← Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
She Spent 20 Years Inside Cartels, Scam Factories & Black Markets. Investigative Journalist Mariana van Zeller On The $12 Billion Industry Stealing From Americans & Why Everybody Is Scammable
01:13:56
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- [00:00]
Mariana Van Zeller
Everybody is scammable.
- [00:02]
Mayim Bialik
Why are we so gullible?
- [00:03]
Mariana Van Zeller
I was the victim of a romance scam.
- [00:06]
Jonathan Cohen
No.
- [00:06]
Mariana Van Zeller
$12 billion were stolen from Americans just on scams alone. Once they drain your money doesn't mean that you're no good for them anymore. You become the money launderer or a drug mute. Black and gray markets make up for a third of the global economy. Sex trafficking, pirates, assassins. They are really good at what they do. No one is born wanting to be a criminal. The lack of opportunities lead people to these lives of crime. We're talking about fact full with tens of thousands of scammers. We should be blaming the system.
- [00:37]
Mayim Bialik
Mariana Van Zeller is an investigative journalist gaining unprecedented access to cartel operations, trafficking networks and black market systems all over the world.
- [00:47]
Mariana Van Zeller
Organ trafficking is a booming industry. I interviewed a funeral director who showed me a pen where inside was a piece of human brain. Most scared I've ever been was with an assassin in South Africa. We spent two, three hours talking, and when I asked him, but have you realized that what you're doing to other children is exactly what was done to you? He stopped for a second and says, I hope that they're really great conversations about the lives we lead and what we choose to do with them. Mom, can you tell me a story?
- [01:20]
Mayim Bialik
Sure. Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car.
- [01:23]
Mariana Van Zeller
Was she brave?
- [01:24]
Mayim Bialik
She was tired mostly. But she went to Carvana.com and found a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required.
- [01:30]
Mariana Van Zeller
Did you have to fight a dragon?
- [01:32]
Mayim Bialik
Nope. She bought it 100% online from her bed, actually.
- [01:35]
Mariana Van Zeller
Was it honey?
- [01:37]
Mayim Bialik
It was as unscary as car buying could be.
- [01:39]
Mariana Van Zeller
Did the car have a sunroof?
- [01:40]
Mayim Bialik
It did, actually.
- [01:41]
Mariana Van Zeller
Okay, good story.
- [01:43]
Mayim Bialik
Car buying you'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.
- [01:51]
Jonathan Cohen
And I'm Jonathan Cohen.
- [01:51]
Mayim Bialik
And welcome to our breakdown. Today we're going to be talking to someone who holds the world's darkest secrets and for a living, tries to find the humans and the humanity behind what goes on in the hidden third of our economy. Mariana Van Zeller is an Emmy and Peabody Award winning investigative journalist. She's known for her National Geographic show, Trafficked with Mariana Van Zeller. The most Emmy nominated unscripted series in Emmy history. And she has a podcast, the Hidden Third, where she talks to people who have been victims of romance scams, cyber scams, banking scams, fraud. Her career has included gaining unprecedented access to cartel operations, trafficking networks, cybercrime Rings and black market systems all over the world. She's here today to talk about what are the lessons she has learned from speaking to some of the most complicated aspects of the black and gray markets. The stories we're going to hear today are, in many cases, unbelievable. And we all want to think we could never be scammed. It would never happen to us. But what Mariana is going to explain to us is that we are all on a spectrum of vulnerability, and we are all susceptible to the things that matter most to us, whether that's security, money, love. We are all potentially open to learning more about ourselves from hearing the kinds of stories that Mariana has tackled for decades in her career. It's a pleasure to welcome in person Mariana Van Zeller to the Breakdown. Break it down.
- [03:33]
Mariana Van Zeller
Thank you for having me.
- [03:35]
Jonathan Cohen
This is a different episode than we normally do, but a lot of our episodes revolve around pulling back a curtain of what is happening in the world that a ton of people don't have access to. And that really describes most of your work.
- [03:49]
Mariana Van Zeller
That's right, yeah.
- [03:51]
Jonathan Cohen
If no one has heard of you, which I find it hard to believe, can you describe a little bit about what you have done for all of these years?
- [03:59]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah, absolutely. So I've spent the last 20 years of my life reporting as an investigative journalist on black markets. Black and gray markets actually make up for about a third of the global economy. Most people don't know anything about what's happening inside these black markets. We're talking about the drug trade, sex trafficking, scams, the world of assassins, pirates. And I've, Yeah, spent the last two decades basically gaining access to these worlds and speaking to the smugglers and the traffickers and the scammers and all of them.
- [04:31]
Mayim Bialik
Many of us have heard of the black market from jokes, from snippets here and there on TV shows like, oh, buy it on the black market. Right. Can you explain, for someone who doesn't know, what does the black market encompass and then what is the gray market?
- [04:45]
Mariana Van Zeller
So the difference between the two is that the black market is everything that's illegal. So if you're buying guns illegally or drugs illegally, or scamming people, robbing people, killing people, that's all part of the black market. The gray market is more gray.
- [05:00]
Jonathan Cohen
The connection to taxes is obviously interesting, meaning that in an ideal world, all the money that's being created is sort of above board so that it can contribute to the greater society, but there's also a much bigger implication to people's lives. Right. Like, not only are they at risk, for example, of a crypto scam, which we can discuss, or a love scam, which is maybe some of the most compelling emotional content. But if a third of the world's economy is operating in this area, there's no rules, there's no safety, there's no regulation. Can you describe maybe some of the potential impact even peripherally if this is how the world is working?
- [05:42]
Mariana Van Zeller
I mean, it's gigantic. Right. There's a whole world out there that, like you said, there is no safety, no security. I think a good example, most people don't think about this, but we did an episode about fake medications, fake pharmaceuticals, and how 20 million Americans can't afford their life saving medications sometimes and have to resort to the black market pharmaceuticals. And that's going to labs that are often in India where you can order stuff online or going across the border into Mexico. So we went to both of those countries to understand how this, how the pharmaceuticals, how these fake medications are being made. And the problem is that a lot of them don't actually have the active ingredients that they have. And worse than that, a lot of them are mixed in with incredibly dangerous chemicals that American consumers are taking and using and has led to deaths around the world. So it's this sort of, you know, world where there are no real rules, there is no safety, and where it's dangerous for everyone.
- [06:44]
Mayim Bialik
The trust people have in our institutions, especially here, you know, in, in the United States, is dwindling. Right. And in many cases, people don't have trust in pharmaceutical companies, doctors, you know, what we're being told. How do you balance sort of what you do with also the very human need for people to get the care that they want, for example. I mean, I know people who go south of the border, you know, for lots treatments. How do you sort of balance that? Because obviously it's important for things to be above board, it's important for things to be verified, it's important for things to be accounted for.
- [07:19]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah. I certainly don't blame the consumers for doing it. I think the biggest message that I try to weave through my work all the time is that we shouldn't be blaming the people, we should be blaming the systems. It is because of broken systems that we have undocumented immigrants in this country. Right. It is because of broken systems that we have a drug trade and drug epidemic that has killed a million Americans in the last 20 years. You know, these are all issues of system. Yeah. Systems that are failing people. And it's in those situations where ultimately you either have consumers or the users of those black markets that have to resort to those black markets, or you have the people that are willingly operating in these black markets. And no one is born wanting to be a criminal. Right? You don't wake up one day either and decide, hey, I just want to start trafficking drugs. It is the majority of cases, not always, but the majority of cases, the lack of choices, the lack of opportunities that lead people to these lives of crime. And as long as there's inequality in this world, there is going to be growing violence and the, you know, the booming black markets that exist around us.
- [08:29]
Mayim Bialik
What is it about the vulnerability that you've sort of seen that runs through all of these different kinds of cases that you are involved in?
- [08:38]
Mariana Van Zeller
Whether I'm interviewing a victim or I'm interviewing the perpetrator, I find out that their stories are very similar, that often it's the same again, broken systems that has led them to that path. I remember interviewing one of the longest interviews I've ever done actually was with an assassin in South Africa. Now, this is not somebody that we obviously do not condone what he does. Just don't imagine understanding or connecting to a person who's ultimately killing people. The worst of the worst thing you can possibly do. And yet we spend two, three hours talking. And at the end, what he told me, his life story was that his parents had been killed when he was 8 or 9 years old, didn't have family that took him over, was on the streets, basically spent most of his life on the streets, went into the drug trade, eventually became an assassin, started using drugs in order to be able to kill people. And he saw the world as very black and white, right? It was bad people. He was just killing bad people. That's how he moralized it. And he would never, ever touch women or children, only bad men. And when I asked him, but have you realized that what you're doing to other children is exactly what was done to you?
- [09:49]
Mayim Bialik
Right?
- [09:49]
Mariana Van Zeller
And he stopped for a second, says, no, no, I've never even thought of that. At the end of the interview, he came to me and I said, look, you were the first person ever that was interested in my life. No one ever asked me. Nobody ever wanted to know anything about me. Literally no one wanted to know about my life or why I do what I do. And he said, I've been wanting to get out of this for a long time, and I'm going to try and find a way out. I'm not saying that it was because of this conversation, but I Do think conversations like these are incredibly important. Understanding the problem, understanding the root cause of all these problems, of all these black markets, is the only way that we can prevent them from existing. You know, we can build all the walls. We can spend all the money on law enforcement. We want all the money on the drug trade, on fighting drugs, on the drug war. I've done nothing to prevent the drug trade in this country. Right. So unless we understand what's at the root of all of these problems, and that starts by asking questions even of the people that we don't agree with. Yeah. We're not gonna change anything.
- [10:53]
Jonathan Cohen
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- [10:56]
Mayim Bialik
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- [12:40]
Mariana Van Zeller
Focus features in Blumhouse present Obsession. When I have a crush on a guy no one knows, Be careful. I wish Nikki love me more than anyone in the entire world. Who you wish for? Obsession is 96% fresh on rotten Tomatoes. I love you so, so, so, so much. It's blood soaked nightmare fuel.
- [13:01]
Jonathan Cohen
Brooke, I suppose you put on her.
- [13:03]
Mariana Van Zeller
You have been warned. Obsession. Rated R under 17. Animated without parent. Only in theaters May 15 with special engagements in Dolby.
- [13:10]
Jonathan Cohen
But for a few things, all of our lives would have been different, right?
- [13:14]
Mariana Van Zeller
Exactly. And that doesn't mean that I again condone what they do. Because I do get a lot of shit for this. Like, a lot of people say, how. How are you giving this. These people a platform? Why you? They even say that I'm glamorizing crime, which is absolutely untrue. I think that respecting people, treating people with respect, by doing so, you're sort of expecting some humanity back, right? By understanding them, you're really getting at the core of humanity, of what a human being is. And that for me has always been important. So when I'm trying to gain access to these worlds, which is the hardest thing we have to do on our job, I don't approach people first. It takes years sometimes to even get people to say yes to talking to us. But once we do get to meet with these people, what I say all the time is I'm here with empathy. I'm trying to understand why.
- [14:08]
Jonathan Cohen
What's in it for a drug dealer, a kingpin, someone who is in that world to let you in at all. Because it's a risk.
- [14:14]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah, of course. I think it's a few things. First of all, it's ego, right? A lot of these people have never even told their stories. Like the assassin in South Africa. I remember one case where we were interviewing a guy who makes counterfeit. He's the best at the best. In Peru, there's a thriving black market for counterfeit dollars. They make dollars, $100 bills that look exactly like the real thing. And he was sharing with me how he makes it. And he was so proud of the work that he does. And he told me, look, my family doesn't even know what I do. And yet again, I'm the best of the best out there doing this kind of work. And you are giving me an opportunity with a mask and a distorted voice to share what I'm passionate about. What I realize is my true talent in life. So I think that ego and wanting to share stories that their families many times don't even know, I think impunity in places like Sinaloa, where there's so much corruption, they don't even see a downside to talking to us. But I do think the third most important reason is really what I talked about, the South African assassin, which is the need that we all have to be understood. Right. To connect on a human level. These are the most shunned and stereotyped people in our society. And they really, I think, in many times, appreciate somebody that comes there and who's genuinely curious about their lives and them. And I think that really helps in getting people to open up.
- [15:35]
Jonathan Cohen
I would love to move into a bit of an overview of some of the scams that many people will not know at all or understand. And the ones that jump out, to me, the most are the romance scams, pig butchering, which is terrifying. And there's just like a thick. An entire world that people don't understand is happening because it impacts every. Everything we do online. If you start to realize what's happening there, Medical scams also. But before we get to those topics, you spent a lot of time in Mexico. Mexico's kind of on fire in the last few weeks. What insight do you have from the work that you've done on what's happening there now?
- [16:17]
Mariana Van Zeller
Right. We've spent billions of dollars on this war on drugs that started with President Nixon, and yet we're. Again, millions of people have died, continue dying, both here in America, but also with the violence in Mexico. And there's always this belief by the US Government that if we go after the El Chapos of the world, the El Menchos of the world, the leaders of these cartels, that that is going to stop the drug trade. And in fact, what has been happening again and again, not that I'm saying that we should not go after these people and hold them accountable. We should. But what happens when you take out the head of these cartels is that violence grows. Why? It's very simple, actually. The majority of people, there's usually infighting within the cartels. It happened when Chapo was apprehended. It is happening right now with El Mencho having been killed. There's infighting within the cartel to who's going to take over. Right. And usually the people that step to the top are the most violent people, because that's how you show power in the underworld, in the black market, in the World of crime, right? And so again and again, the leader is being replaced by somebody who's more violent, which is why each new generation of new cartels is more violent than the previous one. I mean, if we're talking about cjng, the Jalisco cartel that Al Mencho was the leader of, they used ISIS type tactics to impose their power and their access to the trade routes up to the United States. I mean, it was, you know, beheading people, hanging them of bridges and roads all over Mexico. It's terrifyingly violent stuff that they do. And this is what we, I believe we're expecting to see more and more of. And let's not forget that the weapons that are, that they use are all coming from the United States. Something like between 70 and 80% of the guns that are found in every crime scene in Mexico, those guns come from the United States. There's only one gun shop in the whole of Mexico, and it's in Mexico City. And only authorized buyers can go in and buy the guns. The vast majority of guns are coming from the United States. It's what's called the Iron river, is the trade of guns from the US To Mexico. And most people don't talk about that. Right. We usually just talk about the drugs coming north. We don't talk about the guns that they're using to maintain their violence and their power and how those are American.
- [18:53]
Jonathan Cohen
Before we talk about love scams, can you describe a few times where maybe you thought your work was going sideways, that you may have really been in danger?
- [19:02]
Mariana Van Zeller
I mean, there have been many situations. We've been in shootouts with the Sinaloa cartel. We've, we've, yeah, I mean, we've been. Our phones have been confiscated and taken to, you know, detained. All sorts of things like that have happened. But I think the most scared I've ever been was when we were stuck in a military coup in Niger. We were there to do a story about gold trafficking and how illegal gold trafficking in the country is actually funding groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations spent four years trying to convince NATGEO to let us go. That this was, we know, the most dangerous part of the world, but that we were going to be able to do our job safely. And finally they said, okay, you guys can go, but we need a military escort to go out into the mines and film with the miners. And we got a military escort. It was four trucks with 50 or 40 heavily armed men, soldiers trained by the United States to protect us. And then as we were coming back in town. After spending overnight camping with the miners, we came back to town. We found out there had been a military coup and that the borders were closed, the airspace shut down, and that we were stuck in this small town without a way out, and that there was an incoming, possible incoming war, and we were surrounded by the groups that we went there to report on.
- [20:29]
Mayim Bialik
When you say goodbye to your, you know, your husband and kid for this kind of. Is there a possibility that you won't come back?
- [20:36]
Mariana Van Zeller
I don't think it that way, or else I wouldn't do this job. Right. I want to survive. And no story is worth a life, obviously. But there is risk and we know there is risk. And my husband has been traveling. Not anymore, but we used to travel together. He's a journalist as well. We met at Columbia University's journalism school. So he knows better than anyone what the risks are. But there's also a lot of planning that is put in place to make sure that we're minimizing the risk. But what really scared me about that situation in particular was that there was nothing that we could do. The situation was completely out of our control. Right. And that was terrifying. I'm generally not an anxious person. My husband gets very mad at me, actually, because I sleep very well every night and I can fall asleep anywhere. And that was the most anxiety inducing experience of my life.
- [21:26]
Mayim Bialik
And who were you with? Like, what's your crew like?
- [21:28]
Mariana Van Zeller
We're usually six or seven people, so it's myself, a director, two, three people from our camera team, and a producer. And we also had a fixer from Mali who's a local journalist who was from the neighboring country, Mali, who was there in Niger with us. And I was the only woman, by the way, as is often the case, actually. And when I was camping out with the miners, I was the only woman.
- [21:50]
Mayim Bialik
Did you sleep well that night?
- [21:52]
Mariana Van Zeller
You know, no, because I had horrible diarrhea. Sorry, guys.
- [21:59]
Mayim Bialik
That's nature's way of keeping you vigilant.
- [22:01]
Mariana Van Zeller
I ate goat the night before with tribespeople and ended up spending my night going to the bathroom in an open bucket surrounded by men. Please don't clip this part.
- [22:17]
Jonathan Cohen
And did you lose your military escort because they had to go to fight.
- [22:22]
Mariana Van Zeller
As soon as we landed in town, we found out there had been a military coup. We lost our escort, and that was not fun. Immediately started getting calls from my team here in la, from National Geographic, who I was working with at the time. And everybody was very worried for us, but there was nothing they could Do. It was nine days. Thankfully, it was only nine days. And in the end, what happened was that we had an evacuation company, which is why the work we do is not cheap, because we have high insurance rates. We have to hire an evacuation company. Exactly. For situations like this. The evacuation company. We actually made the whole story. The episode we put together, we used part of these calls us trying to get out, because it demonstrates the danger of this part of the world that we were reporting on. But we called the evacuation company, they had no plan in place, so there was really nobody who could come and get us out.
- [23:14]
Mayim Bialik
And meanwhile, what'd you do for nine days?
- [23:17]
Mariana Van Zeller
Oh, we kept reporting, actually. We interviewed a human, a gold trafficker, who was one of the people responsible for getting the gold out of Niger. And he was also a human trafficker. So I asked him if I paid him a little bit of money or a lot of money if he'd get us out of the country. He said we were Americans, so we were high value targets, so no thanks. So he declined our offer. But we also interviewed a former Al Qaeda member during that time. We had to keep doing something because or else we would go mad, but also because we saw it as an opportunity. We believed and hoped that we'd be able to get out of there alive, even though at some moments it was hard. We wanted to be able to tell the story as much as we could. And people were starting to be evacuated. We've got the French, the British, the Portuguese, the Spanish being evacuated from the capital, but we couldn't get to the capital. It was too far, it was too dangerous. I mean, there were no flights, we couldn't get there. And so eventually I went to the airport and there were a few planes. And I was asking the airport manager, is there any way there's any plane coming or leaving? If there is, please let me know. And I showed him a photo of my son and I said, do you have children? And he said, I do. We talked about our kids. And I said, look, his name was Khadr. Said, Khadr, if by any chance any planes come in or out, please, this is my number, call me. And a few days later, nine days later, my team in the US, led by my husband, were able to find some crazy pilots with a plane that were willing to come to Niger. They would spend 20 minutes on the ground, they would come at night, 20 minutes on the ground. And we had those 20 minutes get onto the plane and leave. And the day we arrived at the airport, we were ecstatic, super nervous as well, there is an enormous military presence there and they don't want us to leave. And Kader was there as well, because he'd found out that there was a plane coming and he wanted. And he thought about us and he thought this might be a plane for Mariana. And he shows up and he's yelling at the military and really putting his own life at risk at this point and telling them, you have to let them leave. And fighting for us, he goes back and forth. We found out the pilots were Portuguese. Luck of all luck. So I was able to talk to the pilots myself. And eventually we got on a plane, and as I'm the last one, my whole team is in the plane, and I'm the last one running into the plane. And Carter yells my name and says, mariana. And I look back and he says, say happy birthday to your son. Because I told him it was my son's birthday. And he says, happy birthday to your son. And so I was leaving on that plane. That day was just a moment of being super happy. Right. But at the same time, just carrying this enormous guilt for all the people that we'd spend time with and the future of this country that was now in the hands of these mercenaries.
- [26:00]
Jonathan Cohen
The power and optimism that you can find in a human connection who is putting his life on the line to help you, like, it's really unbelievable.
- [26:09]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah. That's exactly why I have enormous positive view of the world and of human beings, of humanity. Not on the systems, not in governments, but in human beings. Yeah.
- [26:19]
Jonathan Cohen
There isn't a documentary about crime that Mayim doesn't like.
- [26:22]
Mayim Bialik
I've seen them all.
- [26:24]
Jonathan Cohen
Of course, all the other things we're talking about are widely dangerous. But there's something about love scams and getting someone to just fall in love with you that feels oddly strange and intimate and dangerous. Can you tell us a little bit about what is happening in this world and how really technology has made it so much easier?
- [26:44]
Mayim Bialik
Oh, you're talking to her. I thought you were talking to me. I was gonna do the intro on this section.
- [26:48]
Mariana Van Zeller
Go ahead. You know what's funny? I should actually. I'm going to talk to you right now, but I should come back because I'm in the middle a project for Nat Geo, which I can talk a little bit about it, but part of it was that I was the victim of a romance scam, which is amazing. But, yeah, we started reporting on this. So it's so interesting how the scam industry in general has grown. We first pitched this story about scams to Nat Geo in season one of Traffic in 2019. And now I remember our execs there being like, scams, that's not a big deal. And it really was not at the time a big deal. I mean, they happened, but it wasn't as prevalent as they are right now. I think in 2024, which is the last numbers we have for them, $12 billion billion dollars were stolen for Americans just on scams alone. And a big part of that are in fact romance scams. So, yeah, we ended up doing a few stories on scams and then realized that romance scams are really the juiciest but also the most sort of cruel kind of scam out there, in my opinion. You've got people a lot of time. Unfortunately, what we found in our reporting was that they are a lot of these scammers are in West Africa. We actually ended up, I mean, they're all over the world, but from the reporting that we did took us to the victims that we spoke to, when we tracked down their scammers, a lot of them were in West Africa and we ended up spending time in Ghana. Interviewing it's an entire industry, entire industry.
- [28:19]
Mayim Bialik
Like people can't imagine it, that there's like rows and rows of people.
- [28:23]
Jonathan Cohen
A lot of people have no clue. Like, if someone is like, what is like give us sort of the nuts and bolts, how does it work? And then the industry.
- [28:30]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah. So you're out there, you have, you're on social media or you're on a dating website or maybe there's just been news that your husband has died. I mean, there are so many ways that these cameras find your about, find out about you and they reach out to you.
- [28:46]
Mayim Bialik
But a dating profile would be the easiest way because it's your contact information, it's everything about you, all the things you like. Right.
- [28:52]
Mariana Van Zeller
And then they start saying, usually, you know, the typical profile of a romance scammer is that they're in the military, oil rigs and they're very, very wealthy and they live very adventurous life out there. They usually start sending you photos. These are usually male scammers, but they're also female scammers. But the male scammer profile, there are
- [29:17]
Mayim Bialik
also men who pose as female scammers, which is 100%.
- [29:20]
Mariana Van Zeller
And they do like a voice. Some people doing a female v insane. And they start sending you photos and they're usually this dreamy, the most beautiful, handsome.
- [29:32]
Mayim Bialik
They always have gray hair and blue
- [29:33]
Mariana Van Zeller
eyes you have ever seen. Right. The best bodies. There are always lots of shots of them. Without their T shirts, bare chest and lots of muscles and the whole thing. And then they start talking to you day and night. And this happened to me as well. Every single day. You're love bombed. And they start slowly, like, I want to know more about you. So what interests you? They find common ground. If you're divorced, if your husband died, their wife has died too. If you suffer from depression, Turns out they suffer from depression too. They're always trying to find a common ground.
- [30:06]
Mayim Bialik
It's also, there's a long game. This isn't like, oh, they ask you for money on the first date.
- [30:10]
Mariana Van Zeller
Weeks, months, sometimes years go by before they even ask a person for money.
- [30:15]
Mayim Bialik
And it's always something like, oh, my account. I had to change the bank and the password.
- [30:20]
Mariana Van Zeller
And then they start asking for pictures of you. They actually in many cases start sending you. I know this from first time experience, firsthand experience. They start sending you photos that they've made of you and him side by side. And they start sending you photos where they've printed photos of you in their house and they're showing you how you are all over their world.
- [30:42]
Mayim Bialik
And, and people fall in love, which is also a thing. I, I personally don't understand that. People who have never spoken on the phone, never facetimed. In many cases, they start saying I love you, they develop a.
- [30:56]
Mariana Van Zeller
A love relationship 100%. He did talk about what he would do to me once he actually got his arms around me after I sent him all the money he was asking for. Yeah. Wow. They fall in love so deeply that even when they find out it's a scam, even when they find out that the person is not the person they
- [31:15]
Jonathan Cohen
believed, they can't believe it.
- [31:16]
Mariana Van Zeller
That happens almost always. They stay in love with the new person that has just come up in their life.
- [31:22]
Mayim Bialik
Like, oh, he needed. The fact that he was so desperate that he needed to pretend to be a scammer shows, like what he needs. My love. Yeah, it's like a whole thing.
- [31:31]
Mariana Van Zeller
I spoke to a woman once who was being scammed for years, and she was deeply in love with this man. This man. When there was no money left, she. He couldn't drain her of any more money. He said, okay, I'm gonna come real. I'm gonna be real with you right now. I'm actually a Nigerian rapper and I am not the military guy you thought I was. And I'm not American and I'm a Nigerian rapper, but I am deeply in love with you. And she traveled to Nigeria and married him this actually happened.
- [32:00]
Jonathan Cohen
So he's developing feelings for her, too.
- [32:04]
Mariana Van Zeller
He thought he could still get something from her.
- [32:07]
Mayim Bialik
We need to be clear. The people who are scamming are often scamming many people.
- [32:12]
Mariana Van Zeller
They use their victims for lots of different things. Once they drain your money doesn't mean that you're no good for them anymore. You still are useful to them.
- [32:21]
Mayim Bialik
You borrow money from other people to give them. That often happens.
- [32:24]
Mariana Van Zeller
Or you become a drug mule, or you become the money launderer for that person. I interviewed a woman who was receiving, no joke, this was recently receiving thousands of dollars a week from women, female victims all around America, that her scammer was victimizing, scamming. And she was receiving all these checks and boxes of money from all these women, putting it into her bank account, and then moving that money to crypto bitcoin to pay the guy. And she was being used as a money launderer, which can also get her in trouble with the law, by the way. But she. In her defense, she had no idea. What her scammer told her was that he had business in the US with all these people. He had some sort of tax problem, and his bank accounts were frozen. And so he needed her to do this for him in order to build our trust and love for each other. And she did it for three years.
- [33:18]
Mayim Bialik
This is the way that millions of dollars, billions of dollars are sent. Billions of dollars, billions of dollars are sent. What happens to that money when it gets there? Meaning what are the scammers actually raising money for?
- [33:33]
Mariana Van Zeller
Oh, well, the very luxurious lifestyle. So there's various scales, right? There's the, you know, guys in the Internet cafes on the bottom of the scale, which I have also interviewed.
- [33:45]
Jonathan Cohen
And they're freelancers. Those are just like loan operators.
- [33:48]
Mariana Van Zeller
Exactly, Freelancers. I remember interviewing a guy who had sort of a den of scammers, and he was. He worked with, like, three or four different people. And each one of them has their own job, right? One of them is the guy that goes online and looks for the dating profiles or the social media profiles out there.
- [34:04]
Mayim Bialik
But you got to keep track of all these different women, too. You got to, like, know, oh, this one is this and this one's that. It's like a whole job.
- [34:10]
Mariana Van Zeller
This is sort of the planner, the producer, right? The organizer that's reaching out and finding people. And then there was the guy who was the. What do they call him? Like the. Not the catcher, but hook or something. He was the guy that was really good at talk or the real. He was the romantic One, he was the one who was really good at talking to these women or men and getting them to fall in love. And. And then there was the guy at the end. That was the guy that would come in the closer with a closer. He was like the finisher that came in with the last ask and was the one who, like, really knew what words to use in order to be able to convince these women or men to send them money. But this guy that I, in this den of scammers sort of took me to his slum that he grew up in. And he was saying, look, for the longest time, the only way out of the slum was if you were a football player, soccer player. That's all kids want it to be. Nowadays, the only way out of these slums is if you become a scammer. So ask these kids. And we did. We asked the kids, what do you want to do when you grow up? Half of them put their hands up were like scammers, because all the scammers in their town are the ones bringing back the money to their families, but they're also the ones driving luxury cars and going out and, you know, nightclubbing and all that. So this is sort of from the bottom to the middle. But then there's the real big criminal enterprises, and a lot of these are being operated out of Asia, actually. And it's the pig butchering scams that are mixed with romance scams, by the way, because that's how they get people to trust them. It's a mix of romance scam and a financial crypto scam, essentially, where they start communicating with these women or men. A lot of times, in this case, it's actually more male victims. They start having relationships, and at some point they start sending photos of themselves traveling around the world, having a luxurious lifestyle. And then they start saying, hey, I got rich because I invest in crypto. Would you like to invest in crypto too? It is so easy. Go to this website. Just put $100 and you put $100. Everything looks so legitimate. By the way, these websites, they have legitimate names. They look totally legitimate, and they look
- [36:15]
Mayim Bialik
legitimate even if you're 30. Like, God bless my mother, she cannot tell when things are illegitimate on the Internet. But these are like. Like you or I would look at it and be like, that looks like a bank account.
- [36:27]
Mariana Van Zeller
Which is why this is not an elderly scam. Actually, the majority of the victims of these pig butchering scams are not the elderly. They're actually people like you and I.
- [36:35]
Jonathan Cohen
So you think that how could they possibly do anything nefarious. I'm logging into Coinbase.
- [36:41]
Mariana Van Zeller
It's even more than that. Sometimes they are actually legit. Like they are websites with companies behind them that are legitimate. What they don't know is that the money. When you're seeing your deposit of $100 go up and up and up and it looks like you're making bank. It is actually. That part is fakes.
- [37:01]
Mayim Bialik
They're hacking into actual systems and investments
- [37:04]
Mariana Van Zeller
to convince you that you're making a lot of money. Except when you want to get your money back, there is no money there. And. But they come up with more excuses. Oh, you put in $1,000, you've made $100,000. Amazing. And now I want my money back. I want to get it out. Right. And they say, okay, to get your money back, you just have to pay a fee. And once you're in, and this is the psychology behind scam victims, is that once you're in, even if they sometimes only get you for $10, but once you're in, once you invested even a dollar into one of these scams, they have you. There's something psychologically that happens in a person's mind where at that point you just want to believe it. It is really hard to admit that you've been scammed. You prefer to believe that this is all real and keep pouring money into this.
- [37:51]
Mayim Bialik
Why are we so gullible?
- [37:52]
Mariana Van Zeller
I don't know. It's a great question. But it is not because we're dumb.
- [37:59]
Mayim Bialik
A lot of the kind of misogynistic read on this is that women are so susceptible and women this. But it's not just women and it's not stupid people.
- [38:08]
Mariana Van Zeller
A lot of these crypto scams that are bringing in billions of dollars for criminal enterprises in Asia, men are the victims. It is not. They are really good at what they do.
- [38:17]
Jonathan Cohen
To speak to the men versus women. There was the case of the bank CEO.
- [38:22]
Mayim Bialik
Yeah.
- [38:22]
Mariana Van Zeller
It blew even my mind, even though I've been reporting on scams for so long. So this was a bank in Kansas, I believe. Right. And it was a regional bank that was set up by all these local farmers and hardworking people. It was the bank that everybody trusted in town. And the head of this bank, the CEO, I think he was the CEO of the bank was one of the most trusted men in the town. Right. He would. He was a very important person in the town. And suddenly you got mixed up with one of these crypto scams. And it started like this online too. Somebody reached out to Him. They became friends online. I don't know if this was a romance scam, but this person portrayed themselves as being very, very, very wealthy and having these incredible returns on these investments that they were doing in crypto. This is somebody who's been a banker all their lives, but perhaps did not know a lot about crypto and was interested in learning more about it. And what are some of the businesses? What can I. Can I invest my money into this? And what often happens, too, is that they will say. They won't immediately say, yes. They'll say, I have to check. I'm not sure if the company will allow you to invest the money. So then you feel special. Right.
- [39:37]
Jonathan Cohen
There's a scarcity mindset.
- [39:38]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yes. And in this case with the banker, was that the poor guy, I actually feel bad for him because he started putting initially his own money into this, and they started asking for more money. Well, in order to be able to unlock the money you've already made, you have to put in more money.
- [39:55]
Jonathan Cohen
And then I think this is where people can get stuck. Right. You're like, okay, I have this money. I think I've put a little bit in, it's gotten a return. Why do I have to put money in to get the money out? And like, I don't think they quite understand sort of the snowball effect and how that perpetuates.
- [40:11]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah. And that's what happens is that they, they come up with these excuses. And again, they're very good. They've been crafting and profess. They're becoming more and more professional at what they're doing and asking for money. Right. So their excuses are amazing and incredible.
- [40:25]
Jonathan Cohen
But like, like what?
- [40:26]
Mariana Van Zeller
It's. You have to pay the tax for this country or you have to get insurance.
- [40:30]
Mayim Bialik
The excuses are things that are either unverifiable or to verify them, you would have to do so much research that, that it's just not worth it. And that's when you convince yourself. And this is the psychology of it. That's when you convince yourself, like, I'm being crazy. I'm thinking too much about this. Like, if it's that elaborate for me to figure it out, it's not real.
- [40:51]
Mariana Van Zeller
So that is the other part that's so interesting is that sometimes they actually send you something. They'll send you money.
- [40:57]
Mayim Bialik
Oh, yeah, that's a thing.
- [40:58]
Mariana Van Zeller
If you're a few thousand dollars out and you're starting to have suspicions. Wait, is this real? They, they, they think there's a much bigger bank of money that I can Get. So I'm going to send the victim $1,000. Now they're going to believe us. Once that trust is established, then it's.
- [41:15]
Mayim Bialik
And that often happens that the first time they ask for money and you give it, they pay you right back. I'm like, oh, and that's all part of the scam.
- [41:24]
Mariana Van Zeller
Just like they send the romance victims flowers, they start sending you gifts, they send jewelry sometimes to the romance scammers victims.
- [41:33]
Jonathan Cohen
So this banker ended up, it was like, I forget how much. It was like 24 or 48 million.
- [41:38]
Mariana Van Zeller
It was 40 something million dollars that he stole then from the clients, from the customers of the bank. And the bank went down, the bank collapsed.
- [41:47]
Jonathan Cohen
So it's not only that he starts putting his own money in and then he can't get his own money out, but he's like, I'm gonna double down and I'm just gonna start taking money, embezzling money from the bank in order to unlock.
- [41:58]
Mariana Van Zeller
Like, because you're in so deep at this point that admitting that you were a victim of a scam means your life is over.
- [42:07]
Jonathan Cohen
But can you imagine for a moment you've put in maybe 20 times of insurance and fees and I just have to unlock like the mental gymnastics to be like, oh, yeah, this one's gonna work is unbelievable.
- [42:21]
Mariana Van Zeller
I spoke to a woman recently who for over a year thought she was in a relationship with Jon Bon Jovi. She spent so much money sending money to his manager. Oh my God. Because she thought she was gonna have a face to face with Jon Bon Jovi. And Jon Bon Jovi, by the way, sent her. Not the real Jon Bon Jovi, but she would get videos that look exactly. Because that's the problem with AI now, which is gonna play the role that it is starting to play already. And scams. She would get, you know, messages from what looked like Jon Bon Jovi saying, good morning, love, my lovely da da da. I, you know, and she was. Started giving money and at one point she realized this is all fake, this is all a scam. But she thought, what is? What's my life now? I don't have that anymore. Now I go back to just being my lonely self without any prospect of happiness in this world. So I prefer to just believe that this is real and this speaks to the loneliness epidemic. But I think that that's what happens a lot, even in these crypto scams, where admitting that you've been scammed and you've lost all this money is so incredibly depressing that I just want to Keep feeding into this and believing for one more day that maybe this is true and maybe it's real.
- [43:39]
Jonathan Cohen
This speaks to like, how the love scammers can be on the phone with you, can send you pictures, can even video chat with you. Can you describe some of the complication in the technology that is helping people be pulled through these scans?
- [43:56]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah, with a lack of complication, the advancement in these technologies, that it is helping. Right. So with these crypto scams, pig butchering, really sad fact is that most people don't know a lot of the people doing the scams in, in these Southeast Asian compounds. We're talking about factories full with tens of thousands of scammers, people living there day and night. And in many cases it's forced labor. The majority of people that are stuck there are promised these jobs in the tech and finance industry. And they are lured from all over the world to come to Southeast Asia, to places like Myanmar and Cambodia. And once they get there, they take the bosses, the criminal bosses of these operations, they take away their passports, and they are forced to scam Americans all day long, which is crazy. And as part of this, we did a story about it, really. They beat them, they torture them. It's horrific. But as part of this whole operation, what we found is that they were using these female models because again, a lot of the victims in this case were men in the pig butchering scams. They were using these female models to have these conversations. Using. They would sit in front of a camera and the camera would. The victim thought he was talking to Diana from Arkansas, whatever, this 25 year old from Arkansas that was living this luxurious life, traveling around the world. But in fact he was talking to. Right, a 25 year old from India, a man who was being tortured to do this. But then there was a moment where they want to see you face to face. Right? So they had these female models that would get in front of a screen and the screen would make you look, whatever, like the Diana that he's been talking to and not like the female model. But she was telling me that the technology was still not advanced enough, which is why she had to be a woman. She had to gesticulate and act like a woman does. But every time if she moved her head too much, it would glitch and they could see that it's not Diana that they're talking to, but it's with this woman. So she had to be very straight and careful with her movements. But now we're not at that stage anymore. Now we're at A stage where. And it doesn't matter if there's even a person in there at all. They can just put something into their computer and tell them what to do, give them the orders, and it will create a fictitious person that sounds and looks exactly like the person you believe you've been talking to.
- [46:22]
Jonathan Cohen
I think the other thing that some people listening may poke out or pick up on is like, well, you're never in the US you live this lavish lifestyle. We can never meet in person. We're just gonna constantly kick the can on that.
- [46:36]
Mayim Bialik
No, I mean, there are cases where for years, women. I mean, the stories that I know, women have been strung along and he'll say that he landed, but there was a change in the flight and you can't imagine buying it. But there's so many other touch points and the flowers come and all this thing. But yes, this can go on for years.
- [46:58]
Mariana Van Zeller
This person is now. It's not a stranger. Right.
- [47:02]
Mayim Bialik
It's your boyfriend.
- [47:03]
Mariana Van Zeller
People didn't understand, why would I ever send money to a stranger? This was not a stranger. In many ways, I knew. I thought I knew this person better than anyone else in my life. Many of the women that I've spoken to, the actual real victims of these romance scams. Yeah. They've spent sometimes years speaking to these guys. Years. And yeah, like they said, people think I'm ridiculous because I sent money to a stranger. He wasn't a stranger. In many ways, I knew this person better than I almost knew myself.
- [47:28]
Mayim Bialik
Oh. And we all want to think that if we were in that position, we wouldn't fall down.
- [47:32]
Mariana Van Zeller
We would never do this. Yeah. But everybody is scammable.
- [47:35]
Mayim Bialik
Can you explain a little bit what is happening with the billions of dollars that circulate related to human bodies?
- [47:44]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah. There's basically two different areas. There's the organ trafficking. Right. Which is different from body parts. These were two different episodes we did for Trafficked my Nat Geo Show. So organ trafficking is unfortunately a booming industry. Because I think it's something like 17Americans die every day. I believe I might have gotten that wrong. But it was a really high number of Americans die because they are on a wait list for organs. And those organs never show up. And they die on that wait list. And because of that, there's people who resort to the black market who go to other countries. And in our story, it was actually in Mexico and Colombia. We traveled to Mexico and Colombia and yeah, there was a black market for organs. So Americans could travel to these countries and procure an organ, liver, kidney, Whatever organ you needed, cornea, eye, corneas, organs that you needed to be able to live. A lot of times from poor people. A lot of reports that were done 20 years ago, I think it's gotten much better. But in India, where there were black market operators that would go out to the poorest of the poorest neighborhoods and towns and procure people and say, if you give me a kidney, I will pay you $10,000. And in many cases, these are people who need that money to survive and they're willing to give that kidney. In our story, what we found, although we could never fully corroborate that this was happening, we interviewed a guy called El Desuer, the deboner, who apparently works for the Cartel del Golfo in Mexico. And he said, and again, we could never corroborate his story. And we made this very transparent in our reporting where he said they would snatch immigrants who are making their journey through the Darien Gap all the way to the United States. And because if something happens to them, nobody will know because they're oftentimes with no communication making this very dangerous journey all the way to the US and many people, as we know, disappear while making these journeys. And how they would snatch migrants and basically kill them and take their organs. Take their organs first and then. And then kill them. It was incredibly horrific and really tragic. So that's the organ trait. It is not, it turns out, a Hollywood. Hollywood fabrication. This actually exists. Even I was shocked to the extent to which this exists. But then there's the body parts industry, which is bananas, which I had no idea existed, hadn't even seen in Hollywood either once we started reporting on it. There's a burgeoning market called the oddities market, where you can go on places like Facebook or other marketplaces and buy a skull or buy a piece of bone or buy. Or some of the popular ones, a piece of skin, inked skin, to make wallets. There's people making wallets with human skin. Sometimes if the skin has tattoos, it will go for more money. I interviewed a funeral director who showed me a pen where inside the pen, it had, like this see through area, and inside was a piece of human brain that he had procured online, that he had bought online. So there is, again, a thriving black market for these body parts everywhere. And then there's also the medical establishment.
- [51:23]
Mayim Bialik
Are wombs included in this kind of, you know, renting wombs? Yeah.
- [51:27]
Mariana Van Zeller
Oh, the surrogacy trade, that's another thing as well. Yes. But also, you know, doctors all around the World. And in order to be able to train, you need body parts. And so that they were procuring jaws and teeth for dentist practitioners. And we filmed in. It's so crazy. We filmed in a cemetery in Mexico City where they were going and digging for old skulls and jaws of people to sell them on the black market.
- [52:02]
Jonathan Cohen
What does a jaw go for on the black market?
- [52:04]
Mariana Van Zeller
I didn't ask about this jaw at the time. I believe the skull could go anywhere from 1,000 to $5,000, sometimes more.
- [52:12]
Jonathan Cohen
I didn't know there was a black market for surrogacy.
- [52:16]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yes, it is allowed. Surrogacy exists in the United States. It's actually allowed. It's not allowed in a lot of countries, but it is in United States. However, it's prohibitively expensive. So people cost. It can cost upwards of 200,000, $250,000. There's a lot of people out there that can't have children. And surrogacy is a very viable way for you to have. For people to have children. And so they're traveling to places like the Ukraine before the war, and during the war, actually, it's still happening. And Kenya and other part. And India until they close it off. Other parts of the world where surrogacy is allowed and much cheaper. But the problem with it in places like Kenya was what happened is because the laws are very sort of gray, there isn't an established rules as what can and cannot be done. And a lot of times it is people, disadvantaged people, poor people who get exploited. And so there were these black market operators that were going up to these women and promising, if you have a child for this couple, you'll make them very happy. We'll also pay you $40,000. Or actually it cost $40,000 to have a child. They were promised $5,000, $10,000. And there were stories of women who woke up in the hospital without the baby they were carrying and without the $5,000 and were abandoned.
- [53:40]
Mayim Bialik
I don't know if it was Harper's or maybe it was the Atlantic. They did a whole piece on what's happening in some of these places. It's.
- [53:47]
Jonathan Cohen
They're.
- [53:47]
Mayim Bialik
They're factories for women who are kept there 100%. Yeah. Kept in these homes and they're forced to carry children.
- [53:55]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah.
- [53:56]
Mayim Bialik
Well, and I was just thinking, especially with the medical stuff, you know, if. If it's clear that we don't have enough organs in this country, is there not a way for us to establish some sort of system that is not criminal? Right. By which people can have access to organization, organs, you know, I mean, I don't know.
- [54:17]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah. I think that the organ system and the wait list is completely broken. There have been many people trying to fix it. The problem is the moment you make it a business.
- [54:26]
Mayim Bialik
Like Karl Marx said that anytime you commodify anything, right, Love, sex, like, that's. That's what happens. I mean, that's, you know. Well, and I think also what this reminded me of, and I don't know if, if you feel this like, I don't necessarily believe in Satan. It's not a thing. But in. In literature, in Western literature, there's this notion of all the times that people can be tempted, right. It's like the devil and Daniel Webster, you know, that the devil is kind of always lurking, Right. Always looking to test you. What if this, what if that? And it feels like your business. Right. Is encountering situations where kind of good and evil are. Are really hanging in the balances. And I think the subtleties that you're picking up on the hurt people hurt notion. Right. Is showing that things that are evil are not. It's not so black and white.
- [55:19]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah, I love that you say that because I think usually it's easier to find the bad in people. Right. And we tend to focus more on that. And I think much of my job throughout these past 20 years has been in the midst of the, you know, most dangerous and most evil corners of the world trying to find the goodness. Because I do believe there's good and bad in all of us. But it is harder sometimes to find the good in people. And that's always been the challenge for me and what I want to do with my work.
- [55:48]
Jonathan Cohen
Can we talk about exotic pets?
- [55:51]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah, tigers. We did an episode on tiger trafficking.
- [55:56]
Jonathan Cohen
Everyone saw the tiger king back when Covid happened. I think that exploded the idea in people's minds, but there's a lot more pets that are out there.
- [56:07]
Mayim Bialik
But there's also a cuisine aspect to this. Right. And there's also medicinal properties.
- [56:13]
Mariana Van Zeller
There are certain in Asia, particularly in China, for many years, they believe that tiger bone was really great for your health. And then it's the shark fin soup, which is not medicinal, but it is a luxury item in China. So for big important banquets and if you're trying to impress somebody, you serve them.
- [56:32]
Mayim Bialik
So is this some of the black market that we're seeing is for both.
- [56:36]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah. Supposed medicinal and luxury goods? Yes. And we went to a restaurant in New York. It's banned, by the way. Shark fins are banned. In the United States. But I went to a restaurant in New York where I ordered shark fin soup, and they offered it.
- [56:53]
Jonathan Cohen
Can we touch on honeypots? You recently interviewed a honeypot. Can you describe to people what that is and a little bit about how they operate?
- [57:02]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah, it was really fascinating. So she's a Russian sex spy, or so she says she is.
- [57:09]
Mayim Bialik
Can you explain what a sex spy is?
- [57:11]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah. So it's somebody that uses their charm and sexuality to get state secrets or to do the things that the state wants you to do. So in her case, actually wasn't so much. She wasn't so much like a CIA agent trying to find secrets, but she was trying to infiltrate, according to her story, infiltrate these drug and criminal groups in Russia in order to get information that she would then give to the government to go after these criminal groups.
- [57:45]
Mayim Bialik
And she was recruited by the government, Supposedly, yes.
- [57:48]
Mariana Van Zeller
Recruited by the government. There's been a whole podcast about her whole life. Multiple episodes of this podcast were out there. I was fascinated by her story, started looking into her story, had lots of questions about the veracity of her story, and in my podcast, allowed her to tell her story and then confronted her with some of the holes that I had found in her story and allowed her to give me her answers and allowed my listeners to decide whether they believe her story or not. Do. Do sex spies exist around the world? 100%. Is it possible that she was out there working for the government and using her sexuality and sexpionage? Yeah. To find these secrets? Absolutely. Was she used by the Russian spy apparatus? Intelligence apparatus? Because what we. What we found out is that there's actually a lot of sex workers that are used to. For the exact same purpose. Right. The government will go up to an escort and say, we will pay you this amount to infiltrate and find, get into this person's house, find out secrets and things about this person. And that happens a lot. I think the part that is still. That I still have questions on is whether she was actually trained by the intelligence services, or if it's not my place to say, whether she's saying the truth or not. I think our listeners will hear and decide for themselves. Yeah.
- [59:14]
Jonathan Cohen
It is interesting to think, are they just approaching women who are already in this trade and asking them to work for them, or is there government organizations that are training them to do this?
- [59:24]
Mariana Van Zeller
Right. And in her interview with us and with me, she talked about how they trained her in detail of how to perform a bl job and how to have sex and how to really get what she wants from a man.
- [59:38]
Mayim Bialik
There's a bl job that gives you information, and there's one that doesn't, apparently.
- [59:41]
Mariana Van Zeller
Apparently one.
- [59:42]
Jonathan Cohen
There is one you recently had Anna Delvey on. I saw the fictionalized version of her life. I came out a few years ago, and it was shocking. Tell us a little bit about her story. Obviously, people should listen to the episode on your podcast, but give us a little bit of a primer teaser.
- [60:00]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah. So she was known as the fake Harris. Right. She arrived in New York and she portrayed herself as being part of this millionaire billionaire family from Germany. And she started basically staying in hotels for free. She's racking up this bill that she wasn't able to pay, convincing her friends to go on these very lavish, luxurious trips that then she would ask their friends to put on their credit card because she couldn't pay. But she actually got in some boardrooms with some bankers and forged documents and convinced them that if they gave her a loan for hundreds of thousands of dollars, that she would be able to pay them back because she had all these documents that proved that she was a heiress of these millions and millions of dollars in Germany, when, in fact, all of that was a lie. And she ended up being caught. She did time in prison, and she is now out there. She's still with an ankle bracelet. Actually, she wears an ankle bracelet because she's on and she has an immigrant immigration case going. I found her to be one of the hardest guests I've ever interviewed in my entire life. Most of the people that I interview, former sex buys or former cocaine traffickers, people who did horrific crimes and come to my podcast and talk openly about what they did and what they've learned. And the podcast is all about redemption and really trying to learn the consequences that led you to that life. And then what have you done? Sins. To try to come out the other way. And redemption, again, being a real big through line. And with her, it was really hard to get her. She didn't want to talk about her crimes. She portrayed the friends that she traveled with as being losers because they never amounted to anything. And every time I'd ask her questions, she would just say, I don't know. I don't want to talk about that. So at one point I said, so, Hannah, you don't want to talk about your past? You don't want to talk. I'm trying to talk to you about what you're doing now, what you want to do in the future. Even that seems to be hard for you to talk about. I Don't understand why you came on my podcast. And she said, I don't know either, because you're not paying me. And I was like, I'm not. But I am trying to sort of understand you, and you're making it really hard for me. So what began as a curiosity on my part to learn more about the Anna Delvey behind the Netflix scripted series turned into somewhat of a like argument between us, which made it very uncomfortable. Not a situation that I'm comfortable with at all.
- [62:35]
Mayim Bialik
Well, it's gotta be hard. Also, you're confronting people. Right. About some of their darkest truths. But if they are not ready to sort of come clean, there's gonna be all those defenses up. Right. Which I would imagine would happen much more with, you know, a cocaine trafficker or an assassin than with someone like her. But that's just. That's the psychology of it.
- [62:57]
Mariana Van Zeller
Right.
- [62:58]
Jonathan Cohen
There was aspects of her character in the fictionalized version that had a lot of similarities to that, like just a refusal to acknowledge that anything was wrong, a deny till you die mentality.
- [63:09]
Mariana Van Zeller
That's true. And if you go back to some of the interviews that she's given in the past, she has always come across as that. As not somebody that really wants to open up and talk about, you know, and ask, you know, and say sorry to the people that she's caused harm to. But I thought, somehow I thought that this was gonna be different. I thought, because I'm not going to come at her with an accusatory tone. I'm just coming at her because I am genuinely curious.
- [63:38]
Mayim Bialik
Yeah. But I think there's a psychiatric component here also to the kind of elaborateness of that sort of longstanding lie, which makes me very curious also about these scammers that we're talking about. Right. Who are sitting behind a computer and kind of doing this day in and day out. That's very different than sort of perpetrating. Right. A different identity of yourself. I'm not saying it's a dissociative identity disorder, but I'm saying there's a certain amount of dissociation that has to happen from whatever self you used to have. And I think that's. That's going to be very different. You know, it's. I mean, it's sociopathic, you know.
- [64:11]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah. And I'm not. Right. I'm not a doctor. I have no idea. There have been a lot of comments from psychologists and psychoanalysts who have come who have said things like that. After watching the podcast, the episode, I still. Even after the uncomfortable situation I have with her, I don't want to vilify her. Everybody has a reason to be. I don't know. I didn't go through what she went through. I have no idea. But what I don't understand is why then come on the podcast if you don't really want to talk? And then it was funny because she went on another podcast after, and she spoke much more with another guy, much more than she did on mine. Partly, I think, to show, like, it wasn't. It wasn't my fault, it was hers. She just didn't know how to interview me, which perhaps is true.
- [64:55]
Mayim Bialik
You're constantly witnessing, obviously, terror. You're constantly witnessing, you know, the effects of this kind of warfare. You're also getting a front seat into the hypocrisy and the absurdity of so much of the theatrics. Right.
- [65:14]
Jonathan Cohen
It's theater. That's exactly right.
- [65:16]
Mayim Bialik
You know, you think about sort of what Nixon was even trying to do with the war on drugs, and in many cases it did. It became a war on black people, on brown people, you know, and so what you're seeing is this sort of downstream effect of us sort of grandstanding, right? About. And I'm not just thinking about it in terms of this. I think you probably see that everywhere. How do you, as a human being, deal with kind of living in that hypocrisy that you see in every aspect of this work?
- [65:48]
Mariana Van Zeller
I think people look at the work that I do and think, boy, she must really have a depressing view of the world. But it's actually so not the case. I think it's just the fact that I'm spending so much time with people that we consider the bad guys. Right. But I can still find elements of redemption and relatability with all of them. Has really actually given me a very positive view of the world. And it's not just me, my team, we spend time with the worst of the worst, Right? And we can still connect on a human level. Again, not condoning what they do whatsoever, but the fact that there can still be human connections, then that shows me that these aren't people that are completely irredeemable. Right. In many ways, I actually find more hope, more equality in the black market than I do many times in the legal market. As we. As crazy as this is to say,
- [66:39]
Jonathan Cohen
I was going to ask if you wanted to leave the viewers with any in the audience with any sort of insight from seeing the edges of the one third of the world that lives in the shadows Yeah, I think it's
- [66:53]
Mariana Van Zeller
this idea of redemption and relatability. Right. That even in the edges of our society that we can find, still find people who are redeemable and relatable. And that is really, I think, the point of the work that I do. And I also hope that they're really great conversation starters for all of us about the lives we lead and what we choose to do with them. You know, we live at a time of epic inequality, unheard of inequality, where 10% of the world lives with under a dollar a day under the poverty line. And many of the choices they make is because of the lack of opportunities. So we should all look at ourselves in order are we doing with the privileges and the opportunities that we've been given in this world?
- [67:35]
Mayim Bialik
Thank you so much. And where can people find out all the things, obviously, about the Hidden Third and anything else you're doing?
- [67:41]
Mariana Van Zeller
Yeah, so the podcast is out there on every podcast platform. It's also out there on YouTube called the Hidden Third. And my show on Nat Geo is called Trafficked. You can watch it on Disney or Hulu. And I'm also working on a few other projects.
- [67:55]
Mayim Bialik
Amazing. Thank you so much, Mariana.
- [67:56]
Mariana Van Zeller
Thank you, guys.
- [68:00]
Mayim Bialik
I just wanted to clarify. I don't tend to sort of demonize. I mean, the Anna Delvey that case is, you know, incredibly complicated. And I also. I didn't mean to sort of throw out the sociopathic, you know, moniker as a condemnation. What I'm saying is I think that there's a deep pathology to. To people like that who can lead. It's not even a double life. Who can lead a life like that and be so immersed in this story that you create. What I'm interested in is, you know, Mariana is dealing with people who have to do this for a living, or in many cases, are forced to do this for a living. What is going on right in the manufacturing of this kind of reality? And you know, what I've learned from the shows that I've watched is that it's incredibly complicated as a scammer to be keeping track. You know, especially in romance scams, of all these different people, you gotta know, this one's like, they learn your family members, they learn everything about you. And there's sort of like files that. That they keep to keep track because they're often speaking to numerous people at the same time. That's just the. My last note on romance scams, but when I go back to, you know, the beginning of this episode, it's unbelievable. The. The people that she's encountering the way that she's encountering them. And also, there is something kind of hopeful, right, about her belief that human to human contact and really connecting with people helps us understand some of the systems that have been put in place that get us to these places.
- [69:37]
Jonathan Cohen
That's what impacts me the most, is thinking about the systems, especially when we talk about the guns going down to Mexico and we. None of the problems that we see are isolated. Right. They're all. We're all part of a larger system. And so understanding the influences and how she really does connect with people. And once people see some of the impacts or are given an opportunity to find another path, how often they take it.
- [70:03]
Mayim Bialik
And I think also, you know, I kept thinking of the word humbling, like how humbling it is for her to do this work and how humbling it is for us to be shown. Right. The realities of this. So many people do not want to know about this, really. So many people do not want to think about this. They don't want to go there. It's depressing. It's hard. But I think that there has to be some sort of hope for what this kind of journalism also can teach us. Not just about the criminals and the people behind these black and gray markets, but it teaches us about us and where our vulnerability lies.
- [70:38]
Jonathan Cohen
Yes. And very practically, I think we need to be aware, especially as AI proliferates and some of the scamming technology becomes more sophisticated, people are vulnerable. I was talking with someone locally the other day, and I was telling him about pig butchering and the intensity of the scams that are happening. And he's like, oh, yeah, my mom lost $12,000. She's a woman in her 70s. She got a call saying, hey, I'm from this bank. I'm just checking. We need to validate your password. She gave them the password, and $12,000 was drained from her account.
- [71:17]
Mayim Bialik
The thing that I was thinking about, and this is just, you know, because I'm such a Luddite, I was like, how do you like your Internet now, everyone? Are you enjoying it? Because there weren't these scams 5,000 years ago.
- [71:28]
Jonathan Cohen
There were different scams.
- [71:29]
Mayim Bialik
So there were different scams. And I was also thinking of that. It's like, this is one of the. The worst things that I will change. This is one of the hardest, most painful things that I will all of a sudden take to a whole other level. And this isn't like he's on my spice trade. I don't want him there. I'm gonna make him go on this spice trade. Like, also, I'm not allowed to joke about the woman who learns to perform oral sex.
- [71:59]
Jonathan Cohen
I haven't seen the episode.
- [72:01]
Mayim Bialik
But I did think about, I did think about every James Bond movie, which, also, considering, I mean, my mother was obviously more of the feminist in the house than my father. She, she would not have supported all the James Bond movies my father dragged us to. But when you think about what, what those scenarios were, they're to lure James. They're to lure James. And also, it was such a, again, such like a demonization of women and of, you know, that, that sort of notion. But that's happening. And this is the lady who investigates it. It's unreal to me.
- [72:35]
Jonathan Cohen
Well, I do wonder if there is a secret government program.
- [72:40]
Mayim Bialik
If they're teaching remote viewing.
- [72:43]
Mariana Van Zeller
They are teaching teaching jobs.
- [72:46]
Jonathan Cohen
For more content like this exclusive content not released anywhere else, check us out on substack. We'll be breaking down this episode and hearing all of your opinions. Mayim Bialix Breakdown on substack.
- [72:56]
Mayim Bialik
From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.
- [72:58]
Jonathan Cohen
It's Maya Bialix breakdown.
- [73:01]
Mariana Van Zeller
She's gonna break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two and now she's gonna break down. So break down.
- [73:10]
Jonathan Cohen
She's gonna break it down.