Why a $63 Billion Trafficking Empire Keeps Growing with Bill Loucks

In the second part of this two-part conversation, Bill Loucks shifts the focus to labor trafficking, debt bondage, and the systemic challenges surrounding victim identification and recovery. While Part 1 examined how trafficking operates in plain sight, this episode explores how individuals become trapped through financial coercion, smuggling networks, and psychological control. Loucks draws from real investigations to explain how labor trafficking blends into everyday industries and why many victims are reluctant or unable to seek help.

This conversation also addresses unaccompanied minors, cartel involvement in smuggling operations, and the long-term impact of trauma on victims. Loucks speaks candidly about the need for trauma-informed interviewing, stronger partnerships between law enforcement and NGOs, and why restorative care is just as critical as prosecution.

Episode Highlights

[01:03] Why labor trafficking is frequently underreported and overlooked
[02:17] Industries commonly linked to labor trafficking operations
[04:30] How debt bondage keeps victims trapped in forced labor
[06:30] Alien smuggling networks and cartel control over migrant movement
[09:39] Vulnerabilities facing unaccompanied minors entering the United States
[12:47] Sexual assault risks along migration routes
[15:54] Why traffickers view victims as renewable assets
[17:57] The long-term unknowns surrounding missing children
[20:14] Why rescues rarely begin as clear trafficking investigations
[22:55] The importance of trust in victim-centered interactions
[25:47] How trauma-informed interviewing reshapes investigative outcomes
[30:21] Red flag indicators during domestic calls and runaway reports
[32:50] Why law enforcement cannot address trafficking without NGO partnerships
[36:50] What citizens should look for in potential labor trafficking situations
[40:54] Why awareness posters alone do not stop trafficking
[43:09] Signs of progress in prosecution and border enforcement
[46:49] Organizations victims can contact if they are not ready to speak with police
[48:53] A message of hope for individuals who feel trapped

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Listener Advisory

This episode includes discussions of real-world violence, criminal activity, and emotionally intense subject matter. Listener discretion is advised.

Transcript

Bill Loucks  0:00  
The first time my boss came to me and says, I need you to go to this victim centered trauma informed interviewing techniques class. Marc, day two by lunch, I broke down twice. I was like, I suck. I'm a bad human I had no idea. Nobody told me. I challenged myself. I was like, this is horrible. I have done some damage by accident, not realizing that human trafficking and smuggling are in the cartels, approximately 63 billion with a B in 2024, this podcast contains real world

David L. White  0:33  
accounts and discussions related to law enforcement, military criminal investigations, public safety incidents and violent crime topics may include graphic descriptions, strong language, trauma, deaf and emotionally intense subject matter and may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener, discretion is advised,

Mark Bridgeman  0:49  
shifting gears to labor trafficking. Why is this under reported? My lay viewpoint would be they kind of blend in, you know, they provide services, you know, to the community.

Bill Loucks  1:03  
When you look at labor trafficking, statistically, outside of the hospitality type industry, in some places like poultry places and stuff, chicken processing plants, Turkey processing plants, it's generally somebody of foreign descent against another non American citizen. So I have seen, like the 16 men that I dealt with that were all Hispanic, and they were all from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras. One was from El Salvador. It was an Asian male who had them locked in a restaurant, huh? Okay, so it is. It is basically someone not from here, holding someone else, not from here, into this. So a lot of people don't understand what to look for. A lot of people do don't want to get involved. Some people like, I just don't really want to get involved. They don't I think it'll look bad if I do. This may look racial or something like that. You know, if you see something, say something, that's all you got to do. So what industries?

Mark Bridgeman  2:06  
You know, we talked about poultry processing, construction, landscaping, you know, what are some of the other tattletale industries? Just kind of like, it runs the gamut.

Bill Loucks  2:17  
It kind of does, but a lot of seasonal like at beach type places like, for example, if you ever go to any of the beach communities here in North Carolina throughout the summers, you'll see a huge influx of people coming in from former Soviet Republic places, whether anything that ends in a stand, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Krishi stand. You know, Russia itself, Ukraine and stuff, these individuals kind of just end up here for a period of time. And they're like, Oh, I'm just a student. I'm just, I'm just here for the summer. Where are you going to school at? Oh yeah, I'm just a student. And it's like, oh, really, yeah, okay. And it's not just a piece of irony that ends up in there. So they end up into a lot of places like that. Myrtle Beach is a huge, huge, and this is become a kind of a big topic right now within Somalian community, obviously, yeah, you know, with the whole daycare system and everything. If you look at several the hotels in Myrtle Beach, it used to be a big chain. It's still a big hotel, but now there's small, you know, and run and stuff like that. That's already started to set up red flags. And one of those we was actually having the law enforcement, federal law enforcement conference. And everybody there, even the US attorneys were like, this does not fit. Like, there is something going on here, you know. So how does the bondage? Bondage? Bondage is a misconception. A lot of people think bondage is somebody being helped out by change, okay, bondage could be mental bondage, like, if, if I get away from or if I get more than six feet away from this guy, my trafficker, he's gonna beat me. Okay? So it is. It's mental manipulation that has been reinforced by physical some sort of physical force, whether it's a beating, a punching, pulling their hair, grabbing them, or something like that.

Mark Bridgeman  4:23  
Why do victims fear losing work more than exploitation? Let's say they got to work off a debt.

Bill Loucks  4:30  
You got to understand, to get to that, we got to understand a little bit of debt bondage. So how this works is some of these individuals owe a price for coming to the US. Yeah. That's what I meant by Yeah. So if they have to say, if I came from the southernmost part of Mexico and I wanted to come to the US, you don't have to, like, dig deep. There are signs. Everybody knows it was easy passage under previous administrations, come to the US. And they knew who to reach to. And now they would talk to these individuals. And these are. People that are part of what they call the alien smuggling organization, portion of the cartels. And actually, I got that term from Jason Jones, who's a retired captain with Texas DPS, who is a rock star on border stuff. So if you wanted to come to the US, they would say, say, where do you want to go? Charlotte, North Carolina. Say, Okay, that's going to cost you $5,000 well, I don't have $5,000 okay? They come to me. They identified me, my family, my village where I live, so they kind of know my family associates. And they say, Okay, we'll bring you to the US. We're going to give you a job, a place to stay. You're going to pay us a little bit of money, take some money out of your paycheck, and stuff like that. They're basically financing them. When they come to the village or town where I live, they're basically doing a version of a credit check. They're identifying whose life is going to be used as collateral. Because as we start to make the movement say I came from a couple countries away. Came from El Salvador Honduras, and I had to once we crossed the border into another country. Now the cartels, their their version of their alien smuggling organizations, people we used to kind of call coyotes, basically, they would say, instead of being $5,000 we had to pay more for the piso, which is the bride, and it's now going to be $8,000 well, you can't tell them in another country. Hold up, bro, it's a violation of our civil contract. That's civil tort envoy. Take me back home. That's not the way this works, right? You either agree to pay that, or if you give them trouble, they there's always, no matter what remote part you are that they're controlling, there's always a method of communication, and they will radio back, is set satellite phone back to somebody and be like, hey, this person's giving us a hard time. It's causing trouble with this group, because I am now walking with a group of maybe 700 people, and there's only six of you cartel that are controlling, gotcha. Yes, okay, and that's how much power they have. 600 people can like, 700 people can overpower six people and say, No, we're just gonna we'll just walk to the mirror. That's not the way that works. Okay? They've already identified it. So if I give them the trouble, or something like that. Give them a hard time. They'll basically show me pictures where they just killed my mom, my sister, brother, whoever. And now they're like for the trouble. It's not going to be $1,500 okay, so they have to pay off that debt every time they come here. It's not on a credit they are forced to work for within that industry, whether they end up in a restaurant, whether they end up as the person in our investigation who's driving a drug car. I know for a fact we have, unfortunately, didn't identify it and understand the time, but we've arrested multiple people in drug cases and charge them with trafficking. And they were the mule. That was just their job for the cartel was to move, drive this car from here to here, when we would stop them, debrief them, say would have 15 kilos cocaine in the car. They're like, whose car belong to? I don't know. What do you mean? You don't know. They just told me I had to drive. Who say I don't know who they are. I'm like, if for us from a business perspective, we were like, This doesn't make any sense. So you're telling me that somebody you don't know will put you in this car. Just told you to drive. And that's all like, but we didn't understand that we were missing signs with these people because they weren't scared of getting arrested, they weren't scared of getting deported, but they did break down at fear when they would sit down and say, they're going to kill my family, they're going to kill my people. It's like, what do you why? Why would they kill your people? Because I had to do this, because I still owe them money, because they brought me here. Yeah, and I can recall hearing that exact almost word for word, script, 2010 when we started seeing heroin start to tar heroin start to rear its head. And then in throughout Tennessee, we started seeing it multiple places, and we started identifying it through Tennessee narcotics officer Association at conferences. We were like, are you hearing this from people you're arresting. They're like, yeah, what is this? And that was we started kind of putting a few pieces together, going, I think these people are actually being forced legitimately to do this, but we still didn't have a concept of why, right? Because they were paying off the debt that they owed to come here to the US.

Mark Bridgeman  9:39  
So it kind of leads to, under the last administration, hundreds and 1000s of children were unaccompanied coming into this country. Why are these individuals? They were placed in a situation where they if they weren't vulnerable to begin with, they are now because they handed them off to somebody that was. Unvetted. In a lot of instances, a lot of

Bill Loucks  10:02  
times, they would show up to the border with somebody who was at their pair. So the cartels this the children, you what we called uacs, unaccompanied alien children were Expendables, because these kids would end up at the border, and they would show up and it was be somebody, Hey, I'm his grandma, hey, I'm his dad, and then that's all they had to vouch for. Okay? And now these kids end up in a house where they're supposed to be seeking asylum, and there's 186 other kids that are also supposed to be at that same house. So these kids end up in a pathway of victimization because they don't have their parents. We still don't understand their true identity. What we have is them at the border, but we don't have their actual something tangible behind them, because we're not collecting things like biometric fingerprints, DNA. We're just taking a name and pushing them off because the borders were overwhelmed under the previous administration. Just to give you an idea, how many of these uacs? It's estimated approximately 800,000 kids came here to the US. These kids are not with their parents. They are in expendable commodities. These kids are now put in a car seat, in a car to look like a family unit while they're moving money back from, say, New York to California to cross back into San Ysidro, back into Mexico, or something like that. Kids are put into sex trafficking or labor trafficking venues and stuff like that. Because who's the kid going to complain to mom or dad? They can't mom or dad's not here. And just you understand the landscape, how many people actually entered, and this comes from border patrol at our international narcotics interdiction Association conference in Chicago, May of 2025 approximately 22 to 23 million people entered into the US under the previous administration, with Approximately 800,000 of these being unaccompanied alien children. So the obvious question is, what happens to them? Where do they go? I mean, are they put into labor trafficking? We just, we don't have a full landscape. We're still at the point where we're just recovering a little more than we haven't even recovered approximately 2000 of these kids anyway, when I think of a kid, we're talking a true innocent victim from legitimately a different country who probably came here at the age of 3456, have no idea it's right, wrong. Don't understand what is happening to them.

Mark Bridgeman  12:40  
And a lot of these unaccompanied minors were sexually assaulted en route to the United

Bill Loucks  12:47  
States, absolutely, especially when you close to you got to the border, and especially through passes like the darien's gap and stuff. And it's, it's, what are you going to do? Follow a police report. Yeah. You know, these kids just disappear, and they just end up in just crazy place. And you'll see several articles on it, like industrial corporations would have kids in there, 1112, one, two o'clock in the morning, and like, big fats and chemical cleaning things, and they're hanging on the ropes and in their cleaning and stuff like that. One good example when I talk about how much they're shuttled back and forth. And one of the cases I actually teach about it without giving the name, say, for example, boy was eight years old across the border San Ysidro came in with grandma, mom, dad. Okay. Comes in through San Ysidro, San Diego, California, seeking asylum. For some reason, at this period of time, they had actually scooped up by a mesh. So we actually have fingerprints of the child and stuff like that. So the kid has now entered into the US with the family unit, not even, I think it was like 112 days later. Now, the kid is coming in through El Paso Texas, with somebody standing there claiming to be grandma and dad. Now, same child, little bit different date of birth, same actual fingerprints, everything. Kid just came into the US through San Ysidro, grandma, mom, dad, have them identified. Don't know if it's actually real. Grandma, Sure, Dad, but now he's coming in through El Paso Texas, 111 days later, same child, different name, different date of birth, same fingerprints, same exact picture. Why? Why? Yeah, we've learned through multiple investigations, cartels use them to look as family. And you got to think about this. How comfortable would you be with stopping a vehicle on a roadside interdiction stop with a mom, a dad and four young children in the back, three of them being in car seats, if you look at it from the PERS. Perspective, if everybody drive by and I got kids out roadside, they're all They're all of Hispanic descent, maybe one of us speaks Spanish and stuff like that, somebody's actually going to complain the cartels do that intentionally, because they know you're probably less apt to do that, plus they make money off that human trafficking and smuggling to the cartels earn the cartels approximately 63 billion with a B in 2024, well, you know,

Mark Bridgeman  15:32  
talk about drugs. Sell a drug. It's used up. It's no longer it's disposable. Where somebody that's being trafficked, it's a renewable resource for the cartels or whoever's trafficking that individual. So they're making more money in certain circumstances due to human trafficking.

Bill Loucks  15:54  
They never have to as one gangster explained it to me, one of my gang cases, I can account to one of the first times I saw human trafficking as a gang detective didn't understand it. Classic buying dope from a gangster two houses. Crip. Gang member, pretty decent dude, pretty decent target. He is seven kilos about every 10 days. His source supply was Nogales, Arizona. We hit the place we know he's running what we classified at the time as prostitutes. Okay, several young girls there. One of them was 15. We actually hit the door on the day of her birthday. But as we were debriefing him later on and going through everything, he explained why he was running the girls from his business perspective, and he looked at us, and he was like, every time y'all see me, you're putting me on the curb, you're searching my car. He's like, sometimes you catch me rolling dirty. Sometimes you ain't he said, when I got those girls, he was like, think about he says, I can sell. And he said the B word I can sell. Just gonna say the vagina numerous times. He was like, it never has to be ripped. So he says, Every time you stop me, you put me on the curb, you're searching my girls. And he pointed right in his region. He says, You don't understand you're touching the dope. It was like, I don't have to wait for my dope to come out of Arizona. Sometimes my dope don't make it. It was like, sometimes y'all pick it off on the Internet. In those he called it slipped out SUVs and guys, you know, he says, when I got these gals, he was like, there ain't no re up, it's always there. From the business perspective, he explained it. He was like, it is always there. And he said, by the time my dope gets to me, he said, there's probably been about 15 other people done this and put this their hands on it. He said, When I'm selling these girls, man, there's three people, no me, him and her. He ain't gonna tell on himself if she ain't gonna say shit, word for word from this man, he explained it to me fully from the business perspective. Now, who

Mark Bridgeman  17:57  
do you think's gonna encounter these children. I mean, is it going to be teachers? Are they sold off into families? Or some

Bill Loucks  18:08  
it's too early to tell, it's too it's it's too early to tell. Some of these kids are enrolled in school. Some of them weren't. Some are hiding in plain sight. Some of them never leave the house. Some of them are still in places. I mean, like said, We haven't even recovered 2000 out of approximately 800,000 so we are finding some bodies of them. But that brings up a good thing of once you do get them talking about that overall number, we'll say out of 800,000 200,000 of them actually recovered. Okay, it's 200,000 children. Where are we going to put them? We already have think about what the foster system looks like and foster care homes and stuff. We don't even have places to put children now, where we could put them in this already overburdened, stretched system. It has no money, by the way. It's almost a never ending problem. And if we do find them a place, how well can we ensure that this child grows up knowing the difference between right and wrong to become a productive, functioning member of the American society. I do they even understand the language yet? Has this child even been at school? Can they even proficiently, even just write to figure out, hey, I can go get a job or fill out an application? Yeah, there's just so many problems that have already occurred from what has transpired. And it's, it's, it's the best way to put it. It's shameful. It's without having to redact a lot of this was just keeping it that there's some bad people out there

Mark Bridgeman  19:50  
getting into the identification and rescuing these these victims. Rarely do these cases actually start off as rescues. Am I correct? Correct. You know, how does one get into a position to be rescued? Or it depends on totality of the circumstances and how the opportunity presents itself.

Bill Loucks  20:14  
It's, it's, you're going to have to, I don't want to say you have to have the stars and moon lined up, but if you got to look at it again, from the first responder, from the police side, cops got to be able to recognize something's not right with this child, okay? And I think North Carolina State Highway Patrol is running a fantastic like a child interdiction class, so it helps you as a cop, identify roadside something to say, this doesn't look right within the regular norms of a family unit, okay, once we identify them, where do they go from there? Most of them, you call DCS. When you call DCS, somebody's going to contact you back. You're sitting there running side with a child now, 4568, 10 hours, and DCS worker comes out and starts filling, I gotta fill out some paperwork first, and then we're gonna we're trying to figure it out. So we'll need y'all to take care of that child tonight. So where does the police put the child tonight? Where does law enforcement do that? It's where the NGOs become extremely, extremely important. Because if you look out of the legitimate NGOs that are in the human trafficking landscape out here, maybe 2% of them are specializing in juveniles. Like to actually give them a place, hold them, take care of them, care for them, because a lot of them look at it from, and this is a child. This child can make any complaints or accusations against us kind of situation. So some people look at it from the man. This is a problematic for us type situation. So this is going to continuously be more problematic as we identify more children, because, again, we're trying to put them into a system that's already busting at the seams, and we're asking them to do more than they're capable to do. So once an officer recognizes it, it's finding a trusted NGO group. If you don't have an NGO. That's why I say faith based organization is key into this. Because I very there's very few church systems that are legitimate Christian systems that say, No, we just won't this too much liability. There's going to be a Christian family say, I'm going to open up my door, so I'm going to take care of this child and feed this child, go put clothes on them and try to take care of that. Y'all are figuring this out. Safe atmosphere.

Mark Bridgeman  22:51  
So dealing with the victim, you know, why does trust matter?

Bill Loucks  22:55  
Because victims Number one, don't trust law enforcement. They're they're seeing cuffs constantly, constantly, even when they want out and they return back. We get them out and they return back to the situation. How does law enforcement look at most these victims? You're just a liar. You're just you just can't get right, because that's how we perceive it as police, because we don't understand the whole trauma issue. That's just something that's just been taught within the last probably 10 years for law enforcement, we're just getting a very little scape. So trust is very, very important. We the victims, have to be able to trust the fact that I'm going to do everything I can, and sometimes there's a lot of times police, all we can do is take a rapport, yeah, now they're back in the victim that's traffickers hands. And why would they trust us if I just turn them back into the person that is going to beat them, one person that you can trust out of this one word that is will stay solid is the traffickers word. If that trafficker says he is going to beat that victim, that victim knows 100% unequivocally he will beat them. There's and it's not always he, because I think right now, statistically, it looks like about 23 to 24% of traffickers are actually females, and that's the number that actually heard fry. And I'm gonna give you the source, Heidi. Chance from a chance from awareness, who's a retired Phoenix Arizona. PD, Vice detective, a rock star. Got fantastic materials that parents should be reading on identifying signs from their kids, but right now it looks like statistically, 23 to 24% of my traffickers are actual females.

Mark Bridgeman  24:53  
Okay, so I'm an officer rolls up to a scene. What questions would cause? Us a human trafficking victim, to shut down immediately.

Bill Loucks  25:04  
Questions like, why don't you just leave? You could just leave. Why did you just leave? Why did she just call 911, why would you just do that? Why didn't you just tell them, no understanding there's not an option that's like sitting in basic training in a closed Bay and six drill sergeants with big, round hats standing around you, saying, do push ups. And you look at them, go, no. You think it's an option. No, no, no. Guess what's gonna happen. You're going to do push ups on your own, or you're going to get put in the push up position. Yeah.

Mark Bridgeman  25:43  
Okay, so what's the fastest way to build trust?

Bill Loucks  25:47  
Learn more about it. Take victim centered, trauma informed classes for a cop, that's a hard pill to swallow. Oh yeah, it is the first time my boss came to me and says, I need you to go to this trauma informed victim center, trauma informed interviewing techniques class, I literally when that man looked at me, I looked at my sergeant and said, What did I do to you? That that was I recall. I can even tell you where I was sitting when he said that, and he was like, No, really, we think somebody needs to go and you kind of like, bring stuff back. And I was like, why would I? No, I'm not going to go to that. Because to me, it was a feel good, social service, tree hugger kind of thing. And I didn't realize I'm telling you. Marc, day two, by lunch, I broke down twice. I was like, I suck. I'm a bad human. I had no idea. Nobody told me this was real, this whole victim thing. I just understand the policeman aspect, and everybody was not really lying like I broke down, like I challenged myself. I was like, this is this is horrible. I've, I have done some damage by accident not realizing this. So that'll, that'll help a lot, getting smart on this really quick, and developing a quick partner relationship, an actual sit down, because cops, law enforcement, were this half, yeah, criminal justice system. Now, I've got my prosecutors and stuff that need to understand this, so I need to sit down and say, What are we going to do when we get this potential human trafficking victim? What do you need? Where do you want me to take this case? What questions do you want me to bring out in a victim centered, trauma informed interview that are going to be tangible evidence for us to use the court and understand that this person is actually a big because a lot of das go, there are people too. Yeah, okay, it ain't just cops that get a little bent. They see the end product that we're rolling into the system. Yep, they stay as human nature. We become jaded, and they like I just they could left at any point in time. They have to have an understanding. So to get a little bit better is we need to combine this, get to get to this together, have this understanding of what's going on in the whole trauma space. Redo what we have previously learned how to interview and realize that some of these people don't even know that they're victims yet. Yeah, when we think they're lying, it's actually they're just survival mechanism. Like, please no, if you arrest him, he's gonna get out and he's gonna find me and he's gonna beat me. Yeah, okay, I don't know how many victims I've been in, in a hotel room, in undercover operations, where we make the deal, the door opens. They slowly come in, victim centered services, DAs office, talking to the victim, the victim. We're like, look, we will take you with us tonight. And they just lock up because they're like, Oh my God, he's outside in the car. He's gonna kill me if the police are right here, not realizing we're gonna keep them safe. And if, for if, every 10 victims that I dealt with and that nine of them walked out the room, but one thing we did have was a little bit of time to talk to them, because if I purchase them for an hour, they were in the room with me for an hour. We're feeding them, trying to give them food. Yeah, my trauma, like my really good forensic people, are trying to talk to them, saying, Look, we will take you away. Now you will be safe. We will not let him get a hold of you. We're not even going to try to charge him. Okay, if you just say you want help, you will come with us tonight. He won't even see you leave, and we would have an hour just to talk to faith based people. Were sitting there, talking to them, interviewing them, loving on them, you know, trying to deal with it. So we have to figure out how to do that little bit more effectively in these overall operations, to get better with our prosecutor's office.

Mark Bridgeman  30:09  
That's really good responding to a call. What are the first red flag indicators that people should look for? Officers, first responders, even citizens.

Bill Loucks  30:21  
It starts off as, let's say domestic I can say there's probably been six to seven domestics that I've been on that I know now, looking back later on, that were actually human trafficking. So if it is beyond the battered spouse syndrome, because sometimes it's the wife or the girlfriend beating the husband. Yeah, but listen to the key aspects. Look at more than just let me determine the primary aggressor here. Listen to what the actual statements are. When that lady on Duke street told me he beat me again because I would not have sex with his dealer so he could get his meth. I was like all I heard in my head. He beat me. I could see the visual evidence, therefore it determined him to be the primary aggressor, which meant, by my policy, I shall lock him up for domestics, okay? Listen to what is going on. If it is a runaway. You have to ask parents simple questions like, have you seen a change in behavior outside of the normal characteristics of a juvenile? Somebody puberty, okay, have they been secretive? Have they been having new clothes show up? So been new friends? Do they have an online presence? Do you even know? You'll be amazed to see how many parents do not know what social media sites their kids have access to, nor do they even know their username on something unlike Twitter or something like that. So asking questions really quick on that, because there's about a list of 10 questions that I put out in my training for an officer on a runaway juvenile that they should ask up front that would give them the cues to say, if I had to look at this in a statistic, I'm gonna say about 75% this person is potentially with a trafficker or going to a trafficker right now.

Mark Bridgeman  32:31  
So one of the key elements that I found to work on human trafficking cases, sporadically throughout my career was developing partnerships with faith based groups and the non governmental organizations. Why can't law enforcement just do this alone?

Bill Loucks  32:50  
We're we're grunts. That's the best way to put it. We we take big rocks and we make small rocks. Okay? We don't we understand the law, and we've forgotten human nature, because we've we have to try to protect ourselves in everything we see. So faith based organizations are grounded in God, Bible. They understand and have not forgotten, like some of us have, that's just sorry, it has, it happens, but they understand what people still need. Plus there's follow up most of the time. What? Let's look at 80% of police work report. Here's your case number. You can get a report in about five business days we leave. Okay, there's a follow up that has to go on with these victims beyond the interview, there is restorative care that has to go to them. A lot of times. We have to find them housing. Can't just dump somebody at a shelter. Can't just dope them into a hotel where they've probably been trafficked a whole bunch. Sure previously, if it's somebody who's a juvenile, I have to put them in the right home that's going to be a safe outfit for them. So these organizations have the funding, the ability, the beds, the bed space, the food, the clothing to put on them. Police, we don't have it. We got pen and paper. That's what we have. So they're they're very important, that is the only way you can effectively do this. I can put a rock, stellar human trafficking unit together, and I could bring all this daggum evidence into court, but my victim disappears, which we know statistically now, an average is seven times they will leave. We don't have a case, so we need that continuous follow up towards healing, and they need to have an NGO. They'll trust an NGO before they trust

Mark Bridgeman  34:50  
police, not in all aspects of the case. But when do you think the NGOs should be involved in developing a case on these. T victim,

Bill Loucks  35:00  
once we start looking at potential hands on, like, if we're going to, if I'm looking at a particular, say, a human trafficker, if I'm looking at an actual trafficker in an investigation, and understand operational security and stuff like that. So if we're like, a couple days out, I will start talking to my NGOs and say, okay, look, we're going to probably execute a search warrant. I'm looking at three female human trafficking victims, 1622, 27 I may give them some other specifics, maybe even not a name yet, but I've alerted them ahead of time so they understand. Okay, let me prepare potential space maybe meals. You don't know how taxing it is once you put a human trafficking victim into temporary shelter, even if it is a hotel breakfast, lunch or dinner, somebody's got to bring that, yep, somebody's got to do that. Somebody's got to flip that bill. So you get them involved as early as possible. Some of them have a decent financial network. That's why faith based organizations are extremely important. Because once funds run out, there's a lot of churches saying, You know what, we get the money either. But here's what's going to happen. I'm cooking breakfast. This group has volunteered to cook lunch. They're going to bring dinner, breakfast, lunch, dinner. We've got a sign up sheet for the next eight days to take care of y'all covering three meals, plus somebody is going to show up there at the hotel once a day to run them to Walmart to get toiletry station items, fentanyl, hygiene products, other things that they may need sure to take care of them.

Mark Bridgeman  36:40  
Yeah. So like for your average everyday Joe citizen, for Jill citizen, what should the public be looking for,

Bill Loucks  36:50  
for labor trafficking? Let's say labor trafficking if you're in, say, restaurants or something like that, and you see employees that are fearful of their employers, or if you suspect new employees coming into the organizations that are brought in via staffing agencies, and all of these people that are coming in, none of them really speak English. They're being heavily monitored by a manager by the staffing agency. All these people are kind of just brought in early. They won't talk or deal with any other employees and those managers over them, they are kind of like fearful. You got to go, man, why? Why are somebody not? Why are they actually scared the boss? Trust me, every boss I've worked for, I tell you, I've had to holler at this boy probably at least once a month. I've never been scared to face my boss. That's a sign of well, that's just not right. If they show up and they appear very disheveled, if they don't even understand their surroundings. I've been in Nashville, Tennessee talking to a labor trafficking victim, going, where you at right now? Simple question, neglected Orlando, but we're in Nashville, Tennessee, and they think they're under Orlando, okay? They're unaware of their surroundings. If they appear constantly malnourished, they show up in the same clothes. They're very unkept. And it's you see this under the same controller, the same person, the same manager, or something like that, something to pay attention to, report that, yeah, you ain't got to walk up say, hey manager, what is going on? Why are these people not talking to anybody? It's a simple concept, too, of just pick a phone every time you call dispatch or the police department, somebody somewhere is making a note of it. Just saying, I don't want to file a report, but I want to call Fayetteville Police Department. Just say something doesn't look right at Casa Del Rio Plaza, or something within or this Howard Johnson Hotel. These employees always seem to arrive by work their employers transporting them. They always show up in clean uniforms, but they'll never pay attention talk to anybody else, and they're always just they're grouped up at the end of the day, they all have their heads down, and they're waiting for the van to come in and pick them up. This doesn't seem right, that's that's a sign of labor trafficking.

Mark Bridgeman  39:20  
Gotcha. So you recommend confronting these individuals or the people at the just report it.

Bill Loucks  39:27  
Just just report it. Because when you confront worst case could happen. That person could tell you to go pack a sandwich.

Mark Bridgeman  39:36  
I mean, best case scenario, worst case scenario, that person could say, somebody's paying attention to me, and they can move that victim now to a another part of their operation. So that could mean they could leave this city and go to say, Raleigh. They could go into Charlotte now, going to Greenville, South Carolina. They could go somewhere in Virginia or DC. It could cause an actual movement. We have that person which could. Actually, there's tools out there to track movements, and I've used a couple of different versions, you know, and I was able to determine when individuals were being moved from near military installations to military installations, you know, and they were advertising. Some of the tools were able to provide analytics of when they're active, like on the way to PT after PT, on the way home to change, on the way back to work, lunchtime, when they get off work, you can see the spikes in activity, you know, so it's kind of interesting. So what really needs to change in this dynamic? It's more than just putting up a human trafficking poster.

Bill Loucks  40:54  
I've actually asked, if you decide not, I've actually asked a few human trafficking victims about the posters at the airports and restaurants, and it was like, That is the most expensive piece of printed paper ever, because it never generally yields anything. It was like during my time of trafficking when I walked into that bathroom, I knew the numbers I could call. I knew the numbers I could report, but I'm not going to report it while they're there, and I'm obviously not going to have my phone on me. Traffickers not letting me walk in there with that access, that device and stuff. So what needs to change? What gives you openness? I know we keep hearing all elected officials. We need to take action. We need to take action. Man, it'd be really nice to actually see this whole Epstein thing out in a lot of big people, because there's big names, sure, there's the Bill Gates, there's the big people. I don't care who you are and how it sounds, there is big people. A lot of these are elected officials. They need to get banged they need to get charged, just like you and I would if we got caught speeding and got a ticket or drove down the road drunk and got pulled over and arrested for DUI, okay, people actually need to get held accountable. Yes, but unfortunately,

Mark Bridgeman  42:15  
and we had a area of town that known for street level prostitution, and, you know, we had surveillance set up and stuff like that. What I wanted to do is when somebody would drive through, you know, capture their information via the tag, and then send a notice to the residents. They don't know if you realize it or not, but you're in a, you know, high crime area that frequents prostitution and drug dealing and, you know, that type of stuff, and just send it to their house, or the ones that were charged. I wanted to put up a billboard, you know, with their names. So, you know, police says we'll do that. Yeah, well, my agency wouldn't let me do it. Yeah. I so what gives you hope and not all this? Well, we

Bill Loucks  43:09  
are getting a little bit of a slowdown with the final lockdown of our southern borders, kind of hardening those borders, so we're not as open and poor. So there's that it makes it harder to get people in. There are still ways to get people in. There are still poor serious like there is places that you can walk on the northern border, walk straight in through Canada, just through the woods, and there's just a little sign that says, Welcome to the US. It's basically a hand written sign and stuff. So we're not going to totally be able to harden down every square inch of the border, but we have stopped the floor. Think about this, 22 to 23 million people over the previous administration, over a four year period of time, we have basically taken the US and grown by two states in size in four years by people who weren't born here, by the way. Yes, we don't know, you know, Yeah, everybody's like, well, everybody wants to come to the US, because we're the land of opportunity. Not every one of these people were here for that, right? That's, let's, let's, let's be clear on that, so that that is that should be a big takeaway, that we can slow this. And we've got a current administration that is working on this a lot better than previous administrations, so we've got some leeway on it. We're seeing a lot more federal cases now also where a lot of traffickers are actually getting prosecuted federally, and a lot more state. I'm seeing a lot more social media posts via state level prosecution for human trafficking. So it's we're getting better at it. So that's kind of where I'm i.

Mark Bridgeman  45:00  
My take on this is that anything that you can make stick criminally on a human trafficker do it like money laundering. You know, that's that's great one. You know, we had a guy in Fayetteville, we did a human trafficking case on and we wound up getting 38 counts of money launder on the guy, and we went with IRS Criminal Investigative Division, yeah, and I wouldn't want those guys after me whatsoever.

Bill Loucks  45:32  
Now, out of the three letter agencies, if it has an R in it, yes, you don't want them looking you don't want your name, they

Mark Bridgeman  45:41  
they estimated that this trafficker, for lack of a better term, his name was viotis Harding, and he wound up getting four years. And they estimated he did about $3.2 million in a three year period, and had nothing to show for it. Traffickers did. Traffickers are all about the flash and bling. Yep, it's a continuous cycle of rental cars, continuous cycle of new clothes, tennis shoes, brand new electronics. Huge classic, you know, had his older girls recruiting like little runaways at the mall. And, you know, the youngest one, I think, was 13 or 14, you know. And you know, it was an interesting case. Took us about three years to work it, you know, because we collected trash, we did a lot of surveillance, and lot of, you know, paid register, trap, trace type stuff. But it all worked up. So if someone's being trafficked and they don't feel safe in going to the police, where do they turn churches, churches, churches.

Bill Loucks  46:49  
Or just Google NGOs. I can tell if you just want a name, just straight out, hope for justice. Hope for justice. You can Google it. There's a US line. We have had numerous I remember being working as an investigator for them, doing human trafficking cases, and probably 60% of our cases started with a victim calling saying, I'm done. I need help. Within the time that phone call was made, it reached one of the six investigators within the hour, and we were if that came in at two o'clock in the morning, my phone rang through that electronic system, and it was I had to get up and take action, sure. And even though I was in North Carolina, my other partner was in South Carolina. Well, we'd end up in Georgia. We'd be on a plane here. They're going here moving. So they've got investigators from Midwest all the way into Nashville to here in North Carolina. Hope for justice. Fantastic. One. Gate, beautiful. Another one. Just pick up the phone and they will do something. Gate, beautiful. Shelby Thompson and that crew, they would call me and say, Hey, we've got a trafficking victim. Call us. I'm telling you, one of them being a former human trafficking victim herself. She was like, this girl is legit. And she was like, I sent an Uber put on a hotel. Need y'all. Can y'all help me get her while I'm trying to work into the program. And we would start working the housing going there personally, to go meet with that victim, hand to hand and talk to them straight to face, and say, Look, I'm not the police. You used to be the police and not the police. My job is here to help. I want to get you on a plane with me. Let's go, because I want to take you and put you into a program. And I'm going to, let's go get something neat right now.

Mark Bridgeman  48:42  
So if you had to say, you know, directly to someone that feels trapped, feels like they're you know, in a situation, what would you tell

Bill Loucks  48:53  
them you can get away, regardless what this person tells you. And I understand that if there's some more extreme cases where the trafficker will see that victim 23 hours and 59 minutes out of the day, okay, there's a way to get a sign, a symbol, whether you're at a store, if you're out this civil something simple like that, at a store, looking at somebody, where you got your head down, cast your looks, help. Yeah, something, okay, yeah. That's gonna elicit a little bit different police response. But you can also hear the ultimate person in this pray, ask God, I need help. God's not going to tell you, No, God's not going to say, ah, been a bad person. Yeah, look, that's a knight in shining armor. That'll be there. He's he's going to get you to where you need it. He's going to bring those Thundercats. Somebody's coming. Did get you at some point in time, that's a good message. Have that hope.

Mark Bridgeman  50:04  
Well, you know, in closing, Bill, I want to thank you for your expertise in this and your passion human trafficking doesn't survive because it's hidden. It survives because it's normalized. Support is often the first lifeline before enforcement, before prosecution, before recovery. If you or someone you know needs help but isn't ready to go to law enforcement, trusted organizations exist to listen and help safely. No one should carry this alone. Thank you for listening. Stay informed, stay safe and continue to stand behind a thin blue light

Speaker 1  50:43  
sponsored by the North Carolina gang investigators Association

Unknown Speaker  50:49  
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai