#CinemaJourney
#BuildingBad
#BuildingBad
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Short filmTranscript
00:01A strange vessel is seized in the Pacific Ocean.
00:04That's going to be hard to get on!
00:06How was this bizarre, yet impressive craft
00:08deployed in a massive drug smuggling operation?
00:12Authorities discover hundreds of stolen vehicles
00:14at the Port of Montreal.
00:16This was the largest car ring bust in Canadian history.
00:20The investigation reveals that high-tech criminal ingenuity
00:23has turned Canada into one of the world's leading suppliers
00:26of black market vehicles.
00:29Cops raid a drug lab in Missouri
00:32and find an innovative new way to cook methamphetamine.
00:36The meth that was on the streets was lower cost, better quality,
00:39and much more addictive than it had been before.
00:44The world's most inventive criminal minds.
00:48Lawless ingenuity, born out of greed.
00:52From back alleys to the high seas.
00:55Secret structures, custom-built vehicles, high-tech innovation.
01:02What happens when engineering genies ends up on the wrong side of the law
01:08that starts Building Bad?
01:11On June 8, 2019, United States authorities on patrol in the international waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean
01:18spotted a strange half-submerged vessel moving through the waves.
01:33Approaching the boat at high speed, the Americans were stunned by what they encountered.
01:42This was a huge makeshift, handcrafted submarine.
01:59And the bizarre yet impressive vessel was not the only discovery.
02:03It had an armed crew of four and three tons of cocaine concealed inside.
02:08This is a vessel referred to as a narco-sub, and it was intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard.
02:14There have been rumors about cartels using homemade submarines since the 1990s,
02:20but nobody in law enforcement circles had ever laid eyes on one until 2006.
02:26Clearly, these types of vessels have been extremely successful in evading authorities,
02:32especially when it's believed that more than a hundred had been built by the time of this subs capture.
02:39Columbia produces more than 70% of the world's cocaine, making it by far the biggest supplier on the planet.
02:48The United States is the global leader in the drugs consumption,
02:51spending over $28 billion in cocaine annually.
02:55It's a match made in narcotics heaven.
02:58But the ongoing challenge for the cartels is getting their supply into the huge American market.
03:04Historically, cocaine has been transported by every means of conveyance you can think of,
03:09by land, air and sea.
03:11From cars and trucks, to private jets and cargo planes, to fishing boats and large ships.
03:17With so much money on the line, criminal organizations were willing to do whatever they could to get their hands on the cash.
03:24During the 1980s, go-fast vessels, or GFV, as they are known to law enforcement,
03:31became the preferred mode of transportation for the Medellin cartel and their associates.
03:37They ranged between 28 to 48 feet in length and could travel almost 60 miles per hour in ideal conditions.
03:44These kinds of speed boats could be easily acquired without raising any suspicion.
03:48They were affordable and were small enough that they could operate outside the commercial transit and immigration systems.
03:54A small crew or even single driver could get the job done if they were careful to avoid radar and coast guard surveillance.
04:03Artisanal boatyards began popping up in the jungles of Columbia and other cocaine hotspots of South America.
04:09These were off-grid sites where amateur boat builders could modify and outfit go-fast vessels to maximize speed,
04:16cargo capacity, and radar evasion.
04:19The GFVs being pumped out of these boatyards were so successful that in 1999,
04:25they contributed to the creation of the Joint Interagency Task Force South,
04:29which united every U.S. military and law enforcement branch and 15 separate nations.
04:35It was such a problem for authorities that the branches of the Coast Guard created their own high-speed inflatable boats
04:42that were accompanied by armed helicopters to try and stop them.
04:47With the new task force in place and agencies coordinating their efforts,
04:51go-fast vessels were easier to track and capture.
04:54Authorities were seizing millions of dollars in drugs and cash from these vessels every year.
05:00Traffickers needed something fast but less visible, like a submarine.
05:04But how would these highly surveilled criminals get their hands on an actual sub?
05:08It's not like there were decommissioned U-boats floating around.
05:13Deep in the jungles of South America, the cartels got toward constructing submarine prototypes.
05:19Traditional subs were made of heavy metals, welded, and sealed to withstand water pressure.
05:25But this construction made them heavy and highly visible to radar.
05:29And the Narcos didn't have access to the necessary materials, even if they wanted to pursue a similar design.
05:36What they did have at their disposal was a stock of speedboat hulls, motors, and materials like plywood, fiberglass, and other synthetics that could maintain a lightweight structure and were already proven to evade most detection systems.
05:52So, they experimented with wrapping existing gutted boat hulls in fiberglass.
05:59Unfortunately, these submarine designs weren't 100% watertight due to their makeshift squared access hatches.
06:07But they did create the illusion of a submarine. Even if the vessels could not be fully submerged, they just needed them to sit low enough in the water that they could travel more discreetly.
06:18The simplest and most low-tech solution to get the vessels to sink lower into the water was literally to weigh them down.
06:27They would load them with cargo until they sat as close to the surface as possible without going under it.
06:33And the more cargo they delivered, the more money they could make. So, it was a win-win situation.
06:40Weighing some of the vessels down further were massive fuel tanks that could give them a range of over 1,000 miles,
06:46depending on what kind of motor was used in the construction.
06:51When it came to the engines, the boat builders could make one of two choices.
06:54If they maintained outboard motors commonly associated with most speedboats, the easiest design choice.
07:00Mid-sea refueling and maintenance would be more difficult, and the low position of the vessel, the water, risked the engine's flooding.
07:07Alternatively, the motors could be encased in the fiberglass shell too, effectively making them inboard motors,
07:14which is resolving the crew's access issues, but raising a new dangerous one, toxic fumes.
07:23Sadly, there have been a number of cases of crews dying at sea due to these ventilation issues.
07:31These first narco subs, known to law enforcement as low-profile vessels, or LPVs,
07:36had the shape of classic powerboats or yachts, but were far from luxurious.
07:41They were crammed and hot with a crew of two to five men.
07:45There were no galleys, no bedrooms, only a porthole and a shared toilet, if you were lucky.
07:50These were purpose-built, one-way trip vessels that maximized cargo space, engine power, and profits.
07:58And their overall hydrodynamic design, painted finish, made them much more difficult to spot, let alone capture.
08:04Even after the fall of the Medellin Cartel in the 1990s, the remaining players in South and Central America understood the importance of these vessels to their business model.
08:17It wasn't long before they were churning out roughly 100 homemade narco subs a year.
08:22A huge reason why these designs were so successful is the fact that they had a self-destruct feature and were scuttled or intentionally sunk as soon as they were offloaded at their destination, leaving no evidence behind.
08:39That's pretty genius.
08:41By 2009, the U.S. estimated that they were only able to intercept 14% of cocaine shipments via narco sub.
08:49In response, federal prosecutors in Florida started to invoke a little-known law, which allowed the arrest of smugglers caught in international waters.
08:59The expanded scope of the U.S. authorities posed a major threat to the cartel's ability to avoid arrest and prosecution.
09:08They would have to go back to the drawing board and devise a new and improved vessel design to stay one step ahead of the law.
09:15Something had to be done.
09:17With speed in mind, they turned to references like the cigarette racing boats of the 1960s.
09:23Famously fast, needle-fit designs that cut through the waves rather than bounced over them.
09:28So boatbuilders got to work making their vessels longer and thinner to take advantage of that hydrodynamic design.
09:34Only fully wrapped.
09:35This version of a narco sub averaged 65 feet long with a 1.6 ton cargo space.
09:43However, one was discovered that measured an extraordinary 100 feet long, 10 feet wide, and a carrying capacity of up to 3 tons.
09:51That's an impressive haul of product.
09:55Known as very slender vessels or VSVs, these designs could support three or more motors, either inboard or outboard, to take their speed to the next level.
10:05Some could even make a 2,000-mile trip from Colombia to Mexico or Guatemala in only four days.
10:12For a while, these vessels were effective, but they weren't perfect, and there were always people lurking in the weeds looking to get in on the action.
10:23Experienced speedboat driver Oscar Moreno Ricardo seized the opportunity to make some major profits.
10:29He capitalized on his criminal connections to try his hand at boatbuilding, and he quickly earned the nickname the king of narco subs.
10:38Boatbuilders like Moreno saw a market for fully submersible vessels, and their work was so in demand and respected that they were able to work with a number of different drug trafficking organizations.
10:47Looking for other design options, the cartel began experimenting with traditional tube-like submarine vessels made out of fiberglass, and the results show promise.
10:59Once they had a fully airtight superstructure, they needed to add ballasts.
11:05These are controlled cavities that allow a vessel to take on or release water to affect its buoyancy.
11:12This gave narco sub-drivers the ability to control when and how they surfaced to load and unload the precious cargo.
11:21These fully submersible vessels, or FSVs, could travel between one to three meters below the waves, while maintaining the safety of the cargo.
11:30The first attempts at fully submersible vessels ran on diesel, so even if the body of the vessel was the water, the engine still required some kind of intake and exhaust system that had to sit above the water so that the engine wouldn't choke or flood.
11:47These designs were known as snorkel subs because of the mast or pipe that remained above the water.
11:55Snorkel subs were so successful that authorities were only able to intercept 5% of them when 30 to 40% of drugs coming to the US were arriving this way.
12:05The cartel's dogged ingenuity and financial investment in the development of narco subs was paying huge dividends.
12:15These narco subs cost an average of 1 million US dollars to construct, and that price tag can sort at 2 million for the larger versions.
12:22But they carry hundreds of billions of dollars worth of product on every voyage, so clearly the potential profit outweighs the investment and the risk.
12:33In 2022, Colombian police captured Oscar Moreno Ricardo, the rumored king of narco subs, hoping that his arrest would be a major blow to the cocaine trafficking system.
12:43But by then, narco subdesign knowledge had spread throughout the smuggling community, and it was unstoppable.
12:52The high seas game of cat and mouse between the cartels and authorities continues.
12:57On April 2nd, 2024, Canadian authorities seized nearly 600 stolen vehicles bound for international black markets at the Port of Montreal.
13:17With an approximate total worth of 34.5 million dollars, this was one of the most valuable stolen car seizures the world had ever seen, and the largest in Canadian history.
13:29This wasn't the result of a tiny crew that was just really accomplished.
13:33This was a massive, coordinated effort, including local thieves, allegedly bribed officials, and organized crime groups with their fingers in all the right pots.
13:44For decades, car theft has been a growing problem in the entire country.
13:53In 2022, in Toronto alone, more than 12,000 vehicles were stolen in a single year.
14:00That number translates to roughly one car every 40 minutes.
14:06It's gotten so bad that Canada is known as a supplier country in international car theft circles.
14:11So, how are car thieves in Ontario nabbing so many cars that end up halfway around the world in the blink of an eye?
14:21Theft became a problem almost immediately after the car was invented.
14:25Some of the earliest models didn't even have full doors, let alone locks.
14:30So anyone could just hop in, turn the ignition, and take off.
14:33But as cars became more commonplace, car manufacturers had to adjust to the criminal threat.
14:40Vehicles were modified to have features like removable steering wheels.
14:44And in 1910, the key was introduced, even though they weren't widely used until the 40s.
14:49From keys and locks, and eventually alarms and trackers, automobile technology has evolved right alongside crafty car thieves.
14:59They figured out how to pick locks, jimmy doors, and hotwire the latest models for a quick getaway by mastering a specific set of physical skills.
15:07But things were about to change.
15:10In the mid-2000s, technological advancement in car design led to the invention of digital keys,
15:17which allowed drivers to open and start their vehicles with the push of a button.
15:21For seasoned thieves, these keyless systems were a major and loud pain in the neck.
15:27Since most of these models came with standard factory installed alarms.
15:33Keyless systems are based on short-range radio signals.
15:38The key, or the fob, is a transponder that picks up and responds to a signal from the car.
15:45And when it's engaged, the car verifies that unique signal or serial number from the key.
15:50And if it's a match, the door is open.
15:53If you don't have the key, you don't have the car.
15:56Thieves needed to invent something that could intercept and interfere with that communication.
16:00The problem was that these key fobs had a range of only a few feet, meaning the key had to be next to the vehicle for the system to work.
16:10There were plenty of desirable cars parked along suburban streets and in driveways.
16:15But the keys to these cars were more often than not locked safe inside the house.
16:19So they had to figure out a way to boost that faint signal from the key inside the house so that it could reach the car.
16:27Tech-savvy criminals started turning household items like wires and antennas into their own portable radio systems that could trick cars into thinking their keys were present.
16:38They were a simplified two-part system that required an amplifier and a transmitter to be used in tandem.
16:47Crews worked in pairs.
16:49One person stood next to the car with the transmitter that was picked up by the receiver of that car.
16:54The car then issued an authentication challenge to that transmitter, assuming that it was the car's key.
17:02Then that challenge was sent to the other thief's amplifier device.
17:07The other thief stands near the front of the house, which is probably where the key is, and waves that amplifier around trying to get the car and the key connected.
17:15So once that signal reaches the key and the key signal goes back to the car, bang, you're in.
17:22What used to take 10 to 20 minutes to get into that car now takes less than 30 seconds.
17:27It's pretty impressive.
17:29Over the years, the success of these systems has made them so popular that they can now be bought online for a relatively low price.
17:37These modern versions are a lot more sleek, they're less conspicuous, they're easier to use, but they all have this one major basic problem, and that is that you never get the key.
17:48So once the car is running, it works, but if you turn it off or if it runs out of gas, it's dead, because without the key, you can never start it again.
17:56This presented an issue for thieves that needed to be addressed.
18:00But as it turns out, technological advancement on the part of car manufacturers solved the problem for them.
18:09All new cars have onboard diagnostic systems, or OBD.
18:15These car computers have standardized digital ports beneath the dash.
18:20Getting access to these ports provides real-time interactive data about the vehicle.
18:25These ports have proven to be a major vulnerability.
18:30A quick Google search will show that portable professional tablets with OBD cables are readily available online for around $1,000.
18:40While much more expensive than the simple relay system, when used together, the relay attack gains access to the car,
18:48and the OBD tablet overrides the key issue by reprogramming a dummy fob in minutes.
18:58In January of 2022, a six-month-long investigation around Toronto led to the recovery of 217 vehicles hijacked using OBD systems.
19:08Though police charged 24 low-level people in connection with the seizures, the major players could not be identified.
19:15This issue of organized car theft was so widespread that some car owners had their vehicles targeted three or more times.
19:22And many have even had their replacement cars stolen.
19:26Car owners looking to prevent theft invested in everything from enhanced surveillance systems to retractable driveway bollards,
19:34and even low-tech solutions like the club.
19:36Enterprising thieves needed to come up with more efficient workarounds that didn't require multiple steps like relay or reprogramming attacks.
19:46It's easy to assume that those improvements in design are great for the consumer, the person that buys the car.
19:52But that Internet of Things approach to design has had a lot of accidental and unintended consequences.
19:58And car thieves have always been very quick to jump on any opportunity.
20:04By studying new schematics and vehicle design plans, they figured out a new bypass system similar to the OBD attack,
20:12except it doesn't require key access to enter the vehicle at all.
20:17Now, it's just one centralized attack from the outside.
20:21Modern cars, especially luxury models, are designed with smart features throughout to make the user experience smooth, connected and enjoyable.
20:32This means that most major components of the car, if not all, have been designed to communicate and connect with the car's overall computer system.
20:40And a majority of those connections are all inside the car.
20:43But there is this one major vulnerability that the car thieves found, and that was the headlamps.
20:56Smart thieves figured out that behind the headlamp modules of modern cars is an access port to the controller area network bus, or CAN bus,
21:06the central network that allows communication with the vehicle's smart components.
21:10On February 11th, 2024, a car owner rushed out to her driveway when she noticed one of her car headlights turned on.
21:19The thieves had hacked the CAN bus system of her Lexus by disconnecting the other headlight.
21:25Car theft has become a billion-dollar cash cow for organized crime groups with very little downside.
21:32And it's getting worse.
21:33From 2023 to 2024, car theft and car-related home invasions in Toronto rose a staggering 400%.
21:42But to be this successful, it can't be random.
21:47This is made-to-order crime.
21:50Scouts identify potential target vehicles, then those vehicle IDs are sent to higher-ups,
21:57who decide if the car is needed by their end users.
22:00Once the buyer is confirmed, the car is scheduled for a pickup by any means necessary.
22:07Then within 24 to 48 hours, it will end up in a shipping container at the Port of Montreal bound for international waters.
22:15It's shocking to car owners and infuriating to police, who have had very little success stopping these thieves.
22:21Another problem is, this isn't just profitable for the criminals.
22:27Insurance companies have had to jack up their rates.
22:29It's unclear if they're making more money as a result.
22:32And then, if you look at the companies that make and sell cars, well, they're making and selling more cars.
22:38So, there are a lot of people making a lot of money off of this problem.
22:41For now, coordinated police efforts will continue, and concerned car owners will do their best to protect their property.
22:50But, until insulated, well-paid major players of organized crime groups can be identified, cars will continue to go missing from the streets of Toronto, only to be found on the other side of the planet.
23:04The nearly 600 vehicles stopped at the Port of Montreal in 2024 was a serious blow to organized car theft, doubling the number of seizures at the Port for the year.
23:16But, it's anyone's guess how many cars are still getting through successfully.
23:34On February 2, 1993, police raided a bizarre drug laboratory in Battlefield, Missouri, and discovered a scene unlike anything they had ever witnessed before.
23:46Instead of beakers and Bunsen burners, they found garbage bags full of used cold medicine, jars of kerosene, lighter fluid, and a strange yellowish cake in the oven.
23:56It looked more like a messy garage than anything else, but this was a new fangled meth lab, and a man named Bob Pialet was arrested on site.
24:08Until this bus, police understood methamphetamine production to be a highly scientific process, which required a complex setup of laboratory equipment, tools, and glassware.
24:17Even the large-scale super labs of the 1980s, run by biker gangs like the Hells Angels or the Bandidos, still required relatively traditional lab setups in the barns, the warehouses where they operated.
24:30And, given the specialized nature of the work, they knew to employ actual chemists to execute their technical process.
24:37So how did this highly specialized chemical process go from major laboratories to illegal tabletop trailer setups in middle America?
24:48Methamphetamine is a stimulant that can be snorted, smoked, or dissolved in liquid to be injected.
24:55It causes a boost of energy and alertness that can last for many hours.
25:00Unlike other drugs like cocaine and heroin, meth doesn't originate from any plant at all.
25:06It is a purely synthetic, 100% lab-created product.
25:09That's part of what makes it so tricky.
25:11Plant-based drugs are a little bit limited by their ingredients.
25:15For cocaine, you have to have coca plant.
25:18For opium, you need poppies.
25:20But meth has no geographic limitations.
25:23And that also means a lot of those ingredients are more affordable.
25:26Methamphetamine was first synthesized in 1893 by a Japanese chemist, and it was used as a prescription medical treatment for asthma and narcolepsy.
25:38But meth's use became more widespread during World War II, after a German pharmaceutical company created an over-the-counter version of the drug that was distributed to troops to stave off fatigue.
25:49While useful in the short term for engaging the troops, meth was highly addictive.
25:56Its off-book use exploded after the war, and by 1970, the drug was outlawed in the U.S.
26:02Even so, demand never waned.
26:04And that was especially true in the economically depressed rural areas of the U.S. like Missouri.
26:08Though he had never received a formal education, Bob Piolet grew up with a well-used chemistry set.
26:16In the late 80s, likely motivated by the proliferation of meth in his community, Piolet became interested in the drug's chemical makeup.
26:27His curiosity led to some casual research at the Southwest Missouri State Library.
26:32There, Piolet accidentally discovered what would become his solution while reading some Nazi-era research papers about amphetamines.
26:42The papers inspired his experimentation, and the eventual name of this new meth process known as the Nazi Method.
26:50Piolet's new method was a remarkably simplified three-step process that could produce high-quality meth in a fraction of the time.
26:58With a simplified tabletop setup, some commercially available ingredients, he was done.
27:03First, over-the-counter cold medicine with the active ingredient pseudoephedrine was crushed in a coffee grinder.
27:10The resulting powder was then doused in methyl alcohol, likely in the form of windshield washer fluid that would evaporate, extracting, or isolating the ephedrine.
27:21Next, you take some chemicals that you can find in farm fertilizers.
27:25You mix that with chemicals that come from the inside of a commercial battery.
27:29All that goes together to make something called meth oil.
27:31That oil is mixed with more ether, passed through a coffee filter, and what you end up with is this set of crystals that can be crushed into a powder.
27:42Police and law enforcement had hoped that his arrest in 1993 would put a stop to this kind of experimentation, but they were too late.
27:50Piolet's recipe got out, and mom-and-pop meth labs began exploding across the state, turning its already dense drug landscape into a meth mecca.
28:02Because of Piolet's breakthrough, trailers, garages, and kitchens became viable tabletop labs, pumping out small batches of meth in only two hours, without a heat source.
28:11The 1990s were marked by more and more busts as authorities found hundreds of new homemade meth labs each year.
28:27And it wasn't just an issue in Missouri.
28:30Across the country, new cooks were trying their hands at meth production using Piolet's system.
28:35At the time, meth was selling between $10,000 and $15,000 a pound.
28:42It was seen as a low-risk, high-reward endeavor that could be executed with only a few cheap legal household ingredients and a readily available supply of cold medication.
28:52Even when the product was less potent or inconsistent, the customers weren't picky.
28:57But for authorities, it was getting out of control.
28:59Beyond lab busts, there was an influx of dangerous chemical fires and issues of child endangerment, as producers became more brazen with their setups.
29:10By 2004, the meth crisis led to 24,000 seizures of meth labs, 3,000 of which were in Missouri alone.
29:18In response to the rising crisis, in 2006, the US government instituted nationwide limits on the Nazi method's active ingredient, pseudoephedrine.
29:30The Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act had an immediate cooling effect on the meth industry.
29:37This method required about eight packages of cold meds to make half an ounce of meth.
29:42But with that new law, suddenly brands with pseudoephedrine were removed from public shelves.
29:48They were either with the pharmacist or they were locked behind glass.
29:51And besides that, customers are limited in how much they can buy at once or how much they can buy over a 24-hour period.
29:57Some states are even now requiring a prescription to get cold medicine.
30:01There is no doubt that this was a major blow to the meth economy.
30:05But the steady pace of criminal innovation was not going to let this be a death blow.
30:09Cooks and users had to adjust if they were going to keep up with the lucrative demand for meth.
30:15To maintain operations, communities of independent meth cooks coordinated their efforts to gather supplies.
30:21They started working with runners called Smurfs, who were responsible for navigating the local and state retail situation.
30:28A Smurf was the face that went to multiple sites, stores and even states to skirt the legally imposed limits and cold medicines.
30:35Employing new faces made it much more difficult for authorities to identify questionable purchases.
30:43Smurfs were less obvious and it was hard to distinguish one Smurf from another, let alone from the average customer.
30:51And each cook was working with between 10 to 15 Smurfs at a time, adding to the complexity of the system.
30:57Over time, some of these Smurfs evolved from simple runners to small time suppliers.
31:05They amassed stockpiles of cold pills that could be sold at a major market to the cooks who relied on them.
31:11But the addition of Smurfs wasn't enough. Within the next few years, a new portable lab modification hit the scene.
31:20This was a one-pot meth production method that worked with only a couple of pseudoephedrine pills and a large bottle.
31:25The method was called shake and bake. It required a sealable vessel that could hold at least one and a half liters of volume.
31:35Often a used two liter pop bottle, where all the required ingredients, including the pseudoephedrine and various household solvents, were added and mixed together while shaking.
31:45This was dicey. This chemical reaction needed to be watched carefully. You had to burp it every few hours to prevent the bottle from exploding.
31:55But eventually what you get is market ready meth. And it's efficient and it's contained.
32:01But that shake and bake method is way more dangerous than previous production styles because that mixture can easily burst into flames at any point in the process if it just gets exposed to oxygen.
32:11Even so, the portability of the shake and bake method was very appealing and meant that it could be done literally anywhere at any time, even when driving in a vehicle.
32:22The product potency and quality definitely varied, but this innovative method still led to another major spike in meth lab busts.
32:29On March 1st, 2013, police raided a mobile home on the outskirts of Mountain Grove, Missouri, and discovered a series of containers, including metal chemical cans and plastic bottles fitted with hoses.
32:45Four people were arrested and a total of 95 shake and bake meth labs were seized. Today, the largest seizure of its kind of estate.
32:53Eventually, the stressors and obstacles placed on small-time producers and the meth economy slowed down independent production of the drug with major declines and busts by the mid-2010s.
33:08Over that period, even though street value seems to decline, the overall market demand for meth hadn't changed.
33:14If anything, it had grown from a backwoods drug to a mainstream product.
33:21While lab seizures and federal regulation interfered with domestic production, south of the border, cartels and organized groups were primed to fill the growing void.
33:31They already had major drug production facilities and trafficking infrastructure. So, from a business perspective, it just made sense.
33:40In 2016, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency noted that Mexican-made meth was coming into the local market, and by 2019, the majority of the meth available in the U.S. had been made in these Mexican super labs.
33:54And that shift from shake and bake local to super lab Mexican meant that the meth that was on the streets was lower cost, it was better quality, and it was much more addictive than it had been before.
34:07Meth production has come full circle from the days of Bob Pulet's innovative method.
34:19And even though the man himself is gone and his system fallen out of favor, his revolutionary ideas remain an important chapter in the story of the war on drugs.
34:37On April 8, 2009, the Merce, Alabama, a U.S. flag cargo ship, was sailing in the Indian Ocean roughly 240 miles off the coast of Somalia, when it was attacked by a small speedboat carrying four pirates armed with AK-47s.
34:57Despite the unarmed crew's efforts to thwart the attack using fire hoses and flare guns, the Somali pirates were able to board the ship.
35:05They took Captain Richard Phillips hostage on one of the Alabama's covered lifeboats and demanded a ransom of $2 million.
35:14It was the first time that pirates had set foot on an American vessel in about 200 years.
35:21Pirates are about one thing only, and that is money.
35:25So more often than not, ship owners and their insurers just pay the ransom to make the problem go away.
35:31You get these huge bundles of cash literally airdropped into the ocean by private security companies.
35:38Pirates take the loot, they release the ship, and the whole situation is resolved.
35:43With a pretty high success rate and millions of dollars out there to be earned, piracy developed into a major problem.
35:50In 2011, two years after the Alabama was hijacked, there were over 200 pirate attacks in the waters of Somalia.
35:57Question is, why?
35:58Following the collapse of an authoritarian regime in 1991, hundreds of thousands of people fled Somalia because of political instability and an ugly civil war.
36:13Local warlords took control of much of the country.
36:16And although there is a central government, political affairs are often dictated by rival clans.
36:23Schools are shut down, hospitals are shut down, the central bank hasn't printed any currency in over a decade, and the majority of the cash that's in circulation is so degraded people just can't use it anymore.
36:34So Somalis turn to the U.S. dollar, or even counterfeit U.S. dollars that are made by warlords in ungoverned regions.
36:43On top of all the political and economic instability, Somalia is prone to natural disasters like droughts, floods, cyclones.
36:52These things can have a devastating effect on food supply and people's ability to make a living.
36:56Given all these challenges, you can see why piracy is an attractive way to escape poverty.
37:02People tend to associate pirates with old-time buccaneers like Blackbeard or Long John Silver with his peg leg and parrot on his shoulder, flying the Jolly Roger and terrorizing the seas.
37:14But today's pirates are quite sophisticated. They're well-funded, armed to the teeth, and surprisingly tech savvy.
37:20The Indian Ocean is a big place. For would-be pirates, locating a ship for a potential attack must be like finding a needle in a haystack.
37:31But like many modern criminal enterprises, Somali hijacked teams are turning to technology to solve the problem.
37:39What pirates do is set up a command center. In the early days, the centers were usually on land, often in a remote coastal town called Ale, known as the world's piracy capital.
37:51But as they honed their techniques, the pirates realized that it was more advantageous to set up these command centers at sea on so-called mother ships.
38:00They might hijack a medium-sized vessel, like a fishing crawler, and then use the onboard technology to locate ships to target.
38:07For the most part, they used the Automatic Identification System, or AIS.
38:11The AIS was created to avoid collisions at sea, to make ocean traffic safer, using GPS and VHF frequencies to broadcast data to everyone involved.
38:23So, any ship's location, its speed, its heading, those are all available to every vessel in the vicinity, and they're even available on the internet.
38:31Once a potential target has been identified, the pirates have to determine whether or not it's worth their time and effort to attack the ship.
38:41The AIS also provides other intel that they're after, the ship's name, destination, number of crew members, and most importantly, cargo.
38:52The more valuable and substantial the cargo is, the more likely they are to have their ransom demands met.
38:57Some pirate groups have taken it a step further. In 2016, an unnamed global shipping group had its systems hacked.
39:06Pirates were able to access detailed information about vessels' cargo, allowing them to conduct targeted attacks.
39:14Instead of taking over the ship for days on end and negotiating a ransom payment, they take a totally different approach.
39:19They come on board, they move the crew into a safe area, and then they go straight to the very crate they know from the barcode contains all the valuable cargo.
39:30Then they steal the contents and they take off. It's a quick hit and run, just like an old-fashioned train robbery.
39:36The hackers also downloaded information about future shipments, finding out what high-value cargo would be on certain vessels,
39:43and when those ships were scheduled to be at sea, leading to further attacks.
39:46But hijacking and extortion is still the most common tactic used by Somali pirates.
39:53After establishing a ship's location and deciding that it's a worthwhile target, they spring into action and launch the attack.
40:01Generally, they leave their mother ship in several small open-air skips with powerful outboard engines.
40:07Communication is important according to the attack, so they rely on high-end satellite phones and use custom-made GPS systems.
40:13Once the pirates reach the target, they might fire warning shots with AK-487s or rocket launchers before attempting to board, hoping the captain slows the ship down in response to the threat, making it easier for them to climb up using grappling hooks or rope powders.
40:28If the breach is successful, the crew gets rounded up and stashed away somewhere.
40:34The next order of business is to disable the ship's communication systems and then bring that ship closer to shore or even to a receptive port like Ale.
40:43With a hijacking complete, the business of negotiating the ransom begins.
40:50The shipping companies are contacted via email or telephone, and the pirates usually start out demanding outlandish sums of money.
40:57The price almost always comes down during negotiations, but there have been some exorbitant amounts paid out over the years.
41:04In 2011, a staggering 13 and a half million US dollars was paid to Somali pirates for the release of a Greek oil tanker after 58 days in captivity.
41:15Once the ransom is paid, the ship and its crew are released, and the money is divided up among the perpetrators and shadowy figures who finance the operations.
41:25And in a bit of Robin Hood generosity, some of the money even filters back to the communities that provide safe harbor to these pirates.
41:32Often the money is transferred through what's known as Hawala, an ancient informal banking system where no money changes hands directly between two parties, but rather through intermediaries at either end of the transaction.
41:43It's used at places where standard Western banking systems either don't exist or are trusted.
41:49The owing party pays an agent on his end and provides a password, the payee's name, and where they live.
41:56The agent then gets in touch with a contact in the payee's city who completes the transaction by handing over the money.
42:03Completely untraceable and perfect for modern day piracy.
42:08As attacks proliferated along the East African coast, shipping companies and international authorities began to realize they had a serious issue on their hands.
42:19A study in 2013 showed that piracy was costing the worldwide economy about $18 billion every year, so clearly something had to be done.
42:30Couldn't just sit around idly letting the pirates operate with impunity.
42:35Many shipping companies took measures to protect their ships.
42:40They armed crews, hired private security, and rigged their vessels with anti-pirate devices like high-powered water cannons, barbed wire, and sonic weapons called long-range acoustic devices that caused ear-splitting sounds.
42:55NATO warships also began patrolling the waters where pirate attacks were happening the most.
43:00And to some extent, these measures were effective in reducing the number of attacks.
43:04But they didn't go away entirely, and recent data suggests that piracy may be on the rise again.
43:09In 2023, there were a reported 120 incidents of piracy and armed robbery on the world's waters.
43:17And the number of crews taken hostage rose to 73 from 41 the previous year.
43:24While the stats may sound alarming, it's worth noting that the numbers are much lower than they were back in 2009 when the Alabama was attacked and Captain Phillips taken hostage.
43:37On April 12th, four days after the Alabama was seized, Navy SEAL snipers shot and killed the three pirates holding Captain Phillips hostage on the lifeboat.
43:46A fourth pirate surrendered and was later sentenced to over 33 years in an American prison.
43:52A tragic victory in the seemingly never-ending war against piracy.
43:57That's the case of an FLC.
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