The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 1.18 I'm Disgusted & Shocked By The "American Nightmare" Kidnapping Witch Hunt & Today's News

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

Get an exclusive NordVPN deal here https://NordVPN.com/phil It's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee!   Catch up on the last show: https://youtu.be/JWIoGBgcjd8?si=hddBR7Pn_yooYDoc –��� TODAY’S STORIES ✩ – 00:00 - Netflix’s “American Nightmare” Exposes “Gone Girl” Not-So-Fake Kidnapping Story 05:16 - YouTube Removes Channels Promoting Andrew Tate’s Real World 06:15 - Fujitsu Bugs Caused Hundreds of Wrongful Convictions 09:35 - Sponsored by Nord 10:35 - Norway Considers Halting Overseas Adoptions 12:17 - DOJ Releases Report on Failed Response to Uvalde 14:53 - Your Thoughts on Yesterday’s Show ——————————   Produced by: Cory Ray Edited by: James Girardier, Maxx Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks Art Department: William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Star Pralle, Chris Tolve  ———————————— #DeFranco #AndrewTate #Netflix ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sup, you beautiful bastards. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show, your daily dive into the news. And we got a lot of news to talk about today. We're talking about this crazy fake kidnapping that turned out wasn't fake, adoption crackdown, new Andrew Tate bans, the DOJ scathing report about the Uvalde failure was just released,

and how people's lives were ruined or lost over an accounting bug. And then there's even more. So buckle up, hit that like button, and let's just jump into it. Starting with, we need to talk about this insane situation involving Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn, whose names you might be like, they sound so familiar. And that's because they were at the center of a situation that was dubbed the real-life Gone Girl.

And they're now the focus of a new docuseries called American Nightmare. So let me break it down for you. Denise and Aaron, they start dating shortly after Aaron breaks up with his then-fiance. And in early 2015, seven months into this new relationship, Denise learns that he was actually texting his ex about how he wanted to get back together. So she confronts him, and for two weeks, they try to work through it,

trying to rebuild trust. Within one of these nights, going upstairs to sleep around midnight. In this, after an emotionally exhausting round of trying to talk through this in their Vallejo home. But then, three hours later, they're woken up by this blinding light, with a voice in the room reportedly saying,

wake up, this is a robbery. When they look, they say they saw at least two men in wetsuits, with one of them throwing zip ties onto the bed, ordering Denise to bind Aaron's hands and feet. And Aaron recalling to ABC, he got my laptop and then forced me to give up my social security number. My bank account tells me I need to stay there till the morning. I have to call in sick to work. And they had given me Denise's passcode to her phone. I need to text her boss and tell him that she had a family emergency and was gonna be gone for a week.

Then one of the intruders strapped swimming goggles covered in duct tape over their eyes, placed headphones over their ears, gagged them and sedated them, then taking Denise outside, forcing her into the trunk of a car and leaving Aaron to pass out before he could call anyone. When he woke up the next day,

even though the intruder had made threats, he called 911. But then going down to the police station, giving a statement, telling his story, but pretty soon he realizes, oh, they think I'm lying. The story you're telling here, I'm buying it all. It belonged to me. There ain't no frogmen came into your house. Nobody dressed in wetsuits or... It didn't happen.

The detective then accusing him of killing Denise during a domestic dispute. Aaron lawyers up. And that same day, the San Francisco Chronicle receives an email from Denise's kidnapper with audio proving she was still alive. My name's Denise Haskins. I Aaron lawyers up. And that same day, the San Francisco Chronicle receives an email from Denise's kidnapper with audio proving she was still alive. With that along with the kidnapper's manifesto and a ransom demand of $8,500. Meanwhile, Denise says she had been raped twice at a remote location by her kidnappers. Within just two days later, Denise being found alive and alone some 400 miles away in her hometown of Huntington Beach. They're telling ABC, When he opened the car door, I thought, this is it. Either I'm going to hear a gunshot and that's it, or I'm going to get pushed off a cliff.

And it was guiding me and I thought I was walking to my death. And then I heard a door close behind me and and I pulled up the blindfold, and I thought, oh God, he is going to release me. So the cops are like, okay, maybe Aaron didn't murder the girl. We've seen and or read Gone Girl, so we know how this story goes. And that same day, they hold a press conference,

and they publicly accuse the couple of trying to pull off a hoax. Mr. Quinn and Ms. Huskins has plundered valuable resources away from our community and has taken the focus away from the true victims of our community. But then, pretty soon after, Denise's attorney gets a copy of yet another email the kidnappers sent to the Chronicle,

and it's just like straight up bizarre. Within describing themselves as college-educated career criminals, even drawing comparisons to the crew from Ocean's Eleven, saying that they only abducted Denise as training for more high-profile targets. Also saying she wasn't even the intended person, saying they were actually looking for Aaron's ex-fiance. With them then going on to explain they actually felt so bad about that and so that's why they let her go.

But that's also not where it's done, because then they also sent another letter to the Chronicle threatening the Vallejo police if they didn't apologize to Denise, saying, We cannot stand to see two good people thrown under the bus by the police and media when Miss Victim F and Mr. Victim M should have received only support and sympathy. So it's all weird as all hell, but get this, we're still not done because everything changed again three months later when another home invasion case eerily similar to Denise and Aaron's story popped up near Vallejo. It was another attempted kidnapping. But this time, the couple fought off the intruder who dropped his phone before running away. Friends of the police were able to trace the device back to 38-year-old ex-Marine and Harvard Law School graduate Matthew

Muller. And get this, inside his home and car, they found Aaron's laptop as well as a pair of duct tape goggles with blonde hair. So ultimately, that piece of shit gets 40 years in prison. It was victims say, you know, that's not enough. Especially because Denise and Aaron claim that there was more than one kidnapper, right? So we're talking about potentially co-conspirators still at large. So I guess there is a silver lining for Denise and Aaron, right? They ended up getting two and a half million dollars as part of a settlement in their lawsuit against Vallejo Police. But still, you know, it could be argued that it is hard to put a price tag on this level of trauma, harassment, defamation. But it is better than nothing, all things considered.

But I think the final thing that fucks with my head about this story is that seemingly the monster or monsters who terrorized these people put Denise through this nightmare. They were seemingly so much more empathetic than the police who victimized Aaron and Denise, tried to assassinate their character, actually successfully for a long time. And after all's said and done, they give out a sheepish whoopsie. Because understand, I'm trying to make this situation consumable for you

in my daily show format. Watch a documentary on this. Deep dive into this situation. You will be fucking livid if you're not already. But that's where we're going to leave this one for today. And I got to pass a question off to you. What are your thoughts here? Let me know in those comments down below.

Then, in social media news, we have YouTube going after what's been described as the cult of Andrew Tate. With YouTube now removing even more channels that are promoting Tate's The Real World program. And that, notably after a Vice investigation detailed alleged predatory practices. With Vice saying that the program, which has subscriptions that start at $49 a month, has critics who claim that the platform targets and exploits young men and teens by promising them money and success if they commit enough time and money to The Real World, which advertises itself as the most advanced financial education platform where you escape the trappings of the Matrix. One former member claiming they spent up to 16 hours a day making social media videos to promote tate saying though he's out now and he feels like he

escaped a cult and these bands that we're now seeing they're just the latest actions being taken as we talked about in the past google and apple took the real world app out of their app stores youtube also said it previously took down channels associated with tate and the program though you advised saying there were still accounts with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that pushed it still up now youtube has banned a handful of new accounts including ones called out in vice's article. And as far as the official reasoning for the ban, there are different ones.

You had a spokesperson saying it's against the terms of service to prominently feature content from a previously terminated user, adding that another was banned for violating the scam, spam, and deceptive practices policies. And then, I am so sorry we accidentally sent you to prison. That is what this tech company right now is saying to hundreds of people.

Though to understand this, we gotta jump back to 1999, because that's when the British Post Office started using the Fujitsu Horizon IT system to automate sales accounting, which sounds boring and sanitary enough. But shortly after it was implemented, local post office managers or sub-postmasters noticed that money was seemingly going missing.

And the state-owned post office took the side of the massive tech company, saying, hey, this software, it is reliable, and the money missing was obviously the fault of the postal workers. And so between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted for theft and false accounting, and 700 were convicted of criminal offenses. Right, so some went to prison, many were financially ruined, and some even took their own lives because of this.

And again, these prosecutions were based on the Fujitsu Horizon software, which, lil' whoopsie, turned out to be full of bugs and defects. So in 2016, a group of these postal workers sued the post office, with them then taking the high court in London another three years to find that the horizon system was buggy and that the post office actually knew. And following that legal win, hundreds of sub-postmasters came forward. So far, reportedly, only 93 convictions have been overturned. And understand, these convictions have been called

the greatest miscarriage of justice in British history. And that's not some random being hyperbolic. That is literally how the government has described it. And so following the 2019 win for the sub-postmasters, public inquiry was launched in 2020 that'll determine who's responsible for this insane clusterfuck. This has also gotten a lot of attention

because of a recent TV drama where it centered around the impact on the sub-postmasters' lives and it's caused massive public outrage, even prompting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to announce plans for parliament to quash hundreds of these convictions. And also this week, we ended up seeing the tech company

actually apologize for their part. The head of their European division, Paul Patterson, saying to a committee this week, We were involved from the very start. We did have bugs and errors in the system, and we did help the post office in their prosecutions of the sub-postmasters. For that, we are truly sorry.

Even the company's global chief executive apologized as well, saying, Fujitsu has apologized for the impact on the Postmasters' lives and their families. And over 2,500 sub-Postmasters have received compensation from the government in connection with this. That's also been bogged down with delays, and many also say it's not enough. An argument that Fujitsu should absolutely be on the hook. And Patterson, Fujitsu's own, agrees, saying, I think there is a moral obligation for the company to contribute.

We have a part to play and to contribute to the redress fund for the sub postmasters. But right now, we don't know what that's actually going to look like. Patterson just saying that once the public inquiry concludes, they'll sit down with the government and discuss exactly how much the company needs to pay out, which my response is whatever number gets thrown out there more and then maybe more again. And then why not a little more on top of that? Also, notably, while the version that they use has been updated since this whole fucking nightmare, the CEO of the post office has also declared to lawmakers their intention of getting off Horizon IT's system, saying it's outdated, it's clunky, it's old, but it does what it's meant to do. We will be getting off Horizon, and that is our intent.

Also, there's another question here that needs answering. If the money reported in the Horizon system was never actually missing, what happened to the real money that the sub-postmasters paid to cover the loss? And there, infuriatingly, the post office CEO said they don't know, but Sky News reported that there is actually a chance it went to numeration packages for executives. Like, this is the kind of shit that makes you want to tear it all down. When you're Joe Blow, it's a crime. If you're in a power position, it's a fine.

This isn't spilt milk. This isn't broken china. People's lives were lost and ruined. The fuckheads responsible for this should be dragged from their beds as they cling to their silk sheets. Or not. I might just be hangry. I'm gonna go get a Snickers and then I'll get back to you. I get, I get a little dictator-y when, uh, when I'm hungry. Also, for legal reasons, everything I just said, I'm being hyperbolic and or sarcastic. Moving on. And then there's even more news that we gotta talk about today, but I gotta take a second to

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That's nordvpn.com slash phil, the best deal on the internet, and it's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. And then we need to talk about stolen babies, fraudulent paperwork, and years of lies. Because those are the reasons we're seeing some Nordic countries now moving to stop their citizens from adopting kids overseas.

With the first country to bail on the industry being Sweden, which halted adoptions from South Korea late last year over paperwork concerns. Then this last Tuesday, Denmark's Overseas Adoption Agency announcing that it'd be winding down its international operations. And then that quickly followed by the Norwegian government announcing they're halting things until they conduct an investigation. Because for years, many people who have been adopted from places like South Africa, the Philippines, South Korea, and more, they've been shouting from the rooftops that their paper trails are full of fraud and just don't make sense. And looking into it, it's because often corners were cut,

at times to just make the adoption faster, other times trying to hide the origin, which then often makes it hard for kids to find their biological families. But in other cases, it's far more malicious. Like for example, you have kids being registered as abandoned, only for it to be later discovered

they actually had living relatives in their native countries that would have taken them in. And in another case, right, there was an investigation by a Norwegian paper finding that in the Philippines, where many of these overseas adoptions are happening, some kids were just flat out sold and given fake birth certificates, which is why we're now seeing things like the head of the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth, and Family Affairs saying, adoptions must be safe, sound, and in the best interest of the child, and adding, our assessment is that the risk of illegalities is real. And so, of course,

with this, the question is, well, what happens from here? And as far as Norway, they said that as far as cases in the middle of the pipeline, they're gonna be allowed to finish. It was unclear if the same is gonna happen in Denmark. There's also the question of, well, how many people is this going to affect? And actually, as it turns out, fewer than you might expect. Because while thousands of people

may have been affected over the decades, it's actually less common for overseas adoptions to happen nowadays. Many countries actually generally prefer for adoptions to happen domestically, which is also why the international industry has seen a major downturn. Denmark's only overseas adoption agency, they used to do upwards of 500 of these a year

in the 70s. Now it's like only 20 to 40 a year. That's not to say that the investigation and changes are not necessary, because if any of those 20 to 40 involves a child literally being sold, that's one too many. And then the response by law enforcement to the Uvalde mass shooting, it was a failure and more kids could have been saved if the officers had responded differently. That is no longer just my personal opinion. What the Department of Justice is saying in their long-awaited and absolutely scathing report on the Uvalde massacre. With them releasing the report this morning, it's nearly 600 pages long, and it largely confirms what we knew from the state investigation, which outlined how miscommunication, confusion, and a lack of

leadership led to a delayed response. And that's even though more than 370 local, state, and federal law enforcement officials responded to the shooting that left 21 people dead, including 19 children. With the DOJ specifically describing cascading failures of leadership, decision-making tactics, policy, and training that allowed the attacker to remain in the school for 77 minutes before police finally stormed the classrooms.

With the report, Attorney General Merrick Garland both citing a number of factors that contributed to this, but specifically outlining one key aspect. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.

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to treating the shooter as a barricaded subject. This was the most significant failure. And that despite the fact that there have been widely established protocols that have been followed for literally decades, they are supposed to move toward the threat until it is eliminated, regardless of the danger it may pose to responding officers

because more people will die if they wait. And that is exactly what happened here. When they got near the classrooms, they heard a round of gunfire and they quickly retreated. And they waited and continued to wait and waited some more, even though hundreds more law enforcement officials arrived. And they continued to wait after even more gunshots rang out from the classroom. And they waited as police began to receive calls and messages from teachers and kids inside the school. In fact, the report went on to detail what they referred to as 10 stimulus events over the 77 minutes, or specifically 10 key things that should have triggered law enforcement to engage the shooter. We're talking numerous separate

incidents, but saying that during that time, no one assumed a leadership role to direct the response towards the active shooter. But then beyond that, the DOJ also described other failures, that including the medical response, the information relayed to Uvalde parents and the public, and specific failures of individual law enforcement officials. Notably, this report has received mixed responses, where some were happy that the agency's findings reaffirmed what they had been saying all along, but then many others say that it feels like it falls short because it does nothing to actually hold anyone accountable. I hope that the failures end today and that local officials do what wasn't done that day, do right by the victims and survivors of Robb Elementary, terminations, criminal prosecution.

Because while the report does outline a number of recommendations, it does not bring federal charges. Though I would say a key thing there is that is by design. The purpose of this wasn't to form the basis of criminal charges, instead to outline ways to prevent this from happening again. And actually this also is there's already

a separate ongoing inquiry by the local district attorney to determine if state charges should be brought. But for now we'll have to wait and watch for updates there. Then finally, let's talk about yesterday today. When we take a look back at yesterday's show, we dive into those comments to see what y'all had to say. And understandably, a lot of the conversation had to do with that botched police raid, where this poor baby, according to its mom, got flashbanged. With most disgusted and furious at the police, though, some impressed.

With Thunder Blade 1995 saying, I can't lie, I absolutely do not have the balls to say we didn't do anything wrong after throwing a flashbang grenade at a medically precarious baby also had someone saying that they were a doctor and saying these cops are absolutely responsible for that child being in the ICU and the congenital heart defect that this child has makes it hard for his body to get oxygen at baseline saying even if the flashbang does not cause a continuous burn what happens is the smoke inhalation would cause his bronchi to constrict

Essentially choking the kid out going on to say much much more You can pause right here to read it all. It's saying these officers should absolutely be sued within an inch of their lives. And then finally, we had Daniel Castaneda saying, flashbangs are not detonated outside the intended target, in this case, the baby's house. Flashbangs are also called concussion grenades

because their sole purpose is to disorient the intended target, so it would absolutely have to be detonated inside the house. The smoke seen on the cam footage is most likely exhaust gases from firing a grenade launcher. Also, just because the manufacturer of the munitions used may claim that said product doesn't contain X, it doesn't mean that it's okay to use around children. And going on to argue the exceptional harm that can be done to a newborn on a ventilator.

But that wasn't the only story that had people sounding off. The assisted living facility expose had people sharing some wild stories. I mean, I had people hitting up the text line going like, hey, please don't share my name, but I gotta share this story. And saying things like, I work as a paramedic and let me say it's a running joke in the EMS community of just how useless and unprofessional the staff of a lot of assisted living facilities are. I'm not saying all are like this, but finding one that genuinely cares or can give accurate factual information during medical emergencies is few and far between.

I can't tell you how many times I've asked a caregiver, what is this person's history? And their response is, I don't know, I just got here. Or I just got him slash her and they've cared for this person for over a month. I've found people covered in their own feces and urine or one lady with a broken femur that according to staff, quote, happened last night when I wasn't here and they let her sleep at all. It needs to be fixed. Also, Nick Beeb sharing, I felt like you were talking directly to me today, Phil. My grandmother with Alzheimer's passed away three months in a Brookdale living facility. This is after my father and I had cared for her condition for five years together. We were continuously pushed to believe they could offer her better support as they had high quality care providers for her condition.

And I could still visit every single day. I had a key to go in her room and one day just had a gut feeling to go back there at 2 a.m. after being home already for my earlier visit in the afternoon. I walked in, saw no nurses at all, and walked in to find her on the floor unconscious. And going on to say she passed away within the hour before my father could even make it to the facility. What I thought would improve her quality of life ended up taking it. Worst decision of our lives. And the last comment I'll share on this one, though there was no shortage of those comments, like if you want to go back to yesterday's show and go through them, there's a lot of people. We had Phantom Bobcat writing, I'm a CNA and no longer work at assisted living facilities because of the neglect. They are

complete money-making scams. Assisted living costs $5,000 to $10,000 a month here in Connecticut, and they will have one CNA and one LPN for over 100 residents. Never put your family member in assisted living. They need to be regulated on a national level to prevent deaths and neglect as reported here. But ultimately, that is where we're going to end today's show. As always, thank you for being a part of these daily dives into the news, whether you're just kind of passively watching this or you're taking part in the conversation. Also, for more news you need to know but you might have missed. I got you covered right here. You can click or tap or I got links in the description.

But as always, my name is Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love your faces and I'll see you right back here on Monday.