Jeremy Mahugh - Navy SEAL Combating Human Trafficking, Deliver Fund

​Jeremy Mahugh - Navy SEAL Combating Human Trafficking, Deliver Fund  - Jeremy Mahugh a former Navy Seal sniper had turned his attention to the victims of human trafficking. 

Deliver Fund's website

Jeremy Mahugh is a Senior Vice President and Co-Founder of Deliver Fund, a nonprofit intelligence organization dedicated to combating human trafficking. Deliver Fund empowers law enforcement agencies by delivering cutting-edge technology/training when organizational and capacity budgets fall short. 

Haiku
Human traffickers
A US epidemic 
Mahugh will stop it

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Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A. Turner
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev
​Writer: Bojan Spasovski

Transcript

​Pete Turner  0:00  
Hey everybody, this is Pete Turner, executive producer and host of our break it down show. Today's guest is Jeremy McHugh. Jeremy is a former seal. Okay, great big deal. He's an incredible warrior. We're not really here to talk about that. As he's transitioned, he's moved into something that's much more interesting. And we're digging into this a lot more here at the breakdown show. He is from the deliver fund. Now the deliver fund is one of many organizations working on trying to deal with our human trafficking problem. You have heard about human trafficking, you're probably aware that it's a horrible thing, waiting to hear Jeremy's story about what it is here in America, and how Americans are being directly impacted by this.

Pete Turner  0:00  
Hey everybody, this is Pete Turner, executive producer and host of our break it down show. Today's guest is Jeremy McHugh. Jeremy is a former seal. Okay, great big deal. He's an incredible warrior. We're not really here to talk about that. As he's transitioned, he's moved into something that's much more interesting. And we're digging into this a lot more here at the breakdown show. He is from the deliver fund. Now the deliver fund is one of many organizations working on trying to deal with our human trafficking problem. You have heard about human trafficking, you're probably aware that it's a horrible thing, waiting to hear Jeremy's story about what it is here in America, and how Americans are being directly impacted by this. This is a crazy story. You understand why we're going to explore this more so we can all have a better routing and the ground truth and what happens day to day when it comes to human trafficking. If you like what we do or if you're new to the show, here's how you can support us go to break it down show.com and you can sign up and register on YouTube to subscribe to the show. You can subscribe on the website, subscribe at Apple podcast. Guest slash iTunes, anywhere you listen to the podcast, subscribing rating, reviewing fat really is our coin of the realm. Another way to support us is to support the author's the doctors, the people that come on the show, go consume their things go to their website, the more that people go out and react to the guests that we present, the better it is go to the deliver fund.org and check out what they do in Jeremy's they fight human trafficking. That's how you support us, the more engaged you all are with what we're passionate about. And only if you're passionate about it. That is how you help us. Okay, so that's what I'm asking for right now. Just go and engage with what the guest is promoting, or engage with our website, our YouTube presence, those things, so many exciting things are happening. You are not going to believe some of the incredible incredible guests that we have coming up. All right, one more thing. You know what I'm gonna ask you for next, save the brave, save the brave.org. That's our home charity. That's where we put our effort, our time and our money. All right, here comes Jeremy McHugh.

Unknown Speaker  1:55  
Lions rock productions

Unknown Speaker  2:00  
This is Jay Morrison.

Unknown Speaker  2:02  
This is Jordan. Dexter from the offspring

Unknown Speaker  2:04  
naked nice Sebastian yo this is Rick Murat Stewart

Unknown Speaker  2:06  
COPPA. This is much less handy somebody there's a skunk Baxter

Unknown Speaker  2:09  
Gabby Reese is Rob bell. This is john Leon

Pete Turner  2:11  
gray and this is Pete a Turner.

Jeremy MaHugh  2:13  
Hey, you got Jeremy MaHugh from deliver fun on the break it down show

Niko Leon Guerrero  2:23  
and now the break it down show with john Leon Guerrero and Pete a Turner.

Pete Turner  2:29  
Yeah, Jeremy is in Dallas. He is a former seal a sniper and operator and basically we're not going to talk about any kiddo. I guess. If we were going to say what's one thing that we should know about being a sniper that we don't know.

Jeremy MaHugh  2:45  
I will give you one story just because from the time of going through sniper school, our school is in Indiana, just south of Indianapolis and I had to go through in the wintertime which is would be Okay, cuz I'm from Montana. I didn't think that be that that big of a pan NASS, however, our class was long enough that it broke up over the holidays, right? So you had to go and, and right over Christmas, take a break and then come back. And in Indiana, it just so happens that that time of year is cold and wet. It's not just cold, it's the cold and wet, then you're stocking. So we're doing these stocks for four hours. And you're crawling around in the grass in the field. And it's just, it's a, it's like a swamp because it's wet. But now it's like just that temperature where it's not quite freezing. And back then, you know, this is probably like 2002 maybe that I was doing this. And there's not a lot of great gear that we had, but so I'm trying to stick underneath my ghillie suit like a gortex pant that's tucked into a standard gortex boot. And sure enough as I'm going crawling through the weeds feel that cold water start to start to seep down my leg. be cold and be wet for the next couple hours. Because you don't want to be the first one to take a shot. workers have that much more time to for you to search you out, you got to go find your position and sit up basically wait for some other people to start engaging. And so anyways, that's just a story from training. Yeah, that's funny, but a miserable memory.

Pete Turner  4:20  
Yeah, and I guess the other thing I would say about sniping from my own direct experiences if you're a sniper, and you take that shot in combat, use, at least against Americans, and this is why I like him because like, let's go be a sniper. Like, all of a sudden, you're the loneliest guy in the world because there's now a battalion of people looking for you. And they're calling it resources and helicopters and it. It is a very lonely job. Once you pull that trigger. If you can't bogie out of there, we had a guy in Iraq who was hunting us and he was shooting people. And he basically couldn't operate safely anymore because every building every winter, like there was so much attention focused on him. He You know, he had to go somewhere else and so it's it's funny Just those kind of things like, yes, you're cold and miserable, and carrying your own poo. And once you do your job, you're you're at such peril. It's not It's not an ideal job. It is cool. You know, it's sort of like my job being a spy. Yeah, it's super cool. But then when you get to the nitty gritty stuff, there's a whole lot of things that are not great about that job.

Jeremy MaHugh  5:21  
Right? For sure.

Pete Turner  5:22  
Let's talk about the deliver fund. You get out and you get into this and basically, your man pitches you on on the on the idea and you say, Let's sign up and do it because you're talking about human trafficking. Tell us what you guys do and and sort of why it means so much to you.

Jeremy MaHugh  5:40  
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, deliver fun is a is a nonprofit, private intelligence organization. And the reason that we're a charity a 501. c three is because there is there is no, I guess I should say what our our job is to do is to equip, train, and advise law enforcement to go after human traffickers specifically here, not states, there's no real budget there, there's no real resources there. So we have to do that as a 501 c three, charity so that we can give scholarships and and provide technology at no cost to law enforcement to be able to ultimately crush this market. How we got into this? Yes, my, my partner my, our CEO and, and founder at deliver fun Nick McKinley. A good friend of mine, I work with him actually in cook. Iraq is where we first met. And, you know, he was prior Air Force pair rescue men gone CIA operative, special agent. And so we've met over there, you know, after working together on a few trips, ended up having lunch in DC and he just kind of told me what he was thinking about what he's working on. And this was an idea concept of he had been seeing a lot of intelligence and information specific to human trafficking and there's no bucket and put that in. And so there is no reporting system. I mean, you probably same thing like, when you come across those things, there's really no place to put it. There's no actionable robust way to deal with human trafficking, because, again, our tax dollars go for national security things, which means really, guns, drugs and terrorism, right. So there's no, there's no push from society to really have this money be spent on human trafficking. And part of the problem has been as We've also looked at it as like, well, Human trafficking is just something that happens somewhere else, like in Cambodia, or Thailand, or it's the border issue, and Trump needs to build a wall so that we don't have illegal immigrants being human trafficked across our borders. Like that's what we think it is. So we had this idea to I think when we first started because we were working on Internationally, and those were the things that we had seen. But as soon as we started looking at it and talking to law enforcement in the United States, we realized what the epidemic actually is. And when you start taking the academic approach to it, also, you see that dollar for dollar. America, you know, the United States has the largest problem, and it's the American male that drives the market around the world. And more specifically, we have thousands and thousands of traffic victims in the United States and 85% of those are American citizens being exploited to and by American citizens. And so now we're talking about something where it's our kids, right, so now it's now it's becoming even that much more of a, you know, in my neighborhood issue.

Pete Turner  8:52  
So you're telling me that my perception that it's just people from faraway lands being trafficked is wrong, and that the vast majority of it Here, and you guys are leading firm in this. And you're, you're sort of also learning this field too, because it sounds like there's a lot of work to do in the discovery process. Is that right?

Jeremy MaHugh  9:14  
Absolutely. I actually just had this conversation at a meeting. I was in Florida recently in the last couple days. And that was a guy who was one of you, you probably know who he was, I won't say his name on here. But uh, he was one of the first CIA high level people into Afghanistan in that war. And this is a guy who has a long legacy is a legacy guy from the agency, and has literally built a lot of the systems that we use today, including a lot of what we're doing around, you know, Open Source Intelligence. And so, this is, this is a guy with a deep, deep background, but mostly, mostly all of that is is focused in other videos, right? So this isn't So when I'm telling him about what this problem is, and I'm showing him how easily we can look online, we can find sex advertising and how easily we can say this one is specifically human trafficking. Like it meets the definition of forced product coercion. And or it's a minor, which means, you know, like, it's, it's a human trafficking case. He was mind boggling. He was like, I had no idea that this is what's happening within our borders to our own people. And so I came from that same mindset, you know, initially, I also told Nick, I said, Listen, Surely there's some organization, there's some government entity that's already fighting. And then you what you realize very quickly is not only is that not happening, you take with within the United States, for example, I mean, who has maybe the biggest hammer, we would say it's probably the FBI. But again, it comes down to where do your tax dollars go? Within the FBI, that money is spent on guns, drugs and terrorism. So the human trafficking element of the FBI is, you know, beg, borrow, steal from the other divisions just to try and get some resources so they can fight this issue. And this is a huge problem. And so, you know, we are trying to fill that gap. And one of the really cool ways that we are filling that gap, because at the end of the day, we, you know, just like our previous careers, what do we do we we find solutions, we see problems, we find solutions Well, in this in this, it's not even that we have to recreate this or we have to recruit, figure out a new solution, because there's already solutions we've used in the fight against terrorism, and some of these other illicit markets. So we're taking some of those capabilities and again, bringing it here and saying okay, we know the methodology, a very target centric methodology which we can specifically go after the the The storefront of this problem, and we can do that in a way that's hugely impactful and can curb this market that's otherwise going exponentially out. So we want to take some of the same methodologies, some of those same technologies and relationships, and, and even pulling people out of that federal intelligence side who were target ORS or analysts and bringing them over and saying, okay, you already know how to hunt. Now, we're just going to retrain you on a little bit different thing that you're hunting, and then Ready, set, go. And then taking that and bringing that same capability down to the front edge of the battle, which is law enforcement and you'd be so blown away, as I am constantly as law enforcement comes through our training classes at the at the inaccuracy or the level of which the training that we expect them to have had or think that they shouldn't have had. And it's just not the reality. And so they're so grateful that we're, we're giving them this essentially, like federal level training. But they mean for example,  many of these officers not even shot a submachine gun, right. Yeah. So our training course starts out with, we'll have a, a, a, typically a girl who had previously been a victim and now as an advocate, so she tells her story she's giving, she's setting the tone for law enforcement so that they understand first and foremost, like, why we're all here. And then secondly, that there's missed opportunities that law enforcement and society had to report on things that they saw within her story that could have saved her any of those points. And so, and then, as we start to develop a course out from there, who We're teaching law enforcement how to do a very robust Cyber Intelligence piece, because most of these ads are being sold online. So we're, we're doing a, an open source intelligence piece there. And then in the afternoons, we'll take them over and do the tactical training, which is essentially getting them to the point where they feel confident going in with sometimes one or two person teams, not a whole SWAT team, but just if they have to act in a moment they can go in and feel confident going in and doing going through the kill house but doing an arrest and and rescuing these big victims because at the end of the day, you and I don't have badges and we're not the ones to go in and make arrests and and rescue victims. Matter of fact, if you were to go do a body snatch of some child who was you thought was being traffic, that's actually a second degree felony, right? That is unless you have the parent with They're so I mean, that is some, this is the job of law enforcement to do. So it's a matter of giving them the tools to be successful in that job. But just in doing that, like these, these officers mean, just weep a little bit of stress on their, on their situation going through the kill house. And I mean, constantly, you know, we're seeing just what low level of training they've previously had. And so we kind of have to dumb it all down and start from scratch. But it's, it's pretty cool to see them, take that training on board, and then become confident that and by the end of this class, they can come in in the morning and build a case, go out in the afternoon, do a surveillance piece, and then you know, if it's in their own jurisdiction, they can actually go make an arrest like that day. And previously, it was taken them on the short end 21 days to be able to do that case. So that's a massive leveraging of Really, again, those federal kind of assets that you and I are used to being able to see, but like, it just never matriculated into our local communities here at home.

Pete Turner  16:10  
You're breaking my brain. It's so right. It's so shocking. So first off, I had no idea the problem was, was like that. And now I'm thinking, you know, you know, as a counterintelligence guy, I'm always trying to think like, the enemy things, you know, so that I can try to counter that. And I'm thinking about, you know, okay, you're gonna go work big cities where, you know, there's, there's whatever, young girls or whatever, I'm assuming it's young girls get trafficked. And so these forces, you know, Chicago PD, they don't have spare time. You know, like, you can literally, and I am not going to tell any anecdotes, you can literally drink and drive on the streets of Chicago get pulled over by a cop, and they've got better shit to do than pull you in for a DUI. Because it's fucking Chicago. And I guess yeah, you're right, like how does human trafficking and then to go hunt for that. I mean, are there other task force forces like, you know, counter terror? You'll have an FBI guy sitting next to a CIA guy sitting next to an army guys next to a Navy guy. I mean, these task forces are massive. And they're and their joint. is the same thing true for human trafficking, or is it kind of just kind of pushed in, in some of the category?

Unknown Speaker  17:20  
That's a really good question. And it's something that only in the last maybe four years have we seen, there'd be some, like, some federal funding to fund some, some task forces, if you will, but ultimately, those I believe there's, I believe there's 18 or 19 of those, but, I mean, they don't really have their stuff together yet. But there's a couple that are doing pretty good. The one that we work the most with is actually in Houston. And they do a beautiful job. And again, they're about four years into it, and which is ironically about as old as we were five years old, and we started working with them kind of in the first year that we were developing out everything, the very first training class we did, we invited some of their officers, their top people to come in and see what we're doing. And, and so we've been continuing this relationship with them, they, they are a good model for the rest of the country. But they take the local, state and federal and dump that all into buckets, a look for these five counties. This region, we've got everything from the local vice police, up to the US Attorney's, you know, and everything in between. So it's a very seamless piece, if they're going to go out and do an operation, they already know that the prosecutors have what they need before they make the arrest and it's a very good, very good system. And they're continuing to improve that and they're sending their officers through our training on a regular basis to make that that to leverage it make it that much more effective. You also asked about, you know the age of these victims and Unfortunately, this is maybe the thing that breaks your heart the most. The average age of kids that are coming into this is that 12 to 14 year old range. And it's really, really tragic that this is where our society is evolved to, to the point of preying on the most vulnerable at really their most vulnerable age. Right. And again, that's an that's an average age. But this is, you know, this is men that are doing this. It's really sick to think that they're actively seeking out a 13 year old and willing to pay more money to have a 12 or 13 year old. And at the end of the day, I mean, we've had cases where we have a case with a girl. She was 12 years old when she was first traffic. Her mom was a heroin addict. She lived in New Mexico and her mom essentially opened the door, knowingly or unknowingly to sell her for sex so that she get money by drugs. This proceeded into a process where this girl was groomed into a situation fairly quickly, in which she also becomes a heroin addict. And is is really pulled out of that. I mean, the family unit family unit doesn't really exist there because her father had already left her and her mom said, you know, pretty much disowned you. He lived in the same town. Yeah, not 10 minutes, not 10 minutes away from the hotel in which she was being sold, in which the hotel was complicit to the point where they actually had a keycard on the inside of the door, so she could even get out. And this is what was happening in an American town city, to an American Girl. And she was between the time of 12 years old to the time of 22, which is the year that we actually stood up In that same year, she was one of the first victims that we helped that 10 year period, she was raped six to 20 times a day. She's Keep in mind, like, part of that time she was 12 1314 years old. I mean, the amount of trauma, the amount of abuse. I mean, it is true, that you can destroy somebody's spirit. And that's, it's tragic. And so this is something that, you know, why is this not a bigger issue for our society? I think mainly, it's because again, we don't, we don't want to think about what's happening here. in our own backyard, in our neighborhoods, we want to think, Oh, well, that's, there's a bunch. There's 2000 organizations that are fighting this somewhere else, you know, I'll just get some money and I can not have to think about the problem. And they're doing a great job. But you're not looking at what's happening in your own city and we're right here in Dallas. This is our national headquarters is in Dallas, and I'm actually sitting in the room in which previously, the largest website company selling sex advertising used to be in the same office. And it was company called backpage.com. They had a massive market share of online sex advertising. But within that a large percentage of that was human trafficking, again, involving force, fraud, and coercion. And within that, they're found to be complicit in selling minors for sex online. So they actually knew that people were listening as of miners, and they would actually help them change the verbiage in their ads to not get flagged by the police. You know, so very destructive whole thing. But at the end of the day, we were a primary intelligence source to the feds and to the state attorney general. And then once their headquarters got seized, you know, about six months later, we decided that we would move into it Cuz that's what we do right like we we it's a it's a it's the same thing we did overseas with taking our some Saddam's calluses, whatever this is, it's turning dark to light. That's what we do. It's a beautiful thing. That's where we equip train advise law enforcement. Now it's from the very same place that previously was selling minors for sex online.

Pete Turner  23:22  
Why is it human trafficking if a, you know a teen a 13 year old girls being raped repeatedly, why is it not kidnapping or some other kind of crime, like what makes it human trafficking?

Jeremy MaHugh  23:37  
So the definition is, again, just the basic definition of this is that there's force fraud or coercion. However, in the event that it's a minor, a minor is not legally old enough to make the decision to be a prostitute. Therefore, it's human trafficking. So those are easier to prosecute cases. In the event of a minor, once they are, you know, 18 over, then it becomes a little bit more difficult because you have to prove that it's force fraud or coercion versus that this person is is doing this somehow by choice. I prostitution. So what we see today is that like, most of women in prostitution didn't just wake up one day and say, I'm going to be, I'm going to sell myself for money, you know, for whatever reason. There's something else that happened in that in that childhood or in that history there. So take, for example, the girl that I'm calling Samantha from New Mexico. Well, I've just told you part of her story, but she was right. He was 12 years old, and she was being sold for sex. You know, so by the time we get to her, she's 22. And she's basically just like, if you I'm not a victim, you can, you know, like, leave me alone. Like, this is just My wife, she's already accepted the fact that her life is that now she's 22. So everybody's gonna look at her, like a heroin addicted prostitute. Right? Nobody's gonna look at her as a victim of like what has happened over the past, you know, 10 years. Right?

Pete Turner  25:17  
Right. What's the case management piece for her then for the Samantha's. I mean, obviously you come in the door and what syndrome But

Jeremy MaHugh  25:27  
yeah, I mean with her was a little bit different case than we normally do. Because it was such an early on thing for us. We were so involved with the victim piece. Now, there's a lot of other organizations that kind of come in and handle the victim side where we typically focused on the intelligence to law enforcement getting the trafficker arrested and successfully prosecuted and then letting the victim organizations help with with those victims. So in this particular case, we did we did intervene and help her For at least the first couple of weeks. And you know, she came out of it to the point of, in a lot of ways she still thought she was 12 years old. You know, we gave her clothes that were adult size clothes. And she was like, you know, didn't think it was right. She wanted to wear clothes that were basically kids clothes. You know, like there, there are so many trauma, mental blocking things there. But at the end of the day, this is actually maybe one of the happiest, or I don't know if it's one of the happiest stories but does have a happy ending because because, and I only found this out recently within the last couple of weeks. And here we are. Five years later. Yeah, she was prior to us meeting her. She had been in some programs before she had actually been taken advantage of in one of those programs and she'd been arrested before for prostitution drugs and taking advantage in one of those situations so she doesn't trust anybody. Now. She's a free person. When we when we get her Essentially rescued. She's a free person. So now it's up to her whether or not she goes to the program. You know, there's we there's programs available. So over a period of at least three years, she was in out of a program, I think no less than eight times. But over that period, there was always people there that were, were available to her. She always had her freedom. And, you know, we made sure that because her trafficker also went to went to prison. And after this, here we are five years later. We are we were at a conference for the attorney general's office in New Mexico. And you wouldn't believe who the keynote speaker was. Oh, my goodness. Right. Like, I mean, so what a What a cool ending. So, you know, here she is, five years later, she's got the the treatment, real rehabilitation, to the point where she's stable enough to not only be an advocate, but to be a keynote speaker at Attorney General's conference. And really helping other victims. And so I mean, she's a very smart girl but, but to go through all that trauma and to be able to regain, you know, really her spirit or soul back is huge and so there is hope for those victims. But really, why do we even have to deal with like what's what's what's the best prevention model so there is no snap, there is no Samantha being exploited. And ultimately, that's what we focus our efforts to deliver fund at this so that we can we can invest in taking out the human trafficker so that there are no human trafficking victims.

Pete Turner  28:36  
When you guys are trying to figure out I guess I have a couple questions. Let's go to the Intel side first. So obviously you guys are working with Oh cent but are you also teaching these guys how to do you mean there's so many different kinds of intelligence like, I mean, tactical exploitation at the side of a raid or prostitution or whatever. I mean, they learning how to do that as well. They they do in a massive approach. For four years,

Jeremy MaHugh  29:01  
okay, yeah, since so that those are all things, which we do have to kind of start a very basic level. And we we only have a week. And so we're getting to the point where they can actively identify and you know, proactively, you know, build these cases. And the other really nice thing is, we have a platform now that never existed prior to about three years ago, right. But, you know, it's essentially taken the platform the FBI uses as their host investigative platform, and taking the same tools that you would use in like palantir. Or are the mapping and charting a bad guy networks from the intelligence side, and taking that and using using all of those tools. So both both on the investigative side and the intelligence side, trying to figure out before something bad happens, combining all this together into one platform that's at affordable rate that can last for We can actually afford, and they only need a couple of their, their detectives. They're good investigators to be on that building in cases. But now, if one of those detectives is building a case in Dallas, and then boom, it auto associates on a case that is in, you know, Orange County, right where you're at, like, boom, now, even if the officers did want to share that information, the computer knows that AI algorithm knows, hey, there's more information here. Here's you need to call to find out what else is involved in this case. And that's a really big deal, because law enforcement is so siloed. You know, we in the military and the intelligence agency, we figured out how if we're going to fight a war, we've got to figure out how to how to communicate and get those officers or those those people who are working on the front edge of the battlefield to be able to communicate in real time. So that information flows because the information doesn't flow problems don't get solved, right. And so that is what we are bringing to the table for law enforcement. So whether they're at a local state or federal level, they can be building cases on this platform, have the tools they need to build effective cases that happen in a very short amount of time. And then also, at that point, they can, yeah, they just start crushing the market, because it's casting that net over the entire country. So how do

Pete Turner  31:27  
you say, a smaller town, you know, a town of say 60,000 people or 30,000? How do they deal with this? I mean, obviously, a lot of these towns don't have a host role, right? I mean, so who knows, like the storefront may not be there, but that doesn't mean that there's not a dude. Often, you know, back room on the internet and hunting. So how does the small town deal with this because they don't have the budget, the manpower to send someone out to a class and say, Hey, this is pa Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here and if you your brand or your company, Want to figure out how to do a podcast, just talk to me, I'll give you the advice on the right gear, the best plan to show you how to pick a podcast that makes sense for you that's sustainable. That's scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at breakdown, show calm, let me help I want to hear about it. How does a small town deal with this because they don't have the budget, the manpower to send someone out to a class to they,

Jeremy MaHugh  32:20  
they don't know. That's why we exist as a nonprofit, because we can offer scholarships. But also, even if even if we don't train anybody from that small town, we can still have relationships there. And then the other piece of that, too, that I think is important as we're working with the federal side, too. So maybe it's maybe it's somebody who has, you know, from Homeland Security who has federal jurisdiction in that area. So we can essentially pick the officers who are going to be most impactful in this fight, right. And and who can have the best chance of getting a successful prosecution. And that's something where I mean Here in Dallas, this is something that we've stood up is what we call the high tech. It's the International Human Trafficking Analysis Center. And in this very same office, which previously was backpage.com. Now we are becoming the centralized brain of all things, human trafficking, so we can push out that intelligence to whoever it needs to be. And we can say, Well, we know that if we sent it to this local law enforcement officer, they are not going to do anything with it. But we know if we send it to this one, they're going to they're going to prosecute to the fullest extent a lot. You know, so we, we become that middle piece to make sure that information goes to the right place, and actually gets action on as well.

Pete Turner  33:43  
Yeah. Wow. Okay. So trying to cover that day, but I mean, there's no way you guys are big enough to cover down on the whole nation. Is that right? Are you guys focused on metro areas? Or how do you how do you get big enough and where do you need help at?

Jeremy MaHugh  33:56  
Well, for sure, that's the deal right? As is Casting that net across the whole country because the same same way we used to do and, you know, fight terrorists, we used to try and run around follow him. And that was not working. So it's a matter of casting the net so that no matter where they go, he's picking up a phone call. And you say, hey, this guy's that's our goal is to have, you know, to do this at scale, is how long forcement. Again, whose job it is right? And just connecting them and making sure that they have the proper tools. And then we act is that who Yes, we can advise, we can build cases and we can pass those cases to law enforcement, we can track where these guys are going, and let those officers know that this person is is coming into their area has these victims that he's selling, we can do all that but it just doesn't take the extreme amount of manpower that you really think it would and a lot of that because it is happening so much online. Now. Again, if you look at the old days, especially what we've just covered Commonly referred to as prostitution, II think about like, this is something happening on the street corner, right? This is something, you know, like a movie Pretty Woman, right? Like that. Right? It's romantic. It's just, it's, you know, you drive down on that, that maybe red light district and and pick up girl and you're actually doing her a favor because you're giving her money and a good time you're taking out streets for a while. But the reality of it is today, well, one, we just know that that story is not true. And to reality today is because of the internet. Because of the technology and the apps and everything that you have, accessible from your pocket, you can buy and sell and do commerce, you know, from from anywhere you are. And we say this often but it's, it's it's so prevalent and so easy that you can order a child for sex and have them delivered to your hotel room. Just the same as you would order a pizza. Yeah, like it's that is that is the reality of We've slipped into So, again, how's long horseman? I mean, how would they even know where to look? How did they, you know, what we typically see is they're still they're still thinking about that red light district and, and what's what's out in the open and it's more of a passive approach where they, they can drive by they can see something, but if but if it's happening online, it's happening behind closed doors. That's where we have to bring resources. And that's why I deliver funding exists. And and it's pretty exciting to see the technology and how that's developing because we are getting to a point where we have the most robust database, specifically human trafficking. And because of that, we can start to implement that into different industries, whether it's banks, we've been working with banks, we've had account seized because of tracking activity in banks. We are now getting to the point where we can do this at the point of sale, if somebody's buying a hotel room for the night, and they've got to give personal information. And if that ties into anything in our database, we can we can get to a point where we can, again, we say counter human trafficking, just like counterterrorism. Right? Why do we say counter? Well count because all these other groups when we started, they're anti human trafficking. Well, yeah, we're all against human trafficking. But like, how do you stop? Right? How do you block it? Right? So again, counter meaning block, stop, like, and denied territory, that is what we're doing in this market. And we're doing it in different industries so that at the end of the day, human trafficker can't even do business. They can't put their money in the bank, they can't buy an airplane ticket, it can't buy groceries or whatever. And that's really cool to have the technology in this world at the same point in time really come into the fight this. So we don't, you know, we can leverage that and we don't need nearly as much manpower. When we have when we can leverage the technology.

Pete Turner  37:59  
I don't know if you've seen this documentary Don't fuck with cats or not but no. Okay. I know it sounds funny but but it's about a emerging serial killer who's posting his videos and he, because he posts videos of him, him killing cats, people, civilians light into it no like, okay, who is this guy and they take, you know, they take something that the police would never have time to do. But this is sort of a crowd sourced analysis, you know, where people get obsessed with this. And if you've got 10 people obsessed with anything you do, and they want to, they want to expose it, because it's something bad, you know, good luck to you, you're gonna, you're gonna have a real problem. Anyhow, they do because of Facebook because of this group. They they find this person and ultimately stop them before it gets too crazy. But how much of that kind of because there must be people who are passionate about human trafficking are they are they networked or Do you guys alert the police

Unknown Speaker  39:02  
on these maps? That's a good question. I think that the, when we started this I, the first little fundraiser video that we ever made I, I said this because it was true at the time, like five years ago there was there's, I don't know, 1500 plus organizations across the US that are all doing quote unquote, anti human trafficking, right, the like, but what does that mean? Like, what, what is the impact of that, like, the markets still going exponentially up? You know? And then, you know, here we go fast forward a few years down the road, and you have, you know, the, the Jeff Epstein story, right. I mean, that's, that's massive. That's a big story. And there's a lot, there's a lot more to unpack around that. But the reality is like, that's a big name. There's a couple of other big names that were arrested on allegations of human trafficking this year. And so it's starting to be in the news, the point where people are saying, Wait a minute, this is actually happening when this is actually So but now it's changing the conversation a little bit to say, Yes. Do you have? Do you have different ethnic groups who are being exploited in a massage parlor? Absolutely. But is the is the story of human trafficking in the United States based on like shipping containers and people coming over and shipping containers are being smuggled across the border. And that's just a small fraction of what it is we're talking about. And I think really changing the narrative so that people understand that you know, what, your daughter, your daughter, is that risk? If you if you were fighting human trafficking somewhere else, that's great, but that does nothing to protect your child, you know, or your grandchild or your niece or your nephew. And so, having more people start to realize that it's a local problem and, and getting engaged. Yes, when we get engaged, I mean, look at the closet, the mothers again drunk drivers, something like that is, you know, group of moms that recycle had enough, this is not okay. And like, boom, you have a whole movement, you know, it's the same thing this should be this should be that for everybody. But first, there needs to be that level of understanding education, what the actual problem is. And then secondly, and again, I'm very biased on this, because of my background, where I come from and knowing how to fight illicit market. There's so many organizations, so many people that are only focused on helping victims or maybe fighting the demand side somehow. Right, right. And again, the way that this has been fought over the last 10 years, has had 00 impact on the market. And what people have been doing is they've been treating symptoms, not treating the cause. So you are helping victims. That's awesome. That needs to be done. However, you're going to help more and more victims if you don't treat the cops. And so the other side of that is is law enforcement the way that they've been? Fighting human trafficking is very much the the Chris Hansen to catch a predator style where they put out a fake advertisement online and and they get a bunch of purchasers would be purchasers that come in. Well, the amount of purchasers is so massive, and there is nobody that can give me yet a a scalable solution to fighting that, yes, we need to raise the penalties. But ultimately, like I said before, the way that you really occurred this market so that there is the best prevention model, so there is no human trafficking victim is to not have a human trafficker. What once you raise the risk in the market, so that you can start to accomplish that, then you can focus on you know, how to help men be better men, you know, to not do these things, but that that ship has already sailed. I mean, we have pornography today somebody has told me recently, this blows my mind, because I have a one year old son But they said that the average age of boys that are starting to watch pornography is eight years old. Wow. Like, you and I did grow up in that era. Like there was no, you know, like, we want to look at a Dirty Picture. It was like it was probably in a, in a, in a gas station in a in a magazine that was like had a had a wrapper around it, it couldn't really see him as behind the other magazines. He had to go back there like by magazine, you know, and now it's available on a phone that like my kid is one. One and a half years old. When he was like six months old. He was he almost had my six digit code figured out how to get into my phone. I mean, like, we just like figure it out. Like it's it's crazy how how, you know, adapt, they become this is technology world that we're in, but there has to be some serious look at how to  keep that in check for our kids is in even just yesterday. Back from Florida, my wife was sitting next to me and she was like looking at the TV monitor right in front of us is basically a video. And I think they actually blurred out some of the main scenes, but it was just, it was basically like showing an orgy or it was literally a movie about some brothel. And they're like, 20 on an airplane, there's a child sitting in like two seats over, they can look in here, but they can see everything that's going on. Like at some point, we have to protect our children. You know, because if a boy is eight years old, and he thinks that that's how you treat women, right, you've just created a cycle, a system that now lends itself to human trafficking, because we're like, Well, whatever like that that person is, is essentially a commodity. Like, there is no it's not it's dehumanizing them, right. And, and then the girls on the other side of this are like, well, this is just normal. I mean, now you're talking about like, total moral decay. We're just everything else in society starts to crumble.

Pete Turner  45:04  
Yeah, yeah, everything becomes available. So So what's what's taboo, you know, and they just keep pushing the bounds. I was thinking about, I was actually in Dallas at the blaze studios and Glenn Beck was telling me the story of how, by luck, they figured that that their kid was being groomed over PlayStation or Xbox or whatever it was, you know, via gaming. And so the the predators have gotten more clever, you know, and, and think about how one on one that is. And, you know, the the young mind is so impressionable. You know, he, there's any number of stories where the young kid who's been groomed is turns against the parents that they don't understand and the love and all of these things, this is happening while your kid is, you know, playing games on the tablet on the phone. And I'm not saying don't give your kids tablets, phones and games, but Understand the data monitor. Yeah, the threat that's out there. Good grief. You know,

Jeremy MaHugh  46:05  
I gave you two examples on that same issue, because just recently, so glenn beck and their foundation supports us. And we've talked to them a lot about this and very similar story is, is we actually had somebody in a different state, the child was about 15 years old. Boy, he was on a gaming station. And over probably a six month period, somebody had built up a relationship and built up rapport grown man from another state. But he doesn't know who that person is, right? Next is found a friend online he's playing games with so this guy builds up report shows up to his neighborhood and says, Hey, come out of your house. I'm here I want to I want to visit with you. I'm like two blocks up the road. So kid walks out his house, goes up, hops in the guy's car, takes his phone, throws it out the window And off he goes within 24 hours. back into different state only because that family was able to reach out to us and we were able to work with law enforcement, we're able to recover. Boy Boy, and within about 24 hours, but it's not the first time that that guy was doing that. And again, that's a boy, not a girl. And so like, just thinking about like, those things are out there. And if you're not monitoring, that's, that's a problem as a parent. The other thing is I've got a friend here in Dallas, who is got a daughter who's like, a, probably a sophomore, I think, in high school. And he gets all of her notifications to Instagram and different things that she's on sent to him also. So every single day, here's a girl who's what, you know, again, 1516 years old. Yeah. And she's getting solicitations from grown men who are finding her online at Her, you know, to send naked photos or they're catfishing. or somehow they're, you know, they're just like, it's it's so prevalent that just because she has that account, and she's a good looking younger girl, like there is people in her school that are known to her that are asking for those kinds of things. There are people that she doesn't know, that are finding her asking for that. Like, it is just a different world. And if you're a parent, you have to be involved in that because those threats are very real. And a lot of that is coming in through social media.

Pete Turner  48:35  
Yeah, it's Well, first off, thank you guys for the work you're doing. And boy, you know, so So where do people go to donate because obviously people are going to want to be able to kick in some funds. What's the best spot?

Jeremy MaHugh  48:51  
Yeah, the website deliver sun.org is great because you can you can learn more about what we're doing, how we're doing it. Also, you can sign up up for a newsletter on there, we put out monthly, we're not going to send you a bunch of emails, but monthly, we will give you an update of some success stories and just kind of where we're going in the future. So that's helpful and keeps people involved. And it's really easy to donate on there. And, and this is this, again, this is a, an issue. That is we're at a point in history where we we can change this market, we can change the dynamic. And we believe that properly resourced, we can reduce human trafficking by 80% in the next five to seven years. And so this market that's been growing exponentially, we believe with the way that we're approaching this. And obviously, in tandem with law enforcement, we can reduce that by 80%. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of low hanging fruit that we can go after. And just by implementing that risk, there's also going to be traffickers that just fall off the spectrum there. So we have a very impactful solution. And you can read about it at our website, and then just be in touch with us. So you follow our, our Instagram pages, our Twitter pages, our social media pages. And we'll continue to try and get better at keeping that message coming out.

Pete Turner  50:14  
Yeah, and I guess what I would ask the audience to do is, in general, when you hear about human trafficking or these things, you know, put the words deliver fund in whatever kind of posts you put up, because it's going to do two things, it's going to create an awareness so that that potential traffic customer, the person who's going to use that realizes that there is more threat, and then maybe that's just enough to get them to say, it's not worth the risk. And they, you know, that they don't use human trafficking that day, but also to let the police departments know, hey, there's a resource, and we can get someone here qualified and trained up on how to at least know how to access other resources and enter into the database and that kind of thing, because, you know, Jeremy, I mean, just, you know, just because you're a small town doesn't mean that you can't send a guy for a course. If nothing ever happens, at least someone's there who has the pamphlet, in who has the binder, who can open up and go, what do we do now? And then they can respond. So police forces knowing about this, and also predators knowing about it that, hey, we're looking for you, we're coming for you, we're going to train as many people as we can. And, you know, down to that financial trail, you know, like how we chase terrorism, but we looked like that looks like terror money, we now have the ability to grab that money halted and then look into, you know, it causes like a check where that organization now has an eye on it. And there's an extra action, the same kind of thing can happen with these human trafficking things. But this network, like you said, has to be built now ahead of the problem so that it can be contained because you think about kidnapping is not really a real crime anymore for the FBI in general. You know, there's not really landmark kid Mark cases, kid kidnap cases like there are in other countries. But that doesn't mean that people aren't taking kids and doing things with them. It's just a different way of looking at it now. So Whew, man, that is a hell of a problem. And I really appreciate you guys leaning on, I had no idea.

Jeremy MaHugh  52:05  
Yeah, it's something that most of us didn't. And until you really start to look at a problem again, think about it like this, it's an illicit market. So unless you're involved in it, somehow you probably don't really know what's going on, you know. So, you know, law enforcement is just is ill equipped with, you know, a way to fight this. So really, it's, it's something that, you know, we fill that gap, we have solutions all day long. And it's pretty exciting. I mean, I don't do this because the main reason I wake up in the morning, and I'm excited is because I know that it's not a whack a mole problem. I know that we have a solution. And if we can just get that solution, like you said, in front of the right law enforcement in front of the right people that can help fund it for essentially for law enforcement builds this this capability that that can crush this market. So yeah, definitely has Deliver phone hashtag crushing evil. Now that's, that's our deal.

Pete Turner  53:05  
Well, listen, I appreciate you coming on next time I'm in Dallas. I'm going to pop in and do a visit. Let's do an update show.

Jeremy MaHugh  53:10  
For sure. I'll even run you through a case study and show you kind of what the technology looks like. It's, you'll you'll love it. Yeah. And, okay.

Pete Turner  53:23  
Yeah, well, I mean, look, I don't I'm a counterintelligence guy. I want to go out I want to collect I want understand it so I can explain it better to help you guys out because, you know, I've got a voice, I've got a platform and I don't want little girls, I've got a daughter. You know, I'm not I'm not an animal of a human at least anymore. You know? So I want people to be in a better spot and I appreciate you guys for doing this. Anything else you want to add?

Jeremy MaHugh  53:45  
No, man, I really appreciate you taking the time to address a topic like this because it is a heavy topic. But like you said, like, you know, especially you and I are kind of getting in that time of our life where we're looking for purpose. We want to be very purposeful with our time. Yeah. And, and have high impact and, and this is something that, you know, people need to know what's going on I think I think as a society, we can really start to turn the corner. But it's got to be addressed. People have to not just look away, right? Because my what I'm telling people is there is no longer neutral. If you're if you're just going to be neutral on this subject. That's the same as aiding and abetting. Like, get with it. Yeah.

Pete Turner  54:31  
Thank you so much, man. I appreciate you.

Jeremy MaHugh  54:33  
Thanks. Bye.