Thomas Smith concludes the trafficking series by exposing financial webs linking UG Solutions, the Sentinel Foundation, and figures like Eric Prince to unreported grants and conflicts of interest. The hosts debunk a KUTV2 story about Candace Leard, who faced over 30 felony charges for fraud after falsely claiming medical credentials while raising $1.7 million. They further criticize Supervisor Kristen Gaspar for securing $2 million in public funds for Saved in America without disclosing her board role, noting founder Joseph Travers inflated rescue counts by counting children wandering from group homes. Ultimately, the episode reveals how political impunity and lax enforcement enable predatory organizations to exploit vulnerable populations under false narratives of salvation. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Sentinel Foundation Money Stuff00:14:48
What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming.
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down.
The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything, Instead of go-go.
Boots, the seductress Green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 125.
That's a nice round number.
I'm Thomas.
That over there is Lydia.
How are you doing?
I'm feeling good.
I also like numbers that are divisible by five.
Yeah.
I think that's good.
We're in a good place, you guys.
I think that's good.
More numbers should aspire to be divisible by five.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Hey, seven, what are you doing in your life?
But we know we're going to be in a good episode because it's divisible by five.
I think that's pretty cool.
And 25.
Like, I feel like 25 is a cool interval.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a lot.
You know, because of quarters, because it ties to money.
Money.
Oh, my gosh.
We're going to be talking about money today.
Oh, boy.
That's Lydia's thing.
It just came out of, I did not plan that.
I did not.
We could tell.
Today is, this episode rather, is the final part of our trafficking saga, our trafficking journey.
We've been following our traffic, personal trafficking journey.
We've got a lot to talk about.
We've got kind of a where are they now mixed with like, following the money, you know, we thought the money was going to be a more prominent part of it.
But the problem is the laws are so lax that we can't really find all that much.
Like there's stuff we can point out.
There's some money stuff we're going to cover.
I wish we could do more.
We can say there's a lot of money.
We can say that people are making money.
They shouldn't be and people probably shouldn't be donating money to this, but it's hard because we just need reform.
We need a stronger IRS.
I know we all hate that idea, but we do.
Maybe one of the reasons we're all scared of the IRS is that rich people want everybody to hate the IRS because that benefits them more.
Right, right.
The IRS essentially makes money with how much you put into it, but they want to defund it.
Weird.
Isn't that weird?
Anyway, point is, we have a little bit about the money.
We'll wish we had more.
Wish the reporting requirements were stricter.
But we also have some where are they now?
And we have some, I have some stories of fraud that I just, there's nowhere to put them, but I got to put them somewhere and I got to get them out.
And the people have to know.
Why don't we take our first break, which you can avoid at patreon.comslash where there's woke?
Avoid the ads and get the bonus.
Get the bonus like the Bill Maher one.
Hopefully, people check that out.
So funny.
God, that guy.
He's just the Platonic ideal of a reactionary asshole.
Like, it couldn't be better.
You know where to get that stuff and to skip the ads.
We'll take a break and then we're going to get to it.
So, we've talked a lot about UG Solutions, Jameson Gavoni, right?
And all of the nonsense that has been happening, some of the very serious things that have been alleged related to UG Solutions.
But because it's a private company, we can't really dig into the dollars, like what's been happening there.
I guess theoretically, I could find the contract.
We could do a heist and steal their documents.
Yeah, there you go.
No, that's not where you're going?
Okay, no, unfortunately not.
I'm not going to commit a crime.
But because Jameson Gavoni is, you know, the master of all companies, because he started so many things.
I thought we could go back to Sentinel Foundation and kind of look at what's been going on monetarily with them.
As you said in the intro, because there aren't really like rigid requirements with 990s, there was essentially a lot of stuff that I wish we had more information on.
I know you wish you had more information on.
And it is really, really frustrating.
I mean, just to give folks an idea, I poured over the tax documents and stuff for quite a bit.
And I have my like little Excel spreadsheet up of things that I thought were interesting.
But as you've constantly told me, reading things from an Excel spreadsheet, so we'll say it together, is not a good podcast.
We can't do it.
You pointed at the sign.
I was like, yeah, you're right.
But this time I got to do it to you.
I was like, hey, the sign you made that says reading cells from your Excel spreadsheet is not a good podcast.
I want to shout out this Twitter account that also went deep into a lot of these 990s and mapping folks out.
It's so crazy.
I ended up sending you a picture of something that you were like, I have no idea what this is.
Because I hadn't told you anything about it.
But from other work that is being done in this space by, and I'll link this in the show notes because I think this stuff is really, really important.
They've kind of put together this web where they show the various founders of these organizations, like Jameson Gavoni and then the other Sentinel Foundation founder, Glenn Debitt, and their entities that they have founded, and then the relationship to other entities, their funding sources.
And it starts just looking really insane where we have the Sentinel Foundation.
And UG Solutions, both founded by Jameson Gavoni.
And then we have a former vet named Billy Cipriani who serves.
On the Sentinel Foundation, he's like an investigator there.
And also with UG Solutions, we have Black Rifle Company coming in with firearms.
They're a corporate sponsor for this paramilitary NGO called We Fight Monsters that partners with Sentinel Foundation, which partners with UG Solutions, which is then housed under the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as kind of like this protective aspect.
There's the Tim Tebow Foundation, which donates to the Sentinel Foundation.
All of these connections.
The Samaritan's Purse is a partner of the Sentinel Foundation, and that seems to be funded at least in part by Eric Prince, again, the founder of Blackwater.
So, as part of this web that they've created and stuff, is they've highlighted that it seems, based on the research that's been done here, it looks like there might be unreported grants, which is a big problem.
Specifically, the Tim Tebow Foundation, they received $247,000, but In their 990s, they only reported $179,500, which seems so strange.
And so.
So, wait, sorry, Tim Tebow was the one who granted people, or are you saying the Tim Tebow Foundation received that money?
Tim Tebow Foundation granted that to Sentinel Foundation.
Right, right.
Sentinel Foundation only reported a portion of that on their paperwork.
That's a problem.
And then there's additionally an element where grants that they received from other foundations and organizations have a shared person from the Sentinel Foundation.
To that other organization.
And that is a problem.
Without disclosing that, that is a big problem because as a board of director position, you have a fiduciary duty to the organization that you represent.
Pin in that a little bit for some crowd I'm going to be talking about later because what happens when you are that, but also perhaps are in government?
Oh, okay.
Interesting.
So, an example of this is Andrew Gunther is the president of Sentinel Foundation right now.
Evidence that he was serving as president for the Robbins Foundation, it's unclear the timeline, but it seems to have never been reported.
And there is a sizable donation from the Robbins Foundation to Sentinel back in 2023 for $132,000.
And Andrew Gunther was the president of Sentinel at that time, not disclosed on their 990s from anything that I've seen or this other group has done for their research.
Additionally, one of the board of directors for Sentinel named Aubrey Edge is also affiliated with a group called Daly's Foundation.
He was the president there for Four years, including his time when he was with Sentinel.
2019 to 2023 was his time with Daly's Foundation.
Daly's Foundation made a donation to Sentinel Foundation for $150,000.
It was not disclosed that a board of director for Sentinel was also serving as the president for that group that same year.
These are problems.
Yeah.
And they say that they talk about conflict of interest on all their 990s because you check yes, you know, because you're supposed to.
I don't think that they're actually being.
Careful about this at all.
And the IRS doesn't exist anymore.
So no one's doing the work to actually alert that these are problems.
So there's probably a lot more in there that I wish we could know.
But it's so minimal.
But even still, with what minimal amount that we got from those 990s, some good work's being done to try and track down some concerning nonprofit shenanigans potentially and things that should have been disclosed but haven't been.
So, some interesting stuff there.
Then there's another web that they've put together that brings in Mark Wayne Mullen, who actually.
Oh, wow, really?
Yeah, he went with Sentinel Foundation.
Really?
Yeah, to rescue people from Afghanistan when that was falling.
We told you it would all come together.
Yeah.
Wow.
I had heard about that.
And I didn't know about it until like he's getting obviously more attention because of now.
But I had heard and just saw a headline about that and had no idea it was Sentinel Foundation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was Sentinel Foundation that he went with to affect those evacuations.
And I do want to say, Sentinel Foundation, from what I've seen, they did evacuate people from Afghanistan.
Yeah.
I looked into this because it showed up on their tax forms.
And yeah.
Oh, I did too.
And I said that is something that it seems like they did.
Yep.
$2.4 million in expenses related to it.
And I was looking into this because.
The biggest organization or the biggest partnership, I guess, of organizations that were going in to help get people out of there.
It was called AfghanEvac, and it was 250 different organizations.
They coordinated directly with the U.S. government to evacuate folks.
Sentinel Foundation did not participate in that one.
They did participate in a different one, which is called Project Exodus Relief, where a volunteer effort comprised of veterans and patriots seeking the safe evacuation for American Afghan partners and at risk Afghans out of Afghanistan.
So, still, you know, like, Doing good work to get people to safety.
For sure.
Yeah.
For sure.
I don't want to minimize that at all.
But of course, it just had to be like they couldn't be with the 250 organization, like huge, sprawling network that was working with the government that probably was a little more seamless.
They had to do it with the very evangelical Christian.
Yeah.
Like mini group of people.
Do you want to know the government route or the Grift Route?
Oh, Grift Route?
That's over there.
Yeah.
And so Mark Wayne Mullen participated as part of that.
I'm sure he was heroic and he fought bravely.
Yeah.
He likes to talk about it a lot, though.
Yeah, I bet.
It's a particular person that was a Texas resident that was there with her three young kids visiting her parents that lived in Afghanistan.
And she went through a lot.
I mean, they got her out of there safely and stuff.
And so kudos to them.
But they like to spin that a lot.
You know, it kind of hit all the points they wanted and about how Biden abandoned her and would have left her there to die kind of thing.
This document, you know, it lists Mark Wayne Mullen, Lindsey Graham as being a big player here, too, just supporting for, well, for Gaza evacuation.
He didn't travel, but support for the Gaza evacuation efforts.
And then the money, right?
So it lists the Robbins Foundation, which we talked about, and them funding, yeah, funding Sentinel Foundation.
And then, of course, the people who are getting paid related to it.
So, Andrew Gunther, who I mentioned when he denounced Matt Murphy's comments related to Islam, he's the Sentinel Foundation president.
And he seems to be affiliated also, at least in some capacity.
I don't know if it's on the board or if he has a paid position or what, but with the Robbins Foundation as well.
So, people that are on multiple of these foundations kind of moving money between everybody is very, very interesting.
The Tim Tebow Foundation, again, is listed here too.
And it's not just things that are happening in the Middle East.
There's an individual on, well, he was on payroll with Sentinel Foundation.
It seems like he's been affiliated with them for quite a long time.
His name is Taylor Jolly.
I think it's a name that, if you're in the military, you kind of know.
I feel like I've heard that name.
Yeah, he's a retired Marine, he was with the Marines from 2002 to 2019.
He has quite a few commendations.
He has deployed a lot of times with the Marine Corps going back to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.
He Ended up getting three Bronze Star medals, a Navy Commendation Medal with Device for Valor and the Purple Heart.
Well decorated veteran.
And he was serving as an investigator with Sentinel Foundation, might also be working with UG Solutions, unclear, but he was making, you know, like money on Sentinel Foundation in that role, like Billy Cipriani.
They were sort of serving in the same capacity.
But then I found him because he also is partnering with another person named Austin Holmes who testified in Congress.
And this is the only reason why I found this where he was testifying in Congress about how to manage the humanitarian crisis in Haiti.
So, my point is like, it's not just the Middle East.
We're seeing these paramilitary groups go into other places as well.
So, Austin Holmes, who testified in Congress, had started a company called the Caribbean Security Group, and he created it with Taylor Jolly.
So, they're doing high risk recovery operations in Haiti, one of whom was actually a U.S. military veteran who was kidnapped.
And so, we're seeing it.
In all of these other little places, too, where you have people who used to be with the military who are no longer with the military for whatever reason.
Some people are retired, some people discharged, perhaps, that are looking for something to do.
And giving them the benefit of the doubt for them to use the skills and the expertise that they have to give back and like help people.
I have no doubt there's plenty of people who get into this for the right reasons, I'm sure.
Right.
It just feels like as a system, this is bad.
Yeah.
Like they're just so bad.
And I think it can go so wrong.
Yeah, exactly.
It can go so wrong.
So I know you had an update for us about UG Solutions, and that's the one that was in Gaza that had the whistleblower.
So unfortunately, I don't know that the whistleblowing of UG Solutions specifically has, Led to anything.
Their role just kind of changed when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation ceased operations because of the ceasefire.
They kind of went quiet, it seems, until about last month, where Trump's Board of Peace has announced that they are looking for contractors with combat experience to go into Gaza.
Gaza Whistleblower Update00:08:11
And I don't know exactly to do what.
And so UG Solutions has submitted a proposal to be involved in that.
I'm guessing.
So I was looking at like the Board of Peace, it's basically like a redevelopment plan.
For Gaza.
There's a whole PowerPoint presentation.
Oh, this is a beachfront property.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so they are looking for Arabic speaking contractors with combat experience.
And so UG Solutions said, we can do that.
And they will probably be heading out that way again as they rebuild from the ground up and turn it into Trump properties.
I don't know.
I mean, there are no consequences, I guess, to anything.
I wish I had better news, but that's kind of where we're at we haven't seen the end of UG Solutions, we haven't seen any consequences.
Related to the whistleblower concern, there.
And I don't know what that even would have been, especially when you have senators participating in this stuff too and connected to the people at the top of these various groups and they're well funded and the evangelical Christian base of everything too is funding these things too.
I just, it feels something where there are just so many layers to it that how would you ever dismantle any one of these things?
And so they continue to be able to operate, to give grants to each other.
And call it partnership and stuff, but they're really just kind of moving money around to sort of do whatever.
And as we've looked at before with their tax documents, it's so hard to track down any additional information beyond those bottom line numbers.
So it feels a little overwhelming and maybe hopeless.
I don't know.
I don't want to say hopeless.
I don't want to say hopeless, but I am concerned with how much I've seen from this and how incredibly far reaching some of these consequences can be to people, to civilians in these countries that have not asked for this particular kind of help.
Palestinians wanted food.
They didn't want four distribution sites across their entire land.
So I want to talk about some of the fraud I found that didn't really go exactly with this stuff because sort of, you know, it's like isolated.
Well, again, it's, I think this is a high risk area, but it is also true that as we've mentioned, like any nonprofit, even if it's good, can have somebody just like takes money, you know, it doesn't mean they're bad, but you know, I guess I'll let you decide kind of where the line is there.
Uh, and there's going to be a reason that, you know, people who are bad people who want to steal stuff might flock to certain areas.
They might gravitate toward things that have this high emotional.
Appeal stuff that might blind people to what's going on, possibly, potentially.
But this one, okay.
So I saw this video, and it's great because it's always like local news type stuff.
I've watched a lot of local news segments because of this.
I saw this under the title Utah Anti Human Trafficking Group Helps 17 Survivors in 2023 in Finding Safe Locations.
Just let's just listen to this.
Yeah.
Story you'll only see here on Two News An anti human trafficking group has now saved at least 17 survivors since the beginning of this year.
Yeah, these are survivors who were forced.
Into the sex trade here in Utah, but they are now free from that dangerous environment.
Jim Spiewak live outside the airport for us tonight, and you spoke with some.
So, this was when I was doing this search along the lines of, Do these people do anything?
Like, I cannot find examples.
I think there are.
I'm not saying there's none, but I have a real hard time finding tangible examples of the kind of rescuing, in quotes, that they're supposedly doing.
So, I see this one, and so I'm like, Oh, 17 survivors.
Are they going to have that?
Like, you know, when you see those TV things where I have a bunch of.
Folding chairs and everybody's sitting, you know, there's like, right, there's gonna be a bunch of them.
Maybe their identities are protected, but are we gonna hear some stories?
And then the guy goes to the airport, and I was like, oh, he's outside the airport, okay, tonight.
And you spoke with some women that are responsible for all this, Jim.
Yeah, interesting.
Spoke to women, I was like, oh, he's outside the airport, but maybe he will have talked to the survivors.
And it's like, well, you spoke to women responsible for it, right?
Okay, interesting that you wouldn't say you spoke to the survivors for us tonight, and you spoke with some women that are responsible for all this, Jim.
Yeah, absolutely, Mark and Heidi.
One woman specifically, she has brought 17 survivors here to Salt Lake International Airport, helped them get on an airplane to get out of the state which they were trafficked in to a much safer spot.
It's scary.
It's absolutely scary to choose to heal when you have that kind of trauma.
A recent survivor that Candace Rivera helped escape from human trafficking carried a jagged, broken piece of mirror to put her makeup on before being sold for sex.
He said, Well, we're probably going to have to confiscate this because this is a weapon.
And we talked to her a little bit about it.
And she goes, Actually, this is a weapon against me.
She's like, I hate looking at myself in the mirror.
I feel like I'm worth nothing.
I didn't even actually realize this.
It's been a minute since I did this.
I didn't realize how dumb this is.
Okay.
So this is the best.
Again, we deserve a little fun.
This is so funny.
Let's go back to this claim.
Helped escape from human trafficking.
Carried a jagged, broken piece of mirror to put her makeup on before being sold for sex.
Why wouldn't you just have a normal mirror?
Like, yeah, is it that hard?
Like, if you have makeup, wouldn't you just have like the thing that comes with it?
And then, and again, I'm thinking, okay, but surely that means they talk to her because that they're talking as though they did.
And then we go to this woman who's not, you know, obviously not the survivor.
She's Candace Rivera, the founder of Exodus, and she's holding.
I just need to send you a screenshot of this actually because this is okay.
This is oh my god, okay, there's a screenshot for you.
Tell me what you're looking at in the world.
It's huge, it's a car windshield, you guys.
It's literally like a car windshield.
It's huge.
She was not carrying that around.
You fucking liar.
It's so stupid.
That's insane.
This is crazy.
It's the size of at least a textbook.
Yeah.
And she's saying, we have to go.
Now that you've seen that, I'm so sorry, but we got to play this again because this is so fucking funny and also depressing when you see how gullible everybody is.
Yeah.
Just listen to the claim here.
Okay.
Going back.
It's scary.
It's absolutely scary to choose to heal when you have that kind of trauma.
A recent survivor that Candace Rivera helped escape from human trafficking carried a jagged, broken piece of mirror to put her makeup on before being sold for sex.
He said, Well, we're probably going to have to confiscate this.
We're going to have to confiscate that.
So she's just carrying that, hey, that big piece of glass, you have?
Huge.
That's crazy.
And what?
Confiscate it?
It doesn't even make any sense.
Well, the thing that bothered me.
The most about it before I saw this picture, and now this bothers me the most.
But the thing that bothered me the most was when she said, you know, like, and she said, you know, actually, it was a weapon against me.
Yeah, well, okay, I'll keep going to play this.
And we talked to her a little bit about it, and she goes, actually, this is a weapon against me.
She's like, I hate looking at myself in the mirror.
I feel like I'm worth nothing.
That did not happen.
That did not happen at all.
She's making that up.
I just want to imagine this situation.
This is supposedly when they're rescuing her, I guess.
I guess.
And she said, just to take her story, just to take her story.
Oh, we got you.
We went to the fucking sex den of trafficking where we fought all the minions.
And now we're at the big boss, and there's probably a treasure chest in there too.
You can get the goodies.
And we're freeing the sex slave.
And she's like, hold on.
I got to grab my giant textbook size broken mirror that I use to apply the makeup, which is weird because those usually just have a little mirror in them most of the time.
Sometimes, yeah.
Or you could get a little compact.
Or you could easily find one.
Yeah.
Or break this big piece of glass into a smaller piece of glass, yeah.
And then she's like, no no, as we're escaping, we're gonna have to confiscate that, which is not.
Human Trafficking Story00:15:02
That's not a word you would use in that situation.
Yeah, that's not.
That's like her trying to sneak that into something like yeah no, it'd be like well, just that's a, that's trash, just leave.
It is what you would say.
And and then, just to get the reality of the situation, then she's like, okay well, actually this is a weapon against me, because I hate looking, because i'm not worth anything.
Now Someone, I guess, I suppose, could say, well, maybe that's not the actual mirror.
But then that's even fucking crazier.
Because she has found a broken mirror somewhere to have ready.
And in her head, she didn't even think to make it smaller.
Like, it's not even as described.
You couldn't carry this.
There is not a human way to carry this with you without constantly going to the hospital.
Like a rolly backpack as she's being sex trafficked.
She has a really bad conscience to like try to hold on to something like it's a totally like so.
No matter what, we're in insanity town.
I think this whole fucking shit is made up.
But as you let's just keep going, we're halfway through.
To me, she's like, I hate looking at myself in the mirror.
I feel like I'm worth nothing.
Rivera, the founder of the anti trafficking group Exodus, helped the survivor get back on her feet.
Okay, after about 10 days, she took her to the airport to fly to a safe location out of state to get longer term aftercare.
Go all the way to the gate and sit with them while they board a flight, which keep in mind, I'm.
Still thinking, like, this is on the news.
There's got to be something, right?
And so now we're getting shots of the airport.
It exists, right?
I don't know.
Yeah.
That's what I'm thinking.
I'm thinking if they are covering this on the fucking news, I know it's local news.
I don't have like that high of hopes, but like, I would assume there's something.
So we get a bunch of shots of an airport.
I don't know if it's B roll or what, because you can't usually like go that far in an airport, you know?
And then we get, as she's talking about this, all we get are just B roll of airports and inside the airport and whatever.
And they say she's just putting her on a plane to get to a better.
Place, I guess.
Go to the airport to fly to a safe location out of state to get longer term aftercare.
Go all the way to the gate and sit with them while they board a flight.
Which was Rivera's 17th time this year doing that.
TSA agents now shake the survivor's hand and ask their name.
And that really stands out to me every time because these girls don't get called by their name very often.
They get called a lot of other things.
And on this trip, Rivera says something happened for the very first time.
The gate agent gave the survivor First pick of her seat on the plane.
She was so excited.
And to be given the first.
These girls are never first.
You know, they're always on an agenda and they're very last.
She grabbed my hand as we walked down that tunnel and just said, Thanks for saving my life.
And then we see a shot of a plane flying away.
Oh, wow.
Now, Candace tells me that Exodus has saved more than 17 survivors so far this year.
It's just the 17 that she has personally brought here to the airport to help them get on a plane and get out of state for some of that longer term care.
We're live tonight at the airport.
Jim Speedway, KUTV2 News.
That's it.
Wow.
They're live at the airport.
And I watched this, first off, I admit I didn't even think much about the stupid mirror thing because I was so, like, I just was trying, the first time I watched it, I was just trying to get through it.
And then upon presenting it to you, I instantly was like, that's the dumbest fucking shit I've ever heard in my life.
But my first point was going to be I watched this whole thing.
I don't know that this happened.
Like, I shouldn't be able to watch a whole news thing.
Like, you traveled to the airport.
Like, humans were involved in this, putting work, like, hey, cameraman, we're going to go to the airport.
Put up the van.
Yep.
Other people, producer, everybody.
This is the story we got.
Yeah.
Well, do you have any of the victims?
Well, no, I'm sure they do.
They're like, well, we got to protect identities.
I'm sure.
I'm sure that's a lot of, again, it's another reason why this is so easy to do fraud because it's like, well, we can't, we got to protect the victims.
So we can just show the airport that it allegedly happened at.
And this stuff about like the TSA agents and they're going to pick their first, the first pick of the seat.
That's not how seating works in planes.
Like it's not really, none of it makes sense.
Now, it will probably not surprise you to learn.
Oh, boy.
There's so many of these to choose from to play this.
I think this will be a good one.
Remember who that was?
It was the CEO of Exodus.
We have some developing news to bring you tonight on Fox 13 News at 9.
The CEO of an organization called Exodus, dedicated to fighting human trafficking, was booked into Utah County Jail on Friday.
37 year old Candace Leard, formerly known as Candace Rivera, faces more than 30 felony charges of communications fraud, theft, and forgery, among others.
Fox 13 News reporter Lucy Nelson spoke with a woman.
Yep.
Look, I already knew I was already searching Exodus because I had seen that this fraud existed.
So I knew, but what I didn't know and genuinely still don't ever fully know is how much fraud are we talking?
Because many of these organizations, they are doing some stuff, you know, and like there will be examples.
I have another one.
They have examples.
And I don't know when I'm just starting to research, is this somebody who just used a position to steal money, you know?
Because again, if we go to any other organization that's feeding the homeless or something and you find out someone embezzled.
That doesn't necessarily mean that the company was fake.
You know like it could be, like there could be.
You know you set up a fake company to to get you know that could exist.
But it's more likely that like, oh well, they're getting donations, they're probably doing a certain amount of good work, but then someone starts skimming or someone starts like faking you know, maybe paperwork, making it look like they're feeding more people than they are.
It doesn't mean that the that nothing happened usually like that's pretty extreme to be like nothing.
This one there might have been.
Like nothing that happened.
Like it's just because I watched that whole story I was like none.
There's no facts in it.
There's nothing That was even close to a verifiable fact.
She lifted up the broken piece of glass.
Yeah, she had it.
This is proof.
I'm surprised there wasn't fake blood on it or something, you know?
Yeah.
God, that thing was, that's huge.
That's so funny.
Who could believe that?
What kind of, I mean, we're in Utah, so we got a lot of Mormons.
Yeah.
So, oh, wait, maybe there's a Mormon law against questioning any tablet related revelations.
Oh, there you go.
Could be.
It's like, that looks like a tablet.
And a lot of cool and totally real stuff happened involving mysterious tablets.
Yep.
Joseph Smith says, I'm not allowed to ask questions.
I actually can't even look at it.
So I'm going to take your word for it that it's.
It's good.
So I didn't know.
So I like when I watched this, I'm not claiming that I found this and was like, I'm on to this, but I looked at it to try to search.
Just this lady and find the coverage, and sure enough, there was coverage of like before she was busted, and it's just nothing like it's so crazy.
So, I think she was so bad that it may have truly been nothing like she just was like, Wow, there's a bunch of victims, um, and not victims of sex trafficking, people that she claimed, like, Hey, uh, we're gonna do this thing, we're into this business, and she would pretend she had all this success, they would give her money, she would just take it, you know, kind of thing.
Wow, what a bad person from September 10th, 2020 to present date, which I think.
Again, it was 2023, just to make sure, it was 2023.
Except she was busted September 18th ish, 2023.
So, for that like three year period, just about exactly three years, Candace Leard misrepresented herself as a licensed registered nurse, medical doctor, and nurse practitioner.
Yeah, this person is just nuts.
Like, she just did.
So, it may seem extreme to think, like, oh, is someone really going to lie to your face like that, lie to a newscaster?
But there are those.
They do exist.
Yeah, like they do exist.
I think it's unhealthy.
You shouldn't expect everyone to be that, and you shouldn't be looking for that too much because I think it.
I think it's bad if we all start thinking everybody's that level of liar.
I think there's too much of that in our society.
However, they do exist.
Those people do exist.
There are some of them, and you might find them disproportionately in stuff like this because they're the ones who they rise to the top because they're so fucking bold, you know?
Well, and again, who's going to be against the people trying to help victims of trafficking, right?
Yeah, those kind of liars, if they're good at it, and usually just Darwinian process, you probably, if they're bad at it, they're probably already, you know, busted somewhere.
If they're good at it, they're going to know which things they can lie about often because it's the The things are not going to get called out on.
So, we already got nurse, medical doctor, and nurse practitioner.
It's funny to hit all three of those.
You know, like, why wouldn't you just do like one?
Stick to one.
Candace falsely stated that she held a position with the United Nations and was featured on BBC News.
Oh, wait, she might have falsely stated she was featured on BBC News.
I actually am not sure.
How to read that sentence?
It could go either way, probably falsely.
Candace also falsely asserted that she was a successful business owner who has founded several multi-million dollar companies.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Based on the misleading and fraudulent misrepresentations made by Candace, the Exodus nonprofit corporation raised more than $1.7 million since its founding in 2020.
Wow.
Yeah.
Multiple times that investigators believe Leard falsely represented herself to others, including in 2021 when she solicited a member of the Navajo Nation.
I don't know what that.
Oh, yeah.
Candace later met with tribal nation leaders.
To solicit donations for Exodus work with a missing and murdered indigenous woman effort.
Yeah, it's like so evil.
But a Navajo Nation member later learned no such effort to rescue or seek justice for missing and murdered indigenous women existed within Exodus.
Wow, there's one where she's ripping off people with houses like she just it was a full ripoff artist, you know kind of thing.
So that's one where, like she sounds like just a ripoff artist who had a million different schemes.
But it is notable that the one that got the news coverage and the one that she's raised money almost two million dollars for charity for Is this trafficking stuff.
The other stuff is all kind of one offs, you know?
Yeah.
But she was able to be a little bit more grand and systematic with this child trafficking thing.
And I think, you know, I think there's a reason for that.
But this person is just sick.
Like she's just so, even her family, like apparently took $4,000 that her ex husband had given for a car, but then instead, like, fraudulently obtained the car, didn't pay the money to the person.
And then the car was repossessed.
Wow.
She withdrew thousands from the shared bank account.
Some of which her son allegedly still needs to pay back.
And then also she was stealing from his 401k and without telling, like just this person's nuts.
But there's going to be people like that.
But think about that local news segment.
Think about how many people and how much is that happening?
That i'm never.
You know, I don't watch this.
Every city and every state in America has this and they're piping it to our elderly relatives.
You know kind of thing with yeah, with making people believe that someone's carrying a shattered piece of mirror around before being sold for sex, like it's so stupid yeah, so stupid.
All right, I got another one for you.
It's not quite as crazy as that, but it's about an organization called Saved in America.
It's out of San Diego.
Okay.
We got another video, another local news thing.
Actually, this is NBC News.
I guess tell me what you think about this.
This is, we got an interesting mix here.
Okay.
Bless you, Emmy.
Come on.
So we got some grieving things.
This is in 2018.
This is in 2018.
Until Emmy comes home.
Her parents say she has a troubled history, struggling with mental illness and suicidal thoughts, and running away.
Last June, social workers placed Emmy in a group home.
This is the seventh time she's taken off, but the first time the Foleys haven't heard from her.
Everything leads us to believe that she's being hurt.
I think she's trapped in a human trafficking situation.
Why do they think that?
I don't know.
You know, so this is real.
These are real parents.
This is a real.
Thing that happened in that she was missing.
I mean, probably because they're susceptible to the propaganda we've been talking about.
That's what I'm worried about.
Like, there's a cost to this propaganda when these look, this seems like a troubled teen.
You don't want to judge other parents.
Yeah.
So who knows?
It sounds like she's troubled.
I don't know what they've done, what they could or not.
But the fact that she's been taken to a group home and then has run away seven times or whatever they said.
Yeah.
Like, is that there nothing you could do about that?
Like, these are two parents that are.
They have a house.
Like, I don't understand.
Like, am I crazy?
I don't know how that works.
Yeah.
I mean, it is hard to say.
Like, I mean, but it's not the whole story.
Yeah.
Like, okay.
Regardless, like maybe they're doing all they can.
I don't know.
I'm not, but why are they saying she's being trafficked?
She's run away seven times.
But this time they're saying, who knows?
Maybe they have some reason they're saying that.
It's not, there's nothing that we see.
The only reason that they've shared, at least as part of that, is because every other time she's left the group home, she's contacted them.
Sure.
This time she hasn't.
That's, There could be a lot of reasons.
It's just different.
Exactly.
There could be a lot of reasons.
So far as we know, I mean, there's a lot of editing, there's a lot of whatever, so we don't have a ton of information, but they don't give us any reason to suspect that at all.
They give us nothing to back up that claim.
But I wonder now when we're going to hear about the anti trafficking organization coming into it, I wonder the timing of that.
Like, did they make them think that?
So now we're going to get introduced to the police, but quickly decided they needed to do more.
So they turned to Joseph Travers.
Here's the Zone One motels.
Traverse runs Saved in America, a group of ex-cops and Navy SEALs with a new mission.
Track down missing children before it's too late.
This is modern-day slavery in our country.
Now licensed as private investigators, they utilize decades of surveillance training.
Okay, so there's going to be a lot of stuff in here.
There's a lot of footage that, like, it does, again, it's hard.
It does seem like maybe there's some of these dudes who genuinely are volunteering and trying to locate.
Runaway kids or whatever, and that's good.
You know, that's very honorable.
That's a great thing to do for parents who are scared totally.
They're using their know-how.
And then we get his private investigators.
They utilize decades of surveillance training.
He's flying a drone.
What's that gonna do?
Yeah, he's flying a drone about 30 feet in the air currently.
We're gonna hear about the drone again, but right when I saw that, I was like, what the are you doing with that drone?
How is that helping you In this situation?
Checking out people's roofs?
Every member of the team is a volunteer, all refusing pay, instead relying on private donations to fund operations.
It's the same as getting paid.
We see the look of that parent or that mother who gets her child back.
That's why we do what we do.
That's our payment.
And we get paid.
On a Sunday morning in San Bernardino, we join them as they begin their search for Emmy.
Hey, man, I'm a private investigator.
Private Investigators and Drones00:10:37
We're looking for a runaway girl.
They start by canvassing the neighborhood for leads, then deploy a drone to expand the search.
What?
Hello?
Yeah.
It showed it again.
It was like, okay, we got canvassing.
Okay, that's great.
Like, if someone was missing, anyone who would want to help just human to human walk around and ask, have you seen this girl?
Yeah, awesome.
Seriously, that'd be amazing.
Like, if we had someone missing, 100 anyone who did that would be grateful forever, obviously.
So, yeah, that's cool.
It doesn't, I don't think it takes a lot of like military know how, but yeah, you're going wherever you're going, you're asking if you've seen this girl, right?
Awesome, but then they say, and then they use the drone to expand their search.
What by canvassing the neighborhood for me is the drone gonna ask to expand the search?
Hello, that's also a different drone.
Are they just like looking?
We've got a second drone.
What exactly are they looking for?
Like, just a random like building, I don't know where they are.
Yeah, I don't know what, like, what would you look for.
For with a drone.
Okay, let's see.
After several hours, a break break, good samaritan comes forward revealing the operation of a neighborhood pimp they believe could be connected to Emmy.
Oh, that's an incredible tip.
Okay, Travers says, out of the 71 previous cases his team has taken on, they've brought 71 children.
Wow, 71 for 71.
This is for your baby when we find her.
Okay, he's gonna hand a teddy bear to I think it's the mom.
I can't 100 tell because it's a quick shot, but it's a tiny teddy bear and the girl's 14.
He wants children.
It's a tiny teddy bear.
This is for your baby when we find her.
They haven't found her.
They didn't find Emmy that day.
Okay.
But three weeks later.
Okay, you ready for this?
All right.
So we've handed her a tiny teddy bear for no reason.
Right.
We have said we got a great tip, fantastic tip.
Do you remember what the tip was?
That there's a pimp in the neighborhood.
Yeah.
There's a pimp in the neighborhood.
Yeah.
That might be connected to.
Okay.
Fine.
There's nothing, no evidence of that.
Yep.
But we cracked the case here.
So now I'm thinking, oh, great.
So they did crack.
So maybe they are doing something.
They did crack the case.
You know, here we go.
Let's hear.
But three weeks later, she's safe and she's back.
After a harrowing five weeks, Emmy got a hold of his cell phone and made contact with her sister.
I brought it up.
So she just didn't have a phone.
Okay.
She didn't have a phone.
She called her sister.
She stayed on the phone with her for four and a half hours while we took a drive and we were able to pick her up.
Do you remember what the first thing she said to you was?
She said, Mama, I'm hurt.
Emmy's not recovering at a treatment center and hopes to meet the Saved in America team to say thank you.
But what do they do?
They never gave up on us day and night.
I just can't be grateful enough to them.
You've never turned those lights off.
Never.
And so those lights and the prayer, those are for her.
The lights left on so Emmy can always find her way home.
Steve Patterson, NBC News, San Bernardino, California.
So, yeah, so there's no evidence that they actually made that happen.
They didn't.
But there's no, I mean, I know what you know.
There's no, I could look everywhere, I couldn't find any more information on this other than news stories that said, Yeah, she was found.
And also, no information about where she was those five weeks.
No, but I was going to talk about that because do we have another Matt Murphy sister situation where you're like, Well, I think she might have been all signs point to trafficking, right?
And then it's like, Well, oh, she's just on drugs, you know, like this is not a troubled teen.
Yeah, she's a troubled teen.
I have all the sympathy for her, I'm not judging her.
She's 14.
But I think she's on drugs.
When she's in a treatment facility, they didn't specify what type of treatment facility.
Specifically, they had her say, Mom, I'm hurt.
Like, I feel like that was a pretty intentional choice.
Yeah.
Because I feel like she probably was on drugs.
Who knows what happened to her phone?
She might have been, you know, this seems like an addict.
Yeah.
It's a horrible situation, but like, she's not trafficked.
I don't know.
What are you talking about?
You know, not that we know of.
And if she was, what would that mean?
Like, if she was, then the story is she got a hold of a phone, called her sister.
Mm hmm.
And then they were able to drive four hours to go get her.
Yeah.
So she's not like in, she's not like making an escape, you know?
Like she's, I think she just was on drugs.
Yeah.
Didn't have her phone.
Maybe she's, who knows?
Maybe she traded her phone for drugs.
Who knows?
Yeah.
Lost it.
Something.
And then, you know, was on drugs for a while.
Maybe she was in with people that were doing, who knows?
Maybe she, and maybe she was, you know, like in the same way that might have been true about Matt Murphy's sister.
Like maybe she is trading sex for drugs.
Like that happens.
Who knows?
But I really feel like this whole thing in the beginning is so intentional where she is, all signs point to she's being trafficked.
Yeah.
You know, and you're like, what are you talking about?
And the fact that they tie in that we got a great tip it's this local pimp.
Oh, yeah.
What?
What does that have to do with anything?
Especially because she's found four and a half hours away.
Yeah.
So, not very local.
You know, that's a lot of territory for that pimp.
He's hardworking.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's so funny.
And so, like, this is one where I do think they were doing something, but ultimately they got it.
It doesn't seem like they've been in any legal trouble, which is disappointing.
But they did get outed by the local newspaper.
You know, I say local, it's the San Diego Union Tribune.
So, yeah.
San Diego is a big thing.
But, like, the newspaper, there's also some other ones from other towns that were involved in the story.
And it's like local news is what does it.
That's really not the fucking local video news that is always wrong about everything.
But local reporting, you know?
Yep, yep, totally.
And they pointed out that no need to go into too much of it, but the pin I told you earlier was they had gotten this big grant.
Let me read you this.
Supervisor Kristen Gaspar recommended an Oceanside charity run a multi million dollar project for San Diego County while she served on the organization's advisory board.
Ah.
She's the supervisor and served on the board.
She did not disclose her role at the nonprofit when seeking colleagues' support for the spending.
That is just not okay.
Yeah, that is really, really, really not okay.
Yeah.
The County of Sport Supervisors approved the budget request in late June $2 million to purchase a temporary shelter for sex trafficking victims to be operated by Saved in America.
Sorry, is she still in her position?
No.
So, but only because she lost the election.
Oh, no, that's stupid.
She should have been in three calls.
I don't see that there's a, yeah, it's like, but when we talk about this is the thing, this is why it's a tragedy for everybody.
That all we care about is Trump and national fucking news.
Not that that isn't important, but everything is national now, and that sucks because what we've lost sight of is how much is going on in our own neighborhoods, how much of this crime and grip.
You talk about the real moral panic that's not actually moral panic.
How much the grift panic?
Let's start it.
Let's start a moral panic, but for good.
There's a bunch of grift happening from right wing assholes pretending to save kids.
Stealing everybody's money.
Yeah.
That could be in your house, could be your neighbor.
Yeah.
It's, it's, 10 o'clock.
Do you know where your donations are that instead went to the fucking this?
They had this, um, saved in America has this RV for some reason.
That's like a hundred thousand dollar RV that they get, they got government assistance to get government money, you know, like these little grants.
And apparently this is pretty common.
And again, stuff we would know more about if we cared more about our local governments and if we had better local journalism in that we, if we support it more, I don't mean it's not doing a good job, but like if we had more support because there's apparently these like often these slush funds within.
you know, whether it's like the sheriffs or the whatever.
And they're like, well, some people say that this guy's slush fund is just a way for him to kind of dole out stuff to people whose support he needs for election.
Yeah.
And one of these things was like, yeah, they get a $50,000 grant or something like that to this saved in America thing for whatever.
And it's like, oh, but it's part of a local program to help with the whatever.
And it's like, there's stuff like that.
We just, we just need to pay attention to our homes.
Now, having said that, I'm not doing it.
Somebody else needs to.
It's, it's hard because it's like, we just don't have that.
Mindset anymore.
I think I do, but I think the other piece of it too is like, like people are, you know, stretched so thin with everything that, like, yeah, it's just, it's impossible.
It just feels so impossible.
Yeah.
So Gaspar, one of Travers, that Travers was the guy, biggest supporters who also served on Saving America's advisory board, directed at least 105,000 in public grants to the organization during her single term in county office.
105,000.
Those funds and 200,000 in other county grants directed by former supervisors Greg Cox, Bill Horn, Ron Roberts.
Help pay for the command center, and the command center is the fucking RV.
Wow.
And you know, maybe they're doing something with it.
Oh, by the way, remember when they said they're 71 for 71 and rescuing kids?
This is the funniest part because that was insane.
I was like, okay, you're not, there's no way you found 71 for 71 kids.
That's impossible.
It turns out, I just gotta say, sorry, one more thing on the RV just for funds.
I had to go to a different story.
I forgot they had this part, a different source here.
2019, Save New America alongside Gaspar debuted a new mobile command center stocked with. state-of-the-art technology.
The 37-foot RV was advertised as a necessary tool to save children caught in the world of sex trafficking.
We're doing multiple recoveries at the same time.
So we needed one central point of communication and one central point to put our electronic gear.
$240,000.
Wow.
Taxpayers contributed more than $240,000 for the RV, including a custom $10,000 paint job.
Why?
Well, because then he'd saved in America's logo on the side.
Oh, my God.
Hashtag child saved, not sold.
Wow.
Now, we heard the 71 thing, but I guess at a different time, you know, the charity claimed to rescue 250 children since it was established more than a decade ago.
Travers acknowledged in 2019 in an extended interview with the Union Tribune.
That the majority of those rescues were young people who had wandered away from the Casa de Amparo group home for at risk teenagers.
Travers said the San Marcos facility hired his private security firm to patrol the grounds.
And anytime a child left the property, even for a few minutes, he counted the return.
Wow.
Oh, boy.
That's a way to juice your numbers.
Yeah.
So, oh, boy, they've collected 590,000 from the National Christian Information Center.
There you go.
National Christian Information Center.
That's like a parent.
Charity that he also has.
So, I mean, this one adds up by the time you add it all up.
Yeah.
But I don't see that he.
So, one person who went after him, Travers sued for defamation, and there's a whole case.
Weekly Show Wrap-Up00:02:48
I tried to.
Here we go, folks.
I know.
I tried to track it down.
It looks like maybe it's settled because it just kind of disappeared.
But the guy took down his shit.
So, I think it successfully might have scared that guy away.
Interesting.
All right.
Well, listen up, dude.
Bring your fight over to us.
Nah, it's.
This is a bit old, it's like five years old.
But I look at it now.
The website still exists.
The guy still exists.
He didn't, I don't, you know.
So, his was, I guess, like.
I don't know how you're not in more trouble for that government stuff, especially the lady who did it.
Oh, yeah.
But apparently you can just do that.
And the only consequence was electoral.
I guess that's how our Supreme Court wants it, broadly speaking.
You just can't punish anyone for anything.
You just have to unelect them, essentially.
But yeah, so I just wanted to share those two ones that were interesting.
Just the videos, too.
You go through all that.
These poor parents who seem genuine and heartbroken.
And it is important.
They do say they're so thankful to the organization.
Now, what did they do?
Nothing.
But I still also would probably be like that.
If I felt like someone had been helping all along, and even if the daughter was found for completely different reasons, I'd be like, okay, well, I do appreciate them.
But like, there's no nexus to trafficking there established at all that we know of.
And I can't help but wonder if that organization, how would they even know to get in contact with them?
And does that mean if they did, that maybe they were already down the road of trafficking panic, maybe?
And that's why they're thinking their daughter's trafficked, even though they have no evidence for that that they showed us.
So it's just a whole thing.
All right.
That concludes our trafficking.
Series for now, yeah, but you better be good or we'll do another one.
Uh, no, that was uh, that was very enlightening, very interesting.
Learned a lot, we'll see what what uh, anti woke nonsense we debunk next week.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
This show's weekly now.
Oh, yeah, we have finally gotten our together and all our shows are coming out on a weekly basis.
This one was the uh, last one to kind of catch up because we did have a bunch we were overdue, so but it was still going to be it's still Thursday.
We're getting one of these out on Thursday, and then you can expect it every Wednesday late night or Thursday day, essentially.
That's the weekly time for the show.
We're doing it.
We're doing it, folks.
We are.
We're doing it with all the shows.
It's happening.
So we'll see you next week for some other anti-woken nonsense.
We went to the fucking sex den of trafficking where we found, we fought all the minions.