The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Inside The Violent Street Gang Sweeping The Globe: How Tren de Aragua Became A World Criminal Power

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

In less than a decade, Tren de Aragua evolved from a Venezuelan prison gang into a transnational criminal powerhouse, spreading fear and influence from Chile to New York. In this deep-dive interview, crime expert Chris Dalby exposes how the gang's roots in the failed Venezuelan state allowed it to expand through mass migration, government corruption, and ruthless tactics. We uncover: -How a prison became a criminal empire's headquarters -The gang’s expansion strategy across Latin America and the U.S. -Their business model: extortion, human trafficking, drugs, and more -Ties to the Venezuelan government and political assassinations -Presence in American cities like New York, Nashville, and Bozeman -Use of cryptocurrency and illegal gold mining to launder millions Learn more and check out Chris' book all about Tren De Aragua: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F8VV224G?ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_TOKHAU1WMH9KLPVK1WJU&bestFormat=true Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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the Venezuelan Street gang terrorizing neighborhoods from Santiago, Chile to Queens, New York. But who are they exactly? and how much of a threat do they pose to the United States? We spoke with crime expert Chris Dolby, who reveals the gang's origins from Venezuelan prisons to working directly with the Venezuelan government in everything from illegal gold mining to human trafficking, extortion, prostitution,

and contract killings in cities all over South America. Trendyaragua is a fascinating phenomenon birthed from the failures of the Venezuelan state and the 8 million people who have fled that country in the last decade, allowing the gang to stay. spread its tentacles across the American continents. For more insight, go check out Chris's newest book. He's the best in the business.

Trende Aragua, the guide to America's growing criminal threat. With all the ICE deportations happening in America, this couldn't be a more relevant topic. So please enjoy this conversation with my pal, Chris Dolby, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. So it's Chris. It's good to see you again. This is a great time to be talking about. this subject because of what we see happening in the U.S.

I mean, it's a roundup. It's a roundup of the guilty and the innocent alike. So Trendaaragua, tell us first, before we even go into their presence, their threat, tell us how they, their origins, how they formed. It's fascinating. DLanda Ragua exemplifies one of the things I want people to understand about Latin American organized crime. Every group is different.

Every cartel has a different story, and you need to understand that story if you're going to fight it. Dren Dara Gwa, in under a decade, goes from a small-time prison gang, controlling a prison in Venezuela, which is not a country with a track record of international organized crimes. In less than a decade, eight years, they become the boogeyman for all the Americans. That is, however you cut it, a remarkable story. I want to take you back to just before COVID, 2017, 2019. Socoran prison in northern Venezuela, just about an hour's drive from Garakas, is one of the biggest maximum security prisons in Venezuela.

It is filled well over capacity, several times over. And the government, or at least the leadership of the prison, makes a deal with three prisoners. Niño Guerrero, Larichanga, and Joanne Patricka. They make a deal to say, okay, we're going to delegate this prison to you. You run this prison. As long as you cut us in on anything you make from running that prison. Niño Guerrero, the leader of the three, who are referred to as the three fathers of Trin de Rewo. Niño Guerrero is a brilliant strategic mind. He sets up multiple revenue screen, all of which function completely independently from each other, and all of which can be switched off or switched on whenever it becomes politically inconvenient to have one go.

First of all, the prison. If you are a prisoner there, you have to pay $15 a week every single week. Doesn't matter how you do it, you have to pay. It's called the cause, like causa. You don't pay. You're either going to be resident. to like the worst conditions in the prison or are you going to be beaten or on occasion even killed or kicked out the prison.

So you have to pay. Why would you do that? Because above that are a whole raft of business opportunities and luxuries that the prisoners enjoy if they pay the cost. We're talking at drug stores that sell every drug you can imagine under the sun, cocaine, crack, marijuana, meth, whatever you want. There's a disco, there's a pool, there's a zoo. you can bring your you can bring your wives and children to live with you if you get to a certain

level there's a kids play area they had a kids playground built there there's a baseball diamond where professional teams from Venezuela come to play in the disco like reggaeton stars famous stars come to play there as if it was like another nightclub on a circuit so just imagine that right it's not a prison anymore it's a resort as long as you're in the right gang as long as you're among the right people it doesn't even hold them they go in and out then outside the prison there's the town of San Vicente. Tren D'Aragua controls that town, utterly. They impose curfews.

They force people to design their houses a certain way. They take over public services. And they actually do it far better than what was a failing government in Venezuela. The price of that, every shop, every business, has to pay extortion or protection money. And if you don't, you burn, often with a grenade coming through your window. even multinational companies that were in that area had to pay up. From there, you get to the third circle, which we'll stop for now, their relationship with the Venezuelan government.

The Venezuelan government, when it was trying to put down all political opposition, found it very useful to have hundreds of prisoners, often armed to the teeth that they could deploy anywhere they wanted in Venezuela to put down gangs that weren't paying up or political opponents or what have you. In exchange, Tren Dara Agua got to base themselves in the areas of Venezuela they were being sent. So it was a mutually beneficial agreement. The Venezuelan government got protection. Tren Degro was able to expand.

Incredible. So it really is like a mini government. It's like a mini wing of the Venezuelan government is how people can think about Tren Derawa. I think that's not the case today. At the time, it was certainly an armed group that responded to the Venezuelan. as well in government's orders, and was able to work with them to keep criminal economies going. So in San Vicente, that town I told you about, Jenderagua set up a charitable foundation that got money from the government to run public services, to run like charity drives,

football trainings, increase the number of schools. And they did that, but of course, a lot of it went into that pockets. So it's not really part of the government so much as it was at the beck and call of the government. Okay, and you said the government finds them useful to help keep criminal economies going. Why would the government of Venezuela want to keep criminal economies going? Because they make billions of dollars out of it. So the Venezuelan government is often said to be a criminal state or a mafia state. That's true, but in a different way, perhaps, to how some of your listeners might proceed in.

It's not that Maduro or Rugo Chavez before him were Pablo Escobar. They were not making the drug deals. They were regulating organized crime. They still regulate organized crime. That is, if you're a local governor or a police chief or a general or the leader of you can do business in whatever way you want as long as you pay up to the government a certain kind and you don't step on the feet of somebody else that is being protected by the government. So that's cocaine trafficking, that's people smuggling, that's gold mining.

you know, every, that's corruption, obviously, embezzlement and extortion, all of that makes its way up the ranks. And under heavy sanctions, Venezuela is not exactly a place where having foreign currency is very easy. So you need that criminal flow if you're a government figure to keep your, to keep things wrong. Wow. So it's a way to keep like American dollars in the economy in a way. For sure. For sure. Or euros or whatever they're dealing in. It's very, you know, every public institution in Venezuela is obviously every institution in Venezuela is controlled by the state. So it's very easy to, through misinvoicing, through false labeling, through, you know, laundering, illegally obtained gold into legally obtained gold. It's very easy to mask all that on the

international stage. And it's not like Venezuela is letting anybody look at its books. Right. Right. Wow, that's fascinating. So it runs, it's operating now, the Venezuelan government, much like how the Mexican government used to work with drug traffickers and drug cartels in the 80s and 90s, you basically are, they protect their favorite cartel and make sure that everything moves smoothly so they can move drugs into America and they eliminate the competition. The difference between Mexico at that time and Venezuela now is that Venezuela is a much more fragile. Venezuela is in an economic crisis, obviously, Mexico has been through several of those, but never on the scale that Venezuela is right now.

And his economy is absolutely destroyed. Millions of people that fled, especially, you know, intellectuals, people from white-collar jobs. Millions of people fled. I think it's over 8 million people now. So that continuity is very difficult. In fact, they did turn on sending that way. What we saw in 2023 at a time when President Biden was considering going back into discussions and negotiations with Venezuela to get oil,

as perhaps a show of good faith, they take down the gun on prison. So for almost a decade, that prison operates untouched. And suddenly, in September, 23, 11,000 troops rock up at that sense, 11,000 to take the prison. But it's surprisingly orchestrated,

A, the leadership of Trennairagua fled several days before. So they arrested a lot of rank and file guys. So yes, they just, the commanded control center that made Tenderagua operate and allowed it to supervise all its operations in Chile and Brazil and Peru and other but in Colombia But what it did instead of destroying a group and Venezuela absolutely says Tenderagua's gone But look we took a prison we arrested everybody except you've got none of the leaders one of the top three was arrested in Colombia a year later But the top two are still out there What it did was it fragmented Tendara

it destroyed it as a top-down organization, and you're now left with different groups that don't really have much to do with each other that all claim that their Tren Dera one. Okay. So tell us about how they expanded out of Venezuela. What was the timeline on that? When did it really begin? Why?

And, yeah, their presence today, starting just in Latin America, in South America. The number one element for Tren Dren Dren Drenner to expand is where millions of Venezuelans were fleeing. That was, it's like the veins in the human body. It gave them the blood, it gave them the oxygen they needed to circulate. So first, 2017, 2018, 2019, you see Tlinderagua move across Venezuela, off the safe passage to Venezuelans moving into Colombia.

That's their first expansion. It's trying to control illegal trails because the legal crossings were closed at the time. So it's helping people get from Venezuela to Colombia along these what are called trotches, these remote trails across the border. But they didn't just get paid to move people across. They would force them into carrying drugs. They would extort them repeatedly.

They would force them into sexual exploitation, which is something we'll come back to. They would essentially extort every drop of blood they could from these migrants in horribly vulnerable circumstances. They would get into debt with some. DeLagua. And then when those migrants ended up setting up a business or beginning to live in Bogota or other Colombian cities, then DeLago would come knocking and say, hey, remember that debt you owe us, time to pay up. So then you're either going to pay them extortion. You're either going to be forced

into prostitution. You're going to be forced to sell drugs or you're going to be forced to be recruited by that. So that's the way they, that's the business model for expansion that they set up, 2017 to 2019. That is still their business model today. And that's what I am sometimes alarmed by when I see these claims of Thindaragua being all over the US. They're absolutely in the US, but not on the scale that we think because it doesn't follow this business model. And I'm not just talking out of thin air. We see that same model everywhere the Venezuelans go, Trinderawa pops up, Peru, then Chile, then northern Brazil, then Ecuador. It happens every single time and they expand every single time in the same way.

So wherever Venezuelan migrants are going to try to find, you know, some opportunity in a better life outside of Venezuela, Strand Araago will follow them to make money out of that. Exploit that, exploit that process, which is an economy in itself, right? You have to get there. You have to pay people to get in. You have to set up businesses. And so they're basically taxing them in horrendous ways the entire step, entire way. For sure. And they expand fast. For example, you look at Chile. Chile, after Venezuela and maybe

Colombia, Chile's probably the worst country who got affected by Senegalagua, and that wasn't ready for it because Chile doesn't have that legacy of organized crime on that level, right? Colombia's used to having international groups. Venezuela to a certain extent. Chile, not at all. So they were not prepared for what was coming. 2020 to 2021, you get reports of Trennagua at the northern border, right? Migrants turning up and saying they were exploited or raped or forced to sell drugs by the time. Body's showing that. People being arrested and

being turned their own members. By that point, by the time the Chilean police woke up to what was happening, they were already in 16 cities across the country, right down to the southern tip. Right. And how strong are they? They're in 16 cities in Chile. What does their numbers look like?

And are these just like 16-year-old kids? Like, we have, most people, have no idea what like somebody from Trenda Aragua looks like. We figure he's like a Venezuelan guy with like a rat tail and like a baseball cap on, like some skinny poor kid. That's how I view them. But actually how powerful and dangerous and strong are they in a country like Chile? So this is the key thing. The frontline members, you know, the ones who are stealing on the street or collecting the social money, are those 16-year-old kids that you describe. But they have no allegiance to Zatirangu. They were never in Tokoran prison. They're just working because it's a way to make

money, right? There's no loyalty there. However, at the time in that sort of 2019 to 2023 period, the guys who are running the show in Chile, Peru, Brazil are hand-picked and they're sent there by the leadership in Tokoran, by Niño Guerrero himself, because they're trusting. Those guys are incredibly brutal. To answer your question, though, they're not that strong when it comes to numbers. We're talking hundreds in a country, not talking thousands. And we're not talking, they're not armed to the teeth like a Cinaloa cartel or a C.J&G or an MS-13. That's not the way they operate. In fact, Dren Dengraguat deliberately goes out of its way to avoid stepping on the toes of larger groups because that is not a fight they can usually win, right?

The way they do it is that they work in spaces where there's no competition. Extortion, while it is huge across Latin America, not many people are extorting Venezuela and migrants, but there's 8 million of them across the region. So that's a lot of money you can get. Prostitution, yes, it's of course, a money earner, but that's usually local gains. That's quite easy to take over if you're as organized as Cinderagua. They also sell drugs that most Latin American cartels don't touch. Ketamine and Tusi or Pink Cocaine, being one of them. Those are really the drugs that they market.

Why? Because another area of their business is nightclubs, nightlife, is a huge. things for the end of that way. They moved into Bogota, they moved into other cities, and they'll take over the nightclubs. They'll buy them. They'll use them as fronts for prostitution. They'll get acts in. And those nightclubs will become sort of like the bars in the Sopranos, the nightclubs is worth for them that I've got to have business. Mm-hmm. Wow. Are they, I'm sorry, do they have, so there's adults that are calling the shots and making these, you know, deals that you've got to have some money behind.

So it sounds like these guys are better funded than say like MS-13 was when they were in San Salvador, you know, extorting bus routes, like city bus routes. Like those guys didn't have any money. I mean, you need to remember Venezuela was at one time one of the richest countries in the Americas, right? So you have an incredible amount of capital flight with those millions of migrants going out. They're incredibly vulnerable. They'll turn to whoever for help and turn their brain on that. They made millions off the back of extortion. I don't mean to make it sound less exciting than, you know, the cartel wars of Mexico.

It's just a different kind of organized crime. And it's a very post-COVID economic model, even though they did start before. But as you keep your head down, yes, they have absolutely murdered a lot of people, sometimes graphically in execution videos. But that's rare. It's not common for saying that I want to do that. They want to keep their heads down. They want to do business.

They want to keep selling drugs. They want to keep offering prostitutes. They want to keep extortals. in businesses, because those are not the types of crimes that are usually going to get the FBI on you, right? They're not flinging fentanyl to millions of Americans. However, now we're at a different stage. And this is where we talk about that fragmentation. Because now you have three broad categories of Dren Deraqua, what I call the core, so the guys who are still in the tradition of Tocoron, who do business, were still connected to the leadership, to the three fathers. You have franchises because Tren der Leragua was

always a brand for hire. If you and I wanted to set up, we were Venezuelan moving to wherever, and we wanted to set up a Tinderawa branch, if we got their permission, we could use the name, which is going to help you to get extortion money, which is going to help you to set up a prostitution ring, but we have to kick money up the ladder. Since the fall of Tocon, there's no more command and control. So those franchises are operating more and more autonomously. And then you have copycats. And copycats is the real problem. Copycats are guys who are just using the Tindragua name because it sounds dangerous, but there's no one coming to get them. If you use the CJNG name in Mexico and you're not part of the CJNG, you're dead within a week.

If you use a Tindragua name now, you're probably going to get away with it. And so those copycats are dangerous because they're not operating in the ways that Tendragua would traditionally move. Memorial Day weekend is almost here, and it's time to kick off Summer Right. When I'm getting ready for the first big weekend of summer, total wine and more is my go-toe, especially when I'm firing up the grill with family. I'll grab refreshing beers, easy drinking wines, and some hard seltzers for the cooler. And with everything that goes into summer, it's nice knowing you're getting the lowest prices.

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So here's one of the problems. Because now Tren Daraue is a boogeyman that everybody's scripted to Dernagua. Every time you arrest of Venezuela in Mexico or in the U.S., he's Tren Dago with no evidence given, it's very difficult to map them in those years underbite. Indeed, millions of Venezuelans rock up in hundreds of thousands, at least, of Venezuelans rock up in Mexico. The issue is that Mexican organized crime already at that point has a very, very good criminal funnel to extort and profit the shit out of the migrants as they go north, right?

From the minute they enter from Guatemala, they're in the pockets of the C.J and Givasiloa cartel, even the police, even immigration in Mexico. So the few credible reports that we've had is that Trin de Rangba was essentially keeping his head down in Mexico at the time. They were perhaps working with the cartels, offering them, you know, opportunities, making money off the backs of hate. Here are some opportunities to extortment as well as well as, but they were keeping their heads down. because the target was the US. Even at the southern border,

we begin to see individual arrests of people who have a human smuggling background that's a case in Arizona, in New Mexico, in Texas, are people who popped up back in Venezuela, back in Colombia, back in Peru, as human smuggles. But they were not caught in those states, smuggling people across the border.

What seems to have been the thin derogua playbook in the US is to wait, as I described, is to wait until these Venezuelan migrants were set up, until they were little communities of Venezuelans around the country, move in and set up your traditional Treniragwa criminal economies. So there's a case in Nashville, Tennessee, where a bunch of guys had followed these women, Venezuelan women from Peru, then into the U.S., they got them in Nashville, forced them into sexual exploitation,

and were essentially offering them as prostitutes across several states, from Tennessee down to Louisiana. When that one came up, I was like, okay, that is textbook, Dren Dadawa operation. And the indictment backed it up. There's another case in New York, New Jersey, where there's been a rift in Tendago. A couple of bodies got dropped.

Apparently in Trenada would sell like broke apart and fragmented, where they were extorting businesses, where they were selling ketamine-intruthiate nightclubs, where they were operating inside a nightclub. And you're like, again, again, that is something we've seen in Venezuela, in Colombia, in shitting everyone. Again, you read that indictment. It was done sloppily.

The indictment was rushed. I'm waiting for it to come to trial. There are strong evidence of that case in New York, New Jersey, was real to end up. And that's what I think is lacking in the police or the law enforcement approach to the group. I think it's assumed anyone who's Venezuelan commits a crime is to send that way. That's a dangerous thing. It makes actually America less safe. Why?

Because you're slapping that label onto everybody. So we don't know who really deserves it. And since everybody's getting deported, which, again, I understand as a policy, it doesn't allow cases to be killed. It doesn't allow evidence to be gathered to understand if there's any united or coerced effort. Sorry, can you say that? That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, that's just what happens in times of fear is everybody that's, you know, loosely involved or of the same nationality gets the heave ho.

as we've seen that many, many times in American history. And around the world, you have these nativist cries for, you know, only America for Americans. And yeah, so essentially this is a, this is a relatively organized predatory gang that stays, that really just sticks to exploiting their own people, the diaspora of Venezuelans outside of, of Venezuela. Is that correct? Or have they, have they, you know, Aurora, Colorado last year, all the fucking hullabaloo over, you know, a couple of Trenda Aragua guys with high powered rifles trying to like take over an apartment building? Like, can you explain what happened, actually happened with that? And do they pose any kind of threat to like ordinary Americans, non-Venezuelans in the United

States? So Aurora, Colorado was blown out of a portion. Was there, yes, Venezuelan gang presence in Aurora? Yes. Was it Dren der Agua? Very difficult to say. A couple of the guys involved there had names that popped up back in Venezuela as being known to authorities. So yes, there were Venezuelan criminals in Aurora, Colorado.

Taking over an apartment block, that was completely overblock. That was one incident where there was a gang feud that was developing and they attacked someone or they were trying to attack someone in that apartment. And yes, there had been significant. activity around those apartments. To say that they were taking over an apartment block is a major, et cetera. Are they a threat to ordinary Americans? Yes, but not on the scale that is being described by the administration,

not to your average, you know, Joe Schmoe. What we are seeing is that Venezuelans entering the country are very good at setting up communities of business, legal business mode, it's construction, grocery stores, as that grows, Siena Dengue is getting. be there to pray on all of that and adjacent communities as well. They don't just stay on Venezuelans. We've seen that elsewhere. They do move into other areas of organized crime. So if you're running a prosecution ring in a small American town and Therunegro moves in with a prosecution ring, they're definitely going to try and take over your business, right?

So it's more about setting up a very, how would I say it? Not a secondary level, but a more quiet form of organized crime, a more quiet form of community penetration, because you're doing it by targeting those who are the weakest in society anyway, right? Now, Trump has just lifted the protected status for Venezuelan immigrants, so we're probably going to see the colossal deportation of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the months to come. That is obviously going to weaken massively to their own opportunities. Where do they go? Well, Mexico is not kicking out Venezuelans, and Canada is not kicking out Venezuela. So you suddenly have new opportunities for their move.

In fact, I know for a fact, Canada is very worried about Thren Dara moving in and by their time. Trump's immigration policies are not going to last forever. And Dren Daraa has shown us they're very patient. Well, also, it seems like if ordinary Venezuelan migrants that are trying to, you know, make it the legal way in the U.S., if they're scared to call authorities for any reason, And that just seems like perfect for Trenda al-Aagua.

Now it's like now we can really get our hooks into you and there's nothing you can do about it. Not only that, the Venezuelans would probably be accused of being Sindhiraigua if they pop their head up above the parapet. What I say in the book, in the book, I have two chapters dedicated to Tindaraguay in the U.S. One is like a state by state by state and I break down the cases talking about Tendera-Aguyenia.

It's not all 50, but it's a lot. in most of the states I'm like you definitely have a presence of something nothing tells me that it's but in some lost in sort of the weeds of indictments and court cases you see little snippets that are

worry little snippets that are evidence of Trin Dragua or at least their members being there. What is the biggest presence? What area of the US has the biggest actual Trenta Aragua presence? Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey. Right. Yeah.

Right. Yeah, Roosevelt Avenue, you know, anybody that needs to buy some pussy when they're in New York City, you just go to Queens, you go to Roosevelt Avenue. That entire place looks like, it doesn't look like America. I mean, it really looks like a bizarre or, you know, a fairia, an open air market in Venezuela, in Colombia. It's wild. What you're seeing in New York and New Jersey is what you would describe you know. I think the presence there now is to a point. where one of two things is happening and perhaps both.

One, those 16-year-old kids that you described earlier in the interview are now the public face-up saying that I want. You've got dumb kids committing idiot things like beating up a cop or shooting a cop, getting arrested, and then being said that I want. But of course, if you're a 16-year-old in New York being recruited, you know nothing of how this game operates. You can't give any actionable information that will help take down several levels above.

Right. The second thing is that you're beginning to see that entrenched mechanism where the train or this fragment group called the anti-train are operating nightclubs, a selling ketamine, a selling truce, yes, small amounts compared to what we saw in other countries, but it's there. It's a beginning of a present. Florida, sorry, one more thing. I think New York and New Jersey have been less panicky about the way they've dealt with it. They've been fed. cool-headed in the way they built their investigations. So you're seeing a lot of individual incidents, some of which might be mislabeled, some of which might have nothing to do with Sindaragua, but there's enough now that there's no smoke without fire. You look at Florida and Florida and Texas, and sadly they've gone too far away. Florida and Texas have gone to the point where anyone's Sinda Raguay, anyone's being deported, we make a big show of it, you know, governor shows up,

attorney general shows up and that becomes a surface right is look at all the things that Iguid guys we got and we deported without proving that they are and without caring about how to actually know how deep they are in those states Texas has a real problem but it's impossible to know how bad because no one's looking wow wow and so with this is like such a migratory almost nomadic gang it's like you say hey well look they're cracking down on Venezuelans in the US let's go to Canada Like it's, you know, they seem like primitive, like, Native Americans who would, who would follow the Buffalo wherever it was during the season, right? So it's who's calling shots? Who's calling shots?

Like, spanned over this gigantic continent that is the Americas, multiple continents. Are there the two leaders that are left? One got arrested. The two that are left. Are they calling shots from South America, two guys in New York? So I doubt it. I highly doubt they have that level of commanding control. The issue is with Dendaragua is that those two guys,

we didn't yet talk about this haven of gold mining that they have in southern Venezuela. That was always their secondary power, and I'll loop back to America in a second. In southern Venezuela, there's one of the richest gold deposits in the world. And it's called the Orinoco mining arc. There's one town, one little town, with two big gold mines next to it,

which is controlled by Zendaraj. has been since 2015. They have not been bothered there. The government has never moved in and forced on that area, even though it's very well documented. It's called Las Claritas. There's another chapter about that in the book. Johann Petrika, the number two,

he went there in 2017 to build this up to what it is today. There is very strong evidence that Niño Guerrero, the other leader who escaped from Tokonon, is also there or at least moves in and out of there. From there, they're not bothered. So they can set up whatever they like. I don't think these guys are leading operations in New York at the street or at the city level. But what it is, getting a cut of activities in the US back to Venezuela, absolutely, absolutely.

And that, however, is one thing where the terrorist designation, the FTO designation, really does help. Because it opens up a whole new methodology for following the money, the seizing assets, for building RICO cases. What I'm not sure is how well that's being done. because the RICO cases that we've seen being assigned to Linderawa members since Trump came to power have not been that convincing. You can see it's very quickly done to show results rather than the multi-year investigations that the RICOes that you would have seen against Mexican cartels, for example, or even Islamist

terrorists were built. It was a much more cautious process. I was speaking with Daniel Brunner, who's a special agent 20 years with the FBI. He lives in Montana. And he's saying he's equally astounded. at the sloppiness of the legal work. But he's saying if you scratch the surface, you find Trinidadua wherever you want.

He's talked about Bozeman, Montana, where a lot of Venezuelans have legally entered the construction industry. He says the amount of Tinder contracts I see here in Bozeman, Montana would surprise. Shit. So how do you make money off of

Venezuelan construction workers if you're a Trenda Aragoa gang member in Bozeman? You extort them for what they have. And because they can't go to the authorities. You got to give over up. You got to give a portion of your paycheck on Friday. That's crazy. Each guy doesn't bring a lot of money to the game.

But you multiply that into the hundreds, into the thousand. It's something. Something that I've been hearing also out of Texas, this I don't know to an extent is true. And it sounds weird to me that they're recruiting Venezuelan kids who are coming in on the company. right. So, you know, 14, 15, 16-year-old kids who, and we've seen this across Latin America, right? These kids travel, usually boys traveling on their own. I've heard rumors of some sort of organized attempt to recruit these kids into the game. That sounds possible, but it also sounds like a media distortion or a very easy narrative to build, to sort of criminalize even a kid illegal

migrants. But yes, it's exactly what you said. It's getting their hooks in. And it's not that the U.S. is operating alone. If they have that across the Americas, they have that in Chile and Peru, in Peru right now, Tren Dago has continued to be very scary. They shot a leading Venezuelan dissident on the orders of the Venezuelan government in Chile last year. In Brazil, they're still operating quite strongly. That's fascinating. Hold on, Chris. I read about that in Insight Crime. So repeat what you said, but go into detail about it. Trenda Aragua, this dirty prison jungle gang, no offense, they murdered a dissident on the orders of the government,

or they were contracted by the government. That's fascinating. Can you explain that for our viewers a little more? For sure. So Ronald O'Helaire was a not particularly high-ranking dissident against the Venezuelan government. He was a former Venezuelan soldier. who fled with, as many did, and went to Chile. He was living in Santiago, the Chilean capital,

and in March, 2024, he was found in a suitcase buried under cement. I think nine or ten days after he was abducted from his apartment by gang members dressed as Chilean police. Obviously, no one's been prosecuted for this. So we don't have a court case to say with evidence here. saying the Rago was contracted. But Chilean authorities and law enforcement say this was a hit. This absolutely

came from up in the Venezuelan government. The name of Dioszado Cabellio has been thrown around. It's like the number two or three below Maduro because O'Hara was an embarrassment because O'Hara knew too much about something. The reason that that was controversial is, obviously, they murdered a dissident in a foreign country. In Chile, which has a reputation of being

quite a safe haven. It's very Western. Chile's got very strong institutions, you know, compared to the rest of Latin America. Yeah, that hit is very audacious. So it also recontextualizes the relationship. Right. The narrative that Venezuela was pushing after September 2020, 3, when they sent 11,000 soldiers to take Dokron was we've killed them. They don't exist.

If you keep saying they exist, you are simply lying about Venezuela. You're trying to hurt the Venezuelan nation. enemy of us because this gang doesn't exist anymore. Clearly bullshit. Then, less than a year later, they're killing someone on order of Venezuelan officials. That tells you something. It tells you that the Venezuelan government, the Trin de Rairo relationship, is not a commander and servant sort of relationship.

It's like everything with the Venezuelan government. It's layered. It's a multi-layer. There's a network of military, police, governors, central government. government apparatus, intelligence officers, soldiers who have their own relationships with gang members. And so it's not that Maduro himself ordered Brasota will be killed. Maybe he did, but I doubt it. It's someone in the government wanted him whacked and someone had the contact in Chile with

Narewa went to get it done, right? So that tells you more when Trump and much of the intelligence community in the U.S., especially Chelsea Gabbat, says the Venezuelan government is sending Trenneragua into the U.S. on purpose to destabilize this country, that's simply not true. Would they use them to commit similar hits in the U.S. if they needed to? Absolutely. Are they making money off the interaguerreations in the U.S.? Absolutely. But is it a coordination invasion? Nothing shows that. Now, did, is it true that they emptied their prisons because their prisons are so overcrowded? Is it true that they kind of opened up the gates and said, all right, if you guys leave the country, you can go free? Yeah. To a certain extent,

Yes. So before they talked to Kurokorn, the government was reforming prison. So they had a prison reform plan. So they were essentially canceling these agreements they had that I talked about at the beginning where they would delegate control of a prison to a gang. They were removing all that. So they would move into prisons, take everybody over, kick some of them out, arrest the bad guys, and move the prison on. There is a prison in Karakas called the Elicoid, which is one of the most notorious prisons in Latin America. And there, that's almost like an El Salvadoran level horror show, right? Where people are thrown in there, never to be seen again or not for years. And so the rumor is the gang members who stepped on the wrong side of Maduro are locked up in the Helicoid prison in Caracas. However, the ones from Thedaragua are at large and we don't know where they are. I believe in there's evidence that they're in that gold mining territory in the South,

but they're certainly not locked up anywhere. Tell us about the gold mining, because I know that that's big business in the northern part of South America, Emerald mining and Columbia as well. Tell us how Tranda Aragua makes money out of these gold mines. So, again, chapped about that in the book. There were gangs there before that I went moved in. They were called syndicates or syndicatos. They called themselves syndicers because that's the Spanish word,

one of the Spanish words for union. So they posed as unions for the miners. And indeed, they would collaborate with the miners, force them to work for them, pay them, bring in girls, bringing food. But they're making money locally and then sell the gold to the government. Then the L'IGAWA comes in and just formalizes it.

They take over the syndicato de las Claritas. Las Claritas is the town that they control in that area. And they're essentially bringing their own people. They bring in prisoners from Tokoron. They bring in poor workers from around Caracas, from around Paez del Tui to work in the mine and be an answer to Tendaiwa. Progressively, they, of course, when you bring in thousands of migrants, you create a demand for services. So then whether it's prostitution, whether it's restaurants, whether it's hotels, whatever. Equipment needs to come in to service the mines.

They begin to install and control that. More money comes in. from there, they are extracting dozens. To be honest, I don't have a figure about how much gold is being extracted. I've heard figures that would literally bust up the global gold market, so I doubt it's that height. But, you know, let's say dozens of kilos of gold every year coming out. And that are being laundered into the legal gold market.

How? Well, it just so happens that the state-owned mining company of Venezuela invests in that area. and buys the gold from all those mines. There's even front companies that pose as legal that are essentially 10-Darrawa front companies that sell the gold, and there's official transactions to the Venezuelan state mining company

that can then sell that gold abroad. Usually it goes to Dubai. Wow. So that's how they are making millions from that. Again, it's not the hundreds of millions of a Citadel Hotel, but they don't need that. They stay just in millions to keep going. That's fascinating.

So it's not actually the Venezuelan government buying gold because they have one of the most worthless currencies. The Bolivar is like you wipe your ass with it. Everything is a dollar. Everything is a dollar. Everything, the underground, right? Yeah. Like, like unofficially, everybody uses dollars, but officially it's the Bolivar.

But I don't think their central bank is buying gold, right? No. So there are cash reserves in Venezuela in dollars. These accounts and these sales are not being done in bolivars. The worthlessness of the Bolivar is so bad now. that essentially street crime dropped, like muggings dropped in Venezuela because it wasn't worth, literally wasn't worth shooting people anymore. Then once they started using the dollar and the dollar became an unofficial currency,

you see mugging go back up. Okay. So they have the currency in dollars to buy that gold. They have the, I see. But they export that. You're saying they sell it to places like Dubai. Exactly. So that gold goes to Dubai usually.

Wow. So it's intermediaries that are buying from the trend. Araagua mines that are then selling it legally around the world. Those intermediaries are one of the really mysterious parts of this. We haven't been able to tell. We've tried whether it's actually intermediaries or whether the intermediaries are basically just ghost companies, right, to make it seem like to make it a bit harder to trace the picture. Sure.

But the thing that is selling truth of Venezuela can. Wow. Whether there's an intermediary or not that Venezuela state money is going to send that out. Now, how that state money was obtained, we don't go into. And then we haven't talked about crypto currency. Fendragua is very strong on crypto. We know that for a fact. When they seized Tokon prison, there were Bitcoin mining machines there. There were Bitcoin mining machines in Tokon. So they, and this was like... Well, Bitcoin is great for countries like Venezuela. It's literally the best use case for

for Bitcoin is for places where the government has completely destroyed the value of people's money. So I'm actually not super surprised. I'm surprised that they were mining Bitcoin in prison, though. I'm starting to like these guys, Chris. You're turning me on to them. Look, let me tell you the way, one of the surprising ways they made money. They extorted baseball academies. You know Venezuela's obviously got a huge pipeline of baseball talent to the,

the Major League Baseball in America. So every team, I think almost every MLB team had an official academy, but there's a winner at some point. They're now all closed down. Gened Agua would go to baseball academies and either extort the owner or extort the players

based on their future careers. So they'll be like, okay, you don't have to pay us now, but we're going to like buy into your contract and you're going to have to pay us like, if you get transferred to a professional team, we'll make a cut, so it's got to the point that major players,

major Venezuelan place in the U.S. was still paying, not San Diego that we know, but Venezuela organized crime for what was happening back in Venezuela. Because they're like, if you don't pay us now, you know, you made it rich in the U.S. If you don't pay us now, we're going to go blow up your baseball academy or kill your coach.

And do they back these threats up? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. They very famously killed a coach in one of the top coaches in Venezuela who refused to pay up shot in dead in front of his academy. And there's, and there's no, you know, the Venezuela legal system. I can't imagine that they're solving a lot of these murders. No, you wouldn't be, you know, you do see transgender members in Venezuela or in

Colombia who were condemned to life in prison often enough. In Venezuela, it's either, if you're low enough that we don't care, we can use you as a, oh, look, we're doing something. We'll throw the book at you. If you have any power whatsoever, you'll be encouraged to leave the country quietly. which needs to a problem. Now, Tendaragua is such a brand name that everybody who's arrested in the US, in Colombia, Peru and Chile

is a cabesia, is a leader of Tlindraga. Every week I get reports about, hey, you know this guy? Like, top Trenragua guy arrested in company. I'm like, I've heard of them. I send the name to my friends of Venezuela like, nope, they've heard of him. Or they've heard of him as like a low-ranking guy, right? So in Venezuela, they're saying that they don't exist anymore. in the countries where they operate,

they're just saying, oh, everybody, we arrest as a leader. And in the U.S. are saying, oh, it's an invading force that needs to be fought with military's might. You're like, the truth is somewhere in the middle of all of those. Sure, sure.

Tell us about, we'll finish up telling us about the Bitcoin mining. That's absolutely fascinating. They were doing that in prison. So, to be honest, what we know is a lot of the rebates, so it's much less of a cash business

than, let's say, the international drug truck, right? We know that, In Mexico, they prefer to be paid in cash. Given the weakness of the Bolivar, given the weakness of the bodyback, given the fact that the dollar is still the reserve currency, it's either pay us in dollars, so for things like the gold trade, or when money needs to be moved abroad, it's all in Bitcoin. The problem is, and now this is what we need from the US, is we need sustained, follow the money actions against Fendiaryahuah to close that gap, because we don't know the scale of their

cryptocurrency operations. We know, or we can hint at the scale of Mexican cartels or for MS-13, because we have plenty of operations that documented that. We don't have that for the Zendayaquahua. And that's what's worrying me. I'm worried that we're in an attitude where those kinds of investigations are not sexy anymore. We just catch-de-port, catch-de-port, seize and move on without building the sort of long-term follow the money strategy that would really help us understand how to the drug was survived and how to really choke it off. What about the drug trade? You know, I found it fascinating when I dived into MS-13 back when they were getting all the press a couple of years ago.

They were public enemy number one. I did a deep dive. And even at their height, the height of their power in San Salvador, drug traffickers wouldn't give them a fucking ounce. they were like, these guys are way too volatile. You know, we're not giving them any of our product. Tell us about, does Trend de Aragua have any relationship to the international drug trade besides just their stupid little like micro-trafficking in the different little markets of their diaspora?

Very limited. There's lots of claims out there that you'll see Senadaguay is allied with CJG. Sen Dengue was allied with MS-13. Neither I nor any of the big researchers look at this, believe that to be true. Marriages of convenience to extort migrants, sure. Marriages of convenience because they have to temporarily coexist, sure. DLindaagua doesn't have the muscle to get in on this trade. They don't have the money to get in on this trade.

There's no indication that they sell cocaine across borders. There's certainly no indication they move fentanyl. The drug that they know how to make and they know how to sell is ketamine. And in a certain strata, that's a wonderful business decision. Because when you're embedded in nightclubs, when you're embedded in prostitution, sure, cocaine is going to help you. But ketamine is the popular thing now. Pink cocaine is the popular thing, what they call Tusi.

And that's popular in South America, right? No, but increasingly in Mexico, increasingly in the US as well. Wow. Much less, of course, because it's coming in. But there's a substrata of party goes that loves. Academy in Europe. It's not in Europe, I would reassure you. But catamines is huge.

Yeah, it started with your people, the Lymies, back in the 80s and 90s. Hey, who are you calling the Limey? I'm Welsh. Oh, you're Welsh. My bad. They invades us too. Okay, so they're, they're, hmm, it's interesting because I believe the military in Venezuela are the biggest drug traffickers.

I think they're hugely involved, at least that's what I've read, in helping smuggle cocaine out of Colombia and have it set sail for Europe and Africa and these places. Do you know anything about that? Yeah, but that's not saying that there are Colombian groups or Colombian groups who operate in Venezuela. In fact, groups like the ELN, the National Liberation Army, a very Colombian group that now is so strong in Venezuela. you're going to essentially say they're in both countries. They control the Orinoco River in Venezuela.

So from the Colombian border all the way up to the ocean, you see this ELN presence. And Trinidadwa hasn't tried to contest that. Why does the ELN control that? Because the Orinoco River is a wonderful way of smuggling drugs to the coast and out into the Caribbean. So that's more where you're going to see that army involvement, that government involvement, with cocaine smother. Has Trennawa moved cocaine shipments, almost certainly? but not on a level that they're trying to compete with the ELN or with the other Colombian groups.

Again, you have to understand the mentality. The one area where they clashed with the Colombian groups was migrant trafficking across the board because the Colombian groups wanted a piece of that action as well. So there you did see clashes between Tinderagua and ELN. But it wasn't to muscle in on ELN core economies like cocaine. It was to protect their own migrant trafficking. Because if DLN took that, Trenrago had nothing at the border, right?

It was such a money earner for that. Now, are they militarized? Is Trenner Oahu, are they militarized at all the way that the ELN and the guerrilla groups, who are now basically the biggest cartels in Colombia? Yeah. They're all, you know, they look like soldiers from the CJNG. Like they're every, they're small armies. You know, they have high, high power weapons.

Yeah. Yeah, DLNs are parable military. Absolutely. That's how it started. You know, they're trained by sometimes current members of the military. You know, so they're incredibly sophisticated. They have high, you know, technology is on par with that of the government. Does Trendairagua have any kind of infrastructure like that at all? Didiara doesn't have military bases like the CG and G would have all training camps.

In Venezuela, they did. not outside. What you are going to see in terms of weaponry is in a place like Bogota or in a place like Lima or in a place like some cities in Chile where they are going to have to fight for their turf even against local gangs because of the nature of the underworld in those cities.

In the US, you're not going to see that kind of activity. And again, it's not to disappoint your viewers and say, oh, they're nothing. No. they're not, you know, toting 50 cow guns and putting up narcotechs. That's not the way they are. What I'm describing here is a much more insidious below the surface spread, and that's intentional. You poke your head up above the water, you get whacked, as happened in the US.

Sadly for Tendaragua, they didn't get hit in the US because of what they did. They got hit in the US because of essentially false narrative of tattoos and an invasion that Trump used to deport all of those people. In Bogota, in 2022, I believe, there was a case of 32 murders assigned to Tendaragua locally, and that was like people decapitated with heads in binbags and you know, Mexican horror shit. But most of those dead were Venezuelans.

It was a Venezuelan-on-Venezuelan gang war, involving another gang called the Maracuchos. Just to show you, they're willing to go that far. or some of their leaders are willing to go that far. There's videos of executions in Chile of like torturing a guy, cutting his ear off, a guy screaming for his life, they pump the back of his head full of bullets.

And they posted those videos online. So you see that as an aspect that everyone has been able to do and willing to do, but only in certain circumstances. The rest of the time, you keep your head down, you've exploited the migrants, you trust that the migrants, they're not going to go and complain, and you make millions of dogs doing it.

Yeah. And certainly you can act more outlandish and violent in countries in South America, right? Because you just get away with it easier, unfortunately. It's just how it is. I'll give you an example. Brazil. We haven't talked about Brazil. In Brazil, the Tindaragua presence is almost only in the north of the country.

In the state of Rorayma. Rorayma is one of the poorest, most remote states in Brazil. And he's the one next to Venezuela. it had hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans coming across. Trinidadagua came in, started extorting them, started profiting from them. In fact, one of the three fathers, Yuan Pizzika, the guy who took over the mines, registered his son. His son was born in Brazil.

And we called him because we, well, we caught the registration. Because Brazilian's flagged it was like, hey, isn't this one of your guys is looking for? But who runs Brazil, or at least much of it, is the PCC. And the PCC are absolutely what you were describing, you know, armed to the guilds. tens of thousands of members unbelievable fly about it would take them a week to kick Thendaragua out of their country

but Fendaragua makes a deal Dendaragua makes a deal with the PCC to say hey you don't know how to extort these Venezuelans we do we've made it into an art form so let us do it in Brazil with there's hundreds of thousands of them and we'll give you a cut we even see in prisons

what knew Venezuelans were arrested and moved into prisons in Brazil and we were expecting okay shit's going to go down here No, in fact, we see that alliance holding in prisons. But on the outside, there are mass graves of Venezuelans in Brazil, 30, 50 bodies over like a year. And we know, well, we at least strongly assume those were Venezuelans who didn't pay out. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about run club era.

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Wow. So where would you rank these guys between on the danger scale? Like between like MS-13 to... you know, the Sinaloa cartel. Like what effect, certainly it seems like their biggest detriment to the places that they operate in is that they commit like quality of life crimes. They make neighborhoods gross and filled with seedy things like prostitution,

you know, street drugs. And of course, the terror that they impose on their own people by taxing them, right? But that's been going on with every every group that's every immigrant group since the Italians in America from the early 19th century, early 20th century.

That's kind of nothing new. Where would you put them on the dangerous scale between like the hype that we have in America from 1 to 10? Like, you know, the truth always lies somewhere in the middle. So where, how do you categorize them? I'll categorize them as a 4 right now,

three to four, with potential to grow. I think America has done in, they used a chainsaw to cut a branch, but I think that the

the Trump hype of it's an invasion, no, nothing showed that. The opposite of they're not a threat to America at all also is not true. We are seeing the same way the operation everywhere else, slowly building up

slowly affecting Venezuelan communities. And as we see in Chile, if you let that fester, you get really organized cells, you get weaponry able to compete with established organized by me in certain cities, not L.A., not Chicago, not New York, but a Boisville-Montana, that's a target. A national Tennessee, that's interesting.

A Battle Rouge, Louisiana, that's interesting. Because you see these pockets of, not that they're going to control the entire cities underworld, not at all, but where they can build a sustainable underworld that will make them millions, absolutely. That could still happen. Of course, deporting everybody that they could potentially victimize is a way of getting rid of them. But Indiraigua is very patient. Venezuela claimed that Indiraagua doesn't exist anymore, they're still around. Chile claimed we broke the back of them when we arrested 32 members a couple of years

ago. They're weakened, but they're still there. Peru said, we've got rid of them. They're still killing people in Peru and putting up locates. So many experiences show Cendaragua is a lot more resilient than you think. And because of the fragmentation, because of that core franchise, copycat model, essentially anybody could claim to be Cendaragua

and keep going. Wow. And do you think their business, their existence really depends on Venezuelans still emigrating out of Venezuela? Yes. Not necessarily. But I mean, when you've got an exodus population of eight million, on top of that,

those eight million are not setting up stable lives for themselves, right? They go to Chile, but Chile cracked down on immigration and kick some of them out. They go to Brazil, same thing. The U.S. is doing it right now. Every time there's that influx, every time a bunch of Venezuela's have to move, that gives Tierra da Lago, another corridor to exploit. And this is really a complete responsibility when you go back far enough. of the government, of the Venezuelan, the leftist Venezuelan government.

I don't know how else you could see anything, you know, how you could view it any different. Venezuela, until 10, I mean, this is, you know, perhaps a good way to sort of as a concluding point. Venezuelan organized crime didn't export itself, didn't go international until Clinton. It simply didn't. You had, of course, organized crime, but these, there were many gangs called Thren. They didn't go outside Venezuela. They didn't. What allowed them to do that?

Brilliant leadership. Absolutely. I'm not endorsing what they did, but unbelievable strategic planning, methodology for recruitment, ability to follow the migrants. Economic opportunity, the exiles, right? The exodus of Venezuela was the perfect, almost unreplicable method to get your people out, set up sales in different countries, and pump those migrants in terms. till they would bled dry.

And then the third political backing, the Venezuelan government went, hey, we'll stay out of your way. We'll stay out of your way. Don't step on the wrong toes. Pay us a cut. We'll step on the wrong way. Kill some people when we tell you to, and you'll be left alone to handle your business.

And that's still the way it is today. The reason that Chenderaue is weakened is not the Tokoran raid of 2023. The reason Zendurangu is weakened is Chile, Peru, Brazil, began to wake up to that reality and actually built multi-year cases to prosecute and understand how they were operating. And we're not seeing that in the U.S.

in the moment. And in your opinion, that's what needs to happen in the U.S.? It is what needs to happen because deporting everybody, okay, fine, that's not a long-term play, right? There's going to be a change in government at some point. There's going to be a change in immigration policy. What doesn't change is the wheels of justice. What doesn't change is the sort of information that you get from really good detective work and prosecutorial work over multiple cases. And we're not seeing that.

And I think we're going to pay the cost of that with Trindera was spread in the US and maybe Canada. Fascinating work you do, Chris. Very, very niche. I mean, I don't know any European that's willing to look at cases. Read case files from fucking Santiago, Chile. But that's why.

Right, exactly. really a fascinating phenomena. Like you look at the Trende Aragua phenomena, and it's a result of, you know, a failed state that is Venezuela. They've ruined, they've taken one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and they've absolutely ruined it. And it's a shame. And made hundreds of billions of dollars doing it.

That's right. That's right. Let's not pretend that it was incompetence. Let's not pretend that it was, you know, deliberate socialist. It was an attempt. to bankrupt the country to enrich a few. Right. Do you think that was the plan even back in Maduro's time?

No, not Maduro. Adoro is the president now. The Chavez's time? No, probably. Chavez definitely has some very shady characters by side. But I think he had at least an ideal that he was trying to live up to. Yeah, he was kind of an ideologue, right?

He was completely crazy. He's the one of the only, I met, I met him. I was in his presence in Brazil once in 2010, 2011. And he is genuinely one of the only. people to ever unsettle me. You just madness behind his eyes, just utterly unhinged, Chavez. Maduro, I think, hides behind this reputation of being like a little bit of a buffoon. Now, Maduro is a shrewd operator.

He knows just what to do to stay in power. He knows just when to crack down. He knows just when to let go. He knows who to back. He knows when to jail political rivals that might threaten him. He's staying in power for a long time, much longer than anyone. gave him credit for. And he's never really been threatened, despite his country imploding

around it. Yeah. Yeah. Man, that continent is run by thugs. I hope it changes. But yeah, you know, we're not, it's tough for me to talk shit about other people. That's what I hate so much about what's going on

on our own country, is that it makes me hard to shit on other places. Look, there's no perfect country. I'm British and French. We mess stop enough of the world. And I live in the Netherlands, who also did their fair share. And I love America, which is doing his fair share right. Yeah. Trindaragua is a transnational criminal threat. It is a little bit weaker now than it was a couple of years ago. Nothing tells me they don't have the capacity to come roaring back. Chris Dolby, thank you so much. Absolutely fascinating.

As usual, uh, you've got a book out about this right now that goes into much, much greater detail. tell us the name of it and where they can find it. Sure. So let's go Tren de Aragua, the guide to America's growing criminal threat. And it will tell you the entire story from the insanity of Tokaron Prison, which is a resort on a level that I've never seen in any other place in Latin America, all the way country by country, their expansion. It will tell you who their leaders are. It will tell you how they make money. It will tell you how they've extorted Venezuelan migrants.

and it will walk you literally state by state through their presence in the U.S. Absolutely fascinating. We'll have a link to that, to the book that you can buy in the description of the episode. Chris, come back very soon. I really appreciate what you do, brother. My pleasure, Johnny. All right, guys. Take care.