Trafficked with Mariana Van Zeller (2020) s03e05 Episode Script
MDMA
1
(man speaking, played backwards)
(man speaking, played backwards)
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
Before the assassinations,
before the hitmen,
the fire bombings,
the torture chamber,
and the underground pills,
there was this email
from my son's middle school,
warning parents
about ecstasy pills
that kids had ordered online
in a transaction that
had seemed all too easy.
I've done stories
about most illegal drugs,
but I hadn't paid
much attention to MDMA.
It was a party drug
and had seemed too soft,
or too tame, to warrant
that kind of deep dive,
at least until I came
to understand the forces
lurking beneath the surface.
♪
I don't care ♪
if the room's spinnin' ♪
Will you talk to me? ♪
I don't live alone
this time ♪
I don't live alone ♪
MARIANA: How many people
do you think you've killed?
I don't know.
For me it's no problem.
♪
Woo! (echoing)
♪
♪
MARIANA: Okay.
He's there. I see him.
Yeah, that's him.
Cigarette in mouth.
I'm in downtown L.A.
at 1:00 A.M.
to meet with an underground
party promoter named Ziggy.
I'm Mariana.
ZIGGY: How are you?
MARIANA: Nice to meet you.
ZIGGY: Nice to meet you.
MARIANA: So, you guys
keep the gate closed and
ZIGGY: We have to, you know?
MARIANA: What do you call
a party like this?
ZIGGY: Well, this is
the true underground.
MARIANA: And what
makes it underground?
What, what is it?
ZIGGY: Obviously
the sales of alcohol.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
ZIGGY: Ecstasy,
everything you can imagine.
MARIANA: It's the ecstasy scene
that I've come to check out.
The letter from
my son's middle school
had been a warning
to parents about three teens
who had just overdosed
on a bad batch of ecstasy
that they had bought online
and received through the mail.
Is ecstasy a big part of it?
Do people
MARIANA: Would you say that
it's, is it popular right now?
♪
MARIANA: Inside,
partygoers are rolling,
a term used to describe
the whirlwind of energy,
pleasure, and abandon
fueled by ecstasy pills,
pills sold by this man
who goes by the name of Pito.
What do you have
in your hand, by the way?
MARIANA: Holy moly! Wow!
Oh, so the liquid
is only up here?
This is ecstasy?
MARIANA: What kind are these?
MARIANA: And they're
good quality?
MARIANA: How do you know
they're good quality?
MARIANA: How much do you buy it
and how much do you sell it for?
MARIANA: $2,000? Okay.
MARIANA: So you have
about 20 here.
How much do you sell
per, per pill?
MARIANA: That's a markup
of over 1,000 percent
from wholesale to retail.
MARIANA: Indeed,
it's a drop in the ocean.
In the year prior
to the pandemic,
the business of electronic
dance music was soaring.
160 million festival tickets
were sold worldwide.
And the consumption
of ecstasy by attendees
is a very open secret.
How do you get your stuff?
MARIANA: Here in the U.S.?
MARIANA: And do you know
how he gets it?
How it's shipped or
You don't ask him
any questions?
MARIANA: Pito wouldn't
connect me to his supplier,
so I had to do some digging.
Eventually, I found
someone willing to talk.
♪
♪
Up in the Bay Area,
I've made contact with a crew
that is pressing
their own ecstasy pills.
Their leader is a man named Sai,
who has agreed to meet me
with the condition that we
not reveal his actual voice
or the location
where we're filming.
♪
Sai? Is that how
you want to be called?
SAI: Yes, please.
MARIANA: So, what
do you do here, Sai?
SAI: We make ecstasy.
MARIANA: Is this
the end product?
SAI: That is the end product.
They're Blue Buddhas,
200 milligrams of MDMA.
MARIANA: So,
what's the difference
between Molly,
ecstasy, and MDMA?
SAI: MDMA is just
the raw ingredient
in its pure crystal form.
Molly is usually referring
to this in a capsule form.
And then ecstasy
is a pressed pill.
MARIANA:
Oh, so that's pure MDMA?
SAI: Yep.
MARIANA: Can I see,
can I touch it?
SAI: Go for it.
MARIANA: Can I smell it, or is
SAI: Go for it.
MARIANA: What happens?
SAI: Just don't sniff too hard.
You'll be fine.
MARIANA: That's,
yeah, it smells.
SAI: A little flowery.
A little sweet.
MARIANA: Yeah, definitely sweet.
MDMA is the chemical signature
of the molecule first created
in a lab in 1912 by the Merck
pharmaceutical company,
where scientists
were attempting, but failed,
to create
a blood clotting agent.
In the 1950s, the U.S.
government experimented
with MDMA
and other psychedelics,
hoping they could be used
as a truth serum,
but they, too,
abandoned the effort.
Later, in the 1970s,
psychedelic chemist
Sasha Shulgin
saw a different path for MDMA.
Recreating the molecule
in his lab,
he experimented on himself,
then gave the drug
to therapists
to treat patients struggling
with emotional trauma,
work that is again
picking up steam today.
But in the 1980s, when word got
out of MDMA's euphoric highs,
the drug jumped to the streets.
Clubs in cities across America
began openly selling MDMA pills,
now branded
with a new nameecstasy.
MARIANA: Does it
have to be exactly 20?
SAI: Yeah.
We want to crush it up
so there's no hot spots
and the pills are evenly dosed.
MARIANA: How many pills
can you press
with that amount of
SAI: This is an extra 100 pills.
MARIANA: 100 pills?
SAI: Yeah.
MARIANA: How much
do they sell for?
SAI: Uh, retail
on these are $20.
MARIANA: So, you can make
$2,000 from just today
from the pills
you're pressing today?
SAI: Yeah.
MARIANA: How much did buying
the actual MDMA cost,
just the raw materials?
SAI: Uh, I'd rather not say.
MARIANA: That means
you're probably making
good money from this.
SAI: Yeah, it's mostly profit,
let's be real.
MARIANA: Right.
SAI: And now it's time
to really mix it.
MARIANA: Oh, so now
it's all just mixing.
SAI: Now it's just mixing.
Now we wait.
MARIANA: What kind of people
buy and use MDMA,
you would say,
compared to other drugs?
SAI: Uh, I mean, ravers,
obviously, a lot of ravers,
but people of all sorts, like
older people, professionals.
I've been at parties where
there's grandparents there
who are rolling
and they're just, like,
a cute, little old couple
in love with each other,
having a great time.
It's nice to see.
MARIANA: Do you ever worry
that this might land
into the wrong hands?
Like a person
who's too young to try it
or who's not in the right place,
and things can
go wrong real fast?
SAI: For sure.
I mean, the kid thing
I kind of feel okay about,
because it's pretty bitter.
It's very bitter.
And, I mean, like, there's only
so much I can do about that.
Wrong person? I don't know.
No, I guess it's just their
own personal responsibility
to not do that, because
what can I do about that?
MARIANA: So, when was the first
time you ever tried MDMA?
SAI: Almost five years ago,
and it was just me
and my friend by ourselves,
and we were just overwhelmed.
We were just so, like,
sensitive to everything.
We just turned off the lights,
sat there in darkness
for a second,
and then just ended up, like,
walking around the park
all night and talking
and, like, really
connecting as people.
MARIANA: Did you like it then?
SAI: I loved it, yeah.
I felt like it opened
this emotional window
that's been closed
my whole life.
I just didn't know it.
And it was blasted wide open.
And then when the drug was off,
like when I came down,
it closed, but it never
closed all the way.
♪
♪
MARIANA: Wow. Now, totally blue.
So, this is the actual
pill-pressing machine?
SAI: Yep. This is a TDP 5.
MARIANA: And how many
pills can you do?
SAI: So, when it's
plugged in and automated,
it's 3,500 an hour, I believe.
MARIANA: Wow!
SAI: It's very quick.
So, it's been filled,
and now the press comes down.
Pressure's applied.
(pill drops)
MARIANA: Oh, wow!
So, here it is.
So, this is worth $20, yeah?
SAI: Yep.
MARIANA: Why not make this stuff
yourself, the actual pure MDMA?
SAI: The chemicals are
just too closely watched.
It's pretty hard
to source the ingredients
and get away with it.
MARIANA: MDMA
must be synthesized
using a substance
known as a precursor.
It was originally oil
from the sassafras tree,
but today the labs
that make the drug
do it largely by working
with synthetic compounds.
And where does this come from?
SAI: Usually Amsterdam.
MARIANA: That's right
Amsterdam.
The famously tolerant
capital of the Netherlands
is also the world's
epicenter of MDMA.
The reason goes back to 1985
MAN: The Drug Enforcement
Administration is announcing
its intention to place
the drug known as MDMA,
or by the street name ecstasy,
under emergency controls
in Schedule I.
MARIANA: when the
U.S. government named MDMA
as a Schedule I drug.
At the time, nations around
the world quickly followed suit.
But the Netherlands
didn't institute a ban
for three more years, and
criminal groups took notice,
using it as a hub
to legally produce MDMA
and then illegally distribute it
around the world.
It's 30 years later,
and the industry in Holland
is still flying high.
♪
♪
I'm here to find out how Dutch
MDMA reaches American shores.
And there's
a charismatic trafficker
with American ties
who has agreed to meet me.
♪
♪
♪
MARIANA: I've been looking for
a route into the underground,
and I'm hoping
Steve Brown can help me.
(ding)
He's agreed to a meeting,
right on the Amstel River.
And you were born
in the United States, right?
STEVE BROWN:
I'm born in the United States.
Came here with my father
and mother back to Holland.
My father was a GI,
so that's how he met my mother.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
STEVE: And when I was
growing up with my own family,
I have lived about ten years
in the States.
MARIANA: By the time he retired,
Dutch-American
trafficker Steve Brown
had moved ecstasy
across the globe.
And I'm hoping
he can introduce me
to current players
sending pills to the U.S.
How did you get started
in the, in the drug business?
STEVE: We started out
with a youth community center
called the Happy Family, and
we only were selling hashish.
I'm talking seventies
and eighties here.
MARIANA: Like Amsterdam's
red-light district,
the Happy Family
and other coffee shops
that sold weed and hash
revealed the boundaries of Dutch
tolerance and profitability.
According to Steve,
he was raking in $20 million
a year at the time,
mostly from illegal drug sales.
And when did MDMA
sort of enter the scene?
STEVE: The eighties.
The ecstasy pill is introduced
here by the Israeli Mafia,
and so they asked me,
because I had
at the Happy Family
a lot of customers,
if I wanted to sell
that pill on behalf of them.
MARIANA: So you were one
of the first people ever here
to sell ecstasy?
STEVE: I was the first
on the record.
MARIANA: Are you still involved
in the drug business?
STEVE: No. I went with pension,
already 15 years ago.
MARIANA: But you
still have contacts?
STEVE: Yes.
MARIANA: So if we
wanted to gain access
into this drug underworld
here in Holland,
would you be able to help us?
STEVE: I will do really my best,
but it's very dangerous.
♪
MARIANA: Steve says that
competing criminal groups
and widespread access to weapons
created an "anything goes"
atmosphere here.
He begins by putting me in touch
with people connected
with European distribution.
MARIANA: Oh, can I see that?
MARIANA: Is it because
it's high quality?
MARIANA: And where is this made?
MARIANA: For how much
time of work?
MARIANA: Oh, wow.
But what I'm really
in search of
is connections
to the U.S. market.
What other countries
are you guys selling MDMA to?
MARIANA: And to the U.S.?
MARIANA: Why not?
MARIANA: Wow.
MARIANA: Because we know
that Dutch pills
are going to the U.S.
Who'show are they
getting there?
♪
MARIANA: So far,
I've come up short
with connections to the States,
but an American source
has sent me here,
to a warehouse in a town
one hour outside of Amsterdam.
♪
♪
MARIANA: Can I come in?
How are you?
MARIANA: Notorious
MARIANA: P-I-G for pig?
MARIANA: Why that name?
MARIANA: (chuckles)
This is ecstasy?
NOTORIOUS P-I-G: Yeah.
MARIANA: And what is this?
What is it?
MARIANA: Salvador Dali,
the Spanish painter?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: He was actually
my favorite painter growing up.
MARIANA: (laughs)
Is it really your favorite pill?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: What is this?
MARIANA: Oh, yeah, they have the
Maserati symbol and everything.
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: Where are
all of these going to?
MARIANA: You're shipping
them all to the U.S.?
MARIANA: So you're not afraid
of American authorities?
NOTORIOUS P-I-G: No.
MARIANA: For three years?
NOTORIOUS P-I-G: Yeah.
MARIANA: How do you ship
all this stuff?
How do you ship it to the U.S.?
MARIANA: Oh, so you're
hiding the address, right?
MARIANA: I'm not gonna
say the whole name,
but it's Ryan something
and going to Michigan,
United States.
And this one is Christian,
going to Colorado.
This one is going to Florida.
Ecstasy pills.
MARIANA: Oh, wow.
So, it's tons of packages.
MARIANA: So this guy received
MARIANA: Wow! How do
these American people,
how do they even know,
how do they contact you?
How do they know,
where do you sell?
MARIANA: Yeah.
MARIANA: That you've posted?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
Beat, beat, rock,
to the rock beat, beat ♪
♪
MARIANA: What strikes me
as remarkable
about Piggy's Telegram channel,
which he has branded
"Dope Discovery,"
isn't just the hundreds
of videos plugging his wares;
it's the unbridled joy he takes
in thumbing his nose
at the police.
So, you have fun doing this?
This is like
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah. (laughs)
MARIANA: fun for you?
MARIANA: Why is the Netherlands
such a center for production
of MDMA and ecstasy?
MARIANA: Okay. But if they were
able to get into this, this room
and see all this
and arrest you
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: with all this stuff,
or in your car, wherever
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: What
would happen to you?
MARIANA: Yeah. You did?
MARIANA: For how long?
MARIANA: 150 hours of
community service, that's it?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: Given
the lenient sentencing laws
in the Netherlands,
it makes sense that
so many criminal groups
have set up production here.
Back in the States,
large ecstasy busts are rare,
but they do draw
serious jail time.
15,000 pills would result
in federal charges,
a minimum sentence of ten years
and a fine of $4 million.
What about overdoses?
Do you get scared
about, I don't know,
people receiving this
and taking it all?
MARIANA: Wow.
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: And how
did you feel about that?
MARIANA: Oh, did you
worry about, I mean,
didn't the police investigate
then, who sold him
MARIANA: Death is bad
for business, so Piggy says
he tests the purity
of his products regularly,
a preventative step
meant to guard against
the kind of overdose
that I was informed about
from my son's school.
What supposed to happen?
MARIANA:
So it's definitely MDMA.
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: How do you get
your pills, by the way?
MARIANA: So, you don't
think it's worth it,
me asking you to talk to
the guy that doesn't like you?
MARIANA: Why do you
have a shotgun here?
MARIANA: It's tempting to think
of Piggy as an anomaly,
but after my conversations
with Steve Brown,
I realize that would be naive.
How much has it changed,
the drug underworld,
from back then to these days?
STEVE: So the business
in the beginning
was actually not
really violent at all.
MARIANA: And nowadays?
STEVE: Well, if you
compare with that time,
it's a difference
between day and night.
Step by step, the violence
get worse, worse, and worse,
up to today.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm. And now?
STEVE: And now, 30 years later,
it's a commercial
billion-dollar business,
and in every billion-dollar
business, people will kill.
Killing is normal now.
I myself have been shot.
I have one bullet in my liver
and one through my arm.
MARIANA: You know,
I grew up in Europe.
Holland is the last place where
you'd expect this violence.
You know, they give
You know?
♪
MARIANA: By definition,
black markets operate
with their own set of rules.
When times are good,
money and market share
are low-hanging fruit.
But increasingly
in the Netherlands,
when a deal goes south
or a player feels threatened,
the kind of justice handed out
has nothing to do
with courtrooms.
(explosion)
MAN: Politie!
♪
MARIANA: In 2020, at a Dutch
harbor, police officers found
seven shipping containers
converted into prison cells,
a trove of
stolen police uniforms,
automatic weapons,
and this, a fully soundproofed
torture chamber,
complete with dentist chair,
hedge cutters, pliers,
and scalpels.
That raid showed everyone
that a new level of violence,
the kind usually seen
in narco states,
has arrived
in the heart of Europe.
I want to connect with someone
close to the violence
and mayhem
to find out why things
are falling apart.
And Steve Brown says he knows
someone I should talk to.
Have to go right?
But there's little else
he's ready to reveal,
until we're all
in the same room.
STEVE: This is a very,
very old friend of mine.
We will call him not his real
name, you must understand that,
because he's still
an active killer and hitman.
♪
♪
♪
MARIANA: How did you first
become a killer, and why?
MARIANA: So, how old were you?
MARIANA: Were you involved in
the drug business at the time?
MAN: Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARIANA: And how many people
do you think you've killed?
MARIANA: But is it
MARIANA: And who are
these people? And why
MARIANA: So all people involved
in the drug business?
MARIANA:
What's the process like?
How does it work?
How do you
MARIANA: So, you spend
two to three weeks
doing surveillance
on the person before?
MARIANA: What guns do you
usually carry with you?
MARIANA: Do you
have AK-47s here, as well?
STEVE: They sell them
here for 1,000.
They're very cheap.
They come from the East Bloc.
MARIANA: I understand
that you don't think
these people are innocent,
but at least, I mean,
you at least have thought
of their mothers
and their children?
MARIANA: There's
a casual air to all of this
that I find quite unsettling,
because if there's a perception
amongst traffickers
that violence and killing
carry no consequences,
then it's open season on anyone
perceived as an enemy.
If myself
or a journalist coming here
and doing some sort of reporting
that you wouldn't like,
would that be a reason
to kill a journalist?
MARIANA: Oh, so you've
had situations in which
you've gone to journalists
and warned them,
do not mention my name
or my family name.
MARIANA:
If they had done it again
MARIANA: Then you
would have killed them?
MARIANA: Every crime journalist
walks with a target
on his, or her, back.
In the last decade alone,
136 journalists have been
killed around the world.
But it's honestly shocking
to hear it described
in such casual terms
by a person
who actually accepts money
to pull the trigger.
So you're saying that you have,
many times in the past,
intimidated journalists?
MAN: Yes.
MARIANA: Threatened them
and told them that they can't
report on you or your family,
or else you would kill them?
MAN: Yeah. Yeah.
MARIANA: I'm trying to get
a sense of how much
MARIANA: Yeah.
How much back then
and how much do people get now?
MARIANA: But of course,
the price depends on the target.
And some targets
are bigger than others.
It was one year ago
that the country's
most famous crime journalist,
Peter R. de Vries, was
ambushed as he stepped out
of a TV studio
in downtown Amsterdam.
(gunshots)
REPORTER: Celebrity
Dutch crime reporter
Peter R. de Vries has died
after being shot in the street.
De Vries, who was 64,
was a frequent commentator
on television crime programs.
MARIANA: I want to understand
what the killing meant
to Dutch society.
These men, who have arrived
for our interview
in bulletproof cars
and under the protection
of seven government agents,
are friends of De Vries
whose own lives are now at risk.
♪
♪
♪
MARIANA: I started
looking into ecstasy
after receiving an email
from my son's school.
But following the trail
of this party drug
has led me further
and further underground.
And now, here
in the Netherlands,
I've arrived
at a somber anniversary,
the death of renowned crime
journalist Peter R. de Vries.
These men are friends
of De Vries,
lawyers Peter Schouten
and Onno de Jong.
PETER SCHOUTEN: Well,
what actually happened
was that Peter was shot,
executed from close range,
in a very busy area
in the Netherlands,
and without knowing,
he had been observed already
for a long time.
The killer walked up behind him
and shot him five times.
MARIANA:
The story began in 2018,
with a Dutch-Moroccan trafficker
named Ridouan Taghi.
One of the people working
for his organization,
named Nabil B., turned himself
into Dutch authorities
and agreed to testify
against his former boss.
ONNO DE JONG: When you are
becoming a crown witness,
you go and talk with
the police in secrecy,
in total secrecy,
and you make statements.
PETER: And in this case,
this protection agreement
was also made,
and it means that Nabil
was in a secret location
and that also his family
should be protected,
and there it went wrong.
MARIANA: Just a few days
after giving his statement,
Nabil's brother, who was not
involved with organized crime,
was murdered at his print shop.
PETER: And more than a year
after the brother was killed,
the lawyer who assisted Nabil
was shot dead
in front of his house
by people sent to him to,
yeah, basically liquidate him,
to execute him.
ONNO: And it sent a shockwave
throughout society.
And I always experienced it
as very naive, because they say,
"Well, this, this, this
is not happening here.
This shouldn't
happen in Holland.
We're so nice, and we're
a lovely country."
Well, we are not anymore.
PETER: Yeah, that was a message
to put fear in society.
You could see it as the start of
narco-terror in the Netherlands.
MARIANA: Into that vacuum
stepped Peter R. de Vries,
who recruited Peter and Onno
to take on the job
of becoming Nabil's
new legal team,
while himself becoming
a high-profile advisor
for the witness.
He's seen here reading the text
of his shoulder tattoo.
PETER R. DE VRIES: All
(applause)
all that is necessary
for the triumph of evil
is good men do nothing.
(cheering)
PETER: Peter had the
enormous sense for justice
and an enormous sense
to fight injustice.
And he was basically
the only journalist
within the Netherlands who,
besides reporting on crime,
really picked up a case
and then helped the victims.
MARIANA: But not everybody
had warm feelings
about Peter de Vries,
especially those in the
underworld, like Steve Brown.
STEVE: You want to know,
of course, about
MARIANA: Yup.
STEVE: the
"crime journalist,"
Peter R. de Vries.
But I have to tell you honest,
I might not be the right
person to ask about him
because I'm sworn enemy
of him for over 30 years.
♪
MARIANA: From the beginning of
his career, De Vries was known
to seek out high-profile targets
and had his crosshairs
on Steve Brown,
leveling accusations
and launching sting operations
that they broadcast on Dutch TV.
This confrontation
was Steve Brown's response
to a report that De Vries
had broadcast on TV.
(speaking Dutch)
(speaking Dutch)
MARIANA: You didn't like
each other. But I mean
STEVE: That's an understatement.
MARIANA: I understand, but
there's certainly a part of you
that was shocked by the fact
that a journalist
of his caliber was killed.
STEVE: No. No, you know
what is shocking?
Generally speaking,
I'm against murder.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
STEVE: It's always shocking
if somebody gets shot.
MARIANA: Steve Brown
had nothing to do
with the murder
of Peter R. de Vries,
but it's easy to see how
reporters in this world
can make lasting enemies.
PETER: It was incredible, and
it was hard for Dutch society
to see somebody
like that being shot.
It was, actually nobody
feels safe anymore
at a moment like that
in a country.
MARIANA: And that,
perhaps, was the point.
Currently, Taghi
and 16 associates
are on trial in the Netherlands,
with 700 army and
police officers mobilized
to safeguard the courthouse.
I came to the Netherlands
to track the major source
of American MDMA,
but found a country
starting to resemble
a narco state.
A Dutch newspaper reporting
on drug traffickers
was recently rammed
in a van attack.
A news magazine was hit
with an anti-tank rocket.
And 94 hand grenade incidents
were reported by police
in a two-year span.
It's a wave of violence that
has all of Europe wondering,
what could possibly come next?
♪
MARIANA: Did you know
Peter de Vries?
GABRIELLA ADER:
Yes. Yeah. Personally.
MARIANA: Personally?
GABRIELLA: Yeah, yeah.
MARIANA: Like Peter de Vries,
who was murdered for getting
too close to Dutch traffickers,
Gabriella Ader
reports extensively
on the Dutch underworld.
When you found out,
what was your reaction?
GABRIELLA: I was very startled
and, unfortunately,
I cannot say
it was a huge surprise.
MARIANA: Huh, really? Why not?
GABRIELLA: Yeah.
My family's from Sicily,
and I can't even tell you
how much it now resembles
the situation there.
MARIANA: With the Mafia?
With the Mob?
GABRIELLA: Yeah. I even spoke
to lawyers, almost crying,
who told me, "Yeah. I just
want to stop this job."
Because, you know, they used
to have a lot of respect
for attorneys,
journalists, et cetera,
but that's just all gone.
And you also see it now,
for instance,
if you see the trial,
it is not normal.
There's so many police cars,
so many army members are ready.
And then everybody thinks the
Netherlands is so progressive
and that we're
always in control.
But now you can see,
I don't know. Do we?
MARIANA: I'm European.
I was born in Portugal,
lived most of my life
in Portugal,
so the fact that this is
all happening right here
in the Netherlands is
really mind-blowing to me.
GABRIELLA: Yeah. It is. Because
there's so much money involved.
So, the stakes
are just too high.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
GABRIELLA: And also, I think,
what I hear from colleagues,
or from attorneys, is that
really the climate has changed.
It became so much more violent.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
I'm assuming it also sort of had
a negative effect on journalism,
anyone trying to investigate
the crime world here.
Now people are
more scared, right?
How's that affected your job?
Are you more scared
to do what you do?
GABRIELLA: I did
get myself unregistered
when I bought an apartment
because I didn't want
people to trace me.
MARIANA: Wow!
So, basically, you didn't
put your name on the
GABRIELLA: Yeah.
You can't find me.
MARIANA: You can't find you.
GABRIELLA: Yeah.
So, I'm not scared,
but I do take care of things.
And I just think twice
before I do something.
MARIANA: The people I'm meeting
next are also taking precautions
to keep a low profile.
But in this case, they're not
worried about the police,
they are the police
and are so concerned
about counter-surveillance
that they've asked us
to keep their location hidden.
(door opens)
Thank you.
ANDY KRAAG: Go ahead.
So, this is
our mock-up facility.
This is where you have
all the hardware
that's been used in labs.
You have the boiler systems,
the ventilation systems,
and the tableting machines.
MARIANA: So, this is
what's used to make MDMA.
ANDY: This is actually what
was confiscated during raids.
MARIANA: Andy Kraag is
a former special forces officer
in the Dutch Marines who
now leads the Netherlands'
National Criminal
Investigations Division.
What can you do, as
a police agency, to stop this?
To try to stop the violence
in the drug business
from happening?
ANDY: Yeah.
Well, in recent years,
we've had pretty good
successes internationally.
We were able to get
into the communications
of those drug criminals.
We could actually
real-time monitor
what those criminals were doing.
It was as if we were sitting
next to them at the table
and we could constantly
anticipate what they were doing,
and then we could
act accordingly.
(shouting)
MARIANA: The operation
he's referring to
involved a company
called EncroChat,
whose encrypted phones
were widely used
by criminals across Europe.
In 2019, Dutch, French,
and British authorities
hacked the phone system,
giving them direct insight
into criminal networks,
which resulted in thousands
of arrests across the world.
It's a sting that
had a profound impact
on the drug underground
of Europe.
Even Notorious P.I.G.
had mentioned it when we spoke.
MARIANA: Oh, yeah,
the encrypted chat,
where they could read
encrypted chats. Yeah.
MARIANA: And what
does that mean for you?
For your business?
♪
MARIANA: What was the most
surprising thing you found
through the EncroChat
investigation?
ANDY: It is as if you have
one big wiretap
on the complete
criminal underworld.
We knew that the drug business
was intense, that it was high,
but we didn't knew
that it was that big.
The revenues worldwide,
of Dutch MDMA worldwide,
was almost up
to 19 billion euros.
MARIANA: Wow.
ANDY: Yeah.
MARIANA: Are you seeing
international groups coming in,
or foreign groups coming
into the Netherlands?
ANDY: Our Dutch criminals,
you see them working
closely together
with Mexican criminals.
They just switch products.
MARIANA: They bring cocaine in
and they take MDMA out?
ANDY: So it's, it's cocaine
for MDMA, it's MDMA for cocaine.
MARIANA: You know, I've
reported extensively in Mexico
on the drug business there,
and when we talk
about torture chambers
and intimidation of journalists
and even the killing
of journalists,
there's enormous similarities
to what's happening
in Mexico with the drug war.
ANDY: If you look at Mexico, if
you see what's going on there,
of course that scares us,
so we're very alert
of more symptoms of that
moving into Holland.
MARIANA: And are you
seeing more violence
in the Netherlands right now?
ANDY: It's becoming
more violent, yeah.
Demand worldwide is growing,
and that means there are
more drug criminals,
more competition.
And with competition comes
violence by definition.
♪
MARIANA: The global
MDMA business is a wheel,
and it is now
turning full circle,
taking me back to America,
to a mailbox
in central New Jersey
where clients
of the Notorious P.I.G.
await their product.
♪
♪
MARIANA: I've left
the Netherlands behind,
but I'm here to see
some pills created there.
I think this is it.
I think they're expecting us.
(clears throat) Yeah.
MAC: Hi, Mariana?
MARIANA: Yes, it is.
How are you, Mac?
Nice to see you.
MAC: Nice to meet you.
MARIANA: You, too, finally.
MAC: Yes.
MARIANA: So I heard
you got the package?
MAC: I did.
MARIANA: How are you?
I'm Mariana.
ADRIAN: I'm Adrian, how are you?
MARIANA: Good, nice to meet you.
Notorious P.I.G.
asked two of his customers,
whom we'll call Mac and Adrian,
to let us know when
his next shipment arrived.
So these are the packages?
MARIANA: No, I don't, actually.
Can I just see them
before you open it?
MARIANA: So is it usually
in packages like this?
MAC: Yes.
ADRIAN: Yes.
And it came ripped, too,
so I just, kind of,
like, taped it up.
MARIANA: It came ripped?
ADRIAN: A little bit.
MARIANA: Oh, wow.
ADRIAN: So, here's the crystal.
MAC: That's pure MDMA.
ADRIAN: Yeah, it's pure MDMA.
Same presses he uses to make
these Maserati pills.
MARIANA: Oh,
these are Maseratis?
ADRIAN: Yes.
MARIANA:
We saw these in Holland.
These two are
small-time dealers.
They'll repackage and sell
Piggy's MDMA and ecstasy,
tripling their $500 investment.
So, how many of these
packages do you get?
MAC: Maybe five a month?
Once a week.
MARIANA: So every week,
you're receiving packages
from Notorious P.I.G.?
MAC: Correct, correct.
MARIANA: Can I talk about
the elephant in the room,
which I haven't yet?
MAC: Sure.
MARIANA: That's sitting right
there, which is a 9-millimeter?
MAC: That is a 9-millimeter,
but it's actually a ghost gun.
MARIANA: It's a ghost gun?
So you use this mainly
here for protection
because you're operating a drug
business out of your house?
MAC: Correct.
MARIANA: Notably, even
on this side of the Atlantic,
the top concern of dealers
is not law enforcement,
nor is it protecting
innocents abroad.
Have you heard how the drug
trade in the Netherlands
is fueling the violence there?
MAC: No, I
MARIANA: Including
the death of journalists.
Priority number one
is safeguarding profits.
MAC: I guess, to answer
your question directly,
no, I haven't.
I guess it does concern me,
but it doesn't concern me
to the amount that I would
let it affect my business.
MARIANA: Apathy is a luxury
that's not available
to Tahmina Akefi,
a Dutch journalist
who was engaged to
Peter R. de Vries in 2021,
at the time he was murdered.
I'm so, so sorry for your loss.
MARIANA: Did you ever think
that something like this
would happen in your country?
This was possible?
That a murder like this, out
in the open, would be possible?
MARIANA: Do you feel
like the Netherlands
is becoming a narco state?
MARIANA: Do you think
that the users, you know,
the casual drug users
that are, you know,
at parties using MDMA,
which the, the Netherlands
is such a center for,
do you think that they're
aware that their drug use
and them buying drugs
is actually funding these
criminal organizations?
♪
MARIANA: In every drug story
I've ever done,
I encounter this disconnect
between the violence
of the trade
and the ignorance
of the end user.
Maybe it's unreasonable
for a club kid in downtown L.A.
to consider Peter's death, and
the deaths of so many others,
before getting their fix.
But the complicity is real.
Without that demand,
there's no supply chain,
no billions in profits,
and no blood.
♪
Captioned by
Side Door Media Services
(man speaking, played backwards)
(man speaking, played backwards)
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
Before the assassinations,
before the hitmen,
the fire bombings,
the torture chamber,
and the underground pills,
there was this email
from my son's middle school,
warning parents
about ecstasy pills
that kids had ordered online
in a transaction that
had seemed all too easy.
I've done stories
about most illegal drugs,
but I hadn't paid
much attention to MDMA.
It was a party drug
and had seemed too soft,
or too tame, to warrant
that kind of deep dive,
at least until I came
to understand the forces
lurking beneath the surface.
♪
I don't care ♪
if the room's spinnin' ♪
Will you talk to me? ♪
I don't live alone
this time ♪
I don't live alone ♪
MARIANA: How many people
do you think you've killed?
I don't know.
For me it's no problem.
♪
Woo! (echoing)
♪
♪
MARIANA: Okay.
He's there. I see him.
Yeah, that's him.
Cigarette in mouth.
I'm in downtown L.A.
at 1:00 A.M.
to meet with an underground
party promoter named Ziggy.
I'm Mariana.
ZIGGY: How are you?
MARIANA: Nice to meet you.
ZIGGY: Nice to meet you.
MARIANA: So, you guys
keep the gate closed and
ZIGGY: We have to, you know?
MARIANA: What do you call
a party like this?
ZIGGY: Well, this is
the true underground.
MARIANA: And what
makes it underground?
What, what is it?
ZIGGY: Obviously
the sales of alcohol.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
ZIGGY: Ecstasy,
everything you can imagine.
MARIANA: It's the ecstasy scene
that I've come to check out.
The letter from
my son's middle school
had been a warning
to parents about three teens
who had just overdosed
on a bad batch of ecstasy
that they had bought online
and received through the mail.
Is ecstasy a big part of it?
Do people
MARIANA: Would you say that
it's, is it popular right now?
♪
MARIANA: Inside,
partygoers are rolling,
a term used to describe
the whirlwind of energy,
pleasure, and abandon
fueled by ecstasy pills,
pills sold by this man
who goes by the name of Pito.
What do you have
in your hand, by the way?
MARIANA: Holy moly! Wow!
Oh, so the liquid
is only up here?
This is ecstasy?
MARIANA: What kind are these?
MARIANA: And they're
good quality?
MARIANA: How do you know
they're good quality?
MARIANA: How much do you buy it
and how much do you sell it for?
MARIANA: $2,000? Okay.
MARIANA: So you have
about 20 here.
How much do you sell
per, per pill?
MARIANA: That's a markup
of over 1,000 percent
from wholesale to retail.
MARIANA: Indeed,
it's a drop in the ocean.
In the year prior
to the pandemic,
the business of electronic
dance music was soaring.
160 million festival tickets
were sold worldwide.
And the consumption
of ecstasy by attendees
is a very open secret.
How do you get your stuff?
MARIANA: Here in the U.S.?
MARIANA: And do you know
how he gets it?
How it's shipped or
You don't ask him
any questions?
MARIANA: Pito wouldn't
connect me to his supplier,
so I had to do some digging.
Eventually, I found
someone willing to talk.
♪
♪
Up in the Bay Area,
I've made contact with a crew
that is pressing
their own ecstasy pills.
Their leader is a man named Sai,
who has agreed to meet me
with the condition that we
not reveal his actual voice
or the location
where we're filming.
♪
Sai? Is that how
you want to be called?
SAI: Yes, please.
MARIANA: So, what
do you do here, Sai?
SAI: We make ecstasy.
MARIANA: Is this
the end product?
SAI: That is the end product.
They're Blue Buddhas,
200 milligrams of MDMA.
MARIANA: So,
what's the difference
between Molly,
ecstasy, and MDMA?
SAI: MDMA is just
the raw ingredient
in its pure crystal form.
Molly is usually referring
to this in a capsule form.
And then ecstasy
is a pressed pill.
MARIANA:
Oh, so that's pure MDMA?
SAI: Yep.
MARIANA: Can I see,
can I touch it?
SAI: Go for it.
MARIANA: Can I smell it, or is
SAI: Go for it.
MARIANA: What happens?
SAI: Just don't sniff too hard.
You'll be fine.
MARIANA: That's,
yeah, it smells.
SAI: A little flowery.
A little sweet.
MARIANA: Yeah, definitely sweet.
MDMA is the chemical signature
of the molecule first created
in a lab in 1912 by the Merck
pharmaceutical company,
where scientists
were attempting, but failed,
to create
a blood clotting agent.
In the 1950s, the U.S.
government experimented
with MDMA
and other psychedelics,
hoping they could be used
as a truth serum,
but they, too,
abandoned the effort.
Later, in the 1970s,
psychedelic chemist
Sasha Shulgin
saw a different path for MDMA.
Recreating the molecule
in his lab,
he experimented on himself,
then gave the drug
to therapists
to treat patients struggling
with emotional trauma,
work that is again
picking up steam today.
But in the 1980s, when word got
out of MDMA's euphoric highs,
the drug jumped to the streets.
Clubs in cities across America
began openly selling MDMA pills,
now branded
with a new nameecstasy.
MARIANA: Does it
have to be exactly 20?
SAI: Yeah.
We want to crush it up
so there's no hot spots
and the pills are evenly dosed.
MARIANA: How many pills
can you press
with that amount of
SAI: This is an extra 100 pills.
MARIANA: 100 pills?
SAI: Yeah.
MARIANA: How much
do they sell for?
SAI: Uh, retail
on these are $20.
MARIANA: So, you can make
$2,000 from just today
from the pills
you're pressing today?
SAI: Yeah.
MARIANA: How much did buying
the actual MDMA cost,
just the raw materials?
SAI: Uh, I'd rather not say.
MARIANA: That means
you're probably making
good money from this.
SAI: Yeah, it's mostly profit,
let's be real.
MARIANA: Right.
SAI: And now it's time
to really mix it.
MARIANA: Oh, so now
it's all just mixing.
SAI: Now it's just mixing.
Now we wait.
MARIANA: What kind of people
buy and use MDMA,
you would say,
compared to other drugs?
SAI: Uh, I mean, ravers,
obviously, a lot of ravers,
but people of all sorts, like
older people, professionals.
I've been at parties where
there's grandparents there
who are rolling
and they're just, like,
a cute, little old couple
in love with each other,
having a great time.
It's nice to see.
MARIANA: Do you ever worry
that this might land
into the wrong hands?
Like a person
who's too young to try it
or who's not in the right place,
and things can
go wrong real fast?
SAI: For sure.
I mean, the kid thing
I kind of feel okay about,
because it's pretty bitter.
It's very bitter.
And, I mean, like, there's only
so much I can do about that.
Wrong person? I don't know.
No, I guess it's just their
own personal responsibility
to not do that, because
what can I do about that?
MARIANA: So, when was the first
time you ever tried MDMA?
SAI: Almost five years ago,
and it was just me
and my friend by ourselves,
and we were just overwhelmed.
We were just so, like,
sensitive to everything.
We just turned off the lights,
sat there in darkness
for a second,
and then just ended up, like,
walking around the park
all night and talking
and, like, really
connecting as people.
MARIANA: Did you like it then?
SAI: I loved it, yeah.
I felt like it opened
this emotional window
that's been closed
my whole life.
I just didn't know it.
And it was blasted wide open.
And then when the drug was off,
like when I came down,
it closed, but it never
closed all the way.
♪
♪
MARIANA: Wow. Now, totally blue.
So, this is the actual
pill-pressing machine?
SAI: Yep. This is a TDP 5.
MARIANA: And how many
pills can you do?
SAI: So, when it's
plugged in and automated,
it's 3,500 an hour, I believe.
MARIANA: Wow!
SAI: It's very quick.
So, it's been filled,
and now the press comes down.
Pressure's applied.
(pill drops)
MARIANA: Oh, wow!
So, here it is.
So, this is worth $20, yeah?
SAI: Yep.
MARIANA: Why not make this stuff
yourself, the actual pure MDMA?
SAI: The chemicals are
just too closely watched.
It's pretty hard
to source the ingredients
and get away with it.
MARIANA: MDMA
must be synthesized
using a substance
known as a precursor.
It was originally oil
from the sassafras tree,
but today the labs
that make the drug
do it largely by working
with synthetic compounds.
And where does this come from?
SAI: Usually Amsterdam.
MARIANA: That's right
Amsterdam.
The famously tolerant
capital of the Netherlands
is also the world's
epicenter of MDMA.
The reason goes back to 1985
MAN: The Drug Enforcement
Administration is announcing
its intention to place
the drug known as MDMA,
or by the street name ecstasy,
under emergency controls
in Schedule I.
MARIANA: when the
U.S. government named MDMA
as a Schedule I drug.
At the time, nations around
the world quickly followed suit.
But the Netherlands
didn't institute a ban
for three more years, and
criminal groups took notice,
using it as a hub
to legally produce MDMA
and then illegally distribute it
around the world.
It's 30 years later,
and the industry in Holland
is still flying high.
♪
♪
I'm here to find out how Dutch
MDMA reaches American shores.
And there's
a charismatic trafficker
with American ties
who has agreed to meet me.
♪
♪
♪
MARIANA: I've been looking for
a route into the underground,
and I'm hoping
Steve Brown can help me.
(ding)
He's agreed to a meeting,
right on the Amstel River.
And you were born
in the United States, right?
STEVE BROWN:
I'm born in the United States.
Came here with my father
and mother back to Holland.
My father was a GI,
so that's how he met my mother.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
STEVE: And when I was
growing up with my own family,
I have lived about ten years
in the States.
MARIANA: By the time he retired,
Dutch-American
trafficker Steve Brown
had moved ecstasy
across the globe.
And I'm hoping
he can introduce me
to current players
sending pills to the U.S.
How did you get started
in the, in the drug business?
STEVE: We started out
with a youth community center
called the Happy Family, and
we only were selling hashish.
I'm talking seventies
and eighties here.
MARIANA: Like Amsterdam's
red-light district,
the Happy Family
and other coffee shops
that sold weed and hash
revealed the boundaries of Dutch
tolerance and profitability.
According to Steve,
he was raking in $20 million
a year at the time,
mostly from illegal drug sales.
And when did MDMA
sort of enter the scene?
STEVE: The eighties.
The ecstasy pill is introduced
here by the Israeli Mafia,
and so they asked me,
because I had
at the Happy Family
a lot of customers,
if I wanted to sell
that pill on behalf of them.
MARIANA: So you were one
of the first people ever here
to sell ecstasy?
STEVE: I was the first
on the record.
MARIANA: Are you still involved
in the drug business?
STEVE: No. I went with pension,
already 15 years ago.
MARIANA: But you
still have contacts?
STEVE: Yes.
MARIANA: So if we
wanted to gain access
into this drug underworld
here in Holland,
would you be able to help us?
STEVE: I will do really my best,
but it's very dangerous.
♪
MARIANA: Steve says that
competing criminal groups
and widespread access to weapons
created an "anything goes"
atmosphere here.
He begins by putting me in touch
with people connected
with European distribution.
MARIANA: Oh, can I see that?
MARIANA: Is it because
it's high quality?
MARIANA: And where is this made?
MARIANA: For how much
time of work?
MARIANA: Oh, wow.
But what I'm really
in search of
is connections
to the U.S. market.
What other countries
are you guys selling MDMA to?
MARIANA: And to the U.S.?
MARIANA: Why not?
MARIANA: Wow.
MARIANA: Because we know
that Dutch pills
are going to the U.S.
Who'show are they
getting there?
♪
MARIANA: So far,
I've come up short
with connections to the States,
but an American source
has sent me here,
to a warehouse in a town
one hour outside of Amsterdam.
♪
♪
MARIANA: Can I come in?
How are you?
MARIANA: Notorious
MARIANA: P-I-G for pig?
MARIANA: Why that name?
MARIANA: (chuckles)
This is ecstasy?
NOTORIOUS P-I-G: Yeah.
MARIANA: And what is this?
What is it?
MARIANA: Salvador Dali,
the Spanish painter?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: He was actually
my favorite painter growing up.
MARIANA: (laughs)
Is it really your favorite pill?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: What is this?
MARIANA: Oh, yeah, they have the
Maserati symbol and everything.
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: Where are
all of these going to?
MARIANA: You're shipping
them all to the U.S.?
MARIANA: So you're not afraid
of American authorities?
NOTORIOUS P-I-G: No.
MARIANA: For three years?
NOTORIOUS P-I-G: Yeah.
MARIANA: How do you ship
all this stuff?
How do you ship it to the U.S.?
MARIANA: Oh, so you're
hiding the address, right?
MARIANA: I'm not gonna
say the whole name,
but it's Ryan something
and going to Michigan,
United States.
And this one is Christian,
going to Colorado.
This one is going to Florida.
Ecstasy pills.
MARIANA: Oh, wow.
So, it's tons of packages.
MARIANA: So this guy received
MARIANA: Wow! How do
these American people,
how do they even know,
how do they contact you?
How do they know,
where do you sell?
MARIANA: Yeah.
MARIANA: That you've posted?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
Beat, beat, rock,
to the rock beat, beat ♪
♪
MARIANA: What strikes me
as remarkable
about Piggy's Telegram channel,
which he has branded
"Dope Discovery,"
isn't just the hundreds
of videos plugging his wares;
it's the unbridled joy he takes
in thumbing his nose
at the police.
So, you have fun doing this?
This is like
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah. (laughs)
MARIANA: fun for you?
MARIANA: Why is the Netherlands
such a center for production
of MDMA and ecstasy?
MARIANA: Okay. But if they were
able to get into this, this room
and see all this
and arrest you
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: with all this stuff,
or in your car, wherever
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: What
would happen to you?
MARIANA: Yeah. You did?
MARIANA: For how long?
MARIANA: 150 hours of
community service, that's it?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: Given
the lenient sentencing laws
in the Netherlands,
it makes sense that
so many criminal groups
have set up production here.
Back in the States,
large ecstasy busts are rare,
but they do draw
serious jail time.
15,000 pills would result
in federal charges,
a minimum sentence of ten years
and a fine of $4 million.
What about overdoses?
Do you get scared
about, I don't know,
people receiving this
and taking it all?
MARIANA: Wow.
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: And how
did you feel about that?
MARIANA: Oh, did you
worry about, I mean,
didn't the police investigate
then, who sold him
MARIANA: Death is bad
for business, so Piggy says
he tests the purity
of his products regularly,
a preventative step
meant to guard against
the kind of overdose
that I was informed about
from my son's school.
What supposed to happen?
MARIANA:
So it's definitely MDMA.
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: How do you get
your pills, by the way?
MARIANA: So, you don't
think it's worth it,
me asking you to talk to
the guy that doesn't like you?
MARIANA: Why do you
have a shotgun here?
MARIANA: It's tempting to think
of Piggy as an anomaly,
but after my conversations
with Steve Brown,
I realize that would be naive.
How much has it changed,
the drug underworld,
from back then to these days?
STEVE: So the business
in the beginning
was actually not
really violent at all.
MARIANA: And nowadays?
STEVE: Well, if you
compare with that time,
it's a difference
between day and night.
Step by step, the violence
get worse, worse, and worse,
up to today.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm. And now?
STEVE: And now, 30 years later,
it's a commercial
billion-dollar business,
and in every billion-dollar
business, people will kill.
Killing is normal now.
I myself have been shot.
I have one bullet in my liver
and one through my arm.
MARIANA: You know,
I grew up in Europe.
Holland is the last place where
you'd expect this violence.
You know, they give
You know?
♪
MARIANA: By definition,
black markets operate
with their own set of rules.
When times are good,
money and market share
are low-hanging fruit.
But increasingly
in the Netherlands,
when a deal goes south
or a player feels threatened,
the kind of justice handed out
has nothing to do
with courtrooms.
(explosion)
MAN: Politie!
♪
MARIANA: In 2020, at a Dutch
harbor, police officers found
seven shipping containers
converted into prison cells,
a trove of
stolen police uniforms,
automatic weapons,
and this, a fully soundproofed
torture chamber,
complete with dentist chair,
hedge cutters, pliers,
and scalpels.
That raid showed everyone
that a new level of violence,
the kind usually seen
in narco states,
has arrived
in the heart of Europe.
I want to connect with someone
close to the violence
and mayhem
to find out why things
are falling apart.
And Steve Brown says he knows
someone I should talk to.
Have to go right?
But there's little else
he's ready to reveal,
until we're all
in the same room.
STEVE: This is a very,
very old friend of mine.
We will call him not his real
name, you must understand that,
because he's still
an active killer and hitman.
♪
♪
♪
MARIANA: How did you first
become a killer, and why?
MARIANA: So, how old were you?
MARIANA: Were you involved in
the drug business at the time?
MAN: Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARIANA: And how many people
do you think you've killed?
MARIANA: But is it
MARIANA: And who are
these people? And why
MARIANA: So all people involved
in the drug business?
MARIANA:
What's the process like?
How does it work?
How do you
MARIANA: So, you spend
two to three weeks
doing surveillance
on the person before?
MARIANA: What guns do you
usually carry with you?
MARIANA: Do you
have AK-47s here, as well?
STEVE: They sell them
here for 1,000.
They're very cheap.
They come from the East Bloc.
MARIANA: I understand
that you don't think
these people are innocent,
but at least, I mean,
you at least have thought
of their mothers
and their children?
MARIANA: There's
a casual air to all of this
that I find quite unsettling,
because if there's a perception
amongst traffickers
that violence and killing
carry no consequences,
then it's open season on anyone
perceived as an enemy.
If myself
or a journalist coming here
and doing some sort of reporting
that you wouldn't like,
would that be a reason
to kill a journalist?
MARIANA: Oh, so you've
had situations in which
you've gone to journalists
and warned them,
do not mention my name
or my family name.
MARIANA:
If they had done it again
MARIANA: Then you
would have killed them?
MARIANA: Every crime journalist
walks with a target
on his, or her, back.
In the last decade alone,
136 journalists have been
killed around the world.
But it's honestly shocking
to hear it described
in such casual terms
by a person
who actually accepts money
to pull the trigger.
So you're saying that you have,
many times in the past,
intimidated journalists?
MAN: Yes.
MARIANA: Threatened them
and told them that they can't
report on you or your family,
or else you would kill them?
MAN: Yeah. Yeah.
MARIANA: I'm trying to get
a sense of how much
MARIANA: Yeah.
How much back then
and how much do people get now?
MARIANA: But of course,
the price depends on the target.
And some targets
are bigger than others.
It was one year ago
that the country's
most famous crime journalist,
Peter R. de Vries, was
ambushed as he stepped out
of a TV studio
in downtown Amsterdam.
(gunshots)
REPORTER: Celebrity
Dutch crime reporter
Peter R. de Vries has died
after being shot in the street.
De Vries, who was 64,
was a frequent commentator
on television crime programs.
MARIANA: I want to understand
what the killing meant
to Dutch society.
These men, who have arrived
for our interview
in bulletproof cars
and under the protection
of seven government agents,
are friends of De Vries
whose own lives are now at risk.
♪
♪
♪
MARIANA: I started
looking into ecstasy
after receiving an email
from my son's school.
But following the trail
of this party drug
has led me further
and further underground.
And now, here
in the Netherlands,
I've arrived
at a somber anniversary,
the death of renowned crime
journalist Peter R. de Vries.
These men are friends
of De Vries,
lawyers Peter Schouten
and Onno de Jong.
PETER SCHOUTEN: Well,
what actually happened
was that Peter was shot,
executed from close range,
in a very busy area
in the Netherlands,
and without knowing,
he had been observed already
for a long time.
The killer walked up behind him
and shot him five times.
MARIANA:
The story began in 2018,
with a Dutch-Moroccan trafficker
named Ridouan Taghi.
One of the people working
for his organization,
named Nabil B., turned himself
into Dutch authorities
and agreed to testify
against his former boss.
ONNO DE JONG: When you are
becoming a crown witness,
you go and talk with
the police in secrecy,
in total secrecy,
and you make statements.
PETER: And in this case,
this protection agreement
was also made,
and it means that Nabil
was in a secret location
and that also his family
should be protected,
and there it went wrong.
MARIANA: Just a few days
after giving his statement,
Nabil's brother, who was not
involved with organized crime,
was murdered at his print shop.
PETER: And more than a year
after the brother was killed,
the lawyer who assisted Nabil
was shot dead
in front of his house
by people sent to him to,
yeah, basically liquidate him,
to execute him.
ONNO: And it sent a shockwave
throughout society.
And I always experienced it
as very naive, because they say,
"Well, this, this, this
is not happening here.
This shouldn't
happen in Holland.
We're so nice, and we're
a lovely country."
Well, we are not anymore.
PETER: Yeah, that was a message
to put fear in society.
You could see it as the start of
narco-terror in the Netherlands.
MARIANA: Into that vacuum
stepped Peter R. de Vries,
who recruited Peter and Onno
to take on the job
of becoming Nabil's
new legal team,
while himself becoming
a high-profile advisor
for the witness.
He's seen here reading the text
of his shoulder tattoo.
PETER R. DE VRIES: All
(applause)
all that is necessary
for the triumph of evil
is good men do nothing.
(cheering)
PETER: Peter had the
enormous sense for justice
and an enormous sense
to fight injustice.
And he was basically
the only journalist
within the Netherlands who,
besides reporting on crime,
really picked up a case
and then helped the victims.
MARIANA: But not everybody
had warm feelings
about Peter de Vries,
especially those in the
underworld, like Steve Brown.
STEVE: You want to know,
of course, about
MARIANA: Yup.
STEVE: the
"crime journalist,"
Peter R. de Vries.
But I have to tell you honest,
I might not be the right
person to ask about him
because I'm sworn enemy
of him for over 30 years.
♪
MARIANA: From the beginning of
his career, De Vries was known
to seek out high-profile targets
and had his crosshairs
on Steve Brown,
leveling accusations
and launching sting operations
that they broadcast on Dutch TV.
This confrontation
was Steve Brown's response
to a report that De Vries
had broadcast on TV.
(speaking Dutch)
(speaking Dutch)
MARIANA: You didn't like
each other. But I mean
STEVE: That's an understatement.
MARIANA: I understand, but
there's certainly a part of you
that was shocked by the fact
that a journalist
of his caliber was killed.
STEVE: No. No, you know
what is shocking?
Generally speaking,
I'm against murder.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
STEVE: It's always shocking
if somebody gets shot.
MARIANA: Steve Brown
had nothing to do
with the murder
of Peter R. de Vries,
but it's easy to see how
reporters in this world
can make lasting enemies.
PETER: It was incredible, and
it was hard for Dutch society
to see somebody
like that being shot.
It was, actually nobody
feels safe anymore
at a moment like that
in a country.
MARIANA: And that,
perhaps, was the point.
Currently, Taghi
and 16 associates
are on trial in the Netherlands,
with 700 army and
police officers mobilized
to safeguard the courthouse.
I came to the Netherlands
to track the major source
of American MDMA,
but found a country
starting to resemble
a narco state.
A Dutch newspaper reporting
on drug traffickers
was recently rammed
in a van attack.
A news magazine was hit
with an anti-tank rocket.
And 94 hand grenade incidents
were reported by police
in a two-year span.
It's a wave of violence that
has all of Europe wondering,
what could possibly come next?
♪
MARIANA: Did you know
Peter de Vries?
GABRIELLA ADER:
Yes. Yeah. Personally.
MARIANA: Personally?
GABRIELLA: Yeah, yeah.
MARIANA: Like Peter de Vries,
who was murdered for getting
too close to Dutch traffickers,
Gabriella Ader
reports extensively
on the Dutch underworld.
When you found out,
what was your reaction?
GABRIELLA: I was very startled
and, unfortunately,
I cannot say
it was a huge surprise.
MARIANA: Huh, really? Why not?
GABRIELLA: Yeah.
My family's from Sicily,
and I can't even tell you
how much it now resembles
the situation there.
MARIANA: With the Mafia?
With the Mob?
GABRIELLA: Yeah. I even spoke
to lawyers, almost crying,
who told me, "Yeah. I just
want to stop this job."
Because, you know, they used
to have a lot of respect
for attorneys,
journalists, et cetera,
but that's just all gone.
And you also see it now,
for instance,
if you see the trial,
it is not normal.
There's so many police cars,
so many army members are ready.
And then everybody thinks the
Netherlands is so progressive
and that we're
always in control.
But now you can see,
I don't know. Do we?
MARIANA: I'm European.
I was born in Portugal,
lived most of my life
in Portugal,
so the fact that this is
all happening right here
in the Netherlands is
really mind-blowing to me.
GABRIELLA: Yeah. It is. Because
there's so much money involved.
So, the stakes
are just too high.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
GABRIELLA: And also, I think,
what I hear from colleagues,
or from attorneys, is that
really the climate has changed.
It became so much more violent.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
I'm assuming it also sort of had
a negative effect on journalism,
anyone trying to investigate
the crime world here.
Now people are
more scared, right?
How's that affected your job?
Are you more scared
to do what you do?
GABRIELLA: I did
get myself unregistered
when I bought an apartment
because I didn't want
people to trace me.
MARIANA: Wow!
So, basically, you didn't
put your name on the
GABRIELLA: Yeah.
You can't find me.
MARIANA: You can't find you.
GABRIELLA: Yeah.
So, I'm not scared,
but I do take care of things.
And I just think twice
before I do something.
MARIANA: The people I'm meeting
next are also taking precautions
to keep a low profile.
But in this case, they're not
worried about the police,
they are the police
and are so concerned
about counter-surveillance
that they've asked us
to keep their location hidden.
(door opens)
Thank you.
ANDY KRAAG: Go ahead.
So, this is
our mock-up facility.
This is where you have
all the hardware
that's been used in labs.
You have the boiler systems,
the ventilation systems,
and the tableting machines.
MARIANA: So, this is
what's used to make MDMA.
ANDY: This is actually what
was confiscated during raids.
MARIANA: Andy Kraag is
a former special forces officer
in the Dutch Marines who
now leads the Netherlands'
National Criminal
Investigations Division.
What can you do, as
a police agency, to stop this?
To try to stop the violence
in the drug business
from happening?
ANDY: Yeah.
Well, in recent years,
we've had pretty good
successes internationally.
We were able to get
into the communications
of those drug criminals.
We could actually
real-time monitor
what those criminals were doing.
It was as if we were sitting
next to them at the table
and we could constantly
anticipate what they were doing,
and then we could
act accordingly.
(shouting)
MARIANA: The operation
he's referring to
involved a company
called EncroChat,
whose encrypted phones
were widely used
by criminals across Europe.
In 2019, Dutch, French,
and British authorities
hacked the phone system,
giving them direct insight
into criminal networks,
which resulted in thousands
of arrests across the world.
It's a sting that
had a profound impact
on the drug underground
of Europe.
Even Notorious P.I.G.
had mentioned it when we spoke.
MARIANA: Oh, yeah,
the encrypted chat,
where they could read
encrypted chats. Yeah.
MARIANA: And what
does that mean for you?
For your business?
♪
MARIANA: What was the most
surprising thing you found
through the EncroChat
investigation?
ANDY: It is as if you have
one big wiretap
on the complete
criminal underworld.
We knew that the drug business
was intense, that it was high,
but we didn't knew
that it was that big.
The revenues worldwide,
of Dutch MDMA worldwide,
was almost up
to 19 billion euros.
MARIANA: Wow.
ANDY: Yeah.
MARIANA: Are you seeing
international groups coming in,
or foreign groups coming
into the Netherlands?
ANDY: Our Dutch criminals,
you see them working
closely together
with Mexican criminals.
They just switch products.
MARIANA: They bring cocaine in
and they take MDMA out?
ANDY: So it's, it's cocaine
for MDMA, it's MDMA for cocaine.
MARIANA: You know, I've
reported extensively in Mexico
on the drug business there,
and when we talk
about torture chambers
and intimidation of journalists
and even the killing
of journalists,
there's enormous similarities
to what's happening
in Mexico with the drug war.
ANDY: If you look at Mexico, if
you see what's going on there,
of course that scares us,
so we're very alert
of more symptoms of that
moving into Holland.
MARIANA: And are you
seeing more violence
in the Netherlands right now?
ANDY: It's becoming
more violent, yeah.
Demand worldwide is growing,
and that means there are
more drug criminals,
more competition.
And with competition comes
violence by definition.
♪
MARIANA: The global
MDMA business is a wheel,
and it is now
turning full circle,
taking me back to America,
to a mailbox
in central New Jersey
where clients
of the Notorious P.I.G.
await their product.
♪
♪
MARIANA: I've left
the Netherlands behind,
but I'm here to see
some pills created there.
I think this is it.
I think they're expecting us.
(clears throat) Yeah.
MAC: Hi, Mariana?
MARIANA: Yes, it is.
How are you, Mac?
Nice to see you.
MAC: Nice to meet you.
MARIANA: You, too, finally.
MAC: Yes.
MARIANA: So I heard
you got the package?
MAC: I did.
MARIANA: How are you?
I'm Mariana.
ADRIAN: I'm Adrian, how are you?
MARIANA: Good, nice to meet you.
Notorious P.I.G.
asked two of his customers,
whom we'll call Mac and Adrian,
to let us know when
his next shipment arrived.
So these are the packages?
MARIANA: No, I don't, actually.
Can I just see them
before you open it?
MARIANA: So is it usually
in packages like this?
MAC: Yes.
ADRIAN: Yes.
And it came ripped, too,
so I just, kind of,
like, taped it up.
MARIANA: It came ripped?
ADRIAN: A little bit.
MARIANA: Oh, wow.
ADRIAN: So, here's the crystal.
MAC: That's pure MDMA.
ADRIAN: Yeah, it's pure MDMA.
Same presses he uses to make
these Maserati pills.
MARIANA: Oh,
these are Maseratis?
ADRIAN: Yes.
MARIANA:
We saw these in Holland.
These two are
small-time dealers.
They'll repackage and sell
Piggy's MDMA and ecstasy,
tripling their $500 investment.
So, how many of these
packages do you get?
MAC: Maybe five a month?
Once a week.
MARIANA: So every week,
you're receiving packages
from Notorious P.I.G.?
MAC: Correct, correct.
MARIANA: Can I talk about
the elephant in the room,
which I haven't yet?
MAC: Sure.
MARIANA: That's sitting right
there, which is a 9-millimeter?
MAC: That is a 9-millimeter,
but it's actually a ghost gun.
MARIANA: It's a ghost gun?
So you use this mainly
here for protection
because you're operating a drug
business out of your house?
MAC: Correct.
MARIANA: Notably, even
on this side of the Atlantic,
the top concern of dealers
is not law enforcement,
nor is it protecting
innocents abroad.
Have you heard how the drug
trade in the Netherlands
is fueling the violence there?
MAC: No, I
MARIANA: Including
the death of journalists.
Priority number one
is safeguarding profits.
MAC: I guess, to answer
your question directly,
no, I haven't.
I guess it does concern me,
but it doesn't concern me
to the amount that I would
let it affect my business.
MARIANA: Apathy is a luxury
that's not available
to Tahmina Akefi,
a Dutch journalist
who was engaged to
Peter R. de Vries in 2021,
at the time he was murdered.
I'm so, so sorry for your loss.
MARIANA: Did you ever think
that something like this
would happen in your country?
This was possible?
That a murder like this, out
in the open, would be possible?
MARIANA: Do you feel
like the Netherlands
is becoming a narco state?
MARIANA: Do you think
that the users, you know,
the casual drug users
that are, you know,
at parties using MDMA,
which the, the Netherlands
is such a center for,
do you think that they're
aware that their drug use
and them buying drugs
is actually funding these
criminal organizations?
♪
MARIANA: In every drug story
I've ever done,
I encounter this disconnect
between the violence
of the trade
and the ignorance
of the end user.
Maybe it's unreasonable
for a club kid in downtown L.A.
to consider Peter's death, and
the deaths of so many others,
before getting their fix.
But the complicity is real.
Without that demand,
there's no supply chain,
no billions in profits,
and no blood.
♪
Captioned by
Side Door Media Services