← The 404 Media Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
It's not just something you made. It's the privilege that you get to work with your hands. It's building something that serves a purpose, proof that you have the grit to keep going. At Timberland, we understand you take your craft seriously, and we do too, which is why our products are built to the highest quality. We put in the work so you can perfect yours with purpose, in every detail, and crafted with intention. Timberland built on craft. Visit timberland.com to shop.
- [00:35]
B
Hello and welcome to the 404 Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founding company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404Media co. As well as bonus content every single week. Subscribe subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content @404MediaCo. I'm your host, Joseph, and with me today are two of the other 404Media co founders, the first being Emmanuel Mayberg.
- [01:10]
C
Hello.
- [01:11]
B
And Jason Kebler.
- [01:13]
D
Hello.
- [01:14]
B
Any housekeeping, Jason? I feel like. No, I feel we're good on all fronts. It comes for A4 media.
- [01:21]
D
Yeah, I don't know. Nothing comes to mind. Well, in that case, let's get on with it.
- [01:27]
B
Yeah, I won't waste anybody's time then. Let's go straight to the stories. The first one this week is from Emmanuel. It's frankly really, really wild. The headline is this company is secretly turning your Zoom meetings into AI podcasts. So obviously we'll get into the specifics in a minute, Emmanuel. But as with a lot of good stories, this actually started with a tip from a 404 Media reader. What did they say, what did they see, and what did they tell you?
- [02:00]
C
Yeah, so this reader's name is Tom Radmatcher. I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that correctly. He is a former teacher and somebody who is just very involved in education more broadly. And shortly after we saw a lot of of ICE activity around schools and teachers being really worried about how to protect some kids in their community, he put together a Zoom call for other teachers. He knows some local officials in his area and yeah, anyone who wanted to know how to protect these kids during during an ICE raid. And the link to this Zoom meeting was shared only via email and he assumed that it was private for that reason, even though technically the private settings didn't require a password or anything like that. He had the meeting, everything went well, and then a few months later he gets an email from someone called Sarah Blair from a company called Webinar tv. And she tells them, hey, just so you know, this webinar you did is featured on our website and we also turned it into a podcast called the Phil and Amy Highlights Show. And he was obviously very surprised because he didn't know anyone, he didn't invite to this call, had access, and was pretty concerned that it was featured somewhere and turn into a podcast because some of the people who were on the call would not want to be publicly associated with something that may appear like anti Trump or anti administration.
- [03:56]
B
Yeah, this is a very sensitive conversation. Even though there's no password on it. You can totally understand the reasoning that, well, this is like de facto a private conversation because it's only been shared as far as they know, like via email and that sort of thing. There's no, again, as far as they know, third party listening in. But somehow, and we'll get to potential methods in a bit, but somehow this company listened in, recorded the Zoom meeting, which again was pretty damn sensitive, and then turned it into like some weird AI podcast. So you go then to Webinar TV's website. What do you see there?
- [04:39]
C
It's almost like a low tech YouTube. If I was to describe the UI, there is a counter in the top right corner of the website that says they have over 200,000 webinars hosted there. And you can browse them by category or tag. And they each have a thumbnail and a short description and title. And you'll click on any one of them. You'll usually get three things. You'll get a short AI generated summary, like video summary of what the call is about. You'll get the contents of the webinar or meeting broken up into chapters, and you can jump to any point in the meeting that way. And then in some cases, not all cases, there is this Phil and Amy podcast, which is two AI generated personalities who are discussing the content of the meeting, including podcast banter and little lame jokes and everything like that. I don't know for a fact how this is generated, but it very much sounds like a notebook LM type of output where it could just like you can give it any text or video or whatever and it will turn it into a podcast. And Those are like 15 minutes long or something like that.
- [06:14]
B
Yeah, I was going to bring up Notebook. Notebook lm.
- [06:18]
C
I believe so.
- [06:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that is probably the AI podcast products that most people are familiar with. Right? That came out somewhat recently, know, several months ago, maybe. A little bit longer than that. And the idea was that you could feed your notes into this and it would generate an audio podcast for you. So you could have some friendly podcast voice basically regurgitating your notes or your study material or whatever to you. And sure, okay, some people might benefit from that. Maybe they want to put their research in there or whatever, or they're a student and they're trying to cram all of their work in whatever it might be. That's one thing. This is taking other people's zoom meetings and basically doing the same thing, obviously without asking them. It's just emailing them after the fact and being like, hey, you're now in this random ass clip show. Before we get into more of the specifics, just to check with that initial story, did the reader manage to get that sort of material or webinar taken down at all?
- [07:24]
C
Yeah, he replied right away. He was like, what the hell is this? Please remove this. I didn't allow this. And the person who emailed him directed him to a takedown form, which is the type of thing we see on many platforms. He filled it out and within a few days it was removed. And, yeah, by the time he reached out to me, it was already gone.
- [07:45]
B
Yeah. Maybe you don't know this because it might be hard to tell from the outside, but is anyone watching this crap either? Well, there's two things. There's the original webinar itself, which has basically been captured and published online. And some people might watch that because maybe, I don't know, there's some internal machinations or a speech or something that somebody may want to watch. And then there's the AI stuff as well. Is there any indication of whether they're actually being viewed or not, or. We can't tell. What do you make of that?
- [08:20]
C
Yeah, good question. Short answer is we can't tell. They're unlike YouTube, there's nothing on the website that indicates how many views a video has. They don't have comments. You can't see how much engagement they're getting or anything like that. So we really don't know. I will just say briefly, in terms of monetization, as far as I can tell, Webinar TV does not sell ads against any of these. That is not the plan. It appears that the plan is to upsell people to promote their webinars on webinar tv. Right. So the whole reason they're reaching out to Tom, they're not just telling him, out of the goodness of their hearts, that they took his zoom meeting and Turned it into a podcast. They're saying, hey, you're featured here. And then they have kind of a bunch of services to promote your webinar on webinar tv. Whether anyone is interested in that also, I have no idea.
- [09:26]
B
Yeah, it's very weird because maybe to be charitable for just a second, maybe they did think, oh, there's a market gap and a market fit in, that there's all these interesting webinars happening at companies, but then they forget to record them or they don't promote them enough. We can go in there and we can help these companies promote it. That is not the same when you are essentially somehow infiltrating ZOOM meetings that people at least believe are private. I mean, presumably it's automated in some capacity, so maybe that's the reason. But obviously they are going to piss off a lot of people by doing this. You found one of my webinars as well, or rather one I was in. What was the deal with that? Sorry, Jason, go ahead.
- [10:13]
D
Since you published this, someone sent me one of mine as well.
- [10:16]
C
Oh, which one is yours?
- [10:18]
D
Something I did with PBS like, a few months ago. So, yeah, we're on there.
- [10:26]
B
Well, just on that, Jason, because it sounds kind of similar to mine. Mine was. It was designed to be public. It was sort of a. Maybe not an invite only, but you were supposed to RSVP to this webinar that I did with Freedom of the Press foundation about, hey, here's how we file Freedom of Information requests, that sort of thing. It's definitely supposed to be public. So it's different to the ICE meeting that Emmanuel opened the story with. Jason, if yours was with pbs, it sounds like that's also supposed to be public, but I kind of doubt it was not.
- [11:01]
D
It was not. Well, so it's interesting because it was like this thing about, with teachers, about AI in schools. And so PBS has this, like. I don't really know what it is. I was surprised to learn about it, but basically, like, they do. They have like, an educational arm where they do meetings with teachers sometimes to talk about, like to talk with people who are making news. And it's similar in that they do circulate the link to the webinar kind of publicly. But you're supposed to be a school teacher to join it. And the one that I went to, like, as far as I knew, there were only school teachers there and you had to, like, register for it. But the link was gettable, but it wasn't something where it was like, this is made for the masses and it was also something where it was. I mean, I didn't care. Like, I was happy to have what I said be public, but I guess because some of the teachers didn't want to get in trouble necessarily because they were talking about troubles that they were having in their school. It was like supposed to be a space for teachers to be able to talk about these struggles without that being circulated widely, essentially.
- [12:21]
B
Yeah.
- [12:22]
D
So not, not ideal.
- [12:24]
C
A short thing about that. I didn't say this in the story because it is maybe a lot of editorializing, but Joe, I don't know if you would call the thing you did with Freedom of the Press, which I found on webinar tv. I don't know if you would call it a webinar. Jason. I don't know if you would call the thing you did with PBS a webinar. Webinar is kind of an outdated term when I think about webinar. I think about, like, I don't know, 10 years ago you would sign up for a class that you do online and that is a webinar. And 10 years ago, the way you would use Zoom and under other, like, video conferencing software is either at work or for something that is like one of these old school webinars. The thing that makes this service, this service so weird right now is that post Covid there is like this whole other category of zoom meeting. I'm sure we all remember and cringe about having like zoom drinks during the pandemic.
- [13:46]
B
You mean the best time in my life?
- [13:47]
C
But yeah, yeah, but it's like that has stuck like zoom as like this having this like, third utility where you can get a bunch of teachers together and discuss like a thing happening in your community. And it's not quote unquote private in the technical sense or like in like by like the strict definition of it. But it's not a class that people are signed up for. It's a thing where you're inviting a specific group of people to meet on a video conferencing tool. I talked to another group of people whose a zoom call was scraped by webinar tv. There were a bunch of paralegals in Canada. They obviously had no idea that they were up on that website. And they said like, hey, like, technically this is in private. Like, we didn't make it a secret, but it's like, it's not for everyone, right? It's like we didn't invite the public to come to this thing. We invited like other paralegals to discuss a thing in Our profession specifically. And they were like, I guess we can't sue them. But they did make it clear that it made them very uncomfortable that it was happening. And there's another case where people are like, yeah, this is open to everyone, but the point is to make it free and accessible and to not allow anyone to monetize it. And we're not sure that we're cool with another company trying to monetize the. Without our permission.
- [15:20]
B
Yeah, it is absolutely in the same bucket as, like, Zoom bombing, which is what happened a lot. Right. During the pandemic. And then after, as you say, when people continue to use Zoom, and you'd have. I know Jason covered it, like, a lot of these. What was it? City council meetings, Jason. Where people would join and then, you know, hurl horrible insults during meetings, that sort of thing.
- [15:40]
D
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, though, because, like, as, you know, as a manual reporter, it's like they have a. I assume, like a bot that joins, obviously. And it's like, so the bot is not disrupting. And I think, for the most part, it seems like the people that you talk to, they sort of don't realize that this bot is in there necessarily. And so it's not disruptive to the actual webinar experience. But I even hesitate to call it webinar, but, like, to the. To the zoom call experience. But it is then after the fact, the organizers find out, or people who participate in it find out that they've been turned into this weird AI podcast. And it's like, then they feel quite violated.
- [16:23]
B
Yeah, I feel like I bring up this example a lot, but it really was formative to my understanding of data and privacy. But years and years ago, when we worked at Motherboard, I covered the work of this researcher who made a profile on a dating website and then scraped all of the data, which was just behind a login wall. Like, he believed it was like public data. You just had to make an account on a dating site and log in. He scraped all of that data, then he made it public, and that was obviously an extreme recontextualization of that data that people believed it was private, you know. Yeah, it's not end to end encrypted, but it's like behind a login wall and an account on a dating site, and now it's public. It's very similar here where you. Yet, sure, there might not be a password on the Zoom, which is allowing some sort of technical access from this company, but in the context of the conversation, they are treating it Like a private conversation. I think that's absolutely reasonable. Jason mentioned the bot. I'll say kind of beyond that, or maybe even including that, we don't fully know what is happening here in a technical sense.
- [17:32]
C
Right.
- [17:32]
B
Emmanuel? So, like, what do we know? What were you able to figure out? And ultimately, do we know how Webinar TV is actually recording this stuff, or is it still sort of unclear?
- [17:44]
C
Yeah, we don't really know. There's a few theories. It's interesting because every person that I talked to had a different theory for how this happened. I talked to the Freedom of the Press Foundation. They obviously have people who know a lot about privacy and cybersecurity and all that. They speculated that they were doing it through one of the Zoom APIs that were was kind of allowing them to see what meetings were public and jumped into them based on that. There is an organization in Alberta called Cyber Alberta, which is just a bunch of, like, local cybersecurity professionals. They did a report about this and they theorized that Webinar TV was actually doing this via some Chrome browser extensions that were like, letting them know when people were in a Zoom call and doing it that way. And then finally, what everyone I talked to said was that these calls were not private technically, as in they didn't require a password and there were enough people in the zoo meeting. So when I asked, like, do you think there. There could have been like a bot in there recording the meeting? They said, yeah, it's possible. So we're not sure exactly what the mechanism is. Those are just some theories.
- [19:18]
B
Yeah. Again, I'm also speculating, you know more about it than me, but just going on the story that you started with, and that person in the ICE Teachers meeting, sharing the link only via email, and then somehow it's still being recorded. I don't know. That maybe leads some ammo to the browser extension argument that someone in that meeting had some sort of a browser extension that is doing this somehow. And then. But I don't know, or I mean, frankly, the results are of course a possibility that, yes, they believe it was only shared by email, but then maybe one person shared it out, somebody put
- [19:52]
C
it on LinkedIn and.
- [19:53]
B
Right. We don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But very, very interesting. So I guess just to wrap up this section, what did Zoom tell you? Because it is not a Zoom issue. It's just this is happening on Zoom. But what did the company tell you?
- [20:08]
C
Zoom is well aware. They know about this company specifically. And all they said basically is we have privacy settings. And you should use them. That makes a lot of sense. I would also note that because of COVID Zoom has been subject to a lot of press coverage, and a lot of that press coverage did focus on Zoombombing. And, you know, they said, like, verify the identity of the people that you're inviting to Zoom calls, which I think is totally fair. I think it's not necessarily Zoom's problem to solve. It's not their responsibility. But I also think that putting the onus on this teacher who is just trying to get with other teachers and discuss an important issue and then have them verify the identity of every single person who joins, maybe some of those people don't want to verify their identity. That's not a good solution either. I think really what we're talking about is a really cynical bad actor finding software with a vulnerability and exploiting it, like, in a super douchey, cynical way.
- [21:37]
B
Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if Zoom sues this company in the same sort of way that, like, Meta has sued people selling, like, Instagram followers or so. Like, yes, it's not really, like, their problem, but it's a brand reputation issue, and it really sucks for these people. People as well. Yeah. If anyone has any more information of that, of course, please reach out to Emanuel. We'll leave that there. When we come back after the break, we're going to talk about one of my stories about what drove a. A millionaire who already had a lot of money. His what drove him to become a cocaine kingpin. We'll be right back after.
- [22:33]
E
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- [24:24]
D
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- [25:35]
C
Okay, we're back. And our next story is from Joe. The headline is An Adrenaline Junkie Millionaire's quest to become a Cocaine Kingpin. Joe, who is Marty Tibbets? I've never said his name out loud. I have.
- [25:53]
B
Tibbets is what I say. And I think in the cop. No, maybe it was an earlier version. I just said Marty because I kind of liked it. But we can also just say Marty as well. I think it's a good name. So Marty is. Sorry, was, and I'll explain that in a minute, a very, very successful executive. He ran these companies which were basically like back office customer support almost, I think a prison used them basically call centers. And he had a couple of those and they were apparently successful and brought in millions and millions and millions of dollars for him. Became very rich. But he was also very eccentric as well. He did all sorts of things and especially he loved to fly Cold War Airplanes. So he ran an air museum, and he, I think, owned around a dozen aircraft. And there's the sort of the collection aspect of it, like, hey, I'm going to travel to get this really, really rare Cold War jet and then bring it to the States or bring it to the museum or whatever. But then he would also fly them as well. He taught himself the banjo. He spoke all of these different languages. He was just always, it seems, looking for a new thing to get obsessed with, get very good at. And although he made a lot of money, it wasn't always about money, you know, it seems it was like, you know, it doesn't really cost money to learn the banjo. But he was very obsessed, it seems, with developing new skills and just trying to better himself, I think is the sort of the nicest way to put it. And obviously that'll change as the story continues.
- [27:50]
C
Yeah, so very wealthy. A bit of a thrill seeker. I think we've all heard about people getting their pilot's license as a hobby. That's like, not a too crazy thing to do. But he kind of piloted, like, exotic, rare planes. And that eventually led to his demise, right?
- [28:13]
B
Yeah. This is not a normal Cessna aircraft that lots of beginners will learn to use and then fly as a hobby or short domestic flights or something like that. One aircraft he flew and he owned, it was a DH112 Venom, which I had not known about until I wrote this story, but I did a fair amount of research on it. And it is this Cold War aircraft that's very, very striking to look at. It sometimes has this black and red paint job. It actually has, like, two tails at the back. If you imagine a catamaran, as in the boat, and that's like, you know, two vessels essentially attached by a platform in the middle. It almost looks like the aircraft version of a catamaran. And it's supposed to be pretty powerful, but it can have issues at high speeds. And that was of relevance to Marty because in July 2018, he is flying this aircraft. He's about to take off. There's, like, one of these air shows, and he's taking the graph to a location, and lots of enthusiasts are flying their own planes and that sort of thing. One plane takes off. He is behind it in the Venom. He takes off, I think a few seconds earlier than he's supposed to. It doesn't actually say this in the article, but this is due to the really, really extensive FAA investigation into what I'm going to talk about. So this was based on multiple witnesses. There who saw the plane take off. I actually got the 911 audio as well through a public records request with local authorities. So the quotes from the 911 calls are from that, but Marty takes off, and nearly immediately it is clear something is wrong. The wings are shaking. There's a strange sound coming from the engine. And then the plane just starts to descend while its nose is still in the air. It crashes into a barn. There is a huge explosion. There are actually people inside the barn as well who are injured. And Marty dies in that plane crash in 2018 because he was doing this thing which he. I don't know if he'd done it a million times before, but he was used to flying these sorts of planes. But that time it went very tragically wrong.
- [30:39]
C
So, yeah, I mean, at this point, pretty strange, but I don't think we would write about an eccentric millionaire dying in a jet crash. The reason we are writing about it is that it turned out Marty was leading a secret life for many years before his death. What was he up to?
- [31:02]
B
Yeah, so it later emerged in a court case, which we'll talk about, that Marty was also very actively trying to become a cocaine kingpin. More specifically, he was working with a fairly high level cocaine trafficker. And they were working on a plan to build a submersible drone that would carry something like a ton of cocaine latch onto a ship with magnets. When it arrives at its destination, it would then detach and the team would come pick it up, that sort of thing. He was the money and the brains behind that operation. And I think this is clear from the story, and I think it's clear from what the investigators show and the evidence as well. But it wasn't just an idea. This was very much like actively working on this in very close coordination with his drug trafficking partner. And it very much nearly came to fruition. It's just that he died in this plane crash, essentially. But he'd been doing that for years and years and years and years without the knowledge of his wife, his family, his friends appears as well. So the entire time he was doing all that very eccentric stuff with the planes and the traveling and all of that. He's also doing this maybe in his eyes, also eccentric thing of trying to be a very innovative cocaine trafficker as well, like someone at the top financing an operation like this.
- [32:47]
C
So the submarine is obviously a very crazy story. We know that submarines, like DIY submarines, are used in drug smuggling. This one never came about. But before this, was he actively doing any drug trafficking that we know of or was it just planning on this one idea?
- [33:14]
B
I don't think we've seen evidence of that. What we have seen evidence of is the extensive planning of the building of this drone, such as Marty, using the pseudonym Dale Johnson, was contacting this sort of manufacturing company in Canada, had the designs, they made it like a drone was made. Like there are photos in the article and the DOJ court documents as well. That all happened. That was all real and he was actively exploring it. The other part is that the story mentions this and it's a big piece of contention in the related court case. But there was a large amount of money in a duffel bag flown on a private jet at Marty's behest. And prosecutors say that money was for the bulk purchase of cocaine. So whether he'd done it before, we don't know. That's not what was presented in the evidence that I got hold of. But this was very much an evolved plan. It wasn't just scribbles in his notebook, although there were scribbles in his notebook and those were very interesting as well. You could see, well, rather I haven't seen him, it's described in the material I got, but he's drawing like a ship with the drone underneath and then questions to myself like, do I use magnets? Do I have to put spikes on the top to stop birds landing on the drone? That sort of thing. So it very much did go from his notebook scribbles to actually making this like 25 foot long drone. Like it's a huge thing to carry a lot of cocaine.
- [34:56]
C
And to be clear, this isn't like a Breaking Bad or Ozark situation where somebody pretends to have a legit business, but really it's a sham and they're desperate for money, therefore they turn to a life of crime. Like there wasn't anything in your research that showed like he needed the money for something and that's why he did it. He just sort of was like into it, right?
- [35:23]
B
Like, I mean, that's exactly the reason I decided to write this story, because it is the. It's the literal opposite of Breaking Bad. Like Breaking Bad, as we all know, this guy diagnosed with cancer, he wants to care for his family, so he then and get treatment. If I'm remembering correctly, it's been a few while, a few years since I've seen Breaking Bad. I should watch it again. But he does that and then falls deeper and deeper into it. Marty, meanwhile, as you say, did not need the money. He was already a Multi, multi millionaire. But he just did it anyway. And I just find that a pretty fascinating decision and mentality when. I don't know. Breaking Bad is obviously an anti hero. That's the entire point of the show. I don't know if Marty is an anti. I don't know if he's a sympathetic character. I genuinely don't know. But I'd never seen a case quite like that. Because the other alternative usually is that, yes, they break bad to make money or they're already in the drug trade, they're already a capo or they're already in Sinaloa or whatever. This was kind of different to anything I'd ever seen before.
- [36:38]
C
Yeah, it's like Mark Zuckerberg getting into mma, but instead he's like, I don't know, let's try cocaine. Let's try smuggling cocaine. See how that goes. Yeah.
- [36:46]
D
So isn't Jason Bateman's name in Ozark also Marty?
- [36:50]
C
I believe so.
- [36:52]
B
I didn't even put that together.
- [36:53]
C
Yeah, it is. So how do you report a story about this person who is dead by the time you get to the story? Who did you talk to? How did you get an idea of, like, what his life was like and what was he like?
- [37:08]
B
Yeah, so I followed this case basically from the moment it became public. And so when Marty dies in 2018, a few years pass by and then this court record comes out again a few years later, and it's actually a criminal complaint or an indictment against a guy called Yilidadani. I'm just going to call him Dadani for the sake of this, in the same way we called Marty Marty. But Dadani is Marty's cocaine trafficking partner and the case was against him. He's of Albanian descent, lives around Detroit. He had his fingers in all sorts of different cocaine smuggling operations from South America to Europe and I think the UK as well. This court record comes out charging Didani with crimes, but mentioned in there were like redacted paragraphs where, oh, Didani worked with businessman number one or something to that effect. And local press at the time quickly put it together. Wait, that's our local eccentric, multi, multi millionaire Marty. So there was local press in that. And I found that really interesting, as I often do, I put it in a document or a list where it's like, these are interesting cases to check back later, basically. And I did that. I kept an eye on it. And then eventually I got in touch with Dadani, the drug trafficking partner. He had been arrested, he was in prison awaiting trial. I frankly can't remember if I reached out to him or he reached out to me, but we communicated at length across the prison email system. As an aside, he really wanted to talk about his case. He believes that the US Arrested him under sort of a legal regime that was inappropriate. They arrested him based on maritime laws, even though the drug seizures of the ships carrying cocaine were at ports, they weren't at the sea. So you think there's a technicality there. And some lawyers believe that as well. So often when we would talk, he would bring up this case. And at one point I was going to write about that, and maybe I still will. But to me, the more interesting part was Marty and the question of why did this multimillionaire try to become a cocaine trafficker? So speaking to Dadani a lot, asking him about his life and Marty's as well, and how they met and all of that sort of thing. And then the other main part of this reporting is getting hold of these transcripts from the court. They were pretty damn expensive. So I thank our four or four media subscribers to allow us to do that. In the same way that, like, when we're at Vice and they can't afford a court record that cost $0.10 because the company's going bankrupt, here was just like, hey, guys, can I buy these court records for quite a lot of money? And you all agreed that's a good story. Go ahead. So I buy those. And then I read every single page of Dedani's trial testimony, and that was thousands upon thousands of pages. I think it took me several months to do it, while also doing all of the other work that was interesting for a number of reasons, Marty being the main one. And I'm not going to compare, obviously my writing to something is phenomenal as Frank Sinatra has the cold. But that is the point where there's a profile and you're trying to profile somebody, but you can't profile Frank Sinatra because he has a cold, allegedly. I can't talk to Marty because he's dead. So I have to talk to his drug trafficking partner or get an idea of him from his wife, his friends, his business associates who have spoken in this trial. So. So that was sort of the value of this transcript, sort of the last interesting wrinkle. And maybe this will be in a story if I do focus on Didani. Dadani represented himself in his own trial. It was an absolute disaster. The judge telling him essentially to shut up politely, and the prosecutors getting very, very annoyed, the Dani getting very annoyed as well. And you can, you can feel the tension. Reading the court transcripts like this is not going very well. And I think the jury convicted him very, very quickly. I'm not entirely sure why he fired his federal public defender, but that did provide some color. While I was going through all of this material, which again took a long time. I got this material and been working on the story for months and months and months. But that's because I had to read every single word of that and page of that transcript because you don't know what's going to be colorful or important. And it was very similar to when I read tens of thousands of encrypted messages for my book about encrypted phones and that sort of thing. You have to read every single one. You can't just do a keyword search because you don't even know what you're searching for necessarily. Yeah.
- [42:32]
C
I talked to several people recently about AI obviously, because that's all anyone ever talks about. And they were talking about how we could use it at work. And they were like, oh yeah, if you get a dump of documents, just let the AI read it and give you a summary. And it was like, no, it's like you have to read every page because sometimes that's how you find the best stuff. It's like some unexpected connection.
- [42:51]
B
Yeah, I mean, like the AI is not going to know necessarily unless I prompt it very, very, very, very, very well. It's not going to know that I care that Dadani had a rainbow colored Rolex, which to me is very important because that's very indicative of his character. I don't know if that's going to come up. To be fair, maybe it would, but I also just personally want to read every single page. In the same way I want to watch six hours of Tosh deposition.
- [43:15]
C
Yeah, all right. Shall we leave that there?
- [43:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, I will leave it there. With the final line, I'll just say ultimately, and you kind of tease that this Emmanuel, but like he didn't need the money. And I was trying to at least get a little bit to the question of why he did do it. And I'm sure listeners have already guessed this, but what came up over and over again was adrenaline. Like Dadani, the drug trafficker I spoke to, said that Marty was pretty crazy and addicted to adrenaline. The detective said similar. A personal trainer of Marty's who later moved money for him on his private jet.
- [43:54]
C
He.
- [43:54]
B
He also said he was very much into adrenaline. So that's the reason, at least it
- [44:00]
D
seems we're addicted to the adrenaline of podcasting.
- [44:03]
B
Oh yeah, and reading thousands and thousands of thousands of pages of court records. It's incredibly exhilarating. Yeah. All right, we will leave that there. If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying 404 media subscriber, we're going to talk about the death of the Metaverse. A real, real shame. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404 Media co. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you do wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You also get to listen to to the Subscribers Only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope and Alyssa Midcalf. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really does help us out. Here is one of those from Little World cunningly this is the era of independent journalism and 404 Media is at the forefront. This podcast is one of several that I recommend to anyone who will listen. Thank you so, so much. This has been for media. We'll see you again next.