Today's Blind Items - Big Evil - Mr. Hedge
About a decade ago, an international criminal ring sourced a great deal of money to fund an investment. This investment has paid off spectacularly for them.
They found a remote corner of an impoverished Asian country, and set up a destination where ultra-wealthy clients could indulge in all sorts of illegal evil. The owners provide all of these things for their clients. They even gave the government a piece of the action.
Child prostitutes, check. Drugs of any kind, check. Other “goods”, which are in specific demand in that part of the world, are openly available in relatively large quantities. Pictures have even popped up very recently.
As a side to all of this, the group also trafficks in endangered animals including bears, tigers and elephants.
They found a remote corner of an impoverished Asian country, and set up a destination where ultra-wealthy clients could indulge in all sorts of illegal evil. The owners provide all of these things for their clients. They even gave the government a piece of the action.
Child prostitutes, check. Drugs of any kind, check. Other “goods”, which are in specific demand in that part of the world, are openly available in relatively large quantities. Pictures have even popped up very recently.
As a side to all of this, the group also trafficks in endangered animals including bears, tigers and elephants.
ELON MUSK!
ReplyDeleteOh wait his turns tomorrow again. This must be THE CHURCH!
Bangkok, Thailand for the locale?
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one longing for a few kindness blinds????
ReplyDeleteYechhh.
No I am as well:)
DeleteI hear ya and then I start thinking the kindness blinds are planted and think well of course they did it for the pat on the back to offset their bad parts. I'm so jaded. :(
DeleteSame... But then I think yoully never find that on a site like this... TBH I lurk this site and I find the comments more telling of people than the entries.
DeleteI'd probably choose the Philippines over Thailand for this one since the government has always been corrupt.
ReplyDeleteDiego Garcia ;)almighty..
ReplyDeleteBrunei?
ReplyDeleteI'm so exhausted from the evils of this world. I need to stop visiting this site and try to focus on positive stuff. It's hard cause I feel like I'm addicted to the pain.
ReplyDeleteErika B. I feel you sister!!!
DeleteHow do you smuggle a large, endangered animal?
ReplyDeleteSame way you smuggle anything else.
DeleteCarefully.
LOL Geeljire!
DeleteSmugglers always have an inside person.
Sick of these W men doing evil crap in 3rd world countries
ReplyDeleteRich Arabs have been smuggling endangered animals for decades. If you have the $$$, you can make anything happen.
ReplyDeleteIf the world needs proof of the evil nature of the smuggling trade and the role corruption plays in it, it need not look very far.
ReplyDeleteDavid points to what she calls death camps on the Thai-Malaysian border, where a human cargo of persecuted and stateless Rohingya people have been dumped by the smugglers they paid to get them out of Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Their smugglers often turn captors, detaining people in hell-hole camps and starving them while trying to extort money from their families.
Some have been sold to human traffickers. Others have been tortured and killed.
In 2015, dozens of bodies were unearthed in border camps, including that of a young pregnant woman found tethered to a tree in a tidal area and left to drown.
More than 80 suspects - including local politicians and senior Thai army general Manas Kongpan - filed into a Bangkok court on human-trafficking charges in early 2016. But journalists were banned from reporting on the case.
ReplyDeleteImperial Pacific Resort Hotel · Saipan
@Adrian good to call that out as well
DeleteWhat is a 6 star hotel anyway?
What is a six sided star oh wait it's those situationallly "white" people, whatever that means, those shameful sons of Ashkenaz...
'Hostel' was a documentary apparently. Fabulous wealth + no legal consequences = dystopian nightmare. After a while you start to think even david icke might have a point, these people are reptiles.
ReplyDeleteCould someone try guessing the money making investment from the years ago? The location and company behind it will fall into place. It seems to be connected to something newsworthy.
ReplyDelete@T.W., it helps if you own a cargo company with facilities at airports around the world. That way you don't have to go through customs with the masses. Customs comes to you and uses expedited procedures, so as long as the right people stay bribed, no problem.
ReplyDeleteI'm stumped on what the other "goods" would be, aside from child prostitutes, drugs, and endangered animals. That seems like the rich criminal tourist trifecta. I must need more imagination.
This must be fake news, though, since all the right people assure us that "international criminal rings" are crazy conspiracy theories that couldn't possibly be real.
Rhino horn and endangered plants. UAE is looting Socotra while no one cares.
DeleteNon opiate related drugs
Copies of illegal porn
Counterfeit money
Smuggled mundane goods and materials (doesn't have to be illegal to cheat the tax man)
@Cail Corishev
DeleteThank you!
My guess is the other goods are human organs & aborted fetuses.
I read China harvests organs from prisoners. I was also told many kidnappings are for organs & for breeding people who will then have their organs harvested.
Don't get me started on what they do with aborted fetuses. As my mom says, if you want to know what you are eating you need to grow it & cook it yourself.
Pattaya, Thailand. The Thai Gov't is super corrupt, but they're basically immune to criticism thanks to thai lese majiste laws. The "goods" may be a reference to ladyboys. Pattaya was a fishing village until fairly recently, now its a 24/7 luxury party town
ReplyDeleteI see above,that must be part of it at least. It is well known animal parts are very highly prized on the black market.
ReplyDeleteMacao? It was run by the portuguese until 2000, now it is part of china , but has its own monetary system, police, legal system, etc, its one of those places where if you do an investment you get residency.
ReplyDeleteIt is like the Las Vegas of Asia, being the regions major gambling center. Its a pretty corrupt, shady place
If you want to understand how these smuggling networks work, and how an agency like, oh let's say the CIA, piggybacks off a rival network, and why, start here!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/
Or were they ever really rivals?
DeleteWhat's that about...
Paper tigers
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ReplyDeleteA few years ago Wynn Casinos opened a 4.1 Billion resort in Macau. Wynn has known ties to the mafia
ReplyDeleteIt was supposed to be the biggest casino in the world
Delete
ReplyDeleteBlogger Adrian Grimples said...
Imperial Pacific Resort Hotel · Saipan
10:25 AM
This was the first island I thought of, too
"About a decade ago, an international criminal ring sourced a great deal of money to fund an investment. This investment has paid off spectacularly for them."
ReplyDeleteIn around 2008. A great deal of money. An investment. Paid off spectacularly.
Let's try to figure out what this is.
Is this Netflix again?!
ReplyDeleteIn 2008, Wynn Resorts paid USD $50 million to Tien Chiao Entertainment and Investment Company Limited "in exchange for the company relinquishing its rights to what is now Wynn's Cotai site, in macau
ReplyDeleteSaipan is part of the Marianas Islands--a US territory--and it's hardly remote (it's a 15-flight from Guam) or impoverished (well-heeled Japanese tourists have been vacationing there for decades).
ReplyDeleteGolden Triangle economic zone, Laos-Thailand"
ReplyDelete“Goods” May be organ harvesting from China"
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rite_of_Memphis-Misraim
ReplyDeleteThailand... "Other “goods”, which are in specific demand in that part of the world"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/briton-arrested-in-thailand-after-being-found-with-six-roasted-human-foetuses-7766232.html
Dried fetuses.
@T.W., good thinking on other "goods" in high demand. I don't know if pictures of either of those have been floating around in particular, since I haven't been following the news. The Planned Parenthood price lists that were exposed a couple years ago probably aren't recent enough to be what he means.
ReplyDeleteAh, I see @Emptywood has it, you were right on the money.
@Cail Corishev & @Emptywood
DeleteThank you both for your contributions as well.
Ever notice the government & the media are promoting eating insects for protein? They are doing this because there is not enough food to go around.
If Monsanto engineers crops that make their own pesticides what will happen to us when we eat them?
Someone did mention the general area once. However this is a very specific and large luxury destination with a name.
ReplyDeleteHow much more evidence is needed that these satanic cults doing this stuff are real?
ReplyDeleteIt's Laos that is in the news for this very recently
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2141464/mr-big-wildlife-trafficking-could-elusive-laos
"...fabulously wealthy, 58-year-old Su Guiqin is queen of the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, a small enclave in the far northwest of Laosthat, just over a decade ago, was a poor fishing village on the Mekong River. With her husband, Zhao Wei, she now runs the Kings Romans empire, a Hong Kong-registered business that took out a 99-year lease on a 3,000-hectare chunk of Bokeo province in a deal with the Laos government in 2007 and transformed it into a lavish gambling resort.
Hundreds of millions of US dollars of investment poured in as jungle, rice paddies and peasant homes were cleared to make way for a casino.
"The Zhao Wei crime network engages in an array of horrendous illicit activities, including human trafficking and child prostitution, drug trafficking and wildlife trafficking,” said Sigal Mandelker, US Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence."
From the same article posted above the "other goods" are certainly the endangered animal body parts openly sold:
ReplyDelete"...slabs of rhino horn and pieces of ivory were available at stalls inside the entrance of the Blue Shield Casino. In the nearby shopping area, outlets were selling elephant skin and rhino horn for 200 yuan (HK$250) a gram.
Chinese tourists can buy a tiger for 3 million yuan or a moon bear for 170,000 yuan. The animals are sometimes slaughtered and their meat served to gambling parties in the casino’s VIP rooms, they say."
...illgal wildlife body parts at a lobby shop at Don Chan Palace, a five-star hotel just a few hundred metres from the Presidential Palace and government buildings. Inside, we find bottles of tiger bone wine on sale for 1,650 yuan, packets of bear bile powder for 340 yuan and ivory bracelets for 400 yuan."
Organs for rich a$$holes on Black Market. Macau, China!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking other "goods" was ivory, etc... Since they obviously don't care about species survival. I don't think it could be the Philippines, that President is crazy and kills drug dealers.
ReplyDelete@sher
ReplyDeleteThe Zhao Wei crime network
This might work.
Hey Mr Hedge, have we gotten any hits so far? We could use a hint.
I could be wrong, but the way I read it, the other "goods" are something separate from endangered animals, which seems to me to include products made from them.
ReplyDeleteSad thing is, there are surely multiple operations in quiet parts of the world that fit the general description here (just as there are multiple "islands"), so it could take something pretty specific to nail it down.
Intl crime org - The Zhao Wei crime network
ReplyDeleteThailand
Laos
Burma
Remote corner of impoverished country... Laos, the casino
All goods mentioned are available. Look at the article above, the network extends to thailand... where the fetuses came from.
Pics of the fetuses popped up recently.
Endangered animal hunting happens at the casino.
We got this?
@Sher got it - thank Enty for adding that last sentence about the animals which helped the guessing, no doubt
ReplyDeletehttp://www.businessinsider.com/ap-us-declares-laos-casino-operators-a-criminal-network-2018-1
ReplyDeleteOk. i think others may fit but the one in Laos fits EXACTLY.
ReplyDeleteA decade ago? remote? impoverished? check
"a small enclave in the far northwest of Laos that, just over a decade ago, was a poor fishing village.."
Pictures popped up very recently? Yup. They are in the article.
Published April 14, 2018.
Name of the article?
"A Mr Big of wildlife trafficking: could elusive Laos casino operator be behind rackets that run to drugs, child prostitution?"
Just read it. It's long and goes into much more detail than I can share here.
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2141464/mr-big-wildlife-trafficking-could-elusive-laos
@Emptywood, I think so. Mr. Hedge commented earlier to say the general area had been named (the Golden Triangle had been), but not the specific destination, and I don't think that casino had been mentioned yet when he said that, unless it was by a different name. I'm assuming he won't tell us when we're right, since that kinda goes against the whole point of a blind, but maybe we can take silence as a hint.
ReplyDeleteWell, never mind my assumption that he wouldn't confirm it. Thanks, Mr. Hedge.
ReplyDeleteThanks Mr. Hedge for the confirmation!
ReplyDeleteIt was an interesting read. Something I would not mormally come across in the news.
Great job, Sher! Let's hope running that story means some justice is coming for them, at least for the investors and users of it from this country, if it can't be stopped over there.
ReplyDeleteThis shit makes me so damn sick. I wish that all good humans would band together tomorrow and destroy all of their organizations of evil.
ReplyDeleteI missed the Mr Hedge hints, sorry. I think we nailed it.
ReplyDeleteNever weighed in because I had absolutely no clue, but GREAT WORK by others here, and thanks to the Hedge-man for tossing it out (and later confirming).
ReplyDeleteBut....So now what?
These animal parts used to be something procured primarily for traditional medicine. While that is still sometimes the case, these "goods" are now more for status, as gifts.
ReplyDeleteAs Douglas Adams once wrote in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy( on the smuggling of parakeet glands off the planet Antares):
"An Antarean parakeet gland stuck on a small stick is a revolting but much sought after cocktail delicacy and very large sums of money are often paid for them by very rich idiots who want to impress other very rich idiots. "
Apparently animals have more integrity than people.
ReplyDeleteI don't get it. I thought this was an entertainment gossip website.
ReplyDeleteIs Mr. Hedge going to be posting a bunch of true crime blinds from now on? If so, I may have to stop reading this site. Hollywood has enough disturbing scandals without him digging up and sharing any piece of child prostitution news he can find.
So the other day I was having breakfast with a business associate. We were talking about our current financial challenges and career/retirement goals.
ReplyDeleteNow this associate is not married and I am not aware he ever has been. Don't know his sexual orientation and never cared, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was gay.
So when he said his goal was to live 6 months out of the year in Thailand I immediately started to wonder.
Hmmmmmmmmmm