WTW123: Remember That Time the Sound of Freedom Guy Was Himself Accused of Trafficking?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:41 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas. That over there is Lydia. How you doing? Oh good. I-I'm recovering from my being trafficked. Yeah, it's been a few week recovery process, but I think I'm doing okay.

0:00:45 Lydia: Oh, I'm doing okay. How are you? Again?

0:00:52 Thomas: Oh, I just got trafficked again. God damn it. Ah, come on. Yeah.

0:00:55 Lydia: Geez. Yeah. Well, that's two out of the 300,000. So I'm pretty sure I can count you multiple times now and get us closer to that number that we're aiming towards.

0:01:03 Thomas: Yeah, well here's the thing. Maybe I'll do fewer of those jokes going forward because now I do kind of want to talk about a very real problem. Once again, this is such a thorny area to debunk. I want to talk about the very real problems of like CSAM, you know, child sex abuse material. Material. It's good that they've changed the terminology. And that seems to be like very widespread. And led by police? I feel like - I don't mean like they came up with it. I'm not sure, but I do see that. Isn't like a - yeah, it's one of those times where I feel like the authorities are actually being pretty cool for once. Whereas normally it's like the wokest are trying to get you - and I mean that in a good way - like you're trying to get people to not say child porn because there's no such thing. But actually it seems like the authorities are pretty on board with that too. So that's one bit of credit we can give them on that. But anyway, that's a very real problem. But how much of a problem? Someone posted just the other day in our Where There's Woke group, post by somebody.

0:01:28 Lydia: They're very insistent on the terminology. Being accurate for that, yeah, mm-hmm, yeah mm-hm.

0:01:56 Lydia: Yeah, folks, if any of you are listening out there,

0:01:58 Thomas: It had a map. It's all these red dots. Here's all These people sharing CSAM. And there's only like a couple that are blue. And those are the ones that are being investigated. And I was doing a whole thing to try to get to the bottom of that because it seemed pretty crazy in terms of the number. Oh, yeah. And you don't tell them this. Yeah, I know.

0:02:13 Lydia: And you wanna bait Thomas into doing like any fast debunks or anything like that, all you have to do is just join the Facebook group and post something and be like, this seems weird.

0:02:21 Thomas: Yeah. This particular thing came from Tim Tebow congressional testimony.

0:02:23 Lydia: And Thomas, or sometimes it's me, one of us is going to jump on and be, like, yeah, that is weird. And here's actually the truth of the matter. So if you want something quick done, we'll probably get it done for you. Oh, God.

0:02:35 Thomas: Money. I was like, okay, well, this has got to be dumb. Yeah. We're already going to talk about this before that, because we're both going to look at what the possible real use for these organizations, these nonprofits that are doing different things around allegedly trafficking, but also like exploited children and stuff. Like as we've covered, it's very hard to speak precisely about this because there's a bunch of real problems and a bunch not as real problems mixed into one. So I don't even know what word to use, but we're still looking at these these organizations Lydia's found a bunch of really interesting stuff I've told you it's not

0:02:36 Lydia: Oh, and it links so perfectly with everything we're talking about now anyway. Yeah. Oh, boy.

0:03:10 Lydia: And always, I mean, at Where There's Woke, we're always talking about the red yarn, and connecting all these things and the spiderweb influence of the alt-right and conservative media and all of that stuff. We're seeing that here, too. I mean I feel like I need additional bulletin boards right now because of like the actors that are coming into this. And this is truly a spiderweb of nonsense and trying to track everybody.

0:03:29 Thomas: In the budget. Well, let's take a break. patreon.com/wherethereswoke if you'd like to support the show and uh we'll get to it this was sort of like a transitional episode where it was like a pass the baton off because the thing I said to you - if you remember the Matt Murphy stuff - there was a mention of someone named Jim Cole. He was the guy that Matt Murphy met with initially and he thought he was going to impress him and then he's like, hey, you would get arrested if you did did any of that stuff. That was that guy. And he's this like expert according to Matt Murphy. And so I was trying to do some research on that, watch some of the interviews with Jim Cole and I came to the conclusion that this actually seems fine. And it was really interesting. And this is just a preliminary judgment, I'm saying, like I watched the videos and I was like, okay, this is like a version of this that actually maybe I could get on board with, because this Jim Cole guy actually seems real to me. He tells these stories that are very compelling about how he worked in this kind of stuff. He worked in trying to rescue victims of sex abuse and stuff online. And the key insight that he, according to him, again, it's hard to fact check this because am I going to interview like a bunch of police officers and ask them if this, you know, but taking it kind of at face value, he says that what he noticed when he was doing all this work, and obviously it's super super depressing and horrible is like, he knows that everyone was just trying to find the bad guy.

0:03:36 Lydia: So lots more to come. Mm-hmm. Mm-huh. Right important work but it takes a certain kind of resolve to I think get through what you might

0:05:02 Thomas: And I guess he, and maybe there might've been some other people involved at a certain point. They're like, wait, is anyone just trying to help the victims? And so like, there'd be these, again, this is awful stuff. There'd be child sex abuse material. They would find, I mean, the people who do these jobs, I don't know how you do this. I would never want to do it. It's just, I can't imagine the kinds of stuff. Yeah. And it's like, I think it's just,

0:05:23 Lydia: Be exposed to yeah some of the worst crimes you can do to another person yeah yeah yeah

0:05:25 Thomas: I can imagine wanting to like in a pinch, I feel like I can kind of do anything in an emergency, but like why would you want to like I just can't I whatever I guess if you want to do that it's good that we have people who do that because they have to review like all this shit and they have to fucking see this shit it's awful and they talk about it and you don't want to go into it but it comes across pretty sincere there and then he has this really gripping story about like we decided we got to find this one. It was a crazy situation where it was someone who was clearly working up to abusing a child in their care. Like they kept sharing photos and being like, I'm gonna do this kind of thing, and like asking advice. Like, this is the worst, most vile shit. Again, I hope we've made very clear. I'm gonna make clear again, mixed into a lot of the bullshit here is the most serious, horrific stuff in the world that I hope people are stopping. Absolutely. And so that's where I'm, I'm listening to this guy. I'M like, Oh shit, this is a thing I might support like this organization, the way he's talking about it. For one, he doesn't turn into Jordan Peterson and start talking about stupid shit. That's the main

0:06:25 Lydia: Yeah no no that's being done to get follows no

0:06:27 Thomas: Thing to notice. I'm not going to put everybody through another YouTube interview, but the main thing to notice is like, oh, he seems more professional and he's just sticking to his stuff. It's like, here's what I know about child exploitation. Here's the numbers. And the numbers are, it's hard. That links back to the claim I talked about in the pre-show about the Tim Tebow organization saying that there's 300 and something thousand, 338,000 red dots on this map. And that represents an IP exchanging child sex abuse material. Maybe I'll talk about that real quick while I'm at it. Cause I did so much work to try to see if I could track this down. And I ultimately, I can't make a firm claim on it because in the end it comes down to, well, there's a law enforcement database that literally I can'T get into. Only law enforcement can get into, and they made this database to kind of share this kind of thing, like share across jurisdictions and all that, like, okay, who's looking at what, who'S investigating what? And so this claim, for all I know, it could be accurate. The only problem is you got to keep in mind when someone says 338,000, and I hate how everything is now, because this is like, hi, I'm a child trauma therapist and sexual assault specialist. Here's some information shared to Congress that you all should know. Every red dot is a unique IP address sharing, downloading, or distributing child rape material. Almost all victims being under the age of 12. That's not in there, but whatever. There are over 338 thousand of them, and this is just in a six month span. The few blue dots that you can barely see in that sea of red are the only ones currently being investigated. America has a pedophile epidemic and this is a massively viral post and it's a threads account. And so I was going to the threads, massively viral. This is why, again, the line between real and bullshit can be so thin and frustrating sometimes. And so this account goes on further. This is why so many people are okay with pedophiles running And then they post another one. I'm a child trauma therapist. They start everything with that. I don't think being a child trauma therapist means you are an expert in computer science to statistically analyze these weird stats about IPs accessing. It just doesn't. Exactly. And it's it's frustrating. Like everything is that now. But listen to this one. And this is when I was like, OK, here we go. I mean, I'm not a child.

0:08:45 Lydia: No. There's no way. And no one like commented in that thread being like source and no response

0:08:54 Thomas: And pedophilia online, I have some more stats for you. There are 348 million people living in America. One in nine men in the U.S., 10.9% equating to almost 14 million men, admitted online sexual offending against children at some point in their lives. And that's just the cases we know about. There's absolutely no fucking way that's true. It's absolutely not true. I can't That one has no source. I found some surveys. No, I don't. So that was the comment on the viral thing. So, that didn't receive as much attention as the above viral thing that's like hundreds of thousands and whatever.

0:09:27 Lydia: There. Uh huh. Right. Man, send it to me. I'll ask for a source. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry.

0:09:36 Thomas: Whatever. Yeah. I mean, it, it I looked at their surveys and I don't really trust these surveys entirely either because some of them will be like, well, we did an online survey and it's like, okay, well you're already cherry picking people who are online. That's going to skew it. And I, I don'T know, I haven't yet run any of this by Jenessa. I was thinking about it. Cause maybe she could analyze it, but I actually, I DON'T know how much we need to. Cause there was one that was like, it's 0.8%. And then one's like 4%. And another is like six, but that's as high as I Like to say that like one in nine have admitted and then they say that's just the cases we know about. Well, you literally don't know about that. That's just a stat. The idea that it's one in 9, there's no way that's true. It's just not. So it could be one out of one.

0:10:18 Lydia: Yeah. Again, just from a human behavioral perspective, people are not going to like readily admit to things that they know are crimes either. Like, I don't know. I just think about one in nine admit to doing something that is that is completely illegal and despicable for what what are you getting out of it why would you be honest about something like that I would just close out of the window if it was like a question that I didn't want to answer yeah exactly it's equating

0:10:33 Thomas: Yeah, it really is going to depend on how the survey was done.

0:10:46 Thomas: And this is giving us no source, none whatsoever. But the other thing gave us a source of Tim Tebow's thing. I pull up Tim Tebow's thing and actually it does come from that. I went to the Congress website and found his testimony. He claims it's from the U.S. Department of Justice ICAC COPS, which I think is some sort of real thing. But it also says these are IP addresses over a six-month period. And so that doesn't mean nothing. I'm not saying that means nothing. But very clearly, this is being shared under the idea that there are 338,000 pedophiles and we're just not even investigating them. We're just Not even doing it. Not even close.

0:11:24 Lydia: Unique ip addresses with individuals and that's not how technology works especially when you're

0:11:29 Thomas: Especially when you consider yeah and so I tried really hard to track down if there's any better way to get a real number on this but unfortunately it's all best guesses because like there's also

0:11:31 Lydia: You're doing a crime. Yeah. Because they don't want to be found out, is my guess.

0:11:42 Thomas: When it comes to these systems well it's also because we don't have actual access to this information this just comes from a fucking police thing and we can't I can't access methodology or or anything. I found some equivalent stuff that maybe might say something about it, but you can't be sure. If it's IPs, then that could be something like one out of eight, essentially. But also the time period matters. I don't know how, if you go six months, then obviously you'd presume that the IP is changing more, but also you figure people doing a crime, to your point, like I would figure their IP would probably be changing quite a bit. Then stack on top of that, the way these file sharing sites work, if it's, okay, this IP address is sharing a file, does that mean, like, I could imagine if it is anything like torrent sites or something like that, let's say 100 people have CSAM and one person wants to download that. Now, does that

0:12:33 Lydia: Mm. So it is available for download kind of thing?

0:12:41 Thomas: Mean every time one person want to download it, we are getting 100 pings to the IPs that are quote-unquote sharing it because it is a torrent site so that, you know, like is it that kind of thing. I don't know. Like, I actually don't know. It doesn't seem to be exactly like that from what I'm seeing, but it can be similar to that. And there was one similar type study that I'm seeing where there was a 2009 thing where it said there were 1 million unique IPs for a certain thing. And it turned out to be 128,000 GUIDs, which is like more like a computer. Still not people, but probably close, you know, it's probably pretty close to.

0:12:53 Lydia: Yeah, I don't know. Mm. Closer? Mm-mm.

0:13:17 Thomas: Yeah. So that's where I got the 8.4 times because that was a DOJ thing from a different operation, I believe, or it could have been the same. Well, I don't know. I don'T know if it's the same because we don't have that backend information as to where this map comes from. There's another study and it found kind of similar numbers. It was like, Oh, 244,000 computers, US computers, 120,000 known files. But it said that 80% of those computers shared fewer than like 10 files while fewer than 1%, 915 computers were like the ones that were sharing stuff all the time now again that's not to say that the ones that shared 10 or whatever that's still a crime absolutely I'm not downplaying that but the reason I bring it up is because another claim that happens here and it happens in the tim tebow testimony just for the alliteration, Tim Tebow's totally traumatizing testimony, is I believe it's in his testimony, where he says like yeah and people who uh share child porn, they have on average 13 victims. Yeah.

0:14:06 Lydia: Tim. What? Yeah.

0:14:18 Thomas: Yeah, I don't know where you get that. But then they're doing crazy math because they're like, there, do the math. Now you got 300,000 times 13. You know, they're going crazy with this math. And it's one thing if you want to look at these IPs and that's, you know, it's bad. I think the real number of people would be a lot lower. There's also, and even acknowledged in this study, again, it'S not the study because we don't have the study that led to that map, but it's sort of an equivalent one I'm finding. It said that some amount of this is going to be people who are just looking for porn accidentally download something or like, oh shit. It's not not going to be a ton but that is some of it and keeping in mind people who have done like 10 or fewer as a category images is it fair to map on a well on average everybody has 13 victims so those people have all assaulted 13 children like there's just no way it might be that the one percent the low number that's like sharing a lot of stuff they could be literally making it which would be fucking awful and they might be people who are abusing lots of children that could be true but

0:15:11 Lydia: Evil. Yeah. And note, so you will donate money to them?

0:15:15 Thomas: But it's that thin line between like, okay, there's a real problem here. Definitely. There's a CSAM problem. A hundred percent. This is a real problem. Don't get me wrong. I'm not at all trying to downplay the problem, especially when it comes to these tech companies. And like, sometimes they're enabling it. Sometimes they're labeling like the ability for children to get these messages, like all kinds of bad stuff. I a hundred percent, that's a huge problem. But when you start getting these organizations that are trying to trump up these numbers and be like, yes, now it's 338,000 and now it'S one out of nine men. It's just that that's fucking ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah,

0:15:46 Lydia: Keep that in mind. It is for a purpose that they do that.

0:15:48 Thomas: Yeah. So I couldn't get like a firm view on that map that was shared, except to say that it's fucking misleading, to say the least, especially because if they say, yeah, those blue dots, which there's like fucking none of them, like 20. Those are the only ones they're investigating, which would suggest that it'S like, you know, either they don't have the resources or no one cares. And I just can't imagine that's true. Like, how long does it if you think you really have that location that well, is that a point in time where those are being investigated? Are they investigating the ones that are like those 1% that are like the super spreaders that makes more sense to God? I don't know. And we have no way of verifying that other than Tim Tebow put in a thing and said, it's from this database. So I guess it's a don't-know on that one. But all that is to say, CSAM is a very big problem. And when I hear Jim Cole going back to that, talking about this, where he's saying we had the idea to like try to track down the victims, and he tells this really compelling story about there's this video and, oh, that's why I started to tell. They're doing all this sort of forensics, like, okay, there was a soda cup in this video. And it turns out it's from a fast food thing that's like regional. So it's not like McDonald's, it's like Burgerville in Portland or something. And so that narrowed it down. And So he's talking about, they did all this stuff, trying as hard as they could to narrow it down, then there was one where they got like enough of her face where they, then they were like, okay, we're going to go to every like yearbooks in the area. Just look for that this is all heroic stuff like this is you want me to fucking donate a hundred dollars to this right now I would like absolutely this is also stuff I would hope the police are doing but if it's true that they don't actually have the resources and they aren't doing this then that's the good use of this but notably jim cole sticks to these stories of specific things he's done and doesn't go jordan peterson and doesn'T talk about how everyone's getting trafficked and all that but these stories are really harrowing he said they tried for like a year and a half

0:17:38 Lydia: And she was there doing, like, an interview or something?

0:17:42 Thomas: All along he's got other cases too but like they're trying to locate this one and then apparently Apparently the ending to this one was that the girl pops up on America's Most Wanted and it's because she was the victim. And so they never were able to find, he never was able to find her, but they matched it up. And it's a crazy story. Yeah. About her dad. Because like what happened was that video that they were looking at, that CSAM was apparently a little older. So it was a little dated. When she had turned 12, she made her dad stop.

0:18:15 Thomas: And I hope it's abundantly clear that that can't always happen. And I don't think anyone here should think like that's putting the burden on the victim. Yeah. But like this particular victim was able somehow to do that, which is amazing that she was able to do

0:18:22 Lydia: Victims don't bear responsibility for that, yeah?

0:18:29 Thomas: That. She made a deal with this fucking creep. The way he describes it as something like he will stop if she won't tell anyone it happened. And she made that deal apparently. And for years she didn't tell anyone until I think around she was 19 so like seven years later she tells her mom finally because something triggered by I think something she was watching or whatever it's a it's an incredible painful story but it's also like the triumphant story for her in a way you know like she was able to finally tell someone and then it gets crazier because then it was her word versus his and she didn't have proof until she discovered in a computer that he had lent her a while ago like there was files there and then that linked back somehow I think to Jim Cole or these guys and then they were like yeah we've got all these files I think there was something like that where that was able to make the firm case yes he definitely did it and then the fucking guy fled because he had enough warning I think he had some background in law enforcement and that's another thing that gets thrown around casually where it's like anyway this guy also was a cop

0:19:21 Lydia: Coward. Uh-huh.

0:19:31 Thomas: But um there's a high incidence of that and so he was able to get away and he lives in some other country now. And that's why it was America's most wanted because he got away. And so when he's telling the story, I'm like, okay, this, I mean, yeah. Like if there's an organization that's like, hey, we're going to help with particularly this like tech side. Now that I saw that, I sort of saw, oh, that's kind of what Matt Murphy was saying. It was almost like Matt Murphy was doing the CliffsNotes version of this actual guy with actual expertise and like doing his spiel a little bit, but then adding in his fucking Jordan Peterson nonsense to it, because there's sort of stuff like that in Matt Murphy's interview.

0:19:32 Lydia: Yeah. Oh, he's a fugitive. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:20:09 Thomas: So all of this is to say, CSAM is a huge problem. We should devote more resources to fighting it. It's a much different thing than child sex trafficking, which is, it exists. It's not as big of a problem, especially if you compare it — and this is something I meant to do. If you compare this alleged trafficking in the US to just like murders, like it's not even fucking close, you know what I mean? So it's like, relatively speaking, there's other crimes, like even just just outright rape statistically is so much more numerous. And that's a point I've come back to. If we want to do things like fight against sex abuse and rape in a real way, that involves a reckoning that these people don't want for the most part, you know? But if you want to talk about a scary trafficker guy, that's a whole different thing and it gets to be a different thing. But this, yeah, exactly. But when it's actual child sex abuse material online, that is a real problem.

0:20:30 Lydia: Mm-hm, yeah, and furniture companies, companies, sneaking people into cabinets. Yeah. Good idea. All right. So folks who listen to this

0:20:58 Thomas: It's absolutely a real problem. I'm not convinced on some of these numbers. Like I think it's getting exaggerated, but like it might be getting exaggerated with people who genuinely their hearts are in the right place and they just want funding. That might be, you know, I think that's probably where Tebow is. Like he seems to genuinely just want to solve this problem. And that's, that's great. I do think stuff is getting misleading in the process, but whatever. So I said to you, this Jim Cole guy — yeah, I think he might actually be like a legitimate guy. And maybe Matt Murphy is just weird. And then I was like, wait a minute, Jim Cole was still at Operation Lightshine, and Matt Murphy left his own fucking group to go to this other group, and it seemed really weird. As I pointed out, something must have happened there. And that's what I says to you, I says, and you said, ah, that fits with stuff I've been doing. So maybe we'll take a quick break and then get to the stuff you've been doing.

0:21:56 Lydia: Show know me and know that I'm going to be poking around in the socials. I'm gonna be going on people's social media. I'M GONNA BE LOOKING AROUND AND SEEING WHAT YOU'VE BEEN UP TO WHAT YOU BEEN POSTING WHO YOU'RE FRIENDS WITH WHO YOU're NOT FRIEND WITH. Oh, yeah. No, I don't want to do

0:22:00 Thomas: Yeah, it's smart. Honestly, it is. It's a lot of what you could probably be one of the people who did this work, even though you shouldn't, but like of the digital tracking down victims yeah oh wow yeah okay yeah he's older yeah yeah yeah interesting oh wow I am talking

0:22:13 Lydia: That work. Yeah, but I will find you. That's kind of my position. So I'm probably going to show up as like you know Jim Cole's gonna see I've been looking at his LinkedIn and you know it's fine and and actually my cousin-in-law you know I'm only one removed from Jim Cole because she worked in gosh like like child protective legal positioning for Meta for a long time like when it was just Facebook and then she moved over to Google and so I think she has worked directly with him and I almost reached out to her and was like hey tell me everything about Jim Cole but I was like yeah it's okay I haven't talked to her in a long time that'd be weird but let me tell you what I could kind of glean while looking at Jim Cole's LinkedIn. We'll talk about LinkedIn first, and then we'll talk About Instagram after that. But LinkedIn, I thought was really interesting, because it's not like Jim Cole, he's a bit older, you know, he was with Homeland Security for 23 years, he, you Know, has been working in government for decades upon decades, lots of experience, he got a bit of gray, you Now, he is not going to be airing his drama out on social media. But I think we can still kind of see what's going on here a little bit. So first of all, on his LinkedIn, there was a post. I feel like you guys, I swear this is like really worthwhile. It sounds so petty, but I promise there's a lot of information we can get from doing stuff like this. So he has a post on his LinkedIn that he talks about the importance of collaborating with other organizations in this space, saying they can only do as good of work as they can because of the collaborations that they have with other nonprofits that are also fighting child trafficking, that are Also fighting child sex abuse material, etc, etc. And he lists a number of organizations. Sentinel Foundation, where Matt Murphy has moved to, is not one of them. They do not seem to partner with them at all, which is surprising because if someone that you you used to work with very closely at a previous organization goes on to a new organization. Theoretically, that would just expand your network, right? There seems to be no connection there between that, at least from Jim Cole's side of things. He also has a post where he says, quote, vigilante groups are not helping. Playing detective without the training, certifications, rules of evidence, and knowledge of the laws is not only irresponsible, it's dangerous. Yeah. Another quote, I hear so many people talk about wanting to fight trafficking and get involved thinking they're going to kick a door in and rescue the woman held hostage by a trafficker. This right here is how you actually help. And then he links to, yeah, and then he links to direct aid for survivors, you know, platforming voices related to that sort of effort.

0:24:53 Thomas: Talking about Matt Murphy. Oh, wow. Yeah. Right. But it sounds like, I mean, Jim Cole did get involved with, he was in Lightshine at the time, right? Okay. I see. Yeah. Yeah, I would go slightly further, though, maybe just again, we're speculating, but for him to leave his own organization, because why wouldn't Matt just be like, well, it's my ball.

0:25:01 Lydia: So specifically, remember what Matt Murphy said when he said he spoke to Jim Cole when he was first wanting to get involved in this space, when they very first met. He said, quote, and I went back to the transcript and I checked this from the interview that we listened to, quote. I laid it out. This is Matt Murphy. And when I was done, Jim looked at me and he goes, Matt, that's illegal. That's vigilante. If you took everything you just told me and instead of you getting you and the boys to do it and kicking somebody's door, you do all that to support law enforcement and a task force, we can do it. So it's that same language that you see there where he is calling that out on these LinkedIn posts and saying this stuff, it's not just irresponsible. It's dangerous. This is illegal. This is not how you actually help people. This is vigilante and it's only just to serve your ego. That's what Matt Murphy explicitly said that Jim Cole said to him directly and also what Jim Cole is saying on his LinkedIn years later after Matt Murphy has left. He did. Yeah. So he was with LightShine for years. So when Matt Murphy left Light Shine. So my thinking is that Matt Murphy is just the person that he presented himself to Jim Cole from day one and never actually changed. Yeah, exactly. And Jim Cole was probably not interested in doing work with somebody that he viewed to be a vigilante. Yeah, it could be. It could depend on the board that they've created, too, and sort of how things shook out in whatever sort of meetings they had there. I will say, you know, looking at Operation Light Shine's social media presence, they have wished folks well as they've moved on to other endeavors and welcomed new folks in. They did not do anything for Matt Murphy at all.

0:26:31 Thomas: All I'm taking and going home so I feel like there could be more than just that but who knows yeah yeah wow wow his own organization and that was devastating when I heard that I was yes it is

0:27:01 Lydia: There was no announcement on Jim Cole's LinkedIn. Jim Cole and Matt Murphy are not connected on LinkedIn. They both have LinkedIn. They're not connected there. LinkedIn is not everything. Right. So I was like, OK, maybe Matt Murphy does not seem to be very this is a generational divide.

0:27:15 Thomas: I love this hmm interesting wow wow uh wow wow is this what the youths call the tea?

0:27:19 Lydia: Jim Cole is active on LinkedIn, Matt Murphy is not. He does have one. He's not very active on there. So it's like, let me go to Instagram. That's where I'm active not linkedin so I get it and I go over to instagram and not only okay let's look at the organizational following pattern here operation light shine does not follow sentinel foundation okay so there is no collaboration happening there we know that sentinel also does not follow operation lightshine okay fair enough you know matt murphy didn't start sentinel whatever they also do not follow jim cole but sentinel lists operation lightshine as a partner on their their website. Operation Lightshine does not list them. They do not partner with them. There is bad blood between these two organizations that has to stem from Matt Murphy. Matt Murphy, even though he started Operation Light shine, he does not follow Operation Light Shine on Instagram. They do not follow him. Now, funnily enough, and this could just be someone snuck through the cracks. Who knows? Matt Murphy still follows Jim Cole on Instagram, Jim Cole does not follow Matt Murphy, Jim Cole does not follow Matt Murphy, and his follower to following count is really, really similar. So that tells me this is very intentional. It is very, very intentional, it's not like follow me, I follow you back sort of thing. He has 343 followers, and he's following 302 people. He explicitly does not follow Matt Murphy even though Matt Murphy follows him. So interesting. This is tea, you guys.

0:28:55 Thomas: Wow my first tea yeah being so diplomatic right now oh gotcha yeah hmm oh yeah yeah yeah well

0:28:57 Lydia: This is Tea. So I think you take the LinkedIn information, sort of the Instagram behavioral information here, and we can kind of piece together that we don't have the details. They are keeping whatever it is under wraps about the nature of Matt Murphy leaving. At the very least, we can surmise that Jim Cole and Matt Murphy have very different perspectives on how to pursue child trafficking nonprofit organizations. Jim Cole explicitly also went on to just last year tout their platinum seal of transparency that they received from GuideStar for Charity Navigator, you know, like basically saying we are very transparent with our our financials, our data, etc., etc., which we have seen with Sentinel is so freaking confusing. We can't find any information. Jim Cole has taken a different approach with Operation Lightshine in Matt Murphy's absence. I think Jim Cole is now doing a little bit of like a it's not a redemption for him, but he's like helping to redeem other people or other organizations. I guess he's doing a bit of a tour. So he just announced this month, actually, that he is leaving Operation Lightshine for a new opportunity. He is going to work in an advisory capacity for an organization called Our Rescue. Oh, you are. Our Rescue didn't pop up when we were initially talking, but the name that they were formerly known as did. And that is called Operation Underground Railroad. And there's a hell of a lot more to talk about there and what Jim Cole might be trying to fix for them in the same way that he tried to kind of prevent Operation Light Shine from falling into the same path. Operation Underground Rail Road. There's a reason they

0:30:45 Lydia: They changed their name. Yeah, for one, it shouldn't have been called that anyway. Yeah.

0:30:46 Thomas: Well, for one, it was pretty offensive. Yeah. There already was a bad start.

0:30:52 Lydia: So it was founded by a Mormon out of Utah, of course, because where else are Mormons from?

0:30:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:59 Lydia: But folks might know him as portrayed in the movie Sound of Freedom. His name is Tim Ballard, and he had a spectacular fall. Spectacular. Within the span of like less than a year, It was so fast. This was an organization that was so smart in how they built up funding and the support in a lot of ways that I feel like we're seeing with some of these other organizations. They're trying to emulate that to the point where there is an entire movie based on the efforts that they're doing, a movie that really brought, I think, a lot OF this conversation to a larger audience.

0:31:43 Lydia: I think Sound of Freedom was it. So Tim Ballard, this organization has existed since 2013. Long time, especially compared to some of these other organizations. They are anti-trafficking. They conduct these operations domestically and internationally, allegedly. And they also work with law enforcement agencies to investigate sex trafficking rings and crimes of that nature.

0:31:59 Thomas: Allegedly.

0:32:08 Lydia: And according to him, according to Mr. Ballard, Tim Ballard. He felt that there was a lack of strategies that were being used to help these children in specifically in underdeveloped nations throughout the world. And that when you had non-U.S. cases that there wasn't really anything people could do to help go after those offenders. He founded this organization to try and tackle that. And right off the bat participated in an operation in Colombia. They were looking, however, though, because you can start whatever you want, you know, and try and find ways to participate in things that are aligned with your mission.

0:32:43 Thomas: Mm-mm.

0:32:48 Lydia: But without name recognition, without data and evidence to back up that you know what you're doing, that you have success, people, especially law enforcement agencies, are probably not going to partner with you and dedicate budget towards working with you. You and dedicate resources to working with you. But for whatever reason, they were able to form a relationship with the Washington State Patrol in Washington, specifically with a particular sergeant named Sergeant Carlos Rodriguez. It feels weird. It feels weird because Operation Underground Railroad, now known as Our Rescue, was donating money to them for their existing program for a sting. And then the sergeant turned around and then did positive media coverage for the organization and helped get donations for them. A little quid pro quo sort of thing

0:33:14 Thomas: Mm-mmm. Mm-MM. So kind of could be. Yeah. A little kickback quid pro quo thing.

0:33:46 Lydia: Going on. Don't know. Low dollar amounts. $170,000. It's not a lot of money, but they were paying for, quote, additional detectives, hotels, food, and overtime. And so there might have been some sort of, you know, negotiation about, we give you a couple extra bucks and, you know, you say some nice things about us. And it helps with their name recognition. Explicit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:33:53 Thomas: Well, it might not have even been, might not be an explicit ask.

0:34:10 Thomas: It could just be like, that's the plan. They're kind of buying legitimacy. And it's not, you know, it's, I could see it not being entirely like fraudulent. You know, it might just be a thing you have to do to get a foot in the door on this kind of work, I guess.

0:34:22 Lydia: Mm-huh. Yeah. But through that partnership, even though it was under 200 grand that they were offering, it was very successful. The stings that were done with Washington State Patrol ended up resulting in hundreds of arrests, hundreds of people on sex offender registries, hopefully appropriately, based on the evidence that they were seeing. And that helped to legitimize not just the task force for Washington State Patrol and Carlos Rodriguez and the work that he was doing, but then also Operation Underground Railroad as a result, you know, this kind of partnership a bit. And because of that operation and the media resulting from that, it wasn't just the organization that was being brought into the spotlight. Light it was tim ballard specifically that was being mentioned from top to bottom in these media opportunities that they had again culminating in sound of freedom you know that was just a couple years later they started developing that film however he fell pretty hard pretty fast we'll talk about the organization a bit more but let me just close out on tim ballARD because he is to put it lightly a problematic person almost instantly after the movie came out there were

0:35:36 Lydia: Were multiple, many, quite a lot of accusations that he was not just a bad person, but that he himself had sexually abused people. Allegations that he had himself trafficked women. Yeah, pretty bad. There were significant investigations looking into the weight of those allegations, lots of sexual misconduct allegations, a lot from employees. That's kind of where the trafficking allegations came from. And after an internal investigation, he stepped away. So I'm guessing the internal investigation was not looking good. He actually resigned prior to the reasons being made public. So I think he was trying to save face a little bit, but they did

0:35:51 Thomas: Trafficked? Wow. Yeah. Wow.

0:36:26 Lydia: Become public. And it was so bad. Again, remember, I mentioned he was Mormon. He ended up being excommunicated from the Mormon church. Well, and you know why they never do that? Because they They don't actually care about that kind of stuff. The reason he was excommunicated, they cite the sexual misconduct allegations. But the main issue, I think, is that he tried to exploit his relationship with a church leader to help him launder this. And that is unacceptable. So not only did they excommunicate him, they publicly rebuked him.

0:36:34 Thomas: They never do that. Yeah. Wow.

0:37:02 Lydia: They issued a statement. Tim Ballard is no longer welcome. He is not a part of the Mormon church. We condemn his actions his behavior etc etc he tries to to this day say that he was wrongly excommunicated and that it's all part of a wider conspiracy because of course it is but you know this I guess is an example of a bad person meeting something that feels a little just in some ways it's very complicated but with his downfall the organization did not fall with him right I I mentioned Jim Cole just went there.

0:37:37 Thomas: Seems crazy, which is crazy because the stuff that I saw along this, I didn't do a deep dive,

0:37:38 Lydia: He just went there. He left Operation Lightshine earlier this month and he is now serving an advisory capacity for Operation Underground Railroad, which is now called, as I said, Our Rescue. Yeah. Yeah.

0:37:54 Thomas: But I saw things that were like they're taking credit for arrests that they didn't do. And to the point where an actual like I think sheriff or something put out a statement that was like, hey, if there's any organization taking credit for what our task force did, they didn'T do it. Well, sure.

0:38:09 Lydia: I think that there are a lot of other problems. I think maybe what's hard to tell is how much is specific to Tim Ballard and how much is inherent in the organization itself, you know?

0:38:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:21 Lydia: And so if there's a leadership change, perhaps that stuff can get better. There was a Vice News article in 2020 calling them QAnon adjacent and that they were embracing people that were, you know, QAnon conspiracy followers. And Tim Ballard issued a statement to The New York Times following that article saying, quote, some of these theories have allowed people to open their eyes. So now it's our job to flood the space with real information so the facts can be shared. So he really was finding these opportunistic ways. He did not shy away from controversy, did not shy away from, honestly, people who are brainwashed and have lost their minds to, I don't know, almost take advantage of the situation a little bit. But that is like that was specifically him and his position. With someone like Jim Cole kind of coming in to help guide it, the current CEO, he was appointed just last year. He was previously with Homeland Security Investigations, which is where Jim Cole served, you know, for nearly 25 years for his government experience. You know, so you have like actual real people that are coming in now to serve in sort of these roles. So maybe it'll get better. But boy, oh boy, was that a mess.

0:39:06 Thomas: I didn'T know the story when I was doing the Matt Murphy stuff and I was just looking at Sentinel.

0:39:34 Lydia: Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think

0:39:42 Thomas: That was the exact thing I was worried about with Sentinel where it's like, boy, they seem to be saying they're doing all these raids and stuff. But like, what proof do I have? You know, and Underground Railroad was really doing that. Yeah. Oh, wow. You've piqued my interest. How do I how do I get a hold of such content? Never heard of it. Yeah. Yeah, well, I think the important thing to say, though, is that this is a problem with all nonprofits. I think there's going to be risk factors, but modest needs the organization that we donate to and that the puzzle people did their fundraiser, that guy embezzling and stuff.

0:39:53 Lydia: That this is almost instructive as to what some of these other organizations might be trying to do. Looking at the money and how quickly this can grow when you're talking about something that is really sensitive and provocative as child trafficking, they went from still a really significant number, $6.9 million in revenue in 2016 And then three years later, we're talking 22.3 million. And then a few years after that, 50 million. It just it grows exponentially and they're pocketing so much money in between. So like in 2021, still, they're making tons of money at this point. Like I said, it was between, gosh, I don't know, between 22 million in 2019, 50 million in 2023. In 2021, per 990s through the IRS, Tim Ballard, while he was still associated with them, was paid $355,000. And then a year later, he was paid five hundred forty six thousand five hundred and forty eight dollars. He went up by almost two hundred thousand dollars in a year. And then the following year after that, he had all the investigation and the allegations and this fall from grace and stuff. It's so crazy. But there is so much money involved in this particular type of nonprofit organization. We talk about it all the time. You get people who are either looking for power or reputation or money. They're going to gravitate towards these things. And I think that's where we're going to see a lot of grift, a lot of fraud, allegedly, that we're not going to have time to get into today for this episode. I have a lot to talk about. A lot. And it's ongoing and it's bad and it involves Sentinel from the beginning. Spinning yeah it's crazy well you can pick us up on patreon.com/seriouspod and get some of that stuff as early as it's going to come out but my point is there is real money to be made here because it really gets at people nobody wants to be on like like you don't want to be seen as on the pro side of child trafficking like absolutely not you end up getting folks like the aldeans who are going to participate in your golf fundraisers and start donating massive amounts of money and gathering other folks to donate massive amounts of money. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. He embezzled. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah and I think that that seems to be a major problem with this

0:42:34 Thomas: But I was thinking about that because I think it's an important point. Now, fraud of one of these organizations proves that they're all fraudulent or anything like that. In the same way that I wouldn't want someone to look at Modest Needs and say, well, it looks like that's all bullshit. But there is a bit of a difference in that Modest Need was what seemed like a really cool, smart organization tackling a very real problem. It's, I think, a different story when it's, well. I think this happens in nonprofits a lot. So I do think it is a little bit systemic. I think it's something that we just need reform on reporting and stuff on that. We need more, you know, we need more funding to the IRS. I know everybody hates that, I guess. But when you look at something like that, it's not as though that guy was making up the fact that there's families that can't afford their power bills. You know, that's just real. Like, I think there is a bit of a fundamental difference in that versus trying to make up this problem with human trafficking and sex trafficking of children. Again, there's elements of it that are real, but greatly exaggerating all your claims, you know, to the point where it's like pretty unrecognizable.

0:43:42 Lydia: Particular type of non-profit too. To piggyback off of what you're saying there, in that Vice News article that came out in 2020 about Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad, they specifically say that he has embellished their role in their trafficking rescues. They did not find, quote, outright falsehoods, but a pattern of image burnishing and mythology building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading.

0:44:10 Lydia: There was additional articles after saying that they're using inexperienced donors to participate in their jump team, I guess, to get involved in the rescuing themselves, which is insane.

0:44:11 Thomas: Right. They did it with Tony Robbins.

0:44:24 Lydia: That's so crazy.

0:44:25 Thomas: I don't know that they had him like have a gun or something, but like he he told a very, you know what?

0:44:27 Lydia: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:44:32 Thomas: That's where I came across it. Now that I think about it. And Tony Robbins tells like an incredibly compelling emotional story about it, yeah.

0:44:34 Lydia: He's a motivational speaker. Of course he did.

0:44:38 Thomas: Yeah. And he raised on the spot $500,000 in his group of people that he was already bilking, no, whatever, for this organization. He was very emotional about it. And apparently there's internal communications from the investigation. There's a criminal investigation of this organization. It doesn't look like the investigation led to any indictments that I can see. And I might not be finding it. The way it's supposed to work is if you don't end up indicting anyone then you know we don't get details of what the investigation was but there were internal communications that somehow somebody had I think it was a whistleblower maybe and they're like essentially to the effect of well you know we never do the kind of raid that we took tony robbins on like at all but they I think made a point to sort of like how scientology does with tom cruise or something where they like try to put on their best face for like their rich celebrity donors I think they kind of did that with tony Robbins it's just interesting because Because like that motivated that guy to donate so much to raise a bunch of money. And it's really effective.

0:44:47 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah that's really interesting just the way that these raids and these rescue operations are portrayed there was an article in slate in 2021 the author witnessed one of them herself in 2014 in the dominican republic and she said that they were filming it because there was like a proposed reality TV show, which is crazy to me. Yeah. And her position was like, how this went, it absolutely traumatized these children that were being trafficked and then rescued. They were supposed to receive rehabilitative care after being rescued for three months. And instead of that, they were released a few weeks later. And who knows? Who knows what happened to them in the Dominican Republic? I don't know. I don' know. Yeah, there's an expert on international

0:46:02 Thomas: Yeah. Like cops. Oh, Wow. Oh, Wow. What the hell? Yeah. So it could very much just be like all for looks all for show.

0:46:32 Lydia: Law and Human Trafficking, Ann Gallagher, she wrote way back in 2015 that from what she has seen and researched and taken in about Operation Underground Railroad, again, now called Our Rescue, that they had, quote, an alarming lack of understanding about how sophisticated criminal trafficking networks must be approached and dismantled, and then further went on to call them, quote, arrogant, unethical, and illegal. And I'm concerned because what we saw with this organization, with the way that you're able to fundraise and make tons of money, and then the people at the top, just their paychecks balloon, and even though people are calling you out in these articles, and you know, like fairly reputable, especially back in 2020, you know, Vice News and stuff, calling you out on things that don't seem right. It doesn't seem like there's consequences, like your money just kind of keeps going up. What's to stop all these other nonprofits from just trying to mirror exactly what they saw you do? Yeah. And like I said,

0:47:37 Thomas: That's why it's crazy that Jim Cole joined it. I feel like it might be because they have such an established donor base and ability to fundraise that maybe it's like they were able to offer him enough or it felt like, who knows? We don't know this guy. We can't vouch for him or anything, but.

0:47:52 Lydia: The CEO that's come in now in the last year is someone that worked at the Homeland Security office that Jim Cole worked in for decades. Right. So I think there's probably an established relationship there. They probably trust each other. It could be that they're really trying trying to clean things up. This GuideStar seal of transparency, you know, he was really excited about it when he was posting about it on LinkedIn, that it mattered a lot to him that you know exactly where your money's going, that you have metrics to see what's happening, that you understand what's for overhead related to these things. Like I do think Jim Cole is really dedicated to the work that he's doing and to do it right and to make sure that donors are feeling like what they're doing is actually like they understand where their money is going. And Tim Tim Ballard, meanwhile, was apparently consulting psychics for intelligence on missions.

0:48:41 Thomas: Ah, there you go.

0:48:41 Lydia: So I think we're going to be moving away from that.

0:48:42 Thomas: What's Tim Ballard doing now?

0:48:45 Lydia: So regarding the allegations, the Salt Lake County district attorney, this came out in November 2025, declined to file criminal charges against Tim Ballard. They lacked sufficient corroborating evidence to meet the burden of proof. And it was specific to incidents that were alleged to have occurred within Salt Lake County. Not necessarily that the complaints were incredible, but they just didn't have enough that they felt they could actually prosecute. I think there might be civil complaints that are ongoing.

0:49:18 Lydia: And there are other allegations involving incidents in Utah County and also separately in California that I haven't seen any outcomes with at this point. Meanwhile, in December 2025, Tim Ballard went on a podcast and said that his former nonprofit had purchased Google ads using his name and redirected donors searching for him to their organization. So basically like using his if people were looking how to support Tim Ballard, it was still connecting it to the nonprofit that he started, even though he's no longer affiliated with it. And then a month after that, January 2026, he posted on X that there would be a video coming out called Our Rescue Fraud going into their misuse of donor funds, communications fraud and other misconduct.

0:50:06 Thomas: Oh, like from him.

0:50:08 Lydia: Yeah. And then he asserts that a legal team, based on their review, believed that the nonprofit had violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. I haven't seen anything like that come out yet. But, you know, it's only been a couple months since he announced the video was coming. So who knows? I guess we'll see. But Jim Cole's on the case now, I guess. So, yeah, I don't know.

0:50:31 Lydia: Just one little extra note I want to mention about Tim Ballard. He, as I said, rose to national prominence. Like everybody in conservative circles especially knew who this guy was for a couple years. Sound of Freedom, huge, huge. Apparently, he has also been, it says long time, I don't know what that means exactly in these circles, but a close friend of Glenn Beck.

0:50:56 Lydia: And when all of this stuff came out about the allegations against Tim Ballard, Glenn Beck was real quick to drop Tim Ballard publicly on his podcast and said that he, quote, felt completely duped and that Ballard's story, quote, started to fall apart.

0:50:56 Thomas: Oh, wow. Oh, it's about the sexual misconduct.

0:51:13 Lydia: He didn't believe Ballard was being truthful about anything and that after he looked, Glenn Beck himself looked at evidence related to the allegations of sexual misconduct, believe that Ballard was lying about everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And for Glenn Beck, that's kind of a big deal. Oh, God. Yeah. We've talked about Matt Murphy and that he's with Sentinel Foundation, but he did not start Sentinel Foundation folks. A couple other people did. And they've also started a hell of a lot of other organizations and companies. And we will talk about all of them next time. It's beyond.

0:51:27 Thomas: Oh, Wow. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Plenty more to talk about. I mean, you teased the they're not so cool.