VICE (2020) - full transcript

[HIND] What people see on TV

is that women who lived

under Islamic State

are very submissive.

They're housewives...

[INDISTINCT YELLING]

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

This is crazy, because

these kids are saying

that they are going to

bring back Islamic State.

Islamic State will not stop.

[DISTORTED] You basically just...

made money for doing nothing:

um, a phone call and

some research online.

These kids did what with

the money they stole?

[MAN] They took helicopter

flights to dinner.

They bought $5,000 watches.

They rented mansions.

We lost everything...

everything we spent decades building.

♪♪♪

[DRAMATIC ELECTRONIC MUSIC]

[INDISTINCT SHOUTING]

♪♪♪

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

♪♪♪

[HORN BEEPS]

[GATE CLATTERING]

♪♪♪

[HIND] This is one of a

number of prisons in this area

holding and overflowing

with ISIS suspects.

[SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

[HIND] There are rooms all

the way down the corridor.

Each room can contain over 150 men.

We've seen people from

Iraq, Germany, Russia,

and even the United States.

It smells really bad,

like a combination of human sweat,

feces, and urine.

♪♪♪

There are at least 5,000 prisoners here

from up to 30 countries.

Many are European

citizens whose governments

don't want them back.

- Were you a fighter?

- Yes, I was a fighter.

- So you are a terrorist?

- Yeah, of course.

[HIND] How would they know

that you're not gonna continue

the fight for ISIS or

continue spreading the ideals?

Bcause number one, I surrender myself.

- I am finished with it.

- [HIND] You had no choice.

No, it's not true. I

could fight till the end.

Everybody know ISIS fighters,

they fight till the end.

♪♪♪

[HIND] Casper Hansen is from Denmark

and is one of the

highest-level detainees here.

Prison guards say he

commanded ISIS fighters

on the battlefield

and was injured in a

targeted air strike.

Do you know what they say about you?

[CASPER] No.

That you're an emir.

- An emir?

- An Islamic State prince.

Okay. [LAUGHS]

- Did you work?

- No, no.

[HIND] And your wife, did she work?

[CASPER] No, she was in the house.

[HIND] She didn't work.

How important is the woman's role?

They must have done something

beyond just staying in the house,

because I can't imagine...

What are you imagining, then?

That they had more of a role.

Like what, being fighters?

Maybe.

No, they didn't allow women to fight.

I know that.

There were some women,

they was teaching the religious methods.

It's about raising your children

to learn the Islamic, uh, laws.

Will Islamic State re-form?

Do you believe that it will?

Islamic State will not stop.

To be continued.

[GUNFIRE]

[HIND] It was a year ago that ISIS

was on the verge of defeat.

The terror group that, at its peak,

controlled more than 34,000

square miles of Iraq and Syria

was cornered in Baghuz,

a tiny village along

the Euphrates River.

Sixty thousand fled the final battle.

Men were hauled off to prisons.

Women and children

were loaded into trucks

and transported to refugee camps.

- [GUN COCKING]

- [MAN SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

[HIND] Today the Islamic

State remains active.

In Deir ez-Zor, U.S. Special Forces

are training Kurdish and Arab militias

to hunt down fighters

hiding out in villages across Syria.

[GUNFIRE]

But a growing threat is the ISIS women

inside Al-Hol,

a massive refugee camp

near the Iraqi border.

There's 65,000 residents here

from 45 different countries,

half of them children,

but they're not all ISIS.

Many are victims themselves

and are now forced to live with women

who security officials say

are becoming more radical by the day.

♪♪♪

We're with the Kurdish intelligence

inside Al-Hol Camp.

They're about to carry

out a raid targeting women

who they believe are

part of an ISIS patrol

which teaches, maintains, and enforces

the extremist ideology in the camp.

♪♪♪

These operations are

actually incredibly dangerous

because the women that they're targeting

are known to be some of

the most violent women

inside this camp.

[WOMEN SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

[HIND] Do you know why

they brought you in here?

[UMM SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

What we've been told is that

there are women like yourself

inside the camp who are

enforcing ISIS' ideology

on other women and on...

[SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

Do you regret coming here

to join the Islamic State?

Do you want to live under

an Islamic State again?

[HIND] With little evidence against her,

camp intelligence released Umm Hamza

just hours after this raid.

These women say that

they're not doing anything;

they're just sitting inside their

tents and raising their children

and that these accusations are false.

How do you respond to that?

[SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

What happens if there's no

resolution for this problem?

[HIND] There's just about

400 security personnel

guarding this sprawling camp,

and officials are outnumbered.

One of the challenges

they face is finding out

who's radical and who isn't.

Leila Ouadi from France

has been targeted by

women who patrol the camp

and enforce strict ISIS laws

against wearing makeup

and socializing with men.

Have they attacked you personally?

[SPEAKING FRENCH]

Have you heard about them

doing it to other women?

[HIND] Leila doesn't

live in the camp alone.

She's stuck here with her four children

with little access to medicine and food.

And there may be no way out.

France, like other European governments,

is making it nearly impossible

for their citizens to return home.

What are you afraid of,

bringing them up in the camp?

If they don't get out, what are

you afraid will happen to them?

♪♪♪

[HIND] Do you take responsibility

for the situation that

your children are in?

♪♪♪

[HIND] We've managed to get

access to a women's prison,

and this is the first time

that they're going to allow

journalists to go inside and film.

Some of the women that

are being held there

are actually too dangerous

to be kept in the camps,

and so instead they've been transferred

to this detention center.

Here the women are placed

in individual cells

and kept under 24-hour surveillance,

some along with their children.

♪♪♪

Prison guards selected

three foreign detainees

for us to speak to.

Do you know why you're

here in this prison?

[SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

[HIND] Can you talk me through

how you ended up here?

[SPEAKING ENGLISH]

[HIND] Do you know why you're here?

[SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

What was it like when you were

living in the Islamic State

during the time just

before you entered the camp?

How was it not like that?

Was this a big change, in your opinion,

of ISIS and their ideology?

You're accused of trying to smuggle

explosives into the camp.

[SPEAKING FRENCH]

Yeah.

[SPEAKING ENGLISH]

That's stupid?

The role of women is

also to teach the children

the ideology of ISIS.

Is that right?

♪♪♪

[HIND] Women passing on

the ideology to children

is one of the most urgent concerns

for security officials.

Eleven-year-old Malek was held captive

by an ISIS woman inside Al-Hol.

She was rescued by camp

security just days ago

and is now being cared

for by a foster family.

♪♪♪

She's Yezidi, a religious minority

that ISIS vowed to wipe out.

[WOMAN SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

[HIND] For six years, Malek

lived under the Islamic State.

After her mother and sister

were killed in an air strike,

she was taken in by an ISIS woman

who tried to erase her past.

[SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

[SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

[CHICKENS CLUCKING]

Okay.

Gonna show us where she sleeps.

No.

Cu-cuckoo-koo!

[HIND] She's been here

now for a couple of weeks,

and she's clearly become

accustomed to living here.

She's not what I expected at all

when they told me that

there was an 11-year-old girl

who'd been living with ISIS families

and was in the camp

and was getting rescued.

It's nice to see her acting

like any other 11-year-old.

The next step for her is

going to meet her real family.

[LAUGHS]

♪♪♪

[HIND] Malek is fortunate.

She's no longer in the hands of ISIS.

But for many of the children

still inside the camp,

their future is uncertain.

Here the ideology is spreading fast,

and security is carrying

out weekly raids

to try and contain it.

[WOMEN SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

[HIND] One of the ways they do that

is by gathering

intelligence from informants

living inside Al-Hol.

That information has

led security officials

to the far corner of the camp,

where they suspect is an ISIS school.

So this woman coming out

now who they've handcuffed

is apparently one of the ISIS women

teaching the children

extremist ISIS ideology.

♪♪♪

The camp security may be

fighting a losing battle.

As they try and root out the teachers,

there's already a new

generation in the making.

[SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE]

♪♪♪

[DARK MUSIC]

[ANONYMOUS] There is no

one criteria for a target.

I view it as, like, a hunt, man.

It's like a hunt.

If you've ever been hunting,

you understand what it feels like

to track down your target

and fucking kill it.

I mean, you basically just...

made money for doing nothing:

um, a phone call and

some research online.

♪♪♪

[ROBERT] I had never heard

of a SIM swap before.

I mean, these days are

really a challenge...

every day.

You know, sometimes I... I wake up

and it's hard to get out of bed.

So when it first happened, October 26th,

I didn't sleep that night.

I was up with AT&T the entire night.

♪♪♪

I mean, you know, I was...

I mean, I was suicidal.

What brings me down is worry,

worry that I can't meet the

tuition for my daughter.

Within, like, 20 minutes,

a million dollars was stolen.

I can't even believe I

made a million dollars,

let alone lost a million dollars.

I mean...

Quite a lot of victims

were completely caught by surprise.

[KRISHNA] Allison Nixon specializes

in cybercrime and risk intelligence.

SIM swapping is a technique

where criminals basically

steal your phone number,

and all of the text messages

and calls and information

intended for your phone

now go to their phone.

And why is that important?

Well, it's important because

your entire online identity nowadays

rests on your phone number.

Your phone number is tied

to your physical phone

via this, a SIM card, a little microchip

with a unique ID that your

telephone company has on file.

To do a SIM swap, a hacker

gets a cell phone employee

to switch the SIM card number

that's linked to your phone

to a phone they have.

[ALLISON] They can do anything

with your phone number

that you would do,

so imagine you forgot

your password legitimately

and you need to get back

into your bank account.

Banks, web mail providers,

they have an account recovery process

for customers that

forget their passwords.

Since they have my phone number,

they can get into my email.

Most web mail providers nowadays

either require or strongly encourage

that you hand over your phone number.

I... I have little to

no technical expertise.

I'm hacking people, not computers.

It takes a certain type of person,

but it's not a genius.

You don't have to be

outstandingly intelligent.

You just have to know how to do it

and have the will to do it.

[ROBERT] It's not like a regular hack.

Unsophisticated kids

can do devastating damage.

[UPBEAT DANCE MUSIC]

Nick Truglia is a 21-year-old.

He stole a million dollars from me.

[KRISHNA] What's, like,

the spending habits

of these SIM swappers?

What we were seeing was basically

the infinite-money fantasy

of every 21-year-old.

They would go to the club,

waste tons of money,

show it off on social media.

[ANONYMOUS] Some of the stupid ways

I can think we've spent our money:

took a helicopter

from Queens to Manhattan

to get to dinner

just because we felt like it.

[ALLISON] They would

all stand in a circle

with their really expensive Rolexes

and dump this champagne

onto their Rolexes

onto the floor.

[ANONYMOUS] I probably spent, like,

$1/4 million on champagne.

[KRISHNA] So how much are you worth?

Um, I won't say an exact amount,

but it's, uh, under $90 million USD

and over $40 million, all in Bitcoin.

♪♪♪

[KRISHNA] For hackers on

the hunt for a big payday,

SIM swapping turns

robbery into child's play.

[ANONYMOUS] So it all really started out

with a bunch of kids

playing Call of Duty

around, ooh, I want to say 2013.

People started wanting

these things called

OG accounts on PlayStation.

So imagine you're a

kid playing a video game

and someone shows up in your game

and their username is just Hacker.

Like, no numbers after it,

nothing, just the word "hacker."

It's just sort of like

a... a status thing.

So we would call up PlayStation Network.

We'd have their name, address,

and all their personal info,

and we would try to

get... get their accounts.

[KRISHNA] And once you

had that OG username,

you could sell it to someone else

through an online marketplace.

[ALLISON] The big sellers

on these username markets

have realized that the only feasible way

to get good stock to

sell is to steal accounts.

At some point, somebody realized

that video games and social media

are really only worth so much

and if they want to make more money,

they really need to start

targeting cryptocurrency,

where they can make hundreds

of millions of dollars.

[KRISHNA] Cryptocurrencies

are virtual gold mines.

Sure, OG usernames could

net a few thousand dollars,

but digital wallets of

Bitcoin and Ethereum

could be swiped just as easily.

[ANONYMOUS] So there was

this one time me and my buddy

were scrambling before this guy, like,

tries to get his account back,

before he gets his

cell phone number back,

and, uh, my partner

obviously just made, like,

roughly $10 million to $15 million.

He says, "Oh, yeah, I gotta go."

I said, "Why?"

He says, "Oh, I gotta

do my fucking homework."

I thought... I thought

it was really funny.

[EERIE MUSIC]

[SAMY] Last year, we didn't

even know what it was,

and 98 percent of cops

would have no idea, if

a victim came to them,

what happened and how to investigate it.

[KRISHNA] Since 2015, it's estimated

that hundreds of millions of dollars

have been stolen by SIM swapping,

but only a handful of SIM swappers

have ever been caught.

[JOHN] I would say the

majority of cases we go into,

it's kids living with their parents.

And so a lot of times, we

will run into a mom who

thinks all their son is doing is gaming

or just happens to be very brilliant

at Bitcoin investment

and that's the reason he bought her

a brand-new Toyota or

something like that.

[KRISHNA] In November 2018,

they caught Nick Truglia,

the young man accused of stealing

over a million dollars from Rob Ross.

Truglia did have a

social media presence,

with him flying on private jets

and showing fancy clothing

and fancy watches.

He definitely was portraying

himself as a rich guy

and, like, a self-made millionaire,

possibly, like, through,

like, investment banking.

But we came to find out that everything

he posted online about

himself was just a lie.

[KRISHNA] The criminal

case of alleged SIM swapper

Nick Truglia is still ongoing.

[MAN] The court is

going to deny the motion

to reset bail.

[KRISHNA] He maintains his innocence

and is currently awaiting trial.

♪♪♪

But careful SIM swappers

are usually harder to pin down.

Richard Sanders cofounded CipherBlade,

a blockchain investigation agency that,

among other things, uses SIM swappers'

social engineering tactics...

pretending to be someone they're not...

to take them down.

[RICHARD] This is a flow of transactions

from an influencer that

experienced a hack.

This was a team of three to four folks.

They split up the money,

and they sent it to

different wallets from there.

♪♪♪

So I pretended to be a

very, very attractive

19-year-old female video

gamer named Alyssa.

I joined their Discord server

and just started

chatting with these folks.

They're sliding into my DMs.

They're telling me pretty much

anything I wanted to know.

Showing off their money.

I would ask, "How are

you making that money?"

They'd talk about SIM swapping.

Yeah, a bunch of them are talking to me,

but one of them sent me quite

a few different selfies.

There's DMs he sent me

where he admits to what he did.

And sure enough, he sends me

this picture.

Joel Ortiz.

[TENSE MUSIC]

[KRISHNA] In May 2019, a

group of hackers targeted

more than 50 victims,

stealing over $35 million.

Ortiz was one of them...

brazen, prolific, and now

accountable for ten felonies.

Rob Ross attended a public hearing

where his accusers were allowed

to make victim statements.

[ROBERT] I think all SIM swap

victims who have lost money

are watching this Joel Ortiz trial

and certainly the SIM

swappers are watching it

to see how much time he

will end up having to serve.

In my case, Ortiz stole control

of my phone service twice

to take over all of my

email and financial accounts,

ultimately stealing

my entire life savings,

approximately $1.8 million.

[ANN MARIE] We lost everything.

I'm 50 years old with

two small children,

and I ha... I'm facing no retirement...

♪♪♪

... because Joel Ortiz, in one day,

destroyed our lives,

everything we spent decades building.

♪♪♪

[KRISHNA] Ortiz pleaded

no contest to the charges

and, in accordance with his plea deal,

was sentenced to ten years in prison.

But prosecutors have

failed to get him to reveal

the location of Bitcoin

they suspect he's hidden.

[MAN] Given that he

stole at least $7 million

that we know about,

we believe that he

has significantly more

than $2 million that

he refuses to return.

And Joel Ortiz will likely leave jail

with over $4 million at age 24.

[WOMAN] Ooh!

♪♪♪

[ANONYMOUS] If I were to go to jail, um,

it really wouldn't be that many years.

It's not like murder.

It's really just, like, a decade

at... at... at most

is what people look at,

and then even then, I

would still have my money

when I got out because it's Bitcoin.

Um, they can't... it's

not like a bank account.

They can't take the money.

I mean, obviously it would

suck to go to jail for a decade,

but, um,

uh, the way I have everything set up,

I don't think that'll happen.

[KRISHNA] As the tactics of SIM swappers

continue to evolve,

victims are now starting to fight back.

Michael Terpin lost $24

million in a SIM swap.

Now he's suing AT&T for

letting this happen.

People don't realize that

most of the AT&T stores

that say AT&T aren't

actually owned by AT&T.

They're licensed, and yet

they have the same access,

um, as an employee would

to critical information

that will let anybody

be bribed for about $100.

There's over 1,000 cases

just from AT&T alone

that one group is investigating.

They've basically said they

don't take responsibility

for security; that's not their job.

[KRISHNA] Early this year,

three senators and three representatives

wrote a letter to the FCC,

pressuring them to

take on SIM swap fraud.

Vice reached out to AT&T,

Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

Sprint didn't get back to us.

The others declined to

be interviewed on camera.

But AT&T did provide

us with a statement.

The irony is rich here

because phone numbers were collected

as a way to make accounts more secure.

And now they are a

back door for accounts.

♪♪♪

My endgame? [LAUGHS]

There's... there's no endgame.

It's just...

the goal... the goal is just to make

as much money as possible.

I just want to be happy.

That's... that's really it.

That means I'll stop

when they make me stop.

- ♪ Look at my swag ♪

- ♪ Look at my ♪

♪ Look at that bag ♪

♪ Ain't that jewelry, yeah ♪

- ♪ Look at my house ♪

- ♪ Look at my ♪

♪ Look at my spouse ♪

♪ Ain't that jewelry, yeah ♪

- ♪ Look at my bitch ♪

- ♪ Look at my ♪

♪ Look at my whip ♪

♪ Ain't that jewelry, yeah ♪

- ♪ Look at my swag ♪

- ♪ Look at my ♪

♪ Look at that bag ♪

♪ Ain't that jewelry, yeah ♪

- ♪ Look at that bag ♪

- ♪ Swag ♪

- ♪ Look at that bag ♪

- ♪ Swag ♪

♪ Look at that bag, look at that bag ♪

- ♪ Swag ♪

- ♪ Look at that bag ♪

♪ Swag, swag ♪

- ♪ Look at that bag ♪

- ♪ Swag ♪