Crime Junkie - BWBRSA: Operation Fireball 2.0

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

BWBRSA: Operation Fireball was one of our most popular episodes ever! And it's more terrifying than we even knew because after our episode many women from all over the country wrote in and said they experienced the exact same thing! With the help of Delia D'Ambra we tracked down the bartender and witness from our original story and spoke to a number of other survivors along with an agent from the FBI to figure out what's really going on! Listen to Part One of this story HERE.If you want to learn more about the FBI’s human trafficking task forces and state and national hotlines to report suspicious incidents visit www.fbi.gov and www.thisishumantrafficking.com. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.   Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/bwbrsa-operation-fireball-2-0/

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And I'm a little extra excited because today's episode is really exciting, and one that all of you were asking for. So we pulled together some resources to do a follow-up on an episode that we released just a few months ago called Operation Fireball. So if you're brand new to the show and you have not already listened to that episode, I highly recommend you go back and listen or else a lot in this episode is not going to make sense.

You'll be really confused. But Britt, I think our original Operation Fireball episode was one that I've never seen such a response from fans. I mean, we got completely flooded in our DMs, the fan page, the email inbox. I mean, immediately after it aired and for weeks after. Yeah, definitely. We got so many messages from you all talking about how Jetta's story in the original episode was not only creepy, but how some of you had actually experienced the exact same scenario or at least something really similar to it. Yeah. And again, I did a call out on the episode for people to write in.

It's what I wanted, but honestly, the amount of responses. We didn't expect it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it blew my mind and it made me realize we had to do a follow-up episode. Because again, it was just one after another after another. People all across the United States saying that they experienced the same situation at either a bar or restaurant. Now, remember, Jess's incident happened in Denver. But some of the stories we've read after the episode first aired came from San Diego, Nashville, Seattle, Detroit, even cities in Florida.

And many of them included the detail about two fireball shots or some kind of distinctive drink being ordered by a single person waiting for a date. Now, I've said this before, me not an investigative journalist, but luckily we here at Audio Chuck have one of the finest on staff. So I asked Delia D'Ambra to do what she does best and track down some of the people who noticed what was happening to Jess inside the Old Chicago in Denver and figure out what they thought about the situation and why they jumped in to warn her. Delia actually got to interview both the bartender and the waitress from Old Chicago from Jess's story. So you'll get a little bit of a recap from their perspective. And she actually got in touch with the FBI to talk to an agent about whether or not this whole scenario could be something even much more sinister than what anyone was thinking, like a large scale human trafficking ruse or even a serial killer's tactic.

Oh, my gosh, that is honestly so amazing. Yeah. So are you ready, Brett? Definitely. Well, then let's do it because this is Operation Fireball 2.0. Okay, Brett, so just to recap a little bit, in our original episode, Jess, who was a young woman completely new to the Denver area, was in this bar slash restaurant called Old Chicago in downtown. Right. And she met a guy online who was supposed to be meeting her there.

He told her to order two fireball shots and wait for him at the bar. But then after a while, he wasn't showing up and he texted her stuff like, you know, oh, I'm running late. There's traffic. I'm getting pulled over. Like just excuse after excuse. Yeah. And then Jess said, you know, it just kept getting later and later and later. And the guy just kept making more excuses about why he wasn't there yet.

And to a certain point, Jess started to kind of get suspicious, right? Yeah. I mean, she started to wonder, you know, okay, maybe this guy is standing me up or, you know, maybe he changed his mind, whatever. It happens all the time with online meetups. No big deal. But then while she's still at the bar with the two fireball shots still sitting in front of her, a random guy sat down next to her and started talking to her. Yeah.

And she was even kind of starting to get annoyed by this dude and the fact that she was pretty sure she'd been stood up by this first guy. And she was just ready to kind of say, it's a bus. Let's call it a night and just go home. Exactly. Yes. But the guy next to her at the bar just kept persisting that he buy her dinner and make up for this guy. Who stood her up like the dude was unrelenting. He just kept trying to get her to go to a table with him, eat dinner, have some drinks together.

Well, while that was playing out the bartender, a guy who we now know is named Johnny noticed what was going on. He'd seen the guy who was talking to Jess so many times before literally doing the exact same thing. And the man always sat next to girls who were waiting alone at the bar for another date and who ordered two fireball shots. Where the bar was located at inside the restaurant, you could literally see anything that was happening, at least on the bar side. There were some partitions that blocked the family dining room side. But everything in the bar you could see very wide open. And at that time, you know, fireball was really just starting to come on the scene and was the new trends pretty much in every bar was fireball. So we never see him come in with anybody or he'd always come in separate.

But then somehow he would end up sitting at a table with a girl or somebody else. You know, we would tie the fireball to this person. It wasn't until later that some of the circumstances were like, all right, he's always coming in alone. I don't know his name because it's not sitting at the bar usually. But he always, you know, he's always coming in here and then somehow he's always, you know, he's always ends up sitting with, you know, a woman or somebody else. And then usually ends up leaving with that person. Now, Johnny and his wife are actually big crime junkie listeners. And when he heard the first episode about this, he was floored.

Johnny doesn't work for Old Chicago anymore and actually moved away from Denver a few years ago. But he said as soon as he heard Jez's name mentioned in the episode, a flood of memories came back to him. I remember Jez coming in and sitting at the bar again, being very personable, you know, talking with her, trying to get in, you know, a feeling for, you know, as she'd been there before. This was her first time there, what brought her in. We found out that she was new to town just through chatting. So then, you know, that she didn't really live nearby. But she chose to come to that location for whatever reason. So that's her story unfolded about she was meeting up with somebody.

She had ordered the two fireballs and they said, hey, you know, this guy said he's running behind, order two fireballs. So I'm going to sit here and wait for him to take him. It's like, okay, so I'm going about my business. And then that's really when the wheels start turning. It's like, all right, two fireballs like this is very familiar. Luckily that night we weren't very busy at that time. But the wheels were definitely spinning my head. All right, like this seems too familiar.

And I didn't quite tie it together at that moment. But once he saw the guy show up and sit next to Jez, that's when Johnny said he realized what was happening and told a waitress named Morgan that something was up and they needed to intervene. Wait, so Morgan is the waitress who ends up stopping Jez in the bathroom and warning her. Yes. I went inside and I want to talk to Morgan. It's okay, you know, something's not right here. It's like this guy usually comes in and orders fireball, but he's sitting at the bar right now and he's not drinking water. But this girl came in and she is, you know, she has two fireballs waiting.

And I kind of see his eye contact, you know, him like peeking over at her, like checking her out a little bit and then like going back to whatever he was doing, just kind of like keeping an eye on her. So something, something's really weird. I was like, this guy comes in and gets fireball all the time, right? And so we, you know, we started talking about the times she might have seen him whenever I wasn't there or vice versa. And finally, as more of the pieces of puzzles come together, it's like, I was talking with Morgan again, we kept communicating and it's like, hey, I'm pretty sure this is it. But again, you know, I don't want to jump to the conclusion. And, you know, that's when Morgan just jumped in. She's like, she's going to the bathroom.

I'm going to go warn her like we just need to, we need to warn her maybe not with calling him out specifically, but we just need to make sure that she's aware of possibly what's going on. So just like Jez said in her original story, the waitress like bursts into the bathroom and tells her that the guy at the bar does this all the time and she needs to get away from him. Morgan too heard the first Operation Fireball episode and when Delia interviewed her, she said that she remembered a lot from her and Jez's interaction. I was sort of just waiting for a moment to get her alone to talk to her and so soon as she went into the restroom, I went right there. I didn't want the guy at the bar to see me. I went through her expo line into the back way into the bathroom so he wouldn't wash me and go in there because I definitely feel like I was being, I'm not very good at being subtle and, you know, I've been lingering around. I knew I had one chance to get her to listen to me too because it was, it all seemed really weird and surreal and I don't know how I would respond to someone following me in the bathroom and telling me that a stranger was out to get me. I just wanted to take it seriously. I knew how far fetched it sounded but I was scared, I was really creeped out and I just didn't want anything bad to happen to her.

Even in the moment, I felt really afraid, I felt scared for the girl, I was just really creeped out that someone could go through that much effort to trick somebody into going to a location and just all of the pretending and the lying was a giant red flag for me. I do remember being sort of, being very blown away by how cool she acted when she got back to the bar. I don't think I could have pulled that off but I'm not really good at hiding anything. So I feel like so many of us can relate to Morgan in that moment and I guess what I can't get past is the fact that Jess was able to just coolly and calmly hear this terrifying warning from the restaurant workers that she'd basically been tricked into coming to the bar and the guy behind this whole scheme was just like out there sitting next to her trying to get her alone. And the fact that she was able to get out of this situation without tipping him off is truly incredible to me. And that's actually when Jess mentioned how she tried to dial the number for the guy that she was supposed to meet, the one that she'd been like waiting on and then Lyon said it wasn't in service, like it wasn't a real number. I mean, I think a lot of people would probably start freaking out. Oh, for sure. Yeah, at that point. Now, Johnny says that he thinks Jess was the only person he and Morgan tried to warn and was successfully able to intercept.

He said a lot of the previous times whoever had ordered the fireball shots would actually often join the stranger. They would get intoxicated really quickly and then leave with him. Johnny is obviously much more concerned about the situation now, but all those times before Jess, he just didn't feel like he had enough information to report the guy. We couldn't really prove anything outside of what we had seen. And again, we didn't know what was happening after the fact. So there wasn't really any rules or laws that have been broken enough to where we can contact police or somebody else and say this is going on. Morgan says the conversation she had with Jess in the bathroom is something she'll never forget. She's glad Jess wasn't duped into something terrible and the guy who was trying to pick her up wasn't successful. We never had a situation quite like that before.

And so we talked about calling the police, but we didn't really have anything to tell them. A lot of us, we were really close to a lot of the other workers that worked in the neighborhood. And so after I got off work that night, I even kind of looked around for the guy and didn't see him. And if he'd ever come in again, I would have tried to get something from him, but we never saw him again. What's super interesting is that Johnny said in his interview that he actually did see the guy in the bar one more time after that. And their interaction was super sketchy. I feel like I remember him coming in one time where he walked into the bar and I looked at him again, the placement of the bar in the front door and just throughout the restaurant. You could actually, you know, you'd see everybody that walked in the door. I feel like he had walked in at one point, came, you know, not too far into the door. We had made some eye contact and then he had turned around and left.

And then from that point on, I don't ever remember seeing him, seeing him again. And again, you know, and living in that situation or in that time, you know, never did I think that we'd be sitting here talking about that night. But here we are. So I have a quick question. And I think a lot of the listeners who wrote in about this asked about it too. Did Johnny say why he didn't write down this creepy guy's name? I mean, I assume that every time the guy came into the bar and tried to pick up people who had just ordered the fireball shots that Johnny would have had to check his IDs. You know, I actually thought the same thing too. And Johnny actually mentioned this in his interview. He said that the night that the guy tried to pull a bait and switch with Jez, he would have shown Johnny his ID because Johnny carded everybody.

But he says that he never really like paid attention to the guy's name. You know, at the time, it was after he'd already carded him and she's going into the bathroom that he realizes it's happening again and he can't like pull the card again. And he says, you know, all these years later, there's like no way he can remember it. Which I guess I get. Like when you and I would go out and get carded only like once or twice did a restaurant worker ever notice or even mention that we have the exact same birthday. Yeah, I don't think he'd really look. Yeah, so I'm sure Johnny does that. Johnny's great. We love Johnny. But I mean, say the guy at the bar wasn't using his real name or ID. Like if it was a fake, it really wouldn't have mattered what the license actually said, or if Johnny had remembered it. True.

If you're planning on committing a crime or executing a con or, I don't know, say work a human trafficking network, you probably won't be using your real name or ID anyway. No, that's so true. Now, when we told Johnny and Morgan that we were investigating a bunch of other similar reports from people who'd written into the show, they were definitely surprised. There's no way that this same scenario was played out somewhere else. It's definitely startling to hear that that's happened other places, whether it was the same guy or different guy or person that just goes to show you how scary and unsafe online meeting people can be. And I know we say stuff like this all the time, Britt, but crime-junkie-liferal, be your own detective. Don't trust everyone just because they seem nice or strike up a conversation. Do your research before meeting anyone that you talk with online. And if you get bad vibes from them or anyone else, leave. And here's the thing of this story, right? Like Jess didn't even get bad vibes. Like the waitress, Morgan, had to tell her.

So even if no one's putting off bad vibes, there are wolves in sheep's clothing. And I hate to say trust no one, but just be really careful. Yeah, I mean, be weird, be rude, stay alive, right? Exactly. And that's the motto a lot of women who wrote into us followed. And based on the stories they told us, it probably saved their lives. Okay, Britt, so I think Delia sent you the list of cities where listeners said they experienced the exact same situation or something like incredibly similar as what happened to Jess. I mean, we got hundreds of messages, but we narrowed it down to the ones that like most closely fit. Now, all of these accounts occurred between 2009 and as recent as 2019. So can you read off the cities for us?

Okay, so like you said before, Jess's story came from Denver, Colorado, but we also had stories come from El Cajon, California, Seattle, Washington, Winter Park, Florida, Detroit, Michigan, and Nashville, Tennessee. And if you look at a map of the states and those cities, you're looking at like all four corners of the US and some places in between too. Yeah, it spans the entire country. And when I read through Delia's research and realized just exactly how far and why these reports were coming in from. I mean, it just, it's incredible. Yeah, it's kind of mind blowing. A woman from Detroit named Alex said that in 2018, she met a guy on the app Hinge and they decided to meet up at a bar. But he claimed he was running late and told her to order two shots for them. Now he kept getting delayed and delayed and then some other guy sat next to her at the bar and tried to pick her up.

Thankfully, she called a friend and left unharmed. Another girl named Amanda from near San Diego wrote in and said that back in either 2009 or 2012, she met a guy on plenty of fish and they arranged to meet up. The guy insisted that they meet at a bar that was like kind of far away from where she lived, but they ended up agreeing on a place kind of in the middle. So Amanda said that the guy she was messaging told her he was running late and to order two fireball shots and wait for him. After like a half hour, Amanda felt like she'd been ghosted and she tried to call her dates number. Bet you can guess what happened. Oh no. It wasn't in service. Right around that time, another guy like swoops in next to her and tried to get her to join him for dinner. She said that this guy was super pushy and she ended up leaving with a group of friends that she saw walk by.

Wow. Thank God. Yeah. Now in 2019, this is just two years ago. A woman named Mary from Nashville, Tennessee said that she'd just moved to the city very much like Jez and decided to chat with some guys on Tinder. And you know, one of the guys she's talking with, they decide that they're going to meet up. But the guy that she was supposed to be meeting kept giving her excuses as to why he was late. And he told her to order two shots of tequila and wait for him. Before she knew it, another guy slid into the bar still next to her and tried to get her to leave with him instead. Now, Mary's story to me is actually a lot like Jez's because she decided to hang with him for a little bit.

Yeah. She ended up having a few drinks together and he was actually able to get her to leave with him. But as they're walking out, like they are getting up from the bar about to walk out the door, literally crossing the threshold of the door. The bar's bouncer and manager stopped her and told her to come with them. Now, the guy that was with her or who's trying to leave with her, like got really upset and like grabbed her arm and tugged her away, but the bouncer overpowered him. When the bar's manager got Mary alone, he told her that the guy she'd been leaving with had done the same thing a few times before. Oh my God. The manager said that the guy was constantly coming into the bar to pick up women specifically who had been stood up for a date, you know, by another person and who ordered two shots while they waited.

So, I mean, this manager is another Johnny and Morgan. Yes. I mean, this manager and the bouncer, like, I don't know their names. Mary didn't know them either, but I love them. They stepped in and quite honestly could have saved Mary from, I mean, honestly, we don't know, but I know in my gut, it was something terrible. A similar thing happened to a woman named Kate from Winter Park, Florida. Kate doesn't remember the year her encounter happened, but she says after chatting with a guy on Facebook Messenger, they decided to meet up and he told her to order two fireball shots and wait for her. He never showed and another man ended up trying to pick her up.

Kate said she ended up having dinner and drinks with that man and when she went to the bathroom, a server warned her to get away from him. Oh my God. The server said that the guy came in every week, always met a woman whose date were late or had been stood up, always ordered two fireball shots. That's honestly just so eerie and pretty terrifying. Did any of these women remember what the men they met at these bars look like? I mean, are we thinking this is all the same guy or a bunch of different people kind of trying the same trick? I don't know. I mean, at this point, I don't know how it could be the same guy. I mean, all of these stories happened in different cities over the span of like a decade.

That's a very good point because we said it was from 2009 to 2019, right? Yeah. And I mean, that's just from the reports we know about. I mean, there could be tons more, right? Because in so many of these cases, at least in two of them that were wrote into us, like the bartender, the manager knew this was happening over and over again. So I know this is happening even more. So I have a hard time believing this is just one guy who moves around a lot and uses the same ruse to pick up dates. I mean, it's possible, though, right? Like, I'm with you. Nothing good is happening in these situations. Maybe it's not trafficking. Maybe it's not murder.

But I think at a minimum, these women could have been potential victims of a rapist. Yeah. You know, when I saw the list, I remember thinking maybe it was some horrible monster who traveled for work in sales or in transportation and assaults women across the country. I mean, you're right. That's actually like a terrifying thought that it's one person going across the country and who's not even being detected. It's not impossible. One of the reasons I think this is, you know, when Delia was talking to all of these women, she was getting kind of like, you know, what was the description? What do you remember about the guy either that you were talking to online or specifically the guy who showed up? And all of the accounts are a little bit different. Like the woman from Seattle named Trina said that the guy that she matched with went by the name Tor.

He was like very athletic with a Celtic tattoo in like the middle of his chest. And none of the other women with these stories described a guy who looked like that. That is really unsettling. And just a thought that this could be something related to human trafficking or like a really elaborate date rape situation is I'm like frozen in fear thinking about it. Yeah. And I mean, again, I said it was terrifying to think it's one guy going around undetected. But is it more terrifying that they're this underground group where these people are sharing tips? I mean, it's so exactly the same in all these situations.

Maybe it's a ruse that people have just all come up with on their own that they have found works. But what's scarier is what if they're sharing this information? Hey, I tried this in Denver. Or even helping each other being the phone number, being the text messenger. I mean, yes. Oh. So because I think it could be something bigger and scarier, I asked Delia to see if the FBI would want to weigh in on this and give us a little insight into what actually might be going on here. And the Bureau let us interview one of their victim specialists from the Denver field office to talk about all of this.

Just as a disclaimer, the FBI isn't working any of these specific stories as actual cases and they aren't confirming that Jeze's story is in fact human trafficking. They just agreed to have an agent talk with us in a strictly expert general capacity. Okay. Ann Dar, an FBI victim specialist, works predominantly with people who have been rescued from human trafficking and have been victims of online crimes that involve luring tactics. She's listened to the Operation Fireball episode and right away, her antennas went up. She already had a lot of red flags that kind of sent up her spidey sense. And so that was great for her to be aware of that. And then the person that was trying to kind of conversate with her next to her, knowing to kind of have her guard up. That was really, really good. Because again, you never know, maybe that person was trying to exploit that vulnerability of being new in town, not knowing the area, and then trying to lure her away from the bar for, again, we don't know. Was it going to be a sexual assault situation, a carjacking situation, a recruitment in the human trafficking situation? It could have been any of those different things.

And so it was so great for that intervention to take place. So that way she didn't become a victim. I give major mad props to the bartender and the waitress in that scenario for warning her, because again, you don't know what was going to happen next. Anne actually says a common misconception a lot of people make who experience or witness suspicious scenarios that involve luring or online deception is that they don't report it to anyone. They oftentimes out of embarrassment can like delete all of their messages or photos of the person that they were talking with, which actually isn't the best move. I think sometimes when you're in a scenario like that, you just want to wash everything away or you just want to delete everything and helping law enforcement gather that kind of intelligence is key. So having, again, being your own detective and having those things ready to go when you're reporting can be crucial to possibly identifying or saving someone. She says all information, no matter if you think you can't prove a crime is being committed, is still important for the FBI and state task force to receive. We have 56 field offices across the country. We specifically have 86 task forces that are specific to the child exploitation and human trafficking.

And so with that, it's important that we share intelligence, especially if there is a new trend or some kind of new form of recruitment for us intelligence is key. Therefore reporting any kind of suspicious activity can really help gather information for us because you never know we may already have, you know, another scenario where somebody else had a similar situation. And that's additional information for us to build on to be able to kind of have a lead to go off of if we get some of that information coming in. And so again, I definitely recommend if you have a gut instinct, if something doesn't feel right or sits right, it's probably not right. Even though the FBI can't say for sure what exactly is going on in all of these stories. Ann says the basic ruse the victims are experiencing has the telltale signs of something much more dangerous. Some of the ruses of what we see is a lot of times, you know, a potential trap worker or a subject in a case, they're going to do anything that they can to exploit any type of vulnerability. So they're going to look at, you know, who you are when they're contacting you online, they are looking at what vulnerability can we exploit.

So thinking about, you know, the person who was on the original podcast was new in town. So it was someone who was looking for companionship looking for friendship what didn't necessarily know the area very well. And so it's thinking about how they can exploit that kind of vulnerability. They will find anything they can of your weakness, and then they'll try to exploit it. She says in her experience, there definitely can be multiple people behind this kind of behavior. And if this is human traffickers at work, she's not surprised it's happening all over the country. It is a billion dollar industry. And so it's all about making money and profiting off of others. It may not seem visible and they try to stay hidden, but it's right in front of us.

It's in our own backyards. It's in our own communities. And it happens. A lot of our victims are recruited at a restaurant, at a bar. The best thing anyone can do is be cautious online. Yeah. I mean, don't let your guard down if you're meeting a stranger or a stranger approaches you and you feel embarrassed that you got stood up. Right. It's just so normalized to meet people online, whether that be for specific reasons, whether or not it's a meetup group, social activities for friendship, for relationship. And so not to scare anybody away from having those kind of online kind of relationships and friendships,

but it's just making sure that you are your own best advocate and stay on top of your own safety because you never know who you're going to be meeting on the other side. Remember, one thing that really drove this point home for me was something that Johnny told Delia at the end of his interview. Like, after going through his memory of Jesus' incident and learning that so many other people have reported the same situation he saw, he said something really frightening. And one of the things that really stands out to me about Joseph's situation is I met my wife at that same bar, a very similar situation where she was new to town and she would come in there. We got to know each other and be friends and this very easily at some point could have been her putting her trust into somebody like that that she might have met online and going through this same type of scenario. That gives me full body chills. Me too.

So crime junkies, be weird, be rude, stay alive. There are real people out there who will try and deceive you and trick you in your most vulnerable moments. Be your own detective. Be your own advocate, but also look out for one another. We have heroes in these stories, the managers, the bartenders, the waitresses. We are a community, the crime junkie community, and we have to have each other's backs. And if you want to learn more about the FBI's human trafficking task forces and state and national hotlines to report suspicious incidents, visit FBI.gov. And this is humantrafficking.com.

We're actually going to link to both of those in the show notes and on our website because like FBI agent Ann Darces. That might save a life one day. You never know. So when in doubt, report. Special thanks to our number one reporter at Audio Check, Delia D'Ambra, for helping us out with this episode. We couldn't have done it without her. And make sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll see you guys next week for a brand new and more normal episode of Crime Junkie. Crime Junkie is an Audio Check production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?