Tim Ballard E4: The Couples Ruse

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1:01sent off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash wandery, spelled B-A-B-B-E-L.com slash wandery. Rules and restrictions may apply. A warning. This episode contains discussion of sexual assault that may be disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. As a note, we reached out to Tim Ballard's attorney to request an interview. Our requests went unanswered. And one last thing. After Tim Ballard left the anti-trafficking organization OUR in 2023, it was renamed OUR Rescue. Its new leaders say they do not condone Tim Ballard's alleged actions while part of the old organization. The first time hairdresser Kira Lynch met Tim Ballard, she was brought in to help him prepare for one of his undercover operations.

1:51She was there in a professional capacity to cut and dye his hair. But Ballard had other things in mind for her. As Kira worked, she said Ballard talked himself up. He made sure to name drop his ties with former President Trump and Apostle M. Russell Ballard, a very high-up figure in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who is not directly related to Tim Ballard. He boasted about the children he personally rescued from sex slavery. Then he propositioned her. Would she like to join him? If it sounded like a pickup line, that's because essentially it was. But it was for a pretend relationship.

2:31Ballard was asking Kira to pose as his girlfriend on his undercover operations to break up sex trafficking rings. He promised that this risky and salacious act was for the godly purpose of saving children from a terrible fate. There was a question behind Ballard's invitation, one that he explicitly asked other potential partners. How far would you go to save a child? The answer, as it turned out, was pretty far.

3:04This is The Opportunist, an original podcast from Podcast One. You're listening to the fourth episode of a ten-part series on Tem Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin. In this fourth episode, I dive into the couple's ruse, a tactic used by Ballard and OUR where operatives pretended to be dating or married as part of their cover. I've spoken with several participants about their experience in the ruse as well as experts with knowledge of how actual professional undercover operations should work. While Ballard marketed this tactic as a God-given tool to break up trafficking rings, behind closed doors, the ruse appeared to have a much more sinister purpose.

4:08He said, so there's a tactic that we use, and it's actually really genius. It's something that I could never have come up with on my own. It came straight from God. He said it's called the couple's ruse. That's Sasha Hightower, a former operator for Ballard and OUR, whom I interviewed about her experience. We'll hear more from her later. But first things first, what is the couple's ruse? Well, who better to describe it than Ballard himself? Here he is in an Instagram post from September 2023. Hey guys, I want to tell you about a very important undercover tactic that we use that involves female operators.

4:50Based on the allegations that are flying around and the questions being asked, we've decided to tell you these tactics. So if I'm a man or one of my operators approached by a trafficker trying to put a child to service on that person or a sex worker. And that man, that operator doesn't partake of what's being offered. They lose credibility. And so we came up with a concept that we call the couple's ruse or the couple's tactic, where you go in together pretending to be a husband or wife or boyfriend, girlfriend. Now you go in and one of you could pretend that, yes, I want to partake in this sex act with this woman or this child, but I can't because my girlfriend won't let me, but maybe we can do it later.

5:36So is that cool? Like, let's keep talking and she'll warm up to it eventually. But the bottom line is we block for each other. So the trafficker sees the situation and recognizes that I have every excuse not to partake. At first listen, that might all sound pretty neat and tidy. But if you think about it for a little longer, lots of holes in the logic start to appear. For example, how does a man like Ballard who's married and a member of the LDS church justify fraternizing with child sex traffickers or pretending to be married to someone else? But Ballard had an answer for that. Kind of. Here's Damian Moore, a journalist for American Crime Journal, who has done extensive research on Ballard and OUR.

6:23Yes, according to Ballard, he had gotten special permission from M. Russell Ballard to do these things only just because they were rescuing the children. President M. Russell Ballard died in November of 2023. We will dive into him a little bit more later on, but just know that he was one of the most important people in the Mormon church and was a huge supporter of Tim Ballard. So M. Russell Ballard, no relation to Tim Ballard again, He is the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for the LDS Church, Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints. That's essentially basically the second in command of the church.

7:05We're talking essentially like the pope of the LDS Church at the time. This is someone at the top of the church. These are considered a prophet. So Ballard had clearance for his couples ruse technique from high ups in the church. But more than that, he claimed to have divine inspiration and the approval from God himself. Here's Kira Lynch, whose story I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, describing her understanding of the couple's ruse. And that it was inspired by God. And that's why he's able to go and do that and be that way with other women, because it is inspired by God and they're saving children.

7:47And it's actually a very like, quote unquote, very spiritual experience. And Sasha Hightower again. That was my life. I was actually very committed to that religion for quite a while. And so when he spoke about, you know, this is straight from God and this is sanctioned by Elder Ballard, I, in the teachings and the way that I had understood, was, oh, well, then that can't be led astray. So that, in a nutshell, is what the couple's ruse was, or at least what Ballard said it was. But why was it used? Here's Bree Ryder, a former Marine and licensed clinical social worker who volunteered with OUR back in 2020 and 2021.

8:39So the way that Tim presented it, to quote him, I would have to use pretty inappropriate language. So he says that the woman is there because it allows for her to put a stop to the male undercover workers from actually touching any of the trafficking victims. So to act as, in Tim's words, a cock block. Okay, so it's like a buffer. It's a way for them to be skeevy, but not too skeevy. That's how he presented it. Also, and then secondarily, a layer of just that sometimes women, there are a lot of women in the trafficking world. Many women go from being trafficked to remaining in that world and going from victims to abusers.

9:31It's not uncommon at all. And sometimes women can talk to other women more easily. Sometimes women can interact with children more easily. So it was also couched as like, you know, there could be situations where having a undercover agent would be helpful. There you have it. The female operators were deployed to be a church-sanctioned divine cockblock and potentially a sympathetic ear. So that's the what and why. And there's also the how of it. Ballard was quick to tell potential recruits that the couple's ruse wasn't just a free-for-all. There were rules, namely no kissing on the lips, no touching or exposing each other's breasts or genitals.

10:16OUR even had operators sign an agreement to this effect. I've seen a copy of one, and it doesn't look super official. It's literally half a page long, but it's right there in black and white. So there was an effort to at least appear like they were keeping things above board. Although, interestingly, the agreement doesn't specifically forbid operators having sex. Maybe Ballard was building in a loophole. Anyway, once the rules were established, they helped lower the women's guards, made them feel like engaging with Ballard was safe. And once Ballard sealed that impression, he was able to push things really far, really fast.

10:57For example, he asked increasingly personal questions. Sasha Hightower, who was a survivor of sexual assault before joining OUR, shared one of Ballard's lines of questioning. He asked me about my relationship. He asked me about my beliefs. He asked me about my past. He asked me more about the trauma that I experienced. He asked me about my dreams, my goals, what did I want to do? After pushing for emotional closeness with Sasha, she says Ballard quickly pushed to physical closeness and forced intimacy. He took me into his private office and he shut the door behind us. And he went over and like stood at the desk and was just kind of leaning up against it, talking to me and just really getting to know me.

11:42He said, part of this is that he and I had to create actual chemistry so that when we were out on the field, traffickers wouldn't suspect anything. I was like on this little couch bench thing and he sat next to me and he just kept me talking. And so I was talking and as he was listening, he like scooted over and like nuzzled his face into my neck and my chin. And my, my body like immediately had, um, I would call it trauma response, honestly, but it just kind of like just this jolt. And the thought that I had was maybe he's testing me. So he's probably just testing me. Okay. Because I had no reason to believe that this man who goes to rescue women and children would do anything to me.

12:35So just keep talking. So I kept talking and then he kind of like caressed my thigh and I just kept talking. And then he stopped and he kind of got frustrated. He's like, why are you not doing anything? I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like, why are you not reacting? That's when I had said to him, I had said, I'm an actress, I don't even practice kissing offset. Like if I do kissing scenes in my films, I will only practice with the camera on me and people around. This is where things start to get really weird and uncomfortable. And after all the women operators we talked to, we saw a blatant pattern emerge.

13:15When a female operator pushed back after Ballard crossed one of their boundaries, He would remind them of the mission of saving kids, insisting that it was a life or death matter for them to appear as though they had chemistry. He's like, well, see, the problem is we have to know that we have chemistry. Otherwise, if we're not, if this isn't convincing enough, then we're going to get outed out there. And you know, like that we're going to we get shot. And then he brings it back to the bottom line, which is something I heard from other women as well. Basically, he said he's not going to take her out on a mission and waste donor money if she can't be convincing.

14:02He told me that he tried to take a woman out once. They got all the way out there, flights, place, everything, and she couldn't do it. And he said that was donors' dollars wasted. And that was a failed mission of women and children we couldn't rescue. And so in that moment, I was kind of like, oh, crap. Okay, well, I don't want that. Everything that I wondered or had a question about, he had an answer for in some way that would speak to my logic that would defy my intuitive wonders. When it came to recruiting female operators and addressing their concerns, it seemed like Ballard had an answer for everything.

14:48But there were still bigger questions about how these operations would actually work. Would the operators be trained? Would they get special equipment to protect themselves or to gather evidence on these trafficking rings they were meant to be breaking up? Would they get a disguise like Ballard's to protect their identity? Basically, the answer was no.

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15:50This isn't your average mocktail. Choose between tapping in with Flo's dose of Lion's Mane or tuning out with Dream, a sparkling mocktail made to help you relax and ease into rest with reishi, chamomile, and passionflower. Head to feelthebreeze.com slash drink5. That's feelthebrez.com slash drink5 and use the code drink5 for a$5 credit plus free shipping on your first order. Back to the story. So once Ballard had made contact with a potential female operator, put the moves on her, and got her on board with his couple's ruse, then it was time to take the show on the road. That meant getting ready to go to a foreign country, often in Central or South America, and engage with people they ostensibly suspected of dangerous illegal activity.

16:44Naturally, you might think that there might be some pretty robust research and training before a mission like that. And under normal circumstances, you'd be absolutely right. I spoke with an expert in this area, Lindsay Moran, a former clandestine officer for the CIA and author of Blowing My Cover, My Life as a Spy. And let's say like in some rare circumstance, there is a woman who is not trained like that and would need to be a part of this team. How long would her training take until it was okay for her to go out on an operation? If you're using a foreign agent or a foreign source of information to conduct an operation, to go undercover, their safety is of the utmost importance to you.

17:36So you're not going to send a young woman into the lion's den with no training. That's how things should be done to protect the agents in the field. But as you can guess, that's not how Ballard and OUR did things. And he's like, this is where you look for hidden cameras. I'm like, okay, what do I look for? And He said, look for a reflection in the walls or in plants. That's all. That was the training. We've not found any evidence that OUR had any standardized training in place. Here's investigative journalist Damian Moore again. There was no standard operating procedures whatsoever with OUR. It's just things are kind of made up on the whim.

18:25generally speaking for OUR it was a pretty quick turnaround from being recruited to being dropped into the field from the time I met Tim to the time I went out was two weeks if you remember Celeste Bores from episode one she didn't receive any prior training at all she was already on an operation with Ballard when he sprung the couple's ruse on her and Brie Ryder says she didn't get much more notice than that. After a day-long audition that involved shooting drills and combat first aid, Brie was taken to a strip club where she was meant to practice the ruse. She said she was instructed to get up close and personal with OUR's director of security, Matt Cooper, sitting in his lap and whispering in his ear.

19:11After a couple hours, Cooper said she was good to go and Brie was invited on a mission to Mexico that was starting in just 10 days. This kind of laissez-faire training wasn't just sloppy. It was incredibly dangerous. Yeah, it sounds like she could be a great liability to the rest of the team as well, not just as a danger to herself, but putting everyone in danger. Absolutely. Like if you bring someone who's not trained into an operation, I mean, that's just unethical. It's a liability to the operation. That person is then a liability to themselves. They're in great danger. Any U.S. government entity, the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security, whatever, they are not going to put either their female officers or even female agents or sources, undercover sources in that kind of position.

20:14It's completely unethical. So I don't care where he got his training. If Tim Ballard was actually using those sort of tactics, that's like the doctrine of Tim Ballard. That has zero relation to any kind of training he would have received from the U.S. government. Remember, part of Tim Ballard's allure was his portrayal as a superhero-like operator. He started out at the CIA and had years of experience in the field with the Department of Homeland Security. The novices around Ballard looked to him as an expert in their leader. Everyone around Ballard was told to trust in Tim Ballard, but it was BS.

20:59So once the women had received Ballard's patented training program, or rather lack thereof, they were deployed to the field. Usually this meant going undercover and visiting a strip club or massage parlor, sometimes locally in Utah or in countries like Mexico, Haiti, or Ecuador. Sometimes it involved masquerading as wealthy sex tourists looking for underage girls for a party. For these missions, Ballard would alter his appearance and assume his undercover persona of Brian Black, while the female operators went without a disguise. But besides the lack of training, there was another huge problem with these operations.

21:39Since founding OUR in 2013, Ballard had become a pretty well-known figure, the face of an anti-trafficking movement. So exactly how undercover could he really be? One of the things that really bothers me is that he's posting all of these videos on social media. He's putting his face out there. How could you possibly be covert when you're just you're putting yourself out there? You know, if he's undercover, why is he out here in the media? And we're not just talking about, you know, he's he's the face of Operation Underground Railroad. He's been on Fox News. He's done mainstream interviews. He's done these major fundraisers with people like Tony Robbins, who is a major celebrity.

22:27He's known all over the world. So, yeah, with all the concern about covers being blown, why did Ballard keep putting his face all over the news and social media? That's not the typical behavior of an undercover spy. And I've interviewed undercover operatives for the FBI that worked on the Human Trafficking Task Force that have said, you know, you don't put your information out there. They're very selective, even about getting their photos taken at family events, things like that. Because if something gets leaked on social media, it compromises the mission. It could put your life in danger. Once again, there was the way that real operatives do it.

23:12And then there was Ballard's way. And the Ballard way was almost comical. No, he just dyed his hair and put on some tattoos and spray tanned. but you could tell that that was Tim Ballard? Uh, yeah. I'm sorry that I'm laughing, but that was one of the first things that I thought was like, oh, wow, okay, that is not a disguise, but okay. It is kind of funny to imagine slapping on some hair dye and spray tan and then calling yourself an undercover operative. But what actually happened when Ballard took female operators on these missions was no laughing matter.

23:55I'm going to let Sasha Hightower take things away and tell her story for a minute.

24:25operation, just how excited he was about it. And I was just kind of like, Hey, you need to be quiet because I thought this was like something that we don't talk about that. We don't want people to know. He was kind of in this place of just, I don't think he would really hear me to be honest. Yeah. Like just kind of this, like this nervous giddy energy or something. Uh, it just like, It just felt like he was really excited about this. And I was over there feeling, what did I just get myself into? And he's like, okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to go into these massage parlors. We're going to ask for certain things.

25:03We're going to get back to one of the rooms and they're going to give us a massage. What he told me is he said, so we'll get on the tables. They'll start to massage us, but they're going to probably get kind of close. So if they get too close to my crotch or yours, or they go to touch you, we just say the code word. And the code word was fuck me. So I'm laying face down and then they start massaging. And all of a sudden her hand is getting closer to my crotch. And this is when I start to like kind of, I don't know if it was like a dissociative thing, but I had this mix between I need to get myself out of here.

25:43And then I'm in a mission. If I blow our cover by being scared, then I'm going to, we're going to get shot. So I took a deep breath and then she, she touched me and she was massaging me. And I said the code word and he didn't do anything. Yeah. So I knew in that moment I had to, I had to get myself out of here somehow. Now, Tim had told me that the point of the massage parlor is to find the kids, set up an appointment for this party, and then I could get them out by saying that I was so turned on I needed to fuck my boyfriend. So I immediately started like touching Tim's belly and kissing his shoulder and his neck.

26:33And I was like, you guys just need to go out. I need to fuck my boyfriend. and they just stopped massaging and watched. There's a lot to unpack here. First off, there's Ballard's manic excitement on the way to the mission. Then there's the fact that Ballard took Sasha into a situation under the guise of the couple's ruse, knowing that she might be sexually touched in a non-consensual way. He knew she was a survivor of sexual assault. And worst of all, when she was non-consensually touched, Sasha used the code word for help, and Ballard left her hanging. And this wasn't an isolated incident. Kira Lynch had a similar experience with Ballard using the couple's ruse during her training exercise.

27:23I mean, I get to the strip club, the third one, and I go in the bathroom, and I'm literally in there just crying. I remember like leaning my head over so my tears would like drop to the floor. So I wasn't messing up my makeup. Didn't want anyone to know I was crying because I'm still trying to pass the test, the challenge. I don't want them to know I'm like utterly falling apart. And I'm still in there telling myself like, this is for the children. Like, this is a good thing. Like, what you're doing is good. This isn't like you can do this. You can do this. Kira later felt this moment was a turning point in how she viewed Ballard, OUR, and their mission.

28:09I would say probably really the night of the strip clubs. That's really when I started seeing it. I definitely saw a whole different side of Tim. I saw Brian Black. That's his, you know, his, his op name and his other side is, I think is what it is. It's a completely different human. he's sitting down at like this bar where there's strippers in the middle of it and he's handing the strippers dollar bills while I'm gone and I'm like and I kind of thought to myself like he really really seems like he's enjoying this and then I had to be like oh wait he's just playing the part he's still in character but it was like something in me is still just being like no, he's enjoying it.

29:11Like, it looks like he's really enjoying this. So Kira was starting to feel that Ballard wasn't just putting on a brave face and enduring the strip clubs and massage parlors for the greater good. There was a distinct possibility that he was just really enjoying putting on a disguise, for lack of a better term, and spending donors money at strip clubs. Maybe his priority wasn't really to save children from sex trafficking, Or at least maybe that wasn't his only priority. Some of Ballard's other behaviors also came off as more like ulterior motives. He put a lot of emphasis on keeping up the couple's rules 24-7, making it seem very real that he and his female operators were actually in a sexual relationship.