Human Trafficking - Dark Traffic With Noel Thomas
Imagine walking through a crowded market, and in the blink of an eye, your loved one disappears—only to realize the unimaginable truth: human trafficking is happening all around us. Today, we dive deep into this chilling reality with Noel Thomas, a global expert dedicated to combating modern-day slavery. From a traumatic childhood experience to working on high-stakes rescues, Noel shares his inspiring journey and the creation of his groundbreaking company, which uses innovative technology to combat trafficking. We discuss how businesses can unknowingly support this crime and what they can do to protect their staff and customers. Tune in for an eye-opening conversation about how we can all play a role in stopping human trafficking and ensuring a safer world for future generations. Stay tuned as Noel offers a special look into his book Dark Traffic, a powerful guide for families and communities to stay vigilant and take action.
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Human Trafficking - Dark Traffic With Noel Thomas
It Is Bad And Evil
Welcome to the show. We're going to have a very intense conversation about human trafficking with Noel Thomas, who's an expert globally in this. Welcome to the show, Noel. How are you?
Doing great, John. Thanks for having me on the show.
I'm glad you could cut some time out based on your traveling deals, right?
Absolutely. I finally made a little bit of time to get on here, so thank you.
You get to eat Turkey next week, right?
That's it. I get a little bit of a break next week.
Tell us a little bit about your background, and how you were led to get into this business of trafficking.
I think this really started for me as a child. Our family was walking in an indoor market. My dad gets distracted by a lady, and when he looks down, he saw that my four-year-old sister was gone. Thankfully, I believe the Lord told him to go to the exit of this building, and when he got there, a man we didn't know was walking out the door with my sister.
Really?
Yeah, a huge impression on me..
I didn't know that.
The Role Of Technology In Fighting Human Trafficking
I went onto the mission field and I got to India and I saw this 14-year-old girl being trafficked right above a police station and the cops were directing traffic and I thought, "This is an incredibly hopeless scenario." That quote by Edmund Burke where he said, "All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." I knew at that very moment my life was about to change dramatically. I became the statewide anti-trafficking coordinator in Florida, I get to go out on these raids. I noticed that there wasn't any technology to fight human trafficking. They were manually searching online and I thought, there's got to be a much easier way to do this. That was the genesis of this whole company was to make it easier to fight back against modern-day slavery.
I remember when you were telling me about that a couple of years ago and I was thinking, "I need to figure out some way to protect this man because of the stuff you're doing." Did you write Dark Traffic based on your experiences that way plus when you were working within the government? How did that really get in your spirit?
I'd always had this dream to write a book and it came out of nowhere where someone I hadn't seen for ten years, they were the keynote speaker at an event that I was speaking at. I said, "How did you get this book?" He said, "Let me just give you my agent. We'll see if anything happens." Sure enough, we cut a book deal and they wanted to tell this story to show how organized crime is operating with cryptocurrency globally and these threats, and how to teach parents to keep their kids safe.
That came out and then just two weeks ago, I signed a deal for an audible version of this. We've got an audible coming out here in a couple of months as well. It details not only my own journey through this but also the sophistication of organized crime. Lastly, it brings this hope and message of the gospel that really no one is beyond redemption. Despite this being a dark industry that there is hope at the end of this.
Noel, why don't you just give us a thumbnail sketch and a little bit of detail about your book so everybody can get a heads-up on that?
The book is called Dark Traffic. It's available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and most book providers. There's an audible coming out as well. The thing that's beautiful about this book is it really is a field guide that if you're first getting exposed to human trafficking, this is a great place to start to learn about the issue, and how you can take action. It also has tips in there, how you can keep your family safe from these threats in an environment online. The book is a very powerful tool. We're finding that individuals are buying 50, a hundred, or more at a time and passing them out to everyone they know as presidents, to their firefighters, to their cops, to their friends.
Good idea.
It's a great tool to spread awareness about how human trafficking really operates in modern-day slavery exists.
That's good. That's an action guide, brother. What a journey you're having. That's amazing. how did that tie into the legal system? Is your relationship tied into the legal part of this human trafficking if you've been engaged in that with police or FBI or any of those guys?
Yeah, we've worked really closely with federal law enforcement and local law enforcement, directly assisted on a rescue, and have brought the information that have led to arrests. We've worked with law enforcement on that side. We're also seeing that there's a huge shift in the market commercially because these big banks and hotels are getting sued for looking the other way that human trafficking was occurring.
When I went out on this raid with law enforcement, the front desk of this motel had tipped off the trafficker that a raid was about to go down. When we got to the room, the girl was there and the trafficker was gone. This hotel was directly involved and they would be ripe for a lawsuit now in the current environment. These lawsuits have driven a need for these corporations to bring in technology like Dark Watch to have some safeguards against human traffickers operating in their business.
That's amazing. I think you told me that they were using them for the laundry money, right?
Yeah. The banks are using this technology to find the proceeds of money laundering. Hotels are making sure that housing people or having people stay. They'll be using our technology very soon and the government uses it for their investigations.
That is an amazing string of crazy information that I'm sure my audience is just going to get a lot out of. Did you have any downside with dealing with the government?
Part of the reason I transitioned from working for the government to this environment is I wanted more efficiency. I had worked in a nonprofit. I'd worked on the government side. I thought, "How can we use the wheels of capitalism to stamp out this issue?"
We like capitalism, don't we brother?
We do. We love it. You want to tackle hard problems. One of the things I say is if you wanted to build a reusable rocket, you could never do it with charity or government. You have to have an industry that's motivated by profit to go out there and solve these issues. That's why as a company we chose the for-profit model. Now there are all these other companies that there's an industry evolving to fight human trafficking and modern-day slavery, which is so cool to watch. You were prophetic and didn't even know it.
In your experience and knowledge of past and current events, what do you think about that you can share with my audience concerning the needs to have situational awareness?
The Importance Of Situational Awareness For Families And Businesses
I say this is the number one way that we can fight human trafficking is by having a conversation. We're having a conversation today, but it also starts in the home. The risk to my sister was a physical risk, and it's less stranger danger risk. Today, it's more cyber. One of the things that we have to have a conversation about is how we keep our kids safe on online gaming and social media, where these exploiters and human traffickers, and predators are operating.
The number one way that we can fight human trafficking is by having a conversation.
There was recently a case where a child was playing a game called Roblox. Kids as young as eight years older are playing this and this kid formed a relationship with a predator. The predator actually kidnapped that child. When we talk about situational awareness, how do we have this conversation? The first is we got to have a safe environment where we can have this conversation with our kids where they feel comfortable coming forward if they get approached by a predator or criminal.
In your creativity with all the software you and your team have developed in these concepts, have you thought about things that you could share with families so that the kid jumps on one of those programs or something that they can either block it or send a signal to their family somehow to know that they're even in that space?
There are some great tools that are out there. Like, BARC is one of these tools that allows for that. My wife is very passionate about this and she's actually started a company to help train parents and schools what to look for and how to collaborate together to stay one step ahead and talk about situational awareness, stay one step ahead of these bad guys, and have proper training. She just got a huge grant for this. We are very passionate about bringing this knowledge and situational awareness, as you said right to the families and right to the front lines of maybe the biggest risk in our homes.
Maybe I should be interviewing her instead of you.
I know, seriously. She's the better-looking of the two as well.
I don't know, you've done pretty good. There's another question I have for you to consider you talked a little bit about banks and hotels. When you're considering trafficking and threats, what thing goes through your mind about just business in general? Small business, medium-sized business, what tips can you give this audience, a small business guy that's watching this video, this is okay. I get this, but how does that affect my hamburger joint or whatever it is?
That's a great question, John. Human trafficking touches 30 different industries, everything from hospitality to transportation to agriculture to your hamburger joint. One of the big risks is unknowingly supporting it. There's no business owner on your podcast that's saying, "I want to knowingly support human trafficking." In fact, they all want to probably stop it. They can unknowingly, without proper training of employees and staff, the proper vetting of employees to make sure that you don't have someone that's labor traffic that you're employing.
Oftentimes, there will be these recruiters that will pick these men and women up from other countries and they'll go to work in a hamburger joint or hospitality or wherever. The person hiring just thinks, "I'm going through a recruiting agency." Making sure that your headhunters and recruiting agency isn't actively involved. That's one way on the labor trafficking side. If you're a hotel operator or Airbnb host, right?
It's just making sure that there are proper safeguards that you're not having sex traffickers use your property or your stays for. A lot of this is common sense and basic awareness that, "We need a preparation plan just like in Florida, we'd have a hurricane prep plan." There should be a human trafficking plan. That way, if you see something, you can report it, you can say something, you can adequately respond to it and do really do your part, which positions your company in a wonderful light of, "We're here to stop slavery. We may not be able to do everything, but we're doing the little bit that we can."
What just went through my spirit on that was this might be something that fed to the new president. He's already fighting fights about illegal aliens and hold all that train wreck. This idea, if there was a tool for businesses, because every business I talked to, I don't know how it is in Florida, but here in North Carolina, all my friends that are in business talk about the fact that they cannot find help. What they are, they're desperate just to find somebody to show up and go to work every day.
They probably are cutting corners a little bit on this level of even thinking just to get somebody to show up every day and do the work. This is really good information. Finally, give me a two-minute recap about your book and how my audience can simply, other than what you've already talked about, prepare, and receive peace over this concept of human trafficking. Where can they, because part of what we do in this show is to provide information for people so that with our actions guides, which you'll be in, your book will be illustrated there. The people can get peace in their life because you and I both know who the peacemaker is.
That's right.
Everybody watching this doesn't know who that is. Right now with all the drama running all over the world and what's even happening in our country, this is a terror that nobody wants. A threat that nobody wants that's got any brain. Tell me what you think would be the best thing that you really share some peace with this audience.
My heart is for justice and the rule of law. I was on tour with the rock band and I met this former trafficker that came to the saving knowledge of Jesus.
That's cool.
Turned his entire life, his house of prostitution into an addiction recovery center, entered the ministry and totally changed his life. That really struck me. Yes, we've got all this cool technology. Yes, we can bring you the education. For me personally, it's the hope of the gospel and really changing our hearts and minds about this as a society at the very least, not thinking that this is some other country or some other area's problem. I mean, this is in our backyards. If I were to show you the map that we collect, it's on every city corner, it doesn't matter where you are in the United States, this is happening in your backyard. That mindset shift that we can do something, that we can be part of this change, and for me, it's this deep faith that drives me and gives me hope for the future of tomorrow.
That is the great word of wisdom. Right where we live near Charlotte, North Carolina, it's supposed to be one of the high-end traffic areas. That piece is important. I'm going to tell everybody watching this show they need to get your book, they need to get on board. The parents that are stressing out with school and everything else, I think this is very vital information for right now. I really appreciate you taking your time to come to the show. Don't forget to tell your wife that she's next, all right?
That sounds great. You'll get a very good show with her.
Yeah, she cannot tell me anything you're doing wrong. Just the good stuff. Bless you, brother. Have a good day. Again, thank you for coming and spending time with us for the worldwide threat.
My pleasure. Thank you, John.