Exporting the Mission: Tim Ballard’s Legal Trouble in Argentina

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0:34In February 2025, the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, convened at the National Harbor in Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. CPAC is kind of like Coachella for conservatives. Right-wing activists and politicians speak on stage in front of huge crowds. There's music, lights, and a ton of excitement in the air. And this year was no exception since Donald Trump was sworn into office for the second time just one month before. All the big names in his campaign were there, including Elon Musk, who was still friends with Trump at the time. In fact, Musk made a big headline splash when he wove a chainsaw around on stage.

1:30It was an interesting moment in American politics. Musk clearly had a good time. But he didn't bring the chainsaw on stage himself. It was a gift from Argentinian President Javier Malay.

2:04President Malay handed Musk the chainsaw, gave two ecstatic thumbs up, then waved to the crowd before exiting the stage. The crowd ate it up. But there was someone in the audience that day who did more than just watch and applaud. He was taking notes right out of Elon Musk's book on how to latch onto the government like a parasite. That person was Tim Ballard. Officials within Argentina began to notice that Ballard was making claims about his work in Latin America and some of the things he was doing in Argentina. They were sort of on to him. The thing is, Ballard already had a federal lawsuit filed against him in the US accusing him of sexual assault and human trafficking.

2:54So he pivoted, setting his sights on South America. And for a second there, he really thought it was going to be that easy.

3:11This is The Opportunist, an original podcast from Podcast One. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin.

3:21Today's episode is an update on the legal proceedings against Tim Ballard. We first aired our 10-part series on Ballard back in October 2024. If you haven't heard it yet, I'd suggest you give it a listen. It really lays out how he built his name in the U.S. and how it all came crashing down. As of 2025, the Utah-born, self-styled anti-child trafficking crusader has moved his shady operations out of the U.S. and into South America. and he's become embroiled in a shady, sickening business scheme, even for his standards. However, almost as soon as Ballard's plane touched down in Argentina, the government there was ready to defend its people from his corruption and cosplay, largely thanks to the women who have been trying to bring Ballard to justice here at home.

4:27Tim Ballard has gone international. He's no longer operating out of the United States. He's found a new stomping ground, and he's taking his heinous schemes to the next level. Before we dive into all of that, though, let's recap all the damage Ballard caused here at home. In October 2024, six women who had previously sued Tim Ballard in Utah for sexual misconduct, sexual assault, and spiritual manipulation filed an additional joint lawsuit in federal court. A warning, some of the details are disturbing. We spoke to many of these women for our series on Tim Ballard. In the federal suit, the women claimed that Ballard, then CEO of Operation Underground Railroad, now known as OUR Rescue, trafficked them internationally and sexually assaulted them.

5:27According to court records, a ruse consisted of a woman pretending to be Ballard's wife or the sexual partner of other male operatives to prevent detection by traffickers when the man would not engage with the women or children allegedly being trafficked. The federal suit also accuses him of laundering money through a third-party company to solicit sex workers. By the time the lawsuit was announced, Tim Ballard had stepped down from his position at OUR after an internal investigation found evidence that he engaged in sexual misconduct while on the job. He denied everything, both when he left OUR and when the federal suit was filed.

6:07He even filed a defamation suit against all six women. These legal proceedings are ongoing, and progress for the women has been slow. You probably remember Celeste Borees from our previous episodes. She's one of the plaintiffs in the federal suit against Ballard. She and her husband also filed sexual assault charges against him in Utah. Those cases are still tied up in court. But Celeste isn't just waiting around. We spoke to her for this episode. She's understandably upset at the lack of justice here at home, especially considering how many women have spoken out against Ballard. The amount of people that have come forward, the amount of resources that they have in front of them to be doing something, it is disgusting.

7:02It is a disgrace. We also spoke with Brie Ryder, one of Ballard's other accusers in federal court. You'll remember her from previous episodes, too. I'm a former United States Marine. I'm former law enforcement. And to understand how many people knew about what was happening and didn't stop it and were such cowards in the face of it, whether it was because of the political narrative that Ballard was woven into. Regardless, there were so many enablers and so many people over the years that knew what he was doing and chose to stay silent. Completely lost of faith in the justice system, particularly in Utah, particularly when the crime lab in Utah had DNA evidence.

7:56The amount of evidence that is before them is certainly significant enough for charges to be brought forward. The fact that they have not been, I have a lot of concerns about. Bree is referring to the fact that DNA evidence proved that Ballard's semen was present on a piece of Celeste's clothing. A Utah sheriff's office informed Celeste about the lab results, but refused to hand over official paperwork that said so. They said it was because the report is part of an ongoing investigation. Celeste's team appealed, but that didn't go anywhere, because the state dissolved the committee that would have heard the appeal.

8:44The reasons for that, there may be some significant corruption behind it. I don't know, but it's the only explanation I can think of for Ballard not being in jail. While Ballard might not be in jail, he did lose the support of some of his old right-wing supporters, like former Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and talk show host Glenn Beck. Reyes has recently faced pressure and been in the spotlight over his alleged friendship with Operation Underground Railroad founder Tim Ballard. Recent lawsuits accuse Ballard of sexually assaulting women with the nonprofit and imply that Reyes helped cover it up.

9:26Now, Reyes addressed those allegations today by saying he believes Ballard's alleged victims. After hearing their stories in person, I believe them. And I'm heartbroken for what they've endured and the trauma that they will face their entire lives. Reyes decided not to run for re-election after his friendship with Ballard stained his reputation. And Beck said he felt duped by Ballard. Still, the way Celeste sees it, they're just covering their own bases. I think they are disgusting people. They are out to just protect themselves. We are just women, mothers, wanting to protect people, have no agenda other than we've been harmed by this disgusting psychopath.

10:19I don't want it to happen to anybody else. These other men in power, they're either compromised or they're like, dude, Tim Ballard, he's an abuser, he's a psychopath. I'll never be able to wrap my head around psychopaths. But what I have a really hard time with is people who knew about the abuse and didn't stop it. It's bad enough that Ballard's inner circle turned the other cheek. But if you can believe it, his new posse might be even more dangerous. After Ballard's reputation tanked in the U.S., he joined forces with a Nashville-based organization called Aerial Recovery. Their mission is to quote, train and deploy humanitarian special operators to effectively respond to natural and man-made disasters and combat sex trafficking.

11:18Sound familiar? Yep, Ballard got involved with yet another private organization that trains quote, special operators in high risk situations. And just like the last time Ballard was at the helm of an anti-trafficking organization, he still does a terrible job masking his greed. Aerial Recovery was founded in 2020 by Brittany Turner, a millionaire real estate broker known for flipping disaster-stricken communities and the Virgin Islands into luxury tourist destinations. Brittany hosts self-improvement retreats at her resorts, which I hear cost around$40 ,000 per night. She calls it, quote, purpose luxury.

12:08Here's a clip from Brittany's Instagram that she posted in December 2023, where she's lecturing a group of people who are all smiling up at her about mining the world's problems for profit. Opportunity never goes away. It just switches places. So money always follows value. There's more than enough. There's an abundance of wealth available. Look at the worst problems on the planet, find out which ones you care about. And if you start working on solving them, there's actually billions of dollars to be made. That's some pure unbridled altruism right there. Step one, find a global crisis. Step two, express concern.

12:57Step three, something, something. Step four, profit. The basic idea behind aerial recovery is that people can go to the resorts to rest and recharge in order to be ready to help the world in some way. They say that veterans can attend for free. Then they can join the organization's rescue missions. Brittany's husband, Jeremy Locke, boasts 20 years of U.S. military experience and heads up the rescue side of things. Brittany and Jeremy have floated in Tim Ballard's orbit for a while. In fact, Brie Reiter spoke to Argentinian media company Data Clave about the first time she went to one of Brittany and Jeremy's resorts with Ballard.

13:45I agreed to go on an operation to the British Virgin Islands with Tim Ballard's ops team. I asked about training, and I was assured that when we arrived in BVI, I would be trained before I was on a live operation. So when we arrived in British Virgin Islands, we were brought to a private island, a very, very, very nice resort. That private island had been dedicated to our use by some individuals who now are the heads of the organization Aerial Recovery. And they were working closely with Ballard to begin to grow what I now understand to be their business. We were just encouraged to recreate and to relax.

14:22There was no training offered. When I asked about training, I was told, you don't need that. It's not a big deal. When I was asked about surveillance tech, I was told to just download an app on my phone. Ballard spent a tremendous amount of his time in therapy sessions and in working together with the people that own the island on how to grow their business. So they had fantasized about building headquarters there. And I have the schematics. They put it on a group chat where they would bring in large donors and people could pay a lot of money to watch operations live on a screen. So not only were Brittany and Jeremy behind the lack of training, but together with Ballard, their plan was to exploit traffic children for entertainment value.

15:14And that's if. If they actually plan to try and rescue children, because so far, there's zero proof they ever did. But they haven't given up on their get-rich scheme. In 2024, when Ballard's empire bottomed out, he turned to aerial recovery to launch his redemption arc. Ballard knew the con couldn't last without some kind of government backing. So he set his sights on Argentina's president, Javier Millet, as his next power play. For a while, it looked like he'd keep the superhero mask on. But not everyone in Millet's government was buying it. They were reading between the lines. And they weren't about to let Tim Ballard exploit their country in his next grift.

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18:20In 2024, Tim Ballard got involved with an organization called Aerial Recovery. The organization's founder, Brittany Turner, bought up property in the Virgin Islands, where people had lost their homes and communities and natural disasters. There, she rebuilt luxury resorts and started hosting wellness retreats. And then, somehow, she and her husband Jeremy started training people for child trafficking rescue missions. And big surprise, these are Tim Ballard's new best friends. The three of them teamed up, and while no one knows exactly what they cooked up, the formula was familiar. head overseas, claim to be saving kids, and rake in the money.

19:13Only this time they leveled up, partnering with a national government to give it a sense of legitimacy. In February 2025, the same month that Ballard saw President Millay at CPAC, Aerial Recovery signed a memorandum of understanding with the Buenos Aires Attorney General's Office, on which they agreed to, quote, public-private collaboration to combat trafficking with training, technology, and support for victims. Here's how Brie Ryder looks at it. Shifting his focus to new or bigger access to resources, to continue to fund himself and his organizations, to continue to enrich themselves off of this cause, to continue to suck legitimate resources out of the anti-trafficking space and to grow their fame.

20:14It's almost like an exponential expansion. I think he's focused on essentially dominating every corner of the world. I think that's his delusion. how ballard britney and jeremy convinced the argentinian government to partner up with them i have no idea but regardless about a month later ballard posted a video on instagram insisting that he was making huge strides in combating child trafficking in south america in the video he's standing outside wearing a white t-shirt that says God's children are not for sale in red and blue text. Hey guys, we're on our last leg of this major tour throughout Latin America.

21:04We have identified hundreds of victims. We're going back to Argentina and other countries. This is the epicenter, and I want to tell you that this is way bigger than you think. I just came out of multiple meetings with the A-team. They've told me that this is probably the biggest case since they took down Pablo Escobar. And every single target, listen very carefully, every single target are U.S. citizens, organizations, institutions. You will be shocked when you find out who's been behind this. You will be shocked when you find out that millions of dollars have been spent to try to stop me and my team from rescuing children.

21:41But they're losing. They know they're losing. They're hiding. And it's all coming out. A major production studio, I'm not going to name them, but you've heard of them, are in the middle of this. They're learning things and telling me things that I'm surprised they even know. Because I've got to be very careful. I'm working directly with these governments. This video is nothing but a bunch of rambling, fear-mongering. The kind of language that is easy to get caught up in. You've really got to slow down and ask yourself if he's saying anything credible. Because, well, he's not. For the record, Ballard is known to have conducted work alongside aerial recovery in Ecuador, Mexico, Bolivia, and Guatemala between 2023 and 2025.

22:31But as far as I can tell, they never had any official agreement with any nation other than Argentina. And even that relationship was shaky. Here's Brie. officials within argentina began to notice that ballard was making claims about his work in latin america and some of the things he was doing in argentina they were sort of on to him ballard couldn't help himself he kept going public with his versions of events that made him look like a hero and the more he talked the more officials noted that those versions didn't match up to actual events. According to Data Clave, an Argentinian news organization, the same month that Ballard signed the Memorandum of Understanding with Argentina, he participated in raids across the country.

23:25But when I say participated, I mean he tagged along. These raids were headed up by the Argentine Federal Police and the Public Prosecutor's Office, which is similar to the American DOJ. Not aerial recovery. One of these missions successfully busted a network of criminals who were producing child sexual abuse material. One man was arrested and two young girls were rescued. We don't know what Ballard's official role was on this mission. But when the moment was right, he walked up to the man that was arrested and confronted him. And he captured the moment on video. He basically caught a ride for a photo op.

24:15Then about a month later, in March 2025, Ballard posted another video on Facebook. This one was supposedly taken right after another raid. In the caption, Ballard said he's in Ecuador. He's standing near a few agents in SWAT gear and speaking to someone out of frame. It sounds like he's doing a press interview. It's another one of those social media posts where Ballard says a lot without actually saying anything at all. But he does mention some questionable things. Back when the war broke out in Ukraine, she asked me and others to go to find some children that we were trying to adopt and bring home to other families.

25:02and actually Mel Gibson also called me within an hour and asked for the same thing. So we went out there and long story short, we found a trafficking organization out of Europe that was moving children and hurting children all over the world. And we in four months took them all down, but it ended in this hotel behind me, which was a child sex hotel. So, if I understand correctly, Ballard, along with Ariel Recovery, went to Ukraine to rescue trafficked children. And then, instead of reuniting them with their families, they planned to bring them back to the US and put them up for adoption? There's more than a few holes in this plot, and let's talk about the Mel Gibson of it all.

25:55Back in 2023, Ballard claimed that Gibson was involved with the making of the film The Sound of Freedom. In case you need a reminder, Sound of Freedom is Ballard's box office vanity project, The movie where Jim Caviezel portrays him on heroic rescue missions supposedly based on true stories that have never been verified. But Gibson's publicist said that wasn't true. He didn't have any involvement in Ballard's film. Honestly, I'd be mortified if I were Ballard. But I guess he wasn't because here he is name dropping the actor again in that Facebook video. Ballard's own social media posts make it painfully clear he's a fraud.

26:40And in anti-trafficking work, that kind of fraud can do real harm. We all know this. That's why after a couple months and being in Argentina, some officials took one look at Ballard and said, nope. One of the first people to put Ballard under a microscope in Argentina was a man named Rodrigo Tripolone. Rodrigo is a former police officer and criminal lawyer specializing in sexual abuse and violence. In fact, it was Brittany from Ariel Recovery who first roused his suspicion. Here's how Rodrigo describes those initial red flags.

27:27They had signed a cooperation agreement with Ariel Recovery, with the province of Buenos Aires.

27:37Brittany went from living in her car, as she says, from being homeless to having her own private island. That really put me on high alert. It wasn't just Brittany's grandiose rags-to-riches story that set off alarms. It also stemmed from her complete lack of know-how.

27:59When I was on the force, I made sure that no third parties were able to get involved, because that could cause problems at the judicial level. I saw Britney handling documentation during the search raid. Here in Argentina, that can absolutely damage the case and cause it to be declared null, which I'm sure the defendant's lawyer would claim. By this point, Rodrigo learned all about Tim Ballard, and he realized not only were Brittany and Ballard using sloppy protocol, but they carried out quote-unquote operations in Ballard's typical phony and unethical way.

28:47Ballard had various reports made against him regarding sexual abuse, and he attributed these procedures to his own credit. I realized watching the videos that he would arrive on the scene of these searches and raids carried out by Argentine officials, and he would then later claim to have rescued hundreds or thousands, an exaggerated number of children, which isn't even possible. It's not real. Rodrigo also explained that in Argentina, it's illegal for non-government officials to join these kinds of raids. The press can get special permissions, but that's it. So he became skeptical of how aerial recovery got permission to carry out these operations.

29:35Rodrigo clocked right away that Tim Ballard wasn't legit, and he wasn't going to stay quiet about it. He took to social media to voice his concerns, and he caught Bree's attention. Here she is talking about her early interactions with Rodrigo. He started sharing stuff on X and shared some of the work that we had done and said, hey, look, this is what Ballard's done to women in the United States. There are all these allegations against him. So I reached out to him and said, we are available to help. We would love to support your efforts and provide you with information as needed. This entire endeavor has always been to stop harm that is being done by Ballard and the organizations affiliated with him.