CrimeWaves

The pirates of the 1700s were democrats.
Their ships were crammed with men, and women, of all kinds of cultures.
Many were former slaves.
Others were indigenous natives.
Others were our fore-parents escaping a lifetime of servitude as agricultural serfs.
The pay level between a common sailor and a captain on a pirate ship was only twice as much. However, that pay could be massive. Edward "Black Beard" Teach was worth $12 million. Captain John Bowen, a Creole pirate was worth $40 million. But the greatest of them all was Black Sam Bellamy - 300 years later, Forbes magazine would estimate that "Black Sam" was the richest pirate of all time.
And then "Black Sam" sailed into a dark and stormy night off the coast of Cape Cod and the legends began...

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www.crimewavespodcast.com
www.declanhill.com
Twitter: declan_hill

It's the world's oldest profession.
Sex workers, prostitutes, and the pimps who live off them have been around since the dawn of time. There are mentions of them in the Code of Hammurabi. The dusty case files of medieval Europe talk about them constantly. There are references to them in Victorian literature from Charles Dickens' Nancy and Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist to the drunken orgies of the Russian military officers and gypsy girls in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.
However, in the 21st century there is, of course, a high tech spin to a very old issue.
OnlyFans is spoken of as the 'Uber of sex work'. A disruptive social media platform that purportedly allows sex workers to communicate and make money from their customers without the dangerous control of their pimps.
Unlikely female allies have hailed the site as 'self-esteem conferring'. An Australian model raised $1 million to help fight forest fires by posting nude photos of herself. And then the Disney star Bella Thorne made over $1 million in one day by promising to do the same thing.
However, there's a dark side to this new phenomenon. Critics are claiming that far from saving people from exploitation, human trafficking and underage harm sites like OnlyFans are doing the exact opposite.

Please rate, review or like this episode at:
www.crimewavespodcast.com
www.declanhill.com
Twitter: declan_hill

How do you solve a crime when there is no evidence?
How do you solve a crime in a world that doesn't even exist?
How do you solve a crime involving an NBA star, a computer hacker and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraud that touches on every internet transaction that you ever do?
Welcome to the multi-billion dollar world of criminal Internet real estate.

Please rate, review or like this episode at:
www.crimewavespodcast.com
www.declanhill.com
Twitter: declan_hill

I am the watcher on the walls. I'm the shield that guards, the realms of men. I pledged my life and honor to the night's watch for this night and all the nights to come.

How do you stop a crime that has not happened yet?
How do you figure out how some assassin will strike before they've actually done so?

This is the essential conundrum of the American Secret Service. They are the men and women who guard the US President and other important public figures in America. To be clear, they're not for a particular party, they're not Democrat nor Republican. They protect the representative of the people, whoever it is. They are like the Game of Thrones' Nightwatch. The guard the realm and they do so with their very lives.

In today's episode, we'll talk about various assassination attempts, some successful, some failed, on US political figures. In almost all of them the forgotten figure was a Secret Service agent, who knowing there was danger, stepped in front of bullets and knives for the person they were protecting. Their names have been almost all forgotten, except within that small band of watchers who guard the realm...

Please rate, review or like this episode at:
www.crimewavespodcast.com
www.declanhill.com
Twitter: declan_hill

It was a silent, criminal corporation.
It was worth tens-of-billions of dollars.
They killed and tortured their opponents, without giving any signals or clues to their existence.
They were the Super-Cartel. One of the world’s largest drug traffickers and, virtually, no one knew anything about them.
This is the story of the investigation that brought them down.

Please rate, review or like this episode at:
www.crimewavespodcast.com
www.declanhill.com
Twitter: declan_hill