1330: Javier Leiva | Why We Obey: From Prank Calls to Fake Badges

22:53That's how your phone number, old addresses, relatives' names, and other personal details can end up on people search sites. Even if you never posted any of it yourself and trying to get it removed on your own, yeah, good luck. There are hundreds of these sites. The information will pop right back up. I've used Delete Me for years now. Honestly, it gives me some peace of mind knowing that at least someone is staying on top of this for me and for my family. I do think everybody should be on top of this. Delete Me does the hard work for you. You sign up. Tell them what information you want removed.

23:18their experts take it from there. My favorite part is the regular personalized privacy reports showing what they found, where they found it, and what's been removed.

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24:23And I teach some of the techniques that you've been hearing about in the show, not all of them, obviously, in our networking course, 6minutenetworking.com. It uses some social psychology for good. And a few minutes a day is all it takes. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. It'll make you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, and a better peer. The course is all free with no shenanigans at sixminutenetworking.com. Now, back to Javier Leyva. So let's give people a little bit of a script.

24:52If somebody claiming to be the police calls your workplace or even you personally and says, hey, don't hang up. This is urgent. What are the next things that you should do immediately? Because it might actually be the police, but how do we sort of verify that this is not a scam? I would say the same thing if somebody were calling you from your bank or your credit card company. I would say, hey, I'm going to call you guys back. Look up the number for that police department and call them back and see if they're really them. I just don't think that you could just accept a call and believe it, right?

25:26Some of these calls are really believable, too, because they don't come in cold. They do their research, and they might even say the employee's name, which leads you to believe that maybe they are the cops. Like, how would they know that? But that's because the guy, especially in this case, would scope out some of the restaurants and he would learn the descriptions of the employees. He would learn some of their names, which made the call even more believable. But just like any other scam, if you have any question, any doubt, say, I'll call you right back. Look up their number, call them back. And that would solve 99 percent of this.

26:02I think you're right. I think another good thing you can do is to break isolation, essentially. So my wife got scammed one time a long time ago. And I knew that something was wrong because I think I was with her brother and a couple of our friends. All of us had missed calls from her. And we were like, oh, my gosh. So I call her back and she's like, I just bought a stereo. And it was like this scam where the stereo was like a piece of crap. But it was like a fake brand and blah, blah. This is years ago. And it still pisses me off because she was really sad. It wasn't even the money. She was just sad that somebody would do that to her.

26:33And she had tried to break the isolation, right? She's like, I called Danielle. I called you. I called mom. I called dad. I called Glenn. I called Austin. It was like nobody answered the phone. And she's like, had I just talked to one of you guys? I know I wouldn't have gotten all hyped up in the moment and bought this stupid thing. And I was like, yeah, I probably would have said, hey, no, no, this guy can't take a PayPal. He's got to take cash. He's in a truck that does unmarked or whatever. I don't remember the details, but it was like when I recounted it to her, she was like, I'm so stupid.

27:01And she started crying. I was like, no, no, no, you got scammed. This is his job. He's doing this every day. He is much better at this than you are, right? He's a social engineer. We don't have those skills. This guy is a predator, right? He's going after people. And that's exactly how this guy makes money. So if you break the isolation, you might get somebody who goes, let me get this straight. Because that's her cousin, who's the call dropped in the elevator. She called and was like, I got this weird call from the police. And I was there and I was like, that sounds like a scam. And she's like, yeah, that was kind of like what this thing was niggling in the back of my head.

27:29And I was like, call the cops back. And she's like, oh, that's a good idea. So she just dialed basically 911. and they were like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not real. And then they called her back a hundred times and she didn't answer the phone. So you break that isolation. I don't know. Another one that's sort of very specific to this particular case would maybe refuse to do anything that involves anyone else. That's a little particular to this kind of case, but you not being a cop or any sort of authority, I guess this is specifically if you work somewhere, You just don't do anything that would involve acting as if you're a cop with respect to anybody in your workplace.

28:06Well, it turns out that this guy, the suspect, his name is David Stewart. He was a wannabe cop. When they found him, his car had a bunch of fake badges. He was a local correction officer. He wanted to be a cop, but he wasn't a cop. So he was in that world. He was playing cop. For him, this was fun. And that's the thing. This is so weird because you might be asking yourself, what is this guy getting out of this? He's not getting money. He's not scamming you. He's just getting off on some sort of power trip. He wanted to be a cop. Imagine, if you will, all of the guys that did become cops that are exactly the same way as this guy and have that psycho streak where they get off on humiliating other people.

28:46That could cause a lot of problems with law enforcement. And right now, a lot of cops are like, oh, yeah, that's like the so and so and so and so who I work with over there. because we have a lot of cops that listen to the show and I often ask them privately, do you know anyone who does all the crazy, crappy, horrible things that we see on social media? And they're all like, yeah, there's one or two guys that we all would like to see gone and aren't gone because they're the chief's nephew or whatever. So yeah, let's talk about PrankNet, which is sort of similar, I suppose. Tell us about this because there's like dozens and dozens of incidents oh man this didn't go on quite as long as the mcdonald's hoax scam that we just talked about but this one went on from 2009 to 2011 and prank net i didn't know about these guys until i came across the story but they just started out as like an internet prank organization maybe they were inspired by like the jerky boys or you know something like that you know and i love a good prank frank rizzo open your f***ing ears jackass you remember that one i mean i love the turkey boys i love a good prank man it's just something really funny about hearing people fall for these things right they were harmless right because they were making fun of themselves or they were like a really overly aggressive wannabe car salesman that had anger management problems they weren't getting people to spray all of their food supply with a fire extinguisher even like the worst ones are still funny and it sucks because I don't want to laugh at it because they're laughing and it seems funny and what the person's doing is kind of funny, but it is completely diabolical.

30:22And you're talking about prank, prank net. And here's the thing with them. The problem with pranks is that once you do a prank, you got the next prank you do has to be bigger than the last one. You can't just keep doing the same pranks. Yeah. Getting them to throw out all their napkins is funny once, but you can't get them to do it again and again. You got to get them to throw out their burger meat next time or like destroy the fryer with motor oil. Yeah. PrankNet, it was an internet group, but it was led by this one guy who's known as Dex. And Dex is from Ontario, Canada, and he lives with his mom in the basement.

30:54Surprise, surprise. Yeah. And this guy, they would call hotel front desk, pretending to be fire alarm technicians, hotel management, all kinds of stuff. And like I said, it was pretty funny, but one prank would take it further than the next one. At one point, he's calling the hotel and he's asking for room 203. I'm just making that up. And he calls room 203. The guest picks up and they're like, hey, there's a gas leak in the hotel and we don't have time to evacuate. We just need to create some airflow. And right away, they just created a sense of urgency. And this call could happen. This doesn't happen like at three o 'clock in the afternoon.

31:35This happens at three o 'clock in the morning, right? Right. I was going to say, I'm opening the window. Yeah. What do I have to lose? I'm just opening the window. Have you ever tried to open up a Hampton Inn window? Here's the problem. They don't open. So you make it open with a chair. Is that where this is going? Yeah, that's where it's going. They're like, you got to find something. And usually they would instruct them to go into the bathroom and grab the toilet cover, you know, like the porcelain toilet cover and just smash the window. And they would record this. So unlike the pranks that we were talking about earlier, the McDonald's pranks, You could actually hear these cracks and people would just smash the window and they're like, wait a minute.

32:10Is there something electronic in the room? Because that could just blow up. And they're like, yeah, the TV. Is it plugged in? Yeah. And they would grab the TV and just throw it out the window. I'm trying so hard not to laugh because this is actually hilarious other than the fact that, look, this is traumatizing and property damage. If I was watching a dramatic reenactment of this and it wasn't real, it would be really funny. This is like a Mark Wahlberg, Adam Sandler, I don't know who's another, like these corny comedian comedy scenes where they're doing this and you're laughing. It's like Wedding Crashers bit, right?

32:44Yeah. And it is funny. It's hard not to laugh at this, but then you realize, wow, they just destroyed a lot of properties. One of their more popular pranks was the fire alarm scam, right? So that's the one that we just talked about where they would call the hotel. They would talk to the clerk, and somehow they would convince the clerk to pull the fire alarm. So now you have the fire department coming. The guests are just scrambling all over the place. And that seems fairly harmless, right? Except for waking everybody up at 2 a.m. to go outside in a robe in the middle of winter. But yeah. But they would step it up.

33:22Like I said, that was funny for a while. But now they're calling restaurants and they're saying, hey, we are calling from corporate. it. We are doing a routine fire inspection and we need you to look at the exhaust system, you know, the vent that's over the grill. And we just need you to look at a couple of things. And they had done their research. So they knew exactly how to walk the manager through this exact fire retardant system. Oh, they're going to deploy the fire retardant in the kitchen and ruin everything. Oh my God. So they're like, Hey, press this button. And the manager would press this button, all of a sudden shit would just start spraying everywhere like chemicals.

34:01It's supposed to suppress the fire. And they're like, hey, did that get on you? And they're like, yeah, that got on me. And he's like, that's going to burn your skin. You have to strip completely naked. And these managers would strip completely naked. They would evacuate the entire restaurant and they would do this over and over again. There was this one prank where they called the Hampton in in Nebraska, and they got them to set the fire alarm. But one of the guests, this is just somebody that's staying in the hotel, but he drove his truck through the lobby. It was a semi-truck. He drove it through the hotel lobby.

34:40Yeah. Oh my God. Remember the hotel gas leak? Yeah. They actually did it to an ESPN reporter who was staying at a Hampton Inn. She broke the window of her hotel room just to clear the air. And you could hear all this. You could hear this woman do this. And she's all groggy and she's not thinking straight. Oh, my God. I hate that I see the appeal of what they're doing because I really don't want to laugh at this kind of thing. But it's silly. It's so silly that it works. But yeah, it's harmful. I mean, you're destroying property. You're getting people to go outside with their clothes off in winter.

35:15That's not good. That's humiliating. They're ruining all this food. I don't know what happens when a fire retardant system sprays all over a fast food restaurant, but I'm going to guess$10 ,000 cleanup closed for a couple of days. Easily, right? And so this is an expensive ding in the revenue, not to mention if I'm eating at a local McDonald's and the fire suppression system goes off, I'm just never going to go there again because it's like, what is going on with this place? So you lose my business permanently, right? And I haven't been at McDonald's in like a decade or something like that. But still, you know, like it's not good.

35:49The whole thing is terrible. But I do understand why this is entertaining for a certain kind of like ne 'er-do-well basement dweller. Because even there's a part of me that's like chuckling at this and then goes, oh, wait, no, no, no, this is real. My bad. Yeah. Yeah. You hate to laugh at it. This next example is like they call this the apple cider prank. And so this is a multi-step prank. So a lot of things have to go right for this prank to work. Okay. So one of the PrankNet members, his name is James Markle. He called the Homewood Suites in Lexington, Kentucky, and he asked to call one of the guests.

36:25And he called the room and the guest picks up and he told the guest that he's a doctor and that there was an outbreak of hepatitis C and that he needed a urine sample to test for the infection. And so he told the guest to pee in a cup and deliver it to the front desk. And then because he didn't want the guest to be embarrassed, he said, just write apple cider on the cup.

36:52So the guest delivers the urine labeled apple cider to the front desk. Now they call again. Now the front desk clerk picks up and he says that they're running a taste test for a cider company. and he tricks the clerk into drinking the guest's urine, which is nuts. Oh, God. I started doing a podcast about warning people about scams, and I feel like what we're doing is we're giving people ideas, and it's so not what I intended for this, but holy crap. Except for the person who drank urine, that's a pretty good prank. Jeez. Oh, my God. I'm going to hell. Oh, my God. Oh, man. I'm feeling pretty bad about laughing.

37:33This one, remember, they don't just call and make this prank and it works 100 % of the time. Okay, because I'd spoke with one of the former PrankNet members. Her name is Jerry Batsford, and she walked me through how this whole thing works. Okay, so they would test out a prank. Most of the time it didn't work and they would call another restaurant and perfect it until they got it just right. And for this one prank, they nailed it, man. They got it to work perfectly. And so this happened in Manchester, New Hampshire at a KFC. OK, and just like we talked about earlier, they were checking the Ansel fire suppression system, which is that same chemical spray we were talking about.

38:17And they tricked the KFC employees to pull the fire suppression system. It got all over the place. It released this chemical mist and they told the employee, hey, this mist is highly toxic. You're going to have to evacuate the building. They evacuated the KFC. And they told the two employees that this chemical would eat right through their clothes, right through their skin. And he said, you need to go outside right away. And it was freezing cold. It was like 36 degrees outside. Okay. And he got them to strip naked. The shirts, pants, underwear, everything came off. And they told the woman, they said, hey, do you know how you get rid of a jellyfish thing?

39:04You pee on it. This works the exact same thing. We need to counteract the deadly toxins, the acid that's eating through your skin. And he got these women to pee on each other in the parking lot. And it was humiliating. It was just terrible. I mean, to me, that stops being funny, right? Because now this is like trauma. Now you're making me laugh by saying it's not funny. Authority, urgency, isolation, confusion. That's the manipulation toolkit. Add a promo code and suddenly it's just podcast advertising. We'll be right back. This episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show is brought to you by Booking.com.

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42:37More routes coming soon. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do. Take a moment. Support our amazing sponsors. They make the show possible. All of the sponsors, discount codes, and deals are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you're having trouble finding a code, do email us, jordan at jordanharbinger.com. We're happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Javier Leyva. God, I would say edit this out, but I can't be the only one who's still picturing this and laughing a little.

43:12And then you realize it's a human doing this and then you feel really bad. God, I'm having such a crisis here because I totally get why this is tempting. Like if this was a sitcom situation, this would be a funny thing to do. What you have to do is dehumanize people and make them not real outside of yourself. That's the person we're dealing with who's doing this. Because otherwise it's funny for a second, then you realize how awful it is. like you said, it stops being funny. The fire retardant system stuff alone, that can be irritating. Some of it has heavy metals. Some of it might have forever chemicals in it.

43:43So it's not totally harmless. It's not something you want to breathe in. My uncle actually, he works at a paint shop or worked in an automotive paint shop in Detroit. And somehow that thing got triggered. I don't know. Maybe it was a necessary use thereof. But a lot of the guys got sick with lung issues and had to take weeks and weeks off work because they just had nonstop dry or bloody cough because it's supposed to put out a fire. But when you inhale a bunch of it, it's in your lungs, irritating the crap out of you. And there's no way to clean your lungs out. You got to cough. And sometimes you got to cough for weeks and weeks and weeks.

44:15And some of these guys are like 55, 60 years old. You take a bunch of weeks off work and coughing up like this is just terrible for you all the way around. Aside from the humiliation that's happening, aside from the property damage and having to pay to have it remediated because you don't just pull this stuff hose off your kitchen and get back to cooking you've got to have this professionally clean it's super expensive and i would imagine time consuming yeah it's terrible and these guys were never really caught here's the thing what law did they break first of all it's an international yeah i don't know it's just the power of suggestion oh i'm sure a good prosecutor can figure it out.

44:53What they would get charged with is incitement, conspiracy, aiding and abetting, or end up as an accomplice with liability for the property destruction, vandalism, criminal mischief. And it would all be aggravated because the judge and the jury would hear this and go, oh, this isn't, hey, bro, spray paint that wall. This is excessive. And so you're going to end up with malicious intent to destroy property. You can do stuff like wire fraud or whatever when you use the internet or the mail or the systems to do things like that. And this is a throw the book at him by any means possible kind of thing, because it's really horrific.

45:29It's really terrible. And especially this last one. So the one that sticks out in my mind when people ask me about the story is this case, because it's the same deal, a hotel clerk. And I forgot where he was. It was like, probably like in the middle of nowhere. He gets a call, same whole fire alarm thing. He sets off the sprinklers. He gets the mist on him. They get the hotel clerk. Now they switch from the phone from the lobby to now the clerk's cell phone, right? So now they could get him to walk around. They get him to check the building, this and that. They're like, hey, find an empty room.

46:06So he finds an empty room. He closes the door. They got him to undress. They're like, hey, this chemical is really bad for you. And he's like, are you serious, man? I don't even see it on me. He's doubting the entire thing. You could hear the call. He just does not believe what these guys are telling him, but he does it anyway. Takes off his shirt, takes off his pants. They're like, your underwear. And he's like, the underwear, that doesn't make any sense. He's like, you have to, this is life or death. He takes off his underwear and they're like, sir, you need to check your anal cavity. And the guy was like, this is ridiculous.

46:42This has to be a prank, but he does it anyways. And they got the guy to sodomize himself in an empty hotel room, which is nuts. I'm surprised anybody even found out about that. Imagine filing this police report and then you did what? Yep. Shove a fingers in my butt. That's what they told me to do. I mean, I might leave that part out, honestly. I don't know. I wouldn't believe the story if I hadn't heard the actual prank call myself and you hear it all unfold. I don't like the victim shame at all, but God, Come on, man. Yeah. There has to be a little voice in your head saying this is not true. And even he said this has to be a prank.

47:18By the way, I want to clarify something. The reason we have all these recorded calls is because they're uploading them to the PrankNet forum or whatever for people to listen to, right? People are listening to it live. They're laughing their asses off. They're suggesting. You can even hear Dex. He puts the clerk on mute and he's talking to his audience like, hey, what should I do? Look at this guy. And you hear it. For them, they don't treat it as a joke. For them, this is a job. This is like an art form trying to manipulate people to do the thing. Yeah, he's almost like a Twitch streamer who's just like, hey, choose your own adventure.

47:52What other horrible thing do I do to this person? This is dystopian, man, when you think about it. Man, I can't remember exactly where I saw. It was some kind of horror or thriller movie. It might have been Black Mirror. Oh, or Saw? Yeah, it wasn't Saw because I haven't seen those because I just probably can't handle it. But I think it was Black Mirror where this guy, he needed money and he went on a website called Dumb Dummies or something like that. And you could go and people would be like, staple your hand to the table. And then you could do it and you get 600 bucks. And people would be like, all right, I'll staple my tongue to the table if you give me$5 ,000.

48:27And you see the meter going up and up. And it's like, all right, you hit$5 ,000 and the dude has to do it live on the stream. And the point is it's this really dystopian thing. It's not real, right? This is actually Black Mirror on Netflix. And this is kind of what that sounds like, except for the people who are getting tricked are not actually getting paid and they're not aware of what's going on. There's nothing in it for them. But it's very similar in that somebody's doing this to these other people and people are laughing at them at their expense. They think it's hilarious. That's just one of those, where did you find this audience of degenerate, horrible people?

49:02Like all of them need to be on a list. That's just terrible. Were these guys improvising? It sounds like they were taking suggestions from the audience, but are they running structured scripts at all? Or is this something they practiced? I think they're improvised. And yeah, that former pracment member was telling me that they would practice this. They would fine tune it. Yeah, some of it was improvised, obviously, because they had to be quick on their feet just in case the manager would throw them off. But they would get them right back on course and just drive the conversation. and she told me it didn't work all the time.

49:35It didn't work all the time. But man, there's tons of these pranks and they're offline now. I haven't been able, and I even searched for Dax to see if there was any activity prior to this interview, just because I always wonder about him. I'm like, how could you just stop doing this? That makes me wonder if he did or if he's just another doing it somewhere else that's on the dark web, it's harder to find. I don't know. Because he doesn't want to get caught. This is jackass plus a felony factory. And it almost seems like the word prank kind of lets everybody minimize what's actually happening, if that makes sense, right?

50:12It's just a prank, bro. Yeah, you literally have somebody who's getting charged with multiple sexual assaults. You destroyed$60 ,000 worth of property. That's a crime. You can call it a prank if you want to let your conscience go a little bit lighter. We're just pranking people. Ding dong ditch is a prank. Putting a kick me aside on someone's back is a prank. Like maybe even tricking somebody into drinking something that's not apple cider, but probably not urine. I think that crosses the line. But when you're starting to do stuff like that, that's not a prank. You're telling yourself it is so that you don't feel like the criminal degenerate piece of crap that you are.

50:43There's this one recording where somebody was in a hotel room, one of the hotel room guests. And you can hear this, right? You can hear the call. And he's super nervous because there's this gas leak in the hotel. And he breaks the window. You hear the glass break. and the wife is like, what are you doing? He's, I'm breaking the window. He just told me to. I can just imagine how odd that must have been for her. They're on vacation. And all of a sudden, her husband just grabs the toilet seat and just starts breaking the window of this hotel, which is nuts. There's urgency, there's confusion, the timing's in the middle of the night.

51:17You got this fake authority. I would imagine the pranks got, like you said, more extreme because there's a performance element, because there's an audience. If you're just doing this on your own, you might get your kicks doing this a couple of times, having people, I don't know, throw the toilet paper roll out the window and you're like, haha. But when it's like, hey, I want to see more. I want to see something more extreme. It's kind of like terrorism. You can't just do this really lame-o, yeah, we burned a flag in the middle of Times Square. It's like, okay, what did that do? Well, you're being cheered on by fans live in real time.

51:51The rush that these guys must have been feeling when it worked. Yes, exactly. Especially when you have nothing else going in life because you live in your parents' basement somewhere in Ontario. So are there maybe like top three red flags that a weird call is actually a manipulation attempt? Is there anything like that? When somebody causes a sense of urgency and that you bypass your logic, slow things down. Try to slow things down. Just like your cousin or your friend, I forget who was in the elevator, have that elevator moment. Just slow it down, pause it, give yourself some time to think. Because when you're acting out of fear, you're making bad decisions.

52:30And I think just doing that, having that elevator moment will save you a lot of grief. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting because obedience might be partly about fear and partly about not wanting to be the problem, make a situation worse. And so, yeah, if you think about it, if there's really a situation in which the police are calling you, five minutes before you call them back is not going to materially change the situation. Now, I get that they try to use urgency to beat that, right? There's a gas leak. You can't hang up and go to the front desk. This is a matter of life or death in an emergency.

53:02They try and get around that, but it's like, well, that's kind of the flag. You don't smell the gas. Maybe we hang up the phone and go, hey, wife, who's still sleeping? I'm getting a call from somebody who says they're from the front desk and they say there's a gas leak and I need to break the window. Jordan, call the front desk and make sure that, oh, yeah, you know what? That's a good idea. I just didn't think about it because it's three o 'clock in the morning and I'm half asleep. And she's not in the moment like you are. She's not caught up in it. So if you can sanity check this with somebody who's not been on the phone with the fake cop for 25 minutes, it's probably a really good way to break out of this stuff.

53:33I think we need to make this more relatable to your audience because everybody listening probably wouldn't fall for this stuff because this stuff is insane and is probably the most extreme examples. But can you imagine you work in a corporate setting. You work for the CFO or something like that. And you get a deep fake call from your boss saying, I need you to wire all this money. Okay. This is the same thing that we're talking about. Okay. This has happened to my mother-in-law. This happens, right? And it's just not you throwing something out the window or urinating on yourself or whatever, but it is you transferring lots of funds over to some account that you don't need.

54:10And they do the same thing, man. They do the same thing that Dex and all the PrankNet guys do. They create a sense of urgency. They do their research. They're your boss's voice or they know some information that only somebody at your office would have. And you might fall for it. You know what I mean? So same thing. It's just like now it's in a corporate setting, right? This happened to my mother-in-law. She got an email that was like, hey, update to the bank wire instructions. And she goes, huh, I just talked to them on the phone and they're updating their bank wire instructions. That's so weird.

54:41So she calls and goes, hey, I just wanted to make sure that because you just sent me two conflicting bank wire instructions. You just sent me an update, even though I just talked to you. And they were like, we didn't update our banking information. She's like, oh, you're not at a totally separate credit union in a totally different state. And they're like, oh my God, no. And they had found out who the right person was at her company to talk to about the wire. And she had just happened to get off the phone with that person. If that timing hadn't been there, she probably would have gone, oh, okay, well, they're updating their wiring instructions.

55:10I guess we'll just throw that. That was her elevator moment. You know what I The most useful takeaway is probably that context can at least temporarily override judgment. It's not that people are just dumb. It's that with the right context, your judgment is not as good as you think it is. If all of those other pieces are in place. And the thing is that we're hardwired to trust people. We can't be that cynical that we go around the world thinking that everybody's going to be pranking us or trying to scam us. For the most part, we accept things, right? I accept the president built this house, knew what they were doing.

55:44You just have to trust, right? But I think that just have that in the back of your mind that some people are looking to take advantage of you and just have a healthy dose of skepticism. I'd love to talk about something that's pretty apropos our current climate here, which is fake ICE agents. So what's freaked me out about this whole thing is, politics aside, if somebody can just say they're law enforcement but doesn't actually have to show you a badge or an ID, that is a big deal. because I keep thinking, what would happen if masked men came to my porch and said, open the door? And I said, who are you?

56:18And they said, ICE, but we're not going to show you a Badger ID. I am 50-50 on me just answering with bullets. How would you know? This is not about politics. It's a legitimate question. How would you know? I have no idea. I got my wife and kids in here. I'm not going to take a chance that you're actually ICE agents. None of us are immigrants. So what are you doing on my porch? And the answer might be, I have it on ring that they refused to identify themselves and they were armed. So I made sure that they couldn't get in. And when they tried to kick my door in, I lit them up. And I don't know, if they turn out to be federal agents later, I feel like the jury might actually understand that I didn't know that.

56:53And they refused to actually demonstrate that they were. But I'm probably still going to go to prison or get shot. So it's like a really weird dilemma that we're in if these guys are just not subject to the actual requirements of regular law enforcement. And I get it. The official excuse for why they wear masks and don't identify themselves is that they recognize that what they're doing could be very unpopular. And it's a very charged topic and people would target them. They could dox them. They could find out where they live and who they're related to. I'm sympathetic to that. But at some point, you at least go, look, here's my picture and an official ID and a number.

57:31You can call 911 and say, is ICE at my door? And if they say yes, then it's a sanctioned operation. It wouldn't be that hard to set this up. It really wouldn't. But here's the thing. It's like, where does that argument end? Right. Because police don't need to do this. They're out there showing their face all the time. They get harassed. Judges get harassed. Prosecutors get harassed. You and I in the media and the public, we get harassed. Like, is everybody going to just wear masks? That's a really good point. I agree. I think it's almost like you're signing up for something here that's unfortunately part of the job.

58:01Yeah, exactly. And that sucks. Right. And actually, I have a whole series on how to disappear. So if they want to unmask and learn how to actually disappear from the Internet, there's plenty of ways to do that, right? If you go on a people search website and you type in a cop's name and you get their address. Oh, geez. Don't give anybody ideas, man. No, but I'm saying delete your stuff from the Internet. That's a better way of disappearing. There's a point where obedience becomes participation. There's also a point where podcasting becomes advertising. That point is now. We'll be right back.

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59:38Don't forget about our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. The idea is to give you something specific, something practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships in under two minutes every Wednesday. If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It's a great companion to the show. Jordanharbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with Javier Leyva.

1:00:26law partners or whatever. And our nanny is our friends. And so the family asked my nanny, is it really safe for our kid to go over there? And she's like, of course, why? And they were like, I don't know. We looked at photos of the house on the internet and it just doesn't look like a place where we would want our child. And our nanny was like, huh. So she looked it up and she's like, do you know that this is what your house looks like on the internet? It's like when they were about to tear it down, the old property. And it's like this haunted house looking at the place drive by. It's, it doesn't look like that anymore.

1:00:58And they came over and they were laughing and like, yeah, it's slightly different than the photos on the internet. Cause it was, yeah, it was an abandoned property. I think, well, the guy had passed away. Right. So it was like empty for a few months. You can imagine what a place starts to look like after a while. I got all my neighbors to blur out their images on Google maps. So yeah. And it's really easy. Just look up your address. You could do it on your phone. It takes a couple of seconds. So I highly recommend it. I also recommend that. That's a good recommendation of the week unofficially right there is blur your house.

1:01:26The thing is, there's almost just no really good reason for anybody to be able to see what the front of your house looks like. Yes, it would be great if your friends who've never been there could go, do I have the right place? But you know what? There's other ways around that where they're calling you on the phone and contacting you. There's so much potential for misuse that it's just not good. So yeah, fake ICE agents, man. This is not a thing that happened once in the news overly covered it? I thought it would be, actually. When I first approached the story, I was like, okay, fake ICE agent, because I heard about this one story.

1:01:59It actually happened where I live in Raleigh, North Carolina. Some guy pretended to be an ICE agent, and he raped this woman. And I was like, how often does this actually happen? And it did not take me long. I found case after case of people impersonating ICE agents and doing all kinds of stuff, not just rape or violent crime, extortion, like all kinds of stuff. And I was like, you know what? This is perfect, right? Because with a mask, you could go to a Bass Pro shop and buy your ice uniform, right? And you could pull off whatever you want because people respect authority. People are afraid of authority and they will most likely do what you say.

1:02:38Especially people who are here illegally, their entire feed is full of videos of people getting their ass beat in the street while sitting in their car after doing a job or cutting someone's lawn or walking around. They're going to assume that, oh, my number is up today. That's just what this is. They're not going to think, oh, it's a fake badge and the guy has zip ties and a fake document in English that I can't fully read because it's legalese that says I'm going to get deported and says ICE at the top. I'm a lawyer. I don't really fully understand ICE procedures. Do you, as a normal person, do you understand what deportation procedures look like in the beginning?

1:03:12I took classes on this exact thing and worked on some of these, and I still don't remember slash understand all of this. I mean, they just don't even operate like any other law enforcement. According to the vice president, they have absolute immunity. So like, what can't they do? You know what I'm saying? Like, they're a very unique slice of law enforcement that is just kind of alarming. Some of the cases were really silly. I found body cam footage of a real cop approaching a fake ICE agent in Orlando who had detained some undocumented immigrants. I guess in his mind, he was doing a good thing, right?

1:03:48He was pretending. Right. So this is some vigilante idiot who's like, I'm going to be ice now. So I found some people who look undocumented to me and I'm going to hold them up some place and call the real police. Oh, he called the police. Okay. So he's a bonehead. He's a real bonehead. Yeah. And I said, this stuff goes all over the place, right? But then you have some pretty sophisticated stuff. There was this one guy, and this is really weird, Jordan, because I'm Hispanic. I think this is really especially weird. The guy's name is Julio Garcia Barrera. There are multiple cases I found of Hispanics pretending to be ICE to scam other Hispanics.

1:04:27And I think we all saw the video where the guy's like, are you a U.S. citizen? And the guy's like, you sound like you're not the U.S. citizen. And the guy's like, got a Spanish accent. And he's like, yeah, got me on that one. Yeah, he's got a thicker accent than the guy who's yelling at him. He's like, this is my driveway. You don't sound like you're from America. And the guy's like, you don't sound like you're from America. And it turned out, yeah, like one guy was from El Salvador and the other guy was actually from Venezuela. And it's like, wait, wait, wait, you got the job with ICE and you've been here like six months longer than me.

1:04:55What the heck is your problem, pal? So the trick is just to become an ICE agent, which we found out through my investigation, is very easy, actually. They're on a hiring spree, so. Look, I'm going to get pushback from this, and I want to be really clear. Hashtag not all ICE agents, whatever, you know. And I heard this from somebody I know who is in ICE. Don't shoot the messenger. They are hiring some of the dumbest people that have no business in law enforcement. Again, I heard this from somebody in ICE who's like, yeah, we've hired these people, and they are so dumb, they would not make the bar for any law enforcement agency, especially this one as of a year ago.

1:05:29And now there's a zillion of them. That's not just conjecture, man. I actually interviewed a reporter who has posted tons of negative stuff about ICE. She went to an ICE hiring convention or whatever, like an expo, you know, and she got a job. She admittedly smokes pot, did a drug test. She passed all the checkpoints. She just passed an actually got a job offer, which was wild. Yeah. And look, there's plenty, I'm sure, ICE agents out there. They take their job seriously. They're qualified. They care about the United States. They're not just throwing their weight around. I think if you ask those people, they're probably the ones who will confirm the quickest that they have hired some of the dumbest low brain cell inbred people.

1:06:11That must be really irritating, right? It's got to be the worst. If you're a legitimate law enforcement person, You have 20 years of experience and then they're literally lowering the bar to hire as many people as possible. Exactly. Yeah. There's a friend of mine who is like a middle ranking officer in ICE. He's like, I'm leaving because he was in the military before. And he goes, when I was in the military, you could join ICE or border protection or you could join a federal agency or local law enforcement agency. And he's like, I chose this because he cared about sort of the mission. He talked to his buddies in the military who are getting out now.

1:06:44Basically, I feel bad saying this, but if you are the dumb guy in the platoon who they don't trust to hold grenades because you're going to blow everybody up and you just can't figure out how to do anything and you're basically getting low key pushed out of the military for being too dumb, those guys all go to ICE because they can't get a job with the state police, the sheriff, any federal agents. They don't qualify. They're like the guy that everybody goes, God, how did you make it through life? And unfortunately, those are the guys that are largely joining ICE right now. So my friends who are in ICE, who have been there for a while, are like, I can't be around this anymore.

1:07:17I just can't do it. I would imagine it's like the old Police Academy movies. Yeah. And it's not political. Again, they're not like, I'm against all this. They're just like, I can't work with people that can't refill a soda without making a mess. I just can't deal with this. And like you said, we're not just making a blanket statement, all ICE agents. But going back to those Hispanics. So this guy, Julio Barrera, he would rob people at night in the same street corner. He would shine a flashlight in their faces and he would demand proof of citizenship and he would threaten to deport them. And this other guy, Michael Ruiz, another Hispanic, would do the same thing.

1:07:52He got$58 ,000 from these Hispanic family. You know, he actually promised them. He's like, hey, I'm an ICE agent. So, listen, I could either turn you in or you could pay me all this money. I could get you fake legal documents and, you know, avoid deportation. and they would pay him all this money to avoid this stuff. Sure, this is a prank, but now you're stealing these people's money. No, this is criminal. There's nothing funny about this. These people should be thrown in prison. This is actually just really terrible. You're going after some of those vulnerable people in a society. You're extorting their life savings out of them.

1:08:28Holy cow. Shame on you. Doesn't cover it. Again, politics aside, if people can't tell real law enforcement from criminals with props, this is a massive public safety problem. Massive. So, okay, someone says, I'm Ice, come with me. Maybe you're undocumented or you're waiting for your green card in the mail. What do you do? What do you say? What do you do? I think you do what you said earlier, which is like demand some kind of proof. And they may or may not give it to you. There's a video that I found. There's this YouTuber, actually, who goes around. He was just driving around Houston and he saw this guy dressed like Ice.

1:09:03It was at night. He stopped this pickup truck and he was questioning him over and over. He's like, show me your badge. Show me your badge. And he confronted the guy. Dude, that's kind of dangerous, right? Like confront a guy that may or may not be ICE. I don't recommend that. Best case scenario, he's ICE and he's really annoyed with you. Worst case scenario, he's just a criminal pretending to be a federal law enforcement agent and you might be messing with somebody you don't want to mess with. It's like you're in between a hard rock and a hard place when you're in this situation. And I say as little as possible.

1:09:34I don't know, man. It's just not a good place to be. I can't give legal advice, but I'll throw in something that a good lawyer, if there was one here, would probably tell you to do. You ask for an ID. If they pick you specifically, if they're coming after you specifically, you look for a warrant. If they refuse that, it doesn't matter anyways. You ask, am I detained? Am I being detained? Anybody who's seen Breaking Bad knows that scene, right? Am I being detained? Verify this independently. If you have to call 911 and you say, look, there's a guy who says he's an ICE agent. He won't show me his badge.

1:10:03He won't show me his warrant. Can you send an officer? I've asked the San Jose police. I didn't do an exhaustive study of this, but I asked the San Jose police what would happen. And they said, yeah, we'd probably send an officer over there because they should be involving us in this kind of stuff anyways. So if a cop comes and that guy runs away because the police are there, that wasn't a real ICE agent, right? A real ICE agent will talk to the cops and go, we have the authority to be here. We have the authority to do this. don't rely on any provided contact info. If this guy gives you a Vistaprint business card that says ICE and gives you a number, don't call that number.

1:10:33Literally just call 911. They will happily transfer you. Don't worry. Oh, it's not a real emergency. No, I've called 911 for less, okay? They will transfer you to the appropriate department. You do not have to comply with these people until they identify themselves and you verify independently. And you can tell them that's what you're doing. Hey, look, you've seen the news. This is a problem. I'm calling 911 to verify that you're actually ICE. Sure, they might get mad. So what? At least you're not then getting kidnapped and thrown into a trunk by an actual criminal. You know what? Let them sweat that one a little bit.

1:11:05Obviously, complying with them blindly is not going to do you that much good anyways. So I would say you go ahead and you make sure that you're complying with real law enforcement before you end up in a basement somewhere. Again, not legal advice, just hopefully common sense that people can remember and that not everybody knows they have the right to do. You have the right to make sure that you are being legally detained by an actual police officer. That was really good, actually. Good advice. I wonder if you would even have time to make a call like that. Yeah, that's a good point. If they're throwing you down on the ground, you don't have time to do that.

1:11:37But if they're tapping on your window like, hey, get out of the car, we're ice, you can say, how do I know? Can you show me an ID and a badge? And if they go, no, I don't have to do that. You just call 911 and yeah, they might try to break your car window. And then you tell them, I have masked men breaking into my car. That's what you tell them. You don't say, I think they might be cops, but I'm not sure. And they won't tell. No, you just tell them you got a masked man breaking into your car because that's all you really know. Like I said before, if I end up with masked men on my doorstep that say that they're law enforcement, I'm not taking your word for it.

1:12:06You look like every other criminal to me. I'm calling 911 and saying I've masked men on my porch threatening to kick the door in and I don't understand who they are and they're not identifying themselves. That's all I really know. So yeah, if they're throwing you on the ground, you don't have time to deal with this. But yeah, if they're trying to get you to open your car door and comply, you can call 911 and you tell them there's masked men outside my car trying to extract me. You'll hear sirens in a few minutes. So yeah, make these guys identify themselves. And best thing is, if they're not ICE, they're out of there.

1:12:34If you called 911 and the police are on the way, they're not going to screw around with that. They'd be crazy to do that. And then maybe you found a group of criminals kidnapping people, which is a little bit of a better find than most of us are used to. I think if they really are ICE and the cops come, they're just going to identify themselves. And then we're right back where you started anyways. So you can make these guys, you can bruise these guys' egos by not complying right away. I think that's the least of your concerns. Javier, thank you very much, man. I appreciate this. I love talking about stuff like this.

1:13:02I love talking about the compliance and the psychology behind it. And more importantly, what people can do, because the takeaway is not never cooperate. It's always verify independently, slow things down. Don't outsource your conscience or your common sense to someone else's voice. Thank you, Jordan, man. This was so much fun. I always love talking with you because we end up like going down so many rabbit holes. It's always fine. Agree, man. Let's do it again sometime. We're more connected than ever and somehow more vulnerable than we've ever been. Cyber crisis author Eric Cole explains how AI-driven attackers, corporate scale scam operations, and aging systems have turned everyday tech into an open door.

1:13:40So you want to be 100 % secure? You want your family to be 100 % secure? It's easy. Pack up your bags, sell everything, move to Pennsylvania and become Amish. Because I'll tell you, I hacked a lot of things in my life. I have not been able to hack a candle and a horse and buggy. If you have no functionality or no benefit, you can be 100 % secure. And to give you a more realistic example, my smartphone. As soon as you add any functionality, you're decreasing security. Security and functionality are inverse. 100 % security is zero functionality. What is the value and benefit? What is the risk and exposure?

1:14:16Is the value worth the risk? If the value or benefit is worth the risk, do it. If the value and benefit is not worth the risk, don't do it. And the reality is, and I always tell people, the most dangerous word on the internet is the F word. And it's not what you're thinking. The F word is free. Free is not free because all the times when you have a free app, you're basically allowing them to access your microphone or your camera or your pictures. If they ask you and you say yes and you give them permission, that's actually an authorized app and it's allowed. And the reality is most people don't even realize when they install these apps, they're hitting yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and allowing access.

1:14:55If I want to make my smartphone 100 % secure, smash it, burn it, throw it in a ditch, turn it off, and it'll be 100 % secure. It's actually freaking scary of how much you're being monitored and tracked with your phones that you don't even realize it. Check out episode 1247 of The Jordan Harbinger Show with Eric Cole, and you'll start looking at your phone, your home, and even the power grid very differently. Big thank you to Javier. these stories, man, are horrifying because they don't require hypnosis or mind control or some sort of genius-level criminal mastermind. They just require stress, politeness, confusion, and one person pretending to be in charge.

1:15:33That's the part that should bother all of us, because the lesson here is not, hey, people are all sheep. It's that the wrong context can make smart people temporarily pretty stupid, especially when somebody creates urgency, isolates them, and wraps the whole thing in fake authority. So the next time somebody says, hey, don't hang up, don't tell anyone. You have to do this right now. I'm with law enforcement. Your first job is not to comply. Your first job is to slow the whole thing down and verify it through a channel that they don't control. Ask for ID. Ask if you're being detained. Call the agency directly using a number you find yourself.

1:16:05Bring in another person. Refuse anything involving humiliation, nudity, money, secrecy, or physical control. And remember, real authority can withstand verification. Fake authority needs panic. All things Javier Leyva will be on the website in the show notes. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about 6 Minute Networking as well over at 6minutenetworking.com. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show is created in association with Podcast One.

1:16:37My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who's interested in psychology, persuasion, true crime, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

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