls and we were talking about high end girls at the time.

00:38:32:16 - 00:38:59:20
Speaker 3
Some girls that were working for $1,000 an hour, $1,200 an hour. She's like, you have to understand. Yeah, they might get beat up. They might wind up in the hospital. Right? They they might have to do some things they don't want. But she's like, they're driving around in a Range Rover. They have a $1,200 purse. They’re wearing $800 shoes.

00:38:59:22 - 00:39:28:04
Speaker 3
And at the end of the day, as bad as it looks to you, it's better than where they came from. And she's like, you have to understand that. So unless you can walk into a room and offer these girls something better than what they've got, she's like, you'll never win that battle. And so it's, it's a, it's a psychology thing that, that we have to learn how to play the other thing is, is this sometimes it's like dealing with an addict as well, right?

00:39:28:06 - 00:39:56:13
Speaker 3
You have to hit rock bottom and acknowledge there's a problem before there can be any real change. Right. And everybody's rock bottom looks different depending on where you come from. People that come from normal homes, decent homes, your rock bottom, there's going to be a lot higher than somebody who grew up in the foster care system, was probably raped, sexually assaulted by their own dad, by family members.

00:39:56:15 - 00:40:13:17
Speaker 3
Now they're out here. At least they're getting paid for it, right? So what? They get beat up, they wind up in the hospital. And to the average person looking at it, you're like, man, what? That why are you going to continue down this path? But as bad as it looks to us, that's not their rock bottom yet. Right.

00:40:13:22 - 00:40:37:13
Speaker 3
And so you have to take the totality of all that and into, into account. And I'll, I remember a kid that I had when I was in foster care. That was a perfect example of this. He he was a good kid. And I remember going the first time I went to go pick him up, I drove past the house where I was supposed to get him three times, because I thought it was condemned.

00:40:37:15 - 00:40:59:18
Speaker 3
Like I didn't think anybody lived there. It was bad. So I finally stopped by, pick him up and the kid was never gave me any problems. I always went to school. He was very respectful, very good kid. We placed him in a foster home in Miami with with very good foster parents that they took him. They had a house in the keys, a big boat, and he went boating every weekend.

00:40:59:18 - 00:41:33:21
Speaker 3
And they were treating him really, really well. And then all of a sudden the foster parents start saying, Frankie's stealing from us, right? He's taking money. And so we, we, we bring him in and we sit him down and you start to get into the psychology of all this, right? And it's really heartbreaking because he says, listen, I, I took the money because his sister, was on the streets and she was older than him.

00:41:33:23 - 00:41:58:09
Speaker 3
And, he says, I need to buy my sister a Christmas present. She doesn't have anything. That's sad. That's heartbreaking. Right. And then they kept going and they kept being theft problems. There kept being other problems. And what I was starting to realize, and I would sit and talk to him, is the house that he lived in his normal.

00:41:58:11 - 00:42:22:14
Speaker 3
His mom was a drug addicted, prostitute in Miami. Right. And the his normal of people coming in and out of the house at all hours and his mom buying drugs in the chaos at this house, it looked like it was condemned to him. That was his normal. So that's his. That's his baseline for normal. Right. So you got to understand, looking at that, that's what he perceived as normal.

00:42:22:16 - 00:42:49:20
Speaker 3
So when you take him and you put him in a normal environment with two people that care about him, that's the same as taking somebody from a normal environment and putting them into the chaotic environment, because that's the same type of chaos to him. He can't wrap his mind around it. And it's the same kind of psychology when it comes to the survivors, is you have to understand what their perceived normal is, where they're at, and how bad it is.

00:42:49:20 - 00:42:53:15
Speaker 4
So do you ever get that when you rescued someone going, I didn't want to be rescued.

00:42:53:17 - 00:42:55:03
Speaker 3
All the time. All the time.

00:42:55:09 - 00:42:57:13
Speaker 4
I didn't call you. And what are you doing here?

00:42:57:18 - 00:43:20:07
Speaker 3
In fact, the average is they say, a girl will go back to the life on average, seven times before they're ready to leave. And that's one of the reasons also why the men and women in law enforcement to do this job, they don't get near the gratitude and the thankfulness that they should get, because this is a frustrating line of work.

00:43:20:07 - 00:43:37:09
Speaker 4
Well, I can tell you, it's just in my own experience, I got in the middle of a domestic squabble in a parking lot. This guy was beating his wife or girlfriend, and I shoved him on the ground. And I said, what, you pick on someone your own size? She jumped on my back and almost ripped my eyes out of my.

00:43:37:09 - 00:43:43:14
Speaker 4
Yeah, leave my. And it was like I'm walking in going, yeah, well hit on, I guess. I don't know, this is foreplay. I don't know what.

00:43:43:14 - 00:43:44:14
Speaker 2
You call it.

00:43:44:16 - 00:44:02:02
Speaker 4
But it was like, oh, how ungrateful can you be? To, you know, no good work goes unpunished. So my next question was, how many times do you get contacted by the victim themselves, as opposed to family members who are looking for their child?

00:44:02:04 - 00:44:09:09
Speaker 3
So rarely do we get contacted by actual victims.

00:44:09:09 - 00:44:10:21
Speaker 4
So the girl in Mexico was an anomaly

00:44:10:21 - 00:44:35:07
Speaker 3
That's an anomaly that that rarely actually happens. Most of the time it's family members. Most of the time it's law enforcement that will come and say, listen, we need to help with this, from whatever angle they need, whether it's electronics, interviewing, whatever they need help with. So it happens from time to time, but most of the time it's the family.

00:44:35:07 - 00:44:55:21
Speaker 3
I'll give you an example. Like of a family contacting us, this would have been two years ago. We had a family cousins, two cousins contact us and they said, listen, our cousin was talking to some guy out of we don't know where online and we haven't heard from her in three months. We don't know where she's at. Her cell phone’s gone

00:44:55:21 - 00:45:29:06
Speaker 3
dead. All they had was the dead cell phone number and the, one Facebook photo. So it was it was kind of interesting. So one of our other projects that we've started doing, and we noticed this during Covid, and we've partnered up once again with our, our friends at the International Association of Human Trafficking Investigators. We've opened the what we call the human Trafficking Technology and Intelligence centers, and that was opened as a response to noticing that, once again, because this is.

00:45:29:07 - 00:45:30:09
Speaker 4
A database.

00:45:30:11 - 00:45:52:23
Speaker 3
Also. So it's a whole center full of different databases. So and this was done and once again, in response to noticing that funds just weren't being allocated correctly out to law enforcement, we would go and try to assist law enforcement agencies with different cases, and we would find that they just did not have the digital equipment, especially the smaller agencies.

00:45:53:01 - 00:46:16:13
Speaker 3
They wouldn't have the programs and they couldn't afford them because some of the stuff is very expensive. So with, International Association of Human Trafficking Investigators, we've been able to partner with, I can't even tell you how many different software companies from around the country, around the world, actually, to bring cutting edge technology to law enforcement free of charge.

00:46:16:15 - 00:46:24:17
Speaker 3
And as part of that, we have access to things like facial recognition at ID tracking on cell phones. So what we were able to.

00:46:24:17 - 00:46:28:12
Speaker 4
Do is, right. So you were telling me a story about the facial recognition.

00:46:28:12 - 00:46:54:02
Speaker 3
So what we were able to do was run this girl's face through facial recognition, one of the facial recognition programs we have. And all of a sudden, ding ding ding ding, it starts popping up all these porn sites, and it's the girl we're looking for. Wow. What? We were able to find out after really digging into it, is that this guy she met was from Arizona.

00:46:54:04 - 00:47:18:12
Speaker 3
He grabbed her, took her to Arizona, was keeping her in a room where he had all the windows closed. Every time he would move her, he put a bag on her head and put her in the back of a car. So she really never knew where she was at, and he was making her do porn and only fans, a couple of camsites and the the bank account that people would donate to for her to do certain things was wired directly to his phone.

00:47:18:17 - 00:47:42:23
Speaker 3
So he was getting all the money and so we were able to it took us, I think, stem to stern. It took us probably about seven months to track her down and orchestrate an operation to get her out, but we were able ultimately to get her out and get her reunited with her with her cousins. But that wouldn't have been possible unless we had that facial recognition.

00:47:43:01 - 00:47:48:06
Speaker 3
But that's an example. When the family calls us and asks for help as opposed to the victim or the law enforcement.

00:47:48:08 - 00:47:48:15
Speaker 2
This is.

00:47:48:16 - 00:47:52:01
Speaker 1
Happening in every facet of real life. Absolutely. Internet?

00:47:52:07 - 00:47:53:01
Speaker 3
Absolutely.

00:47:53:03 - 00:48:23:00
Speaker 4
Well, that's the thing I was just going to say, as someone who has struggled with porn and I've had my own issues with, massage parlors years ago, my moment came at one of the parlors. I was, you know, as someone who was filled with the shame and humiliation that comes with that addiction laying there. And I remember the girl reaching under the drape and I said, no, and I tap my wedding ring.

00:48:23:00 - 00:48:43:21
Speaker 4
And I said, I've got to stop this. And she leaned over and whispered in my ear and said, thank you. Yeah. And that's when I realized that it hit me. I always thought they were there on their own free will. And this is their choice in life, and we're all doing something. What adults do. And, it frightened me.

00:48:43:23 - 00:49:07:03
Speaker 4
And on one level, I mean, there's so much that goes on with that as an addict, outside of just that part of it. But that part of it really hit me. Never mind the fact, you know, that, you know, the the marriage vows and all the other stuff I was violating doing that. And then, believe me, Tami, and I've had this discussion.

00:49:07:03 - 00:49:13:05
Speaker 4
I've told her everything. So it's not like I'm breaking any news to my to my wife.

00:49:13:07 - 00:49:14:14
Speaker 1
This is the place to do it.

00:49:14:19 - 00:49:16:05
Speaker 2
But right.

00:49:16:07 - 00:49:42:23
Speaker 4
But I'm just saying that, Men that do this don't realize -- you don't realize, I didn't I mean, why would I think that? And then you think about the porn sites. You just said the only fans. Only fans. I'm sure 90% of the 100% of the men that go to these only fans, they think they're there voluntarily and just doing raising money and so what?

00:49:43:01 - 00:50:04:23
Speaker 4
And then you look at all these other, whether it's, chat or bait or strip chat or all these other websites where the girls are on camera, what is the percentage of them that are there against their will? No. And how many of them are there? You know, because they're adults. And doing what? You know, what they feel like they should do.

00:50:05:00 - 00:50:31:05
Speaker 4
It is I see the. The pushback coming from the consumer. Yep. Who says, hey, because everybody, you know, it's like if you accuse somebody of when they're looting and you say you're stealing, no, stealing is wrong. Everybody was doing what I was doing and everybody was taking washing machines and whatever out of that store, so I wasn't stealing.

00:50:31:05 - 00:50:37:21
Speaker 4
So stop calling me a thief. And now you're looking at people who are consuming these, these girls.

00:50:37:22 - 00:50:38:19
Speaker 3
Yep.

00:50:38:21 - 00:50:59:15
Speaker 4
Online. There's no contact or anything, and they're telling you to stay away because these people are here. So that. And then the girls that you rescue again, obviously some are grateful, some not so grateful. And like you said, they go back to the life Yep.

00:50:59:17 - 00:51:31:21
Speaker 3
There's been girls. We've recovered 3 or 4 different times, especially when you start talking about some of the younger teenage girls. They'll they'll run and come back and run and come back and run and come back and and we just had a court case actually down in Broward County, Florida, of a young lady that took because of Covid, it took several years for this case to be adjudicated, but we got involved in it because it involved a 14 year old girl that was just a runaway.

00:51:31:23 - 00:51:50:19
Speaker 3
And so we we got involved because this was like the 10th or 11th time that particular month. She'd run away. And it was really kind of the same thing all the time. She'd run, you'd find her at the home of her older boyfriend, and you'd tell her to go home. She got home, and then she'd get out and run again the next day.

00:51:50:20 - 00:52:22:00
Speaker 3
So we sent one of our guys there, and he went, knocked on the door of the boyfriend, and girl wasn't there. And he calls me and he says, hey, man, something's not right. This girl's not here. This guy's being squirrely. You know? So fast forward 12 hours later, we find her at the home of a 60 year old man or 67 year old man, where she was having sex with him.

00:52:22:02 - 00:52:49:23
Speaker 3
And this was being videotaped when law enforcement raided his house. They found, I think, 4 or 5 other minors on his computer. He was bringing in older women. So this a girl to show this younger girl how he liked it? And that's, you know, a habitual runaway. That girl has since gone back now several times, even though she was a habitual runaway.

00:52:49:23 - 00:52:55:12
Speaker 3
But that's. I think we've recovered her twice more since then. So that's an example of it.

00:52:55:12 - 00:52:57:02
Speaker 4
Whose request?

00:52:57:04 - 00:53:18:01
Speaker 3
Her parents and the grandmother who she's living with. The grandmother who she's living with. And listen, the the Broward Sheriff's Office has done wonderful work on this case, like the I can't say enough about BSO and their detectives and everything they've done on that case. That kind of becomes a community effort. But once again, you can see why.

00:53:18:03 - 00:54:00:01
Speaker 3
You can see why some detectives, they'll go to the unit or the missing child unit, and they'll stay a year and say, I'm done because it's frustrating. It's it's hard work because you're out there at all hours of the night. You're away from your family on holidays, you're away from your family in the evenings, you're gone for 3 or 4 days at a time on the streets, and then you finally get to somebody and you think that they're going to be so grateful, and you get the double tall man and cursed out and that's it's it's interesting because I'll be honest, when the one survivor I was talking to, she told me, and I'm actually

00:54:00:03 - 00:54:22:08
Speaker 3
good friends with her to this day, we actually formed a friendship out of this, and part of it is because she was actually willing to tell me what I didn't want to hear, and damaged my fragile ego a little bit. Right when she told me, you're not going to be the hero and you're stupid, she says, if you think that, that's what's going to happen.

00:54:22:10 - 00:54:27:13
Speaker 4
And so she again and I where we said you'd think, why wouldn't you be grateful.

00:54:27:13 - 00:54:28:03
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:54:28:05 - 00:54:52:06
Speaker 1
Yeah. But well so I was thinking about one. I really appreciate your vulnerability with everything you shared because, you know, I've struggled. I have the same feeling. I, women aren't as vocal about it, but I struggled with porn for years. And to think that I was contributing to tracking or trafficking is just it's so painful and hurtful and you don't even.

00:54:52:06 - 00:55:07:23
Speaker 1
I didn't even realize. I thought it was like you were talking about, like, everybody's looting, so who cares? It's got to be. And I thought in my head I was like, it's going to be clicks and views and monetization, and they probably have tons of money in. And it's just that's not the place. So I really appreciate your vulnerability.

00:55:07:23 - 00:55:36:18
Speaker 1
And then my second thing is, how do you deal with at home? Because I know some people that are prosecutors for like sexual children, crime, sex crimes with children and it's like really negatively impacted their relationship with their own kids. You think that it would be like, oh, I'd appreciate them more. I'd love them more. But it's actually made their relationship with their kids harder and also made intimacy with their spouses significantly harder.

00:55:36:20 - 00:55:43:01
Speaker 1
So how do you navigate, like you're saying, like this hero complex?

00:55:43:03 - 00:56:06:16
Speaker 4
Yeah, we're we're going to be interviewing a guy coming up that was undercover, with the, motorcycle gangs. And he would go home, after hanging out with the strip clubs, all this stuff, and go home to Macallan, where he lived and have Bible study and to stay with his church group. And how do you compartmentalize? That's what the question to me was.

00:56:06:16 - 00:56:15:06
Speaker 4
Yeah, because that's one of the questions I wanted to ask Scott coming up. And, well, how do you shut it down and go home? So I met your wife. She's a saint.

00:56:15:06 - 00:56:45:02
Speaker 3
The the first thing is. The stuff that we have to look at, especially when it comes to the child exploitation stuff. Right. The stuff that involves young kids and the violence and the horrific stuff you see there. If you don't find healthy ways to deal with some of this stuff, it will eat your soul and it will contribute to things like alcoholism, depression, all the bad things.

00:56:45:04 - 00:56:47:00
Speaker 4
It's got to turn your faith against humanity.

00:56:47:00 - 00:57:07:18
Speaker 3
And it does. And this is one of the reasons why I'm so grateful for my team, like we discussed earlier, because they help me get my faith in humanity back. My team, my board, everybody that surrounds me helps me get that back daily. But I also think that healthy coping mechanisms and this is where we discussed earlier the the whole comedy thing.

00:57:07:18 - 00:57:25:01
Speaker 3
This is why I got so into comedy years ago. I don't go home at night. I don't have much time to watch TV anyway. But when I go home and watch TV, it's not the violent blow ‘em up shows. Serious shows. I don't need any of that. I get enough of that. You're living it in the real world.

00:57:25:01 - 00:57:28:01
Speaker 2
World right here. I turn on Jack Reacher, I turn.

00:57:28:01 - 00:57:53:18
Speaker 3
On, I turn on the sitcoms. That's how I found Jeff. I used to scroll and watch Drybar comedy all the time. And that's comedy. And laughing has has been what's been my outlet for all of this. And trying to keep a positive light. And I'm also, I have one vice in this world and that is sports. So I'm a sports junkie.

00:57:53:18 - 00:58:13:23
Speaker 3
Who is your team? It depends on what sport we're talking about. Now we're in the middle of the hockey playoffs. So that's the Florida Panthers right now. So but that's so those are my healthy outlets. I focus on that stuff and I try not to, in my personal life, get involved in all the super serious stuff. Right?

00:58:14:01 - 00:58:46:03
Speaker 3
I don't want to sit here and and it's kind of funny because I've done a lot of the, the true crime podcasts, and the market for that is insane. And they've done a great job, and I'm very grateful for all my opportunities that those people have given me. But I never been able to wrap my mind around the the people that want to sit and listen to all the negative things that happen to other people all day.

00:58:46:03 - 00:58:47:05
Speaker 3
The serial killers, I'll.

00:58:47:05 - 00:59:07:15
Speaker 4
Tell you when I when I got hooked on. So I'm going to defend myself when I got hooked on true crime. And again, I didn't maybe three months out of my life, but I was addicted to it. And I realized this. I slept through all this. All these cases went on while I was alive, and I know nothing about them.

00:59:07:17 - 00:59:24:09
Speaker 4
That's what blew me away. And now John Wayne Gacy I knew about because I was living it. Yeah. I used to drive by the house on my way to a comedy club, and I'd see all the dirt out in front, and it was eerie because you're going. You're thinking of all the lives that were taken out of that basement. But that one, I was aware of.

00:59:24:10 - 00:59:37:14
Speaker 4
Yep. But the vast majority of them, I got when I was like, Tami and I would look at each other and go, Holy cow, that was like eight years ago. I mean, where were we? Why wasn't this, like on the news? And I'm sure it was. Yeah. Locally.

00:59:37:14 - 01:00:03:21
Speaker 3
But I've got so many friends that are true crime podcast freaks and they're always asking me, hey, did you hear about this? You hear about that? I'm like, guys, I appreciate your passion, but I try to keep my personal life very lighthearted. I don't I don't like to dive into the serious stuff and, but that's that's my coping mechanism is I just I keep my personal life very lighthearted.

01:00:03:21 - 01:00:10:11
Speaker 3
I don't get into anything that's very serious because you can only handle so much serious stuff right in your life.

01:00:10:12 - 01:00:11:06
Speaker 4
Absolutely.

01:00:11:06 - 01:00:30:21
Speaker 1
Something I've been battling with recently in faith is, you know, how the Bible will talk about the devil throwing those arrows and you get those just flashes of super inappropriate thoughts that just come out of the middle of nowhere. And I've been thinking about I have a 15 year old son recently and, 15 year old son recently.

01:00:30:22 - 01:00:34:07
Speaker 2
No, I have a 15 year old son. 15 years ago, 15 years ago.

01:00:34:09 - 01:00:58:11
Speaker 1
Recently, he's like, I think I'm ready to see Rated-r movies because I let him just barely dabble with PG 13. And I've been wondering those terrible, intrusive thoughts that we get. Would they be as graphic and as detailed if I didn't consume all of those movies, all of those podcasts, all of those cult type things? Because I love cult documentaries.

01:00:58:11 - 01:01:16:07
Speaker 1
That's my guilty pleasure. And I always think, like, would this be a fully formed thought with imagery if I didn't bring that in? So I can completely understand being like, I see so much of this in real life. I want to keep it so funny that you're even doing drybar comedy. You're like, I even want my comedy clean like that.

01:01:16:09 - 01:01:17:16
Speaker 1
I'm not bringing any any.

01:01:17:16 - 01:01:31:15
Speaker 3
I mean, I consume all sorts of comedy, I'll be honest with that. But but Drybar is one of my favorites, like I was. We were talking before and it's on my Samsung TV every night. When I turn it on before I go to bed, that's what is what's on the TV.

01:01:31:17 - 01:01:55:09
Speaker 4
It's funny, I hear that all over the country. Men, not so much the women, but the men will go. I fall asleep to you every night, and it's like, you know, what a way to go to bed laughing. So I listen to books. I was listening to Amusing Ourselves to Death last night by Neil Postman, and, I fell asleep, you know, for 15, 20 minutes, Tami plays the Hallo app at night.

01:01:55:11 - 01:02:03:05
Speaker 4
It's a prayer. And then when she falls asleep, I put on amusing herself to death, and I go to sleep.

01:02:03:07 - 01:02:06:01
Speaker 1
I feel like I'm the only person in the room falling asleep to nature.

01:02:06:01 - 01:02:06:17
Speaker 2
Well.

01:02:06:19 - 01:02:20:19
Speaker 3
So the interesting thing is, years ago, I went to a comedy show at the Improv in Miami, back when it was in Coconut Grove. And the guy that was doing the show was a hypnotist. It was a hypnotist comic.

01:02:20:20 - 01:02:22:02
Speaker 4
Tell me you didn't get hypnotized

01:02:22:04 - 01:02:50:22
Speaker 3
No, I didn’t, but he he he had some pretty good words of wisdom that I had never considered at the end of the show, and he explained how the hypnotization process work and how your mind works. And I had really never given it much thought. And he said, you know, you should always try to if you're going to leave something on the TV or on the radio when you fall asleep, have it be something positive, because your brain is absorbing that whether you know it or not.

01:02:51:03 - 01:03:10:11
Speaker 3
Right. Very much like the the, the subtle thoughts of the hypnotism. Right. And he said, I want everybody to go home and think about it. Think about the time that you fell asleep to a murder mystery or something negative and dark. And he's like, if you can remember the last time you had a bad dream or something, that was scary.

01:03:10:13 - 01:03:26:02
Speaker 3
Yeah. He's like, I'm willing to bet that it was probably while you were falling asleep to that show. If you if you said if you can fall asleep to something positive or something good, you're going to wake up in a better mood. You're going to wake up, with a more positive attitude, ready to take on the day.

01:03:26:04 - 01:03:33:10
Speaker 3
And whether that's true or not or a bunch of hocus pocus makes sense. It it seems to work for me.

01:03:33:16 - 01:03:54:09
Speaker 4
It's number four in my five questions in my book. Are we there yet? Shameless plug. What voices do you listen to? And my theory is garbage in, garbage out. Yeah. And we live in a great time. You can dial up the greatest minds that God has ever produced on the internet. Or you can play Animal Farm.

01:03:54:11 - 01:03:58:02
Speaker 2
Yeah. So with your time, you know. Absolutely. You know.

01:03:58:02 - 01:04:22:20
Speaker 4
It's, And, so anyway, let's talk about the golf tournament. We are, the first annual, stand up, the human trafficking, golf tournament. We are partnering with the Anti-predator Project at West Haven Golf Club on June 30th. There will be a show June 29th at Zanies. Comedy Club, to raise money for your organization.

01:04:22:20 - 01:04:26:06
Speaker 4
And we're also going to try to partner with the Williamson County Sheriff's Department.

01:04:26:06 - 01:04:26:21
Speaker 3
Yes.

01:04:26:23 - 01:04:28:08
Speaker 4
And TBI, I remember.

01:04:28:11 - 01:04:29:06
Speaker 3
Yes.

01:04:29:07 - 01:04:36:03
Speaker 4
Tennesse Bureau of investigation to help them with their, their trafficking. So, you don't golf?

01:04:36:05 - 01:04:53:04
Speaker 3
Not well. Oh, the golf course will charge you extra money if I go out there and start hacking away their fairways to repair the damage that I will do. I haven't probably picked up a set of golf clubs in at least ten years. It's been a while since I've played outside of war. Unless you count of top golf.

01:04:53:06 - 01:04:57:22
Speaker 1
So I can't golf. It's been a while. I'll be there driving around the cart, making jokes. You want to drive around with me?

01:04:58:00 - 01:05:00:09
Speaker 3
Oh, man, I'll ride the passenger.

01:05:00:11 - 01:05:04:11
Speaker 4
I just love the fact that there'll be a bunch of law enforcement. The the best guys to hang with.

01:05:04:11 - 01:05:06:15
Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

01:05:06:17 - 01:05:25:18
Speaker 4
I was at, I told you this, but I'm gonna tell them this. I was in Santa Ana raising money for the, their police department at a fundraiser and the golf tournament they had live human beings, they had plastic bullets and for $25, you got to shoot plastic bullets at live humans

01:05:25:18 - 01:05:27:16
Speaker 2
You and I.

01:05:27:16 - 01:05:38:03
Speaker 4
Said I got if I ever do a tournament, I gotta do this. And I said, I wonder if we could work this out with Williamson County Sheriff now. It's fun. It's fun enough to just hit golf balls at the guy picking him up on the range.

01:05:38:04 - 01:05:38:15
Speaker 3
That's right.

01:05:38:15 - 01:05:39:19
Speaker 4
But shooting a nine mil.

01:05:40:01 - 01:05:41:11
Speaker 2
That's like.

01:05:41:13 - 01:05:43:06
Speaker 3
That takes it to a whole nother level.

01:05:43:07 - 01:05:47:05
Speaker 4
And our kids are all padded up. They were having a blast. They're. And they're running and they get.

01:05:47:05 - 01:05:49:07
Speaker 2
Hit me all my on the roller.

01:05:49:09 - 01:06:01:07
Speaker 1
Can I, can I ask 1 or 2 things and then we should probably wrap up. Would that be okay? Yeah. Who are the comedians that you're listening to at night? Besides, of course, our our perfect Jeff here.

01:06:01:07 - 01:06:04:08
Speaker 3
Oh, man. The the list is extensive.

01:06:04:10 - 01:06:08:19
Speaker 1
Give me your account. Mount Rushmore three. Top, top three. Jeff included.

01:06:08:21 - 01:06:14:03
Speaker 3
Well, this is where the dirtier side goes. Ralphie may I love Ralph.

01:06:14:04 - 01:06:15:05
Speaker 1
Oh, may he rest in peace.

01:06:15:05 - 01:06:16:12
Speaker 3
Ralphie. Ralphie, man.

01:06:16:13 - 01:06:17:16
Speaker 2
One of my.

01:06:17:18 - 01:06:20:09
Speaker 3
He's one of my favorite comics of all time.

01:06:20:09 - 01:06:21:04
Speaker 2
Yeah.

01:06:21:06 - 01:06:25:15
Speaker 3
Lately I've been listening to a lot of Bill Burr. He's funny.

01:06:25:17 - 01:06:26:13
Speaker 2
I found, but.

01:06:26:14 - 01:06:45:16
Speaker 4
During, Covid, you never heard of about I love Boston. I had to get out of there to stay sober. Know I was just back for the first time in almost 40 years and worked. I love the audiences. I love the people. Yeah, I'm. And, But yeah, as somebody said to me once, how does Bill Burr think of that stuff?

01:06:45:16 - 01:06:51:16
Speaker 4
And I go, you ever live in Boston? There's si Bill, Bill Burr on every bus stop at seven am.

01:06:51:16 - 01:06:53:08
Speaker 2
And you know.

01:06:53:10 - 01:07:05:14
Speaker 1
Oh, okay. So Ralphie May -- my husband close to this joke all the time. But Cuba diving. Yeah. Look you to go goo diving and then Bill Burr, do you have, what's your favorite Bill Burr joke? Paraphrased.

01:07:05:14 - 01:07:12:21
Speaker 3
Well, my favorite thing about Bill Burr is when he goes off about his personal life at home and frustrations.

01:07:12:21 - 01:07:14:01
Speaker 2
Well, because every.

01:07:14:01 - 01:07:16:22
Speaker 3
Every guy can vote and one can identify with.

01:07:16:22 - 01:07:22:08
Speaker 4
That. I love the line when he said his wife, because Tami says this to me all the time, how do you go from 0 to a

01:07:22:08 - 01:07:28:07
Speaker 2
hundred versus a certain? And I walk in there only 50, 50.

01:07:28:09 - 01:07:34:21
Speaker 4
The minute I go, my eyes open in the morning, I'm at 50. So I that one just crushed me. I thought it was great.

01:07:34:21 - 01:07:52:22
Speaker 3
And then then, of course, you know, Kevin Hart is one of my favorites. Gabriel Iglesias is one of my favorites. I've seen him in person several times. If you are a comedy guy or just a podcast guy and you don't enjoy Joe Rogan, you're nuts. He is one of my favorites.

01:07:52:22 - 01:08:05:22
Speaker 4
So that's where I've got this, where we found Scott, who were interviewing coming up. Yeah, was on Rogan. I called, Carollynn. I said he lives in Tennessee. I think we can get five minutes later, she goes. He's on.

01:08:06:00 - 01:08:06:21
Speaker 2
You know. I go

01:08:06:21 - 01:08:08:17
Speaker 4
Holy cow. It's nice to have young people.

01:08:08:21 - 01:08:20:00
Speaker 3
Yep. You know. Absolutely. You know, Joe Rogan is one of my favorite. You know, if you dive on other podcasts, I listen to Joe Rogan's one of my favorite podcast. Sean Ryan is another podcast I listen to quite a bit.

01:08:20:02 - 01:08:23:22
Speaker 4
Yeah, I'd love to go on here. We hear that, Sean. Yeah, I've been watching.

01:08:24:00 - 01:08:32:06
Speaker 3
So he that's, you know, that's kind of how I keep myself learning. And I do a lot of traveling. And so I've got a lot of time to listen to podcasts, a lot of times to listen to comedy.

01:08:32:08 - 01:08:35:12
Speaker 4
Well, The Who Gave Jeff Allen a Podcast? is probably on the top of your.

01:08:35:12 - 01:08:37:20
Speaker 3
List and always one of my favorite downloads.

01:08:37:20 - 01:08:44:04
Speaker 4
So now when you go on Joe Rogan, you'll say that Jeff Allen, who gave him a podcast, is my favorite.

01:08:44:06 - 01:08:58:02
Speaker 1
And then I have one more question, people. Well, one, if I think we should say if you struggle with pornography, prostitution or anything like that, you should definitely get online and check out your local Samson Society 100.

01:08:58:03 - 01:08:59:21
Speaker 4
Yes. My good friend Nate Larkin.

01:09:00:00 - 01:09:01:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely.

01:09:01:00 - 01:09:01:08
Speaker 4
Devin.

01:09:01:11 - 01:09:25:18
Speaker 1
And then, I know you probably get asked this so much, but how do people impact their local community that doesn't have the law enforcement needed besides just making a donation, which I'm sure is phenomenal. We'll have all the links to make donations to Anti-predator project. Is it city council meetings? Is it contacting your congressman? How do we make these small communities have more of an impact?

01:09:25:20 - 01:09:49:16
Speaker 3
So one thing that everybody needs to do, and I've become a bigger and bigger proponent of this over the by the last couple of years, as I travel the country and work with all these different law enforcement agencies, everybody from the federal folks to the state and local folks, and I just see the incredible lack of resources, lack of support they're being given.

01:09:49:18 - 01:10:20:06
Speaker 3
And I really would like everybody to get out, get to your local, your federal, your state level politicians and let them know we need the start backing our men and women of law enforcement that are tackling this particular topic more. They need more resources. They need more money. They need more training. We need to allocate funds to go help this particular problem because, there are some incredible men and women around the country that do this.

01:10:20:08 - 01:10:36:10
Speaker 3
And if they were given the proper resources and the proper backing from the politicians, we could have a much bigger impact. And that, to me, if people really want to make a difference, get to your local politicians, start hounding them about making a difference.

01:10:36:10 - 01:10:44:00
Speaker 4
With this one man dude. Mothers Against Drunk Drivers basically started causing these local DAs to lose elections.

01:10:44:00 - 01:10:44:14
Speaker 3
Yep.

01:10:44:16 - 01:10:54:20
Speaker 4
They would put their, record online for how many drunk drivers they let off and plead out. And, when you start costing them elections, they'll start paying attention to issues.

01:10:54:20 - 01:11:11:14
Speaker 3
Yep. And that's the that's the biggest way that we can, you know, make an impact. And then, of course, make sure you get out there and support your local law enforcement support. If you've got a good sheriff in town, that's that's running things, get a vote for him, make sure he stays around at the next election.

01:11:11:16 - 01:11:27:16
Speaker 4
And go play in a golf tour. Absolutely. You can help Williamson County Sheriff's Department and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations, as well as, the anti-predator project.org. I had a commercial with.com, so I wanted to go I wanted to put a little blurb in there to go.

01:11:27:16 - 01:11:29:11
Speaker 3
The good about that is

01:11:29:13 - 01:11:31:10
Speaker 2
Or gee.

01:11:31:12 - 01:11:40:22
Speaker 3
The good news is we own both domains, so they'll say, oh yeah, this. Oh, so we own them both. Our website guy was much smarter than me when he put that together.

01:11:40:22 - 01:11:52:07
Speaker 4
Well, my, when I got my, Jeff Allen comedy.com, I, I wanted Jeff allen.com and that was a porn portal. So, somebody owned it and I didn't, so.

01:11:52:11 - 01:11:53:15
Speaker 2
All right, well.

01:11:53:17 - 01:11:54:22
Speaker 4
I thought of all these Gaither.

01:11:54:22 - 01:11:58:05
Speaker 2
People, I found that, oh.

01:11:58:07 - 01:12:00:16
Speaker 4
He's got another life.

01:12:01:12 - 01:12:23:21
Speaker 1
Okay, so I know we have to wrap up, but I just so desperately want this to be a clip that we could put out to our following. Could you said New York daughter, ten years old. Don't let her on the internet. Could you just explain to parents with young children why this is a gateway to trafficking for kids on social media?

01:12:23:23 - 01:12:46:05
Speaker 3
So the technology conversation is a loaded one, right? Because in our world, technology is not going anywhere. In fact, not only is it not going anywhere every day, it's going to become a bigger and bigger part of our lives. We've seen it with AI, we've seen with everything else. So I'm gonna date myself in age here a little bit, right when I was young.

01:12:46:05 - 01:13:05:11
Speaker 3
And I'm sure when you guys were young, the conversation about stranger danger was very much different, right? You could, if you saw a stranger at the park or outside your school, you could go tell a police officer, you could go tell a teacher. And then at home at night, you could come home and you could lock your windows, and you can lock your doors and you're safe.

01:13:05:15 - 01:13:31:17
Speaker 3
Right? That's not the case anymore, because you can come home and you can lock your doors and you can lock your windows. And the bad guys still come in through the smartphones, through the laptops, through the tablets. So the real key here is a couple of things. Number one, the common sense is a good starter right. Everything is going good until it's not right.

01:13:31:20 - 01:13:44:17
Speaker 3
There's no reason a six, seven, eight year old should have an iPhone or smartphone of any kind. Why? They they have. We all survived without them.

01:13:44:17 - 01:13:46:18
Speaker 4
Yeah. And it's a super computer.

01:13:46:20 - 01:13:47:04
Speaker 3
That's the.

01:13:47:04 - 01:13:52:03
Speaker 4
Thing. I mean, when you think about what it can do I mean it's, it's so far.

01:13:52:06 - 01:14:03:12
Speaker 3
Well, and I put it to parents because I always, I always get the pushback from the parents, like, I'll go talk to school events and PTA meetings. And I always get pushback. And they say, well, all the other kids are using it.

01:14:03:12 - 01:14:10:09
Speaker 4
Yeah, my son's pushing back. My granddaughter's 11. And he he lets her on TikTok. All she's posting Snapchat videos all the time.

01:14:10:09 - 01:14:34:14
Speaker 3
So I give them I give him this example. All right, let's take your kid. Let's go downtown. Let's drop them off at a room full of 100 random people and let them babysit for the next eight hours. You okay with that? Well that's stupid. Well, if you give your kid a smartphone, you're giving every person with bad intentions unfettered access to them 24 hours a day.

01:14:34:14 - 01:14:43:10
Speaker 3
When you're not watching, when you're not paying attention, they're talking to them. They're texting with them. They come in with roadblocks and all these other video games.

01:14:43:10 - 01:14:53:21
Speaker 4
Also, it gets to the point where if you're not paying attention to them, they're hearing all those things. Yep. Your parents don't understand you, I understand you. There you.

01:14:53:21 - 01:15:13:12
Speaker 3
Go. You know, and that's and that's where it comes in. So first and foremost, it's common sense. Young kids don't need to have unfettered access to smart devices. If you've if they need to use a laptop for school, guess what? They can use it in the kitchen where everybody's walking around. They can do their homework at night. They don't need to have it up in their rooms, right?

01:15:13:17 - 01:15:22:07
Speaker 3
They don't need to have their phones in their rooms at night. So common sense is the first one. The second thing is.

01:15:22:08 - 01:15:48:07
Speaker 3
Just be more involved in your kids lives. Know what they're doing, know who they're talking to. Get them involved in activities that take them out from behind the screen. Get them involved in sports, music, acting or anything. Something that gives them somewhere to do, something to focus on, that they're not always behind the screen. Right. And then the third thing is, like I said, technology is not going anywhere.

01:15:48:08 - 01:16:12:11
Speaker 3
But it almost becomes like the safe sex conversation, right? At some point in time, you've got to trust your kids to be responsible and make right decisions. So we've got to teach our kids how to be responsible on the internet, what to look for as far as when people contact them, how people talk to them, the places they go and visit, the things that they put out there.

01:16:12:13 - 01:16:40:12
Speaker 3
It goes far beyond just the trafficking side of things, right? What people are understanding is once you put stuff out there, it never comes back. So we've got kids that are putting things out on the internet now that want to go apply for a job ten years from now, and the things that they're putting out there, people are going to look back and say, man, well, you know, I'd love to hire you, but you're sniffing a line of cocaine ten years ago right there, you know, and we put it out at the party.

01:16:40:12 - 01:16:58:09
Speaker 3
So it comes down to also teaching our children how to be responsible with the internet and how to be responsible with smart devices and computers, because they're very, very powerful things. And one mistake with one of them can impact your whole life negatively.

01:16:58:11 - 01:16:59:20
Speaker 4
Yeah, well, it's wise.

01:16:59:22 - 01:17:05:18
Speaker 1
We'll try I so I'm grateful. I'm so grateful that you brought Trent on, Jeff. I mean, this has been so.

01:17:05:22 - 01:17:06:12
Speaker 3
Obvious.

01:17:06:16 - 01:17:18:11
Speaker 1
And it's going to make me cry. But most importantly, of everything I heard today, tell your children you're proud of them. I mean, that's step one. They could end up trafficked or worse a comedian.

01:17:18:13 - 01:17:19:17
Speaker 2
Yeah.

01:17:19:19 - 01:17:24:15
Speaker 4
I remember when my dad told me, he goes, oh, you're really a comedian. I was 33 years.

01:17:24:15 - 01:17:26:19
Speaker 2
Old, 11 years.

01:17:26:19 - 01:17:36:17
Speaker 4
into it. I laid in the bed and I told Tami, I got, I got it. She goes, what? I said, approval from the old man. She goes, are you whole now? I go, it's about 33 years

01:17:36:17 - 01:17:38:12
Speaker 2
too late.

01:17:38:14 - 01:17:39:23
Speaker 4
But there is something to that.

01:17:40:02 - 01:17:42:05
Speaker 3
There is absolutely. Yes, absolutely.

01:17:42:06 - 01:17:43:04
Speaker 1
God bless you.

01:17:43:08 - 01:17:46:04
Speaker 4
Yeah. Thank you. Trent. 30th was.

01:17:46:04 - 01:17:46:16
Speaker 3
The 30th.

01:17:46:16 - 01:17:47:05
Speaker 4
Golf club.

01:17:47:05 - 01:17:48:23
Speaker 3
Come out and play some golf.

01:17:49:01 - 01:17:53:01
Speaker 4
And other than the scribe, hit the button. Share, right?

01:17:53:02 - 01:17:53:21
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.

01:17:53:23 - 01:17:59:10
Speaker 1
Leave nice comments. Mean comments. Go visit Trent's website. Follow everything. We're going to.

01:17:59:10 - 01:18:00:18
Speaker 3
Have this on our social media too.

01:18:01:00 - 01:18:10:05
Speaker 1
Yeah. You guys have social. They have social media. Follow them everywhere. All the links will be down below on whatever thing you're streaming this. God bless you guys. Have a great day.