Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Bikini Influencer Caught Running 'Skank' Marijuana Ring: Cops

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Melissa Said, 23, was taken into custody last week in the Brazilian state of Bahia after being on the run, police said. Said's instagram feed is full of videos and photos of her wearing bikinis and talking about her love of "weed." Police in Brazil say Said runs a massive drug ring that raids on five properties resulted in the seizure of evidence including scales, plastic bags and marijuana. Said denies the claims. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes over the allegations in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code CRIMEFIX at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/crimefixHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: Denny BooneProducer:Jordan ChaconCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A beautiful Brazilian influencer is in some really big trouble in Brazil. She's accused of running a drug ring and her social media might be one of the reasons why. I go through the story of Melissa Set and how the cops caught up with her. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Melissa said she loves weed. At least that's what her Instagram page says and that's what police say about her. Said is very attractive. Her feed is full of photos of her looking fit and wearing bikinis. Her Instagram also shows her holding lots of

joints, but we can't show that to you. YouTube does not like us showing drugs. Now you would think that Said would hide her love of drugs, but investigators in Brazil said that she practically advertised it, and now she's accused of running a major drug ring, trafficking in marijuana and narcotics. Said was arrested in a raid last week called Operation Irva Efitiva, which translates into weed loving in Portuguese. Said was considered a fugitive. She knew she was wanted. Police said they found, said, in the state of Bahia in Brazil, where she'd been hiding out with friends and said wasn't the only one taken into custody. Police said they also picked up three of her accomplices. One was charged with drug trafficking after officers found three pounds of so-called

skank marijuana. That usually means it's not very good. Now, police said they also recovered 270 grams of hashish. That's a concentrated form of cannabis made from the resin of a marijuana plant. And they said they also found small portions of marijuana, digital scales, plastic bags and cell phones, all of these things could have been used to package and sell drugs. But Melissa, she is denying that there's a drug ring or that she was the leader of it. When she was arrested, reporters surrounded her and she said, it's a shame. No one in the world should be arrested for smoking marijuana. Her Instagram feed, of course, is full of these pictures and videos where she is smoking marijuana. And she says she just advocates for the personal use of marijuana. That's what she

loves. So to discuss this case, I want to bring in somebody who has investigated many, many instances of drug trafficking in the past. He is Denny Boone. He's a retired lieutenant. And Denny, I'm really interested to talk to you about this because I know that you've done many a drug investigation in your time. So we've got a 23-year-old young woman who's in a whole world of trouble down in Brazil, accused of basically running a drug ring and being a drug mule. We're talking about, you know, marijuana. We're talking about possibly narcotics, according to law enforcement. So it seems to me the first mistake here on this woman's part, and she says she didn't do anything wrong. She's saying, look, I smoke a little bit of weed. That's all I do. Parading around on social

media with joints, probably not the best thing to do. That probably raises a lot of eyebrows as far as law enforcement is concerned. Well, we don't arrest the smart ones. So, yeah, that was kind of weird. But yet, she has, what, 300,000 followers or something. So combine an exotic location, a somewhat exotic, scantily clad female smoking weed, and I guess you're going to get some followers. Yeah, I guess so.

And she does have 300,000 followers or so, somewhere in that ballpark. What is your kind of gut telling you on this? I mean, she was hiding out apparently. She was considered a fugitive. So law enforcement actually had to go track her down in this state in Brazil. They find her. They nab her. And then she's like, look, I didn't do anything wrong.

So what's your gut kind of telling you as far as this goes? Because she's being paraded out there. But then they had arrested some accomplices. The accomplices names, they don't appear to be floating around out there being purplice. but she is. Well, my gut feeling is she was probably a mid-level or lower dealer. She probably had five or six people, maybe selling weed for her. They pop one of them, and one of them probably flipped on her.

I think they're looking at the big picture on this thing. I'm sure they've been doing surveillance. They probably have phone taps. They definitely have informants on this, giving them information. But I don't know who gave her the top. title of the queen of this you know i don't see her being the the kingpin behind a big drug thing if she's putting all this on social media i don't think she's smart enough to stay out of jail long yeah do do drug kingpins typically advertise drug use and their love of drugs i guess

weed loving is what her title was on instagram do they usually like advertise like this on social media in your experience. I mean, I'm not saying like every drug dealer is really smart because we've seen this before where people involved in crimes put stuff on social media that they shouldn't. But in your experience, would a drug kingpin be posting all this stuff on social media? No. Not at all. I'm, you know, she's, what is she, 23 years old, something along those lines. I think this is an ego thing for her. She's putting all. this stuff. What is it? Hundreds of pictures online of her doing drugs, smoking drugs. And did I read, she's telling people how to do things? I'm trying to figure out where the money's coming from.

You always try to look at where the money goes. And I don't think she's making that kind of money off of Instagram. I mean, I know she has that many followers, but I don't think you're going to get a lot of advertisers wanting to back you for narcotics trafficking. I'm not really sure. If you think the crime stories that we cover here on crime fix are scary, wait until you hear what's happening with your personal data online, your name, phone number, even your address, it's all floating around the internet for data brokers to sell or for scammers to steal. Our sponsor, Incogni, it lets you take back control. They find which data brokers have your info and demand they remove it. When I signed up, they found more than 50 brokers with my data, and within days, it started disappearing. Setup takes just minutes, create an account, authorize Incogni to act for you, and they do the rest.

And with their new Unlimited Plans custom removals feature, you can submit custom links where your data shows up and a team of privacy experts will remove it for you. So if you care about your online safety, and you really should, take your data back with Incogni, use code crime fix for 60% off an annual plan. You know, investigators, this is a quote, you know, from police, investigations. also indicate that she purchased the drug and passed it on to some followers through social media contacts. So let's say they do have evidence of that. It sounds like her Instagram and her messages on Instagram, those direct messages, could be a treasure trove for investigators. So would your gut be telling you that if somebody did flip on her, somebody lower level,

that they are somehow, you know, they've got access to those. messages and they're seeing where she's kind of arranging these deals and passing stuff along to other people they have they have all that they've got everything on our instagram account they have all of her phone tolls they have everything they know who she's talking to they knew that ahead of time i'm sure they were going after mr big somewhere along the line her name came up and i have a little bit of a theory on how that happened but i'm pretty sure they popped her hoping to get her to flip on the big guy. There's no way she's the big guy. Yeah. And I want you, I want you to kind of talk to me about that a little bit. You think, you think there's somebody much higher up in the chain than she is.

You don't think that she's the top of the food chain, if you will. No, I think she has a sugar daddy. And I think that he's supporting her and this lifestyle. And he's probably providing the weed. Weed is sold by weight, and it makes a lot to make any kind of money. She's not going to make any kind of money selling joints or baggies of weed on Instagram to her followers. Although, I don't think all 300,000 people are buying from her, but I'm sure some are. She still has to deliver it. There still has to be a delivery system somewhere. And maybe that's the other four people that got popped.

Maybe that's what they were doing for her was doing the deliveries. but somebody was supplying her and somebody's financing her if she owns all these different properties all over Brazil, that money's coming from somewhere. That's my opinion is. Well, I want to read a little bit more of some of the statement that has been obtained from, you know, the police down there. It's the apparently the State Department for Prevention and Suppression of Drug Trafficking down there in Brazil.

It was discovered that in addition to promoting crime and drug use, she also sells and distributes narcotics in Bahia with some people from Sal Palo as one of her suppliers. But again, you don't think that maybe she's the top. You think she's somebody mid-level who's maybe kind of organizing some of this and making money off of it, but there's somebody above her that may be in charge. And she might be just like the digital social media face of this. Absolutely. I think she found her niche.

I think she's part of an organization. and she found her niche with this social media thing. However, I think that's come to a screeching halt. Well, they talk about how somebody, one of her alleged accomplices, I guess, was caught with so-called skank weed. And so skank weed, apparently, is like weed that's kind of weak. This person had like a few pounds of so-called skank weed. That's different, I guess, from skunk weed, which is supposed to be. really um potent uh explain the difference between the two of those things to us like the marijuana

go ahead marijuana is sold by weight um skankweed generally is still has all kinds that they add stems and they add seeds and they add all kinds of other things to the marijuana to jack the weight up so you're getting charged for the same weight but you don't have as much marijuana in that bag there's a lot of other junk in that bag. And they normally sell that kind of stuff to first-time customers or people that maybe haven't paid them as well. Or let me tell you, they do not sell skankweed to their best customers. They just don't do it. So maybe she knew something was up that is out there. Not that I'm aware of. There is no test for potency. I mean, you and I can't run around and want to buy some weed and say, well, let me test the potency first before I buy it. That's not.

out there. So you're kind of, you kind of got to, you know, hope for the best. I guess that's not the right thing to say. But they've put all this other junk in there and then they sell that off to the unsuspecting people. And the profit goes up. But you don't do that a lot or you're going to be out of business pretty quick. Interesting. And then the skunk weed is like the really, I guess, the better stuff, the more potent stuff. Like, it's real stinky. Like, tell me about the skunk weed. It does smell. It smells like a skunk. I mean, it stinks. When we would have that stuff on our property room, it would stink up the entire police station. I mean, it is very aromatic, and you can't mask that at all. But back in my day, and I'm old. So I'll tell you, Akapoko Gold and Sinsomene and all those, those were all supposed to be high potency. You know, that was what you wanted. And there was a little bit of a premium for buying that stuff. But, you know, skunk weed is as, is. it's just that they just gave it that name because it smells bad, but it is supposed to be more potent.

Skank is low level, you know, it's very low level stuff. What's interesting to me is that they're saying she has five properties. So if they're saying she owns five of these properties, is it possible that somebody, you know, if there is somebody bigger, higher up in the food chain on this drug operation, then she is allegedly? Is it possible somebody put these in her name just to have her be like the front of this instead of somebody else? Well, I don't know if she's a front, but that might have been a way to launder money. Maybe they're laundering money through her, among other things.

I don't know where she's getting that money. She's not making that kind of money selling marijuana. I can tell you that. She's not making that kind of money. Somebody is supporting that lifestyle. I forget what they say. You need to have. you've got to be making some kind of money off of Instagram, and I don't think the bathing suit

companies, or I can't imagine who would be doing that, except I, and I'm not that familiar with social media, but there are ways that she can still make money doing this, but not to be buying properties all over Brazil. Somebody's supplying that cash, and I think that's the big guy. well there is also a talk of potentially even though she's you know all over social media talking about marijuana of course um but there is talk about possible um in one of these articles written about this talk about potentially narcotics and maybe there's more money in narcotics um but again you know she's obviously innocent until proving guilty but there would be a lot more money may be involved in narcotics than in the trafficking of marijuana, wouldn't you say?

I'd say so. And they said she got caught at the airport, but they didn't say what she got caught at the airport with. So I'd kind of like to know what that was. Were those pills? Was it powder or was that weed? That might make a big difference. Yeah, that might make a huge difference. It says that it's illegal, apparently, to sell marijuana in Brazil, but it was decriminalized for private and personal use in 2006 in Brazil. So I don't know how one gets a hold of it if you can't buy it. I don't know. Maybe you have to have a license. Maybe it's something like that in Brazil where you can purchase it and use it for private use, but you just can't be like selling it without a license. So it'll be interesting to see how all of this pans out. But she faces potentially up to 25

years in prison if she's found guilty. So that's a lot of time for somebody who's 23 years. old. You know, she'd be 48 years old if she's convicted and gets that much time. Yeah, she's gotten herself into a bind. I don't know what else to tell you, tell her. She's in trouble. Yeah, they opened the investigations after she was caught with drugs inside an airport allegedly. So, you know, there's some there there. And she'll just say, look, I'm advocating for cannabis use. This is going to be her defense. I advocate for cannabis use on social media. I'm being targeted because of that. so it'll be interesting to see how it pans out. Denny Boone, thank you so much for your time.

I really appreciate it. Thank you. Now, again, Melissa said is denying all of these allegations. When she was arrested, she was surrounded by the reporters, as I told you earlier, and she simply says she's an advocate for smoking marijuana, and she denies being involved in any trafficking of drugs. So we'll keep an eye on this and see where the case goes. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix.

I'm Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being. with me. I'll see you back here next time.