#CinemaJourney
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00:00Australian officials discover a body of a diver at almost 120 pounds of cocaine near a cargo ship in the port of Newcastle.
00:09He had attempted a risky nighttime retrieval of the cocaine stash attached to the ship's hull and something went wrong.
00:17Italian authorities disrupt a huge international counterfeiting scheme with a major bust.
00:23Over 3 million fake banknotes with an estimated value of 233 million euros.
00:31A coordinated rain on one of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels reveals a massive and highly complex communications network.
00:41The authorities seized nearly 200 radio antennas and receivers, most of which were hidden or camouflaged in the landscape.
00:53The world's most inventive criminal minds.
00:58Lawless ingenuity, born out of greed.
01:02From back alleys to the high seas.
01:06Secret structures.
01:09Custom-built vehicles.
01:11High-tech innovation.
01:12What happens when engineering genies ends up on the wrong side of the law and starts building bad?
01:23In May of 2022, authorities in the port of Newcastle, Australia, discover Brazilian diver, 31-year-old Bruno Borges, floating unconscious alongside nearly 120 pounds of cocaine.
01:45Nearby is the Oreti, a massive 656-foot-long cargo ship, recently docked from Argentina.
01:55The cocaine was in watertight, brick-shaped packages.
01:59Local police soon learned that Borges was from Santos, Brazil.
02:03That's Brazil's biggest port.
02:04It's right near Sao Paulo.
02:05They allege that he had attempted a risky nighttime retrieval of the cocaine stash, attached to the ship's hull, and something went wrong.
02:17Attaching drugs to the outside of a ship is called parasite smuggling.
02:21It's a technique used more and more by drug cartels to secretly transport cocaine and other contraband from South America to Australia, Asia, and parts of Europe.
02:33In the global drug trade, with billions of dollars at stake, it's all part of a cat-and-mouse game, playing out between drug cartels and the authorities.
02:47In Australian cities like Melbourne and Sydney, cocaine users pay some of the highest prices in the world, as much as $400 per gram.
02:55That makes the cocaine seizure from the Oreti worth an estimated $30 million to Aussie drug gangs.
03:04That's why the illicit powder is nicknamed white gold.
03:08The drug shipment's origin is South America.
03:11While not a producer, Brazil's the key strategic hub for cocaine trafficking.
03:15One reason is Brazil's extensive and mostly unpoliced borders.
03:20Brazil shares borders with the three biggest cocaine producers in the world.
03:24Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru.
03:27And since those borders are often deep in the rainforest, they are treacherous and very hard to control.
03:33So cocaine is easily smuggled into Brazil.
03:36Half of that gets sold domestically, and the other half gets shipped around the world.
03:43The problem for drug traffickers is that Brazilian authorities are aware of their smuggling, and they're doing everything they can to stop them.
03:51For decades, police have found illicit drugs on board ships in fairly standard locations, hidden in engine rooms, store rooms, compartments close to the ship's funnel, fuel tanks, and even in the captain's cabin.
04:08But the cartel's most popular tactic has always been concealing the drug in containers on board massive cargo ships, often with the rip-on, rip-off method.
04:20Known as the Gancho Ciego, the drugs are concealed in legitimate containers that have been inspected, often with counterfeit seals on the container opening.
04:30It's a technique that involves paying crew members for container access and even bribing customs and port officials.
04:37The popularity of container drug smuggling led the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Customs Organization to launch the Container Control Program in 2004.
04:51Now in over 70 countries, the organization relies on increased training, security, and shared intelligence between law enforcement agencies.
05:03The Container Control Program has been a real headache for criminal gangs, but a real crisis point came with COVID-19 and its supply chain disruptions, travel limitations, and increased port security.
05:14Forced to find alternative places to hide their drugs, the cartels became incredibly inventive.
05:19This is where parasite smuggling comes into play.
05:23It started with rudimentary methods, basically just dragging the cargo underwater behind a ship.
05:28In Colombia or Peru, chains get welded onto a commercial ship's hull so that the drugs can be dragged behind in these narrow containers that are basically shaped like torpedoes.
05:40Since the contraband is secretly attached by divers, the ship's crew is often unaware of the drugs they're towing.
05:47And once the vessel is at sea, the cartels sit back and follow the cargo's progress on open-source websites that track commercial ships.
05:58When the ships dock in cocaine-hungry marketplaces like Australia or Asia, the drugs are cut free and sold for maximum profit.
06:07The cocaine is retrieved by small boats and divers.
06:12To simplify the process, some traffickers have refined the towing technique to use cables instead of chains, which can be detached if the shipment is intercepted by the authorities.
06:24But increased port surveillance and improved intelligence between enforcement agencies has again led to more drug busts, both when the stash is attached or retrieved at its destination.
06:35The cartels have also adapted, starting to attach torpedo-shaped containers and other boxes containing drugs directly to the ship's hulls, where they're harder to detect.
06:45Remember, these cargo ships are massive.
06:48They average as much as 200 meters in length, with the biggest vessels weighing more than 220,000 tons.
06:54A traditional visual inspection is not going to detect anything attached to a cargo ship's hull.
07:01But fixing torpedoes and other small containers to ship hulls is tricky work, usually done at night in murky waters of industrial harbors.
07:11Even when performed by highly skilled divers for hire, it's a dangerous enterprise.
07:18So much so that many cartel divers are ex-military, attracted by the job's huge payouts.
07:31In Detroit, Michigan, a drug gang took torpedo engineering a step further by using magnets.
07:38An operator would signal its release from the ship 100 miles from a European port.
08:04At that point, the drone would send out its GPS location, and some of their gang members on a fishing boat would retrieve it.
08:11Other criminal organizations have enhanced parasite smuggling to make their drug shipments harder to find by attaching them to the inside of the hull instead of the outside.
08:21There are vents and water inlets under the water line in various sections of these ship hulls, and the cartels realized their drugs could be stashed even further from view behind their grills.
08:36A compartment near the ship's bow quickly became their favorite hiding spot, the sea chest.
08:45The sea chest is an inlet that sucks in water that serves as a ballast as well as an engine coolant.
08:53The compartment can only be accessed through a grill removed from the outside, so only an underwater inspection can discover a drug stash inside the sea chest.
09:03Some countries are now using teams of divers to inspect the sea chest and other underwater areas of suspicious ships.
09:14And it's a big problem.
09:15In just two years, there were 22 incidents of cocaine found in the sea chest of cargo ships originating from Brazil.
09:22The Netherlands is one of the countries employing a dive team to try and stem the tide of drugs being smuggled into the country.
09:34But it's a losing battle with the sheer volume of its shipping industry.
09:38In Rotterdam, there are as many as 300 landings and departures each day, and a third of those could be deemed high risk for smuggling.
09:49But their diving teams can inspect only two ships per day at most.
09:54They simply can't keep up.
09:57But technological advances by port officials, like the advent of remote-operated vehicles, or ROVs, are pressuring the cartels to stay one step ahead.
10:08Remote-operated vehicles are now being piloted by trained divers in Australia, the Netherlands, and other port countries.
10:19The ROVs have their own camera and also a sonar that will signal any irregularities on the hull's surface as they move along it.
10:28ROVs may be fascinating new tools to detect parasite smuggling on the law-abiding side, while the cartels have upped their technology game as well.
10:39It's like something out of a James Bond movie.
10:42Some of the cartel divers are riding underwater scooters, or CBOBs, to evade port officials.
10:47And the divers are relying on a state-of-the-art piece of equipment called a closed-circuit rebreather to avoid detection underwater.
10:55With a closed-circuit rebreather, the gas that usually gets exhaled by a diver as bubbles gets rebreathed by recycling that part back into the system.
11:05It's got two gas cylinders, one that's just oxygen, and one that takes the gas that they breathe.
11:11But even for an experienced diver, a rebreather is super dangerous.
11:17And it only adds to an already risky enterprise.
11:20In the case of diver Bruno Borgis, who was found floating unconscious in Newcastle, Australian authorities learned he purchased a rebreather after his illegal entry into the country.
11:32They believe something went wrong with it on his ill-fated dive.
11:37Bruno Borgis never regained consciousness and died in hospital the day after he was found.
11:43Another casualty of the cartel's white-gold parasite smuggling.
11:48On July 15, 2020, Italian authorities from the Specialized Anti-Counterfeit Currency Unit, along with police in France, the UK, and Belgium,
12:12rounded up and arrested 44 people suspected of producing fake euro banknotes.
12:18Those arrested were part of an international counterfeiting scheme responsible for producing and circulating over 3 million fake banknotes with an estimated value of 233 million euros.
12:33The majority of the suspects were from Italy, which is one of the main sources of counterfeit money in Europe.
12:40The city of Giuliano, just north of Naples, is reputed to have the largest number of illegal presses and skilled forgers anywhere on the continent.
12:49Over half the fake banknotes circulating in the 17 European Union countries are made there.
12:55Historically, the Naples area was a hub for publishing companies, so there was a surplus of experienced printers.
13:05And when economic difficulties hit the industry, they were forced to pivot into the counterfeiting game.
13:10There's even a sort of counterfeiting university in Naples, where criminal organizations from all over Europe send people to learn from the best.
13:17The art of producing fake currency is as old as the use of currency itself.
13:24Enterprising counterfeiters throughout history have devised numerous innovative ways of cheating the system.
13:30There's evidence of Greek coins being tampered with as far back as 400 BCE.
13:38What the counterfeiters did was cover a layer of low-value metal with a layer of precious metal and pass it off as proper currency.
13:49Or they would engage in what was called clipping and shave off the edges of silver coins and then melt the shavings down to create new coins.
13:59When paper money was first introduced in 10th century China, forgery became such a problem that the excess of banknotes led to significant inflation.
14:11Zhao Z, as the notes were called, were rendered almost worthless, valued at only 10% of their original value within a couple of decades.
14:19When the euro was first introduced as the currency of the newly formed European Union in 2002, it was regarded as a banknote that was virtually impossible to replicate.
14:35The first euros had many highly advanced security features for the time.
14:41Watermarks, holograms, raised printing, security threads, and micro-lettering, to name a few.
14:47But forgers will always try to get a leg up when there's money to be made.
14:51So, it was only a matter of time before somebody figured out how to produce counterfeit notes.
14:55Sure enough, in 2004, the first illegal euro press in Italy was discovered in Parete, just a couple of miles from Giuliano.
15:07But it should be noted that early euro fakes were mainly produced by small-time operators using basic desktop personal computers and inkjet printers.
15:17The process was pretty simple, really.
15:21They used a high-resolution scanner to capture a digital image of a banknote.
15:25Maybe they make a few changes to the serial number with some picture editing software.
15:29And then they just print copies.
15:31Some of the first bills were pretty bad because the inkjet printers tended to lose some of the detail.
15:36And, honestly, a lot of the colors were just pretty far off.
15:39The Naples counterfeiters eventually turned to more advanced production methods to create better quality banknotes in much greater quantities.
15:53They began to use what's called offset printing, a technique that involves plates, usually made from aluminum, that transfer an image onto a strip of rubber, known as a blanket.
16:03That image is then rolled onto a sheet of paper.
16:06It's called offset because the ink is not printed directly onto the paper.
16:10Offset printing came with advantages like special inks and a large variety of paper options with custom finishes allowing counterfeiters to produce top-quality forgeries with precise colors and sharp detailing quickly and at high volume.
16:29They didn't really need much infrastructure to set up one of these operations either.
16:33Just a large room with a couple of industrial presses and a decent electrical supply was all that was required.
16:42In November of 2006, a police wiretap picked up conversations about a plan to set up a new counterfeiting print shop in the Naples region.
16:52The authorities later discovered that a shed had been built in the countryside where numerous presses had been installed, among them a Heidelberg offset printing machine, which was cutting edge at the time and did not come cheap.
17:08It's likely this facility was set up for a one-time job.
17:14Generally, counterfeiters work on commission.
17:17They'll receive an order for a certain amount of forged bills and only then will they establish the operation.
17:23Once the order is delivered, they usually dismantle everything and wait for the next request.
17:30The police found counterfeit euros produced in and around Naples, in Germany, in France, in Romania, in sub-Saharan Africa.
17:39They even discovered a fake 300-euro note.
17:45That is a denomination that does not even exist.
17:47Clearly, this was a major problem and clearly the authorities had to step up their game.
17:55In 2013, new euronotes were introduced.
18:00Called the Europa Series, the bills featured upgraded security measures intended to stem the tide of rampant counterfeiting.
18:09The new euros were a significant upgrade from the original designs, featuring a hologram stripe with a portrait of Europa, a figure from Greek mythology beside the euro symbol.
18:20The stripe changed color when tilted, which made checking the note's authenticity simple and fast.
18:27Additionally, a watermark of Europa embedded in the bills became visible when held up to light.
18:32And more advanced raised printing techniques were used so that when someone ran their finger over certain parts of the banknote, they would feel a tactile sensation, a feature very hard for counterfeiters to replicate.
18:47Each denomination also had images of a different architectural era, ranging from classical to modern.
18:53These designs paid homage to Europe's rich cultural heritage and also made the graphic elements difficult to reproduce.
19:02The new euronotes were thought to be the safest in the world, brimming with anti-counterfeiting measures.
19:09But criminal ingenuity often succeeds where everything else has failed.
19:14No surprise, the counterfeiters figured out ways around those security features.
19:18To replicate the raised print texture, they used a technique called intaglio printing that involves etching the design onto a metal plate, which then gets filled with ink and pressed into the counterfeit currency.
19:32On top of that, counterfeiters also started using holographic stickers or foil to copy the holograms found on real banknotes.
19:40And they sometimes included security threads made of metallic materials or plastic that mimicked the appearance of a genuine bill when held up to the light.
19:49Technological advancements in high-resolution printing also meant that they were able to reproduce the tiny fonts used for microprinting elements found on euronotes.
20:00The forgeries sometimes included microscopic words or numbers that looked like a solid line, but when magnified several times over, showed an intricate design.
20:12But as good as these fake euros have become over the years, it's impossible for them to ever be convincing enough to avoid detection entirely.
20:21And so these counterfeiters keep getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
20:24The July 2020 arrests in Italy and beyond dealt a major blow to European counterfeiting, with some investigators believing it was likely the largest network ever to be dismantled since the introduction of the euro.
20:41But if history tells us anything, the secret printing presses probably weren't silent for very long.
20:48On November 23rd, 2011, in Veracruz, the Mexican military executed a coordinated raid on one of the country's most deadly drug cartels, the Zetas.
21:13But instead of illegal weapons and drugs, the police seized a massive amount of communications equipment.
21:21In addition to handheld items like radios and push-to-talk phones, the authorities seized nearly 200 radio antennas and receivers, most of which were hidden or camouflaged in the landscape.
21:35The infrastructure was just a small window into the Zetas' elaborate communication system, which had allowed them to expand their operations and also outmaneuver the Mexican police at every step.
21:51For years, law enforcement had been allocating a large amount of resources to catch the Zetas.
21:56But no matter how many leads they followed or attempts to intercept drug shipments, the Zetas always seemed to be one move ahead.
22:02The secret of the Zetas' success was something called Radio Zeta, an encrypted radio network that was so effective and sophisticated that even trained experts couldn't penetrate it.
22:16And here's the kicker.
22:17The Zetas created the entire network themselves.
22:21The Zetas were just one of many powerful drug cartels to emerge in Mexico in the late 1990s.
22:31They quickly earned a reputation for being violent, highly trained, and extremely organized.
22:38The Zetas traded in kidnapping, abductions, and extortion, but the cartels' main focus was drug trafficking.
22:47They secured new drug routes and expanded their territory as they grew in numbers.
22:53All the while, they continued to recruit and train new members in remote narco camps.
23:00In addition to militia and weapons training, recruits were schooled in communications technology.
23:05High-value, high-volume drug trafficking required stealth and coordination.
23:12But most importantly, it required a secure system for sharing information.
23:18Gang members were constantly sharing intelligence about drug shipments, supply chains, and the names and locations of key players.
23:26A lot of times, this information had to be relayed across the country using traditional forms of communication, like cell phones and walkie-talkies.
23:35But these methods were vulnerable to monitoring and interception.
23:39Phones were easily tapped, and anyone in law enforcement with a decent receiver could eventually locate the walkie-talkie channel being used by the bad guys.
23:46What's more, cell phone networks were all traceable and trackable.
23:52Police could pinpoint the user's location within seconds, even when it was a disposable burner phone.
24:00The Zeta bosses needed a communication system that would allow them to coordinate their operations without the risk of interception.
24:07The most effective way to secure a telecom message is called encryption.
24:14It's basically like a secret code from World War II.
24:18One person sends a coded message that's theoretically indecipherable, except the person receiving it can unlock it with a key or a code.
24:27Another challenge facing the Zetas was that cell phones in the 1990s had extremely limited range.
24:34As soon as you went outside of the major cities where all the network antennas were, you lost coverage entirely.
24:44The solution to the Zeta security and range challenges could be summed up by one simple word.
24:50Radio.
24:50A radio network allows for fast, real-time communication with large groups across multiple operations.
25:00So you can send and receive updates, communicate with one person or the entire network, or any number in between.
25:06A complex radio network can maintain a robust encryption system and operate across long distances without getting intercepted by law enforcement.
25:17In other words, ideal for drug cartels conducting multiple illegal operations.
25:25It was a perfect solution for the Zetas.
25:28But it was also ambitious, expensive, technically challenging, and time-consuming.
25:35How do you design, build, and maintain an entire radio network without getting caught?
25:41The lucrative drug trade had established the Zetas as one of the wealthiest cartels in the country.
25:51Funding the project was not going to be a problem.
25:55The Zetas could afford to build all the infrastructure and buy all the equipment they needed.
25:59And if the gang members couldn't do the actual design and construction themselves, they hired engineers to do it for them.
26:08Creating the network required expertise in many fields.
26:11Radio frequency engineering, computers, encryption technology, and telecommunications.
26:16So they needed a small army of highly trained technicians to pull it off.
26:19They also needed a specialist to lead the whole enterprise.
26:26His name was Jose Luis del Toro Estrada, a mild-mannered communications expert with no criminal record.
26:34And yet, in 2006, he became the Zetas' chief technical officer, earning him the nickname Technico.
26:42Estrada was tasked with building a covert radio network that could cover the entire country.
26:50And that meant expanding outwards, from the large cities into the more remote and isolated Mexican states, where the Zetas had established cells.
27:01In the cities, the Zeta-built antennas were erected, usually at night, in hidden and hard-to-reach locations like water towers.
27:10To receive the sender's radio signal, a small base station was placed at the bottom of each antenna.
27:18These were usually hidden in suitcases or picnic coolers.
27:24To relay the message further, hundreds and hundreds of secondary antennas called repeaters or duplex repeaters had to be constructed.
27:32These antennas picked up the original message and amplified it.
27:36The repeater antennas had to be built in remote areas, like forests or mountain ranges.
27:42They were difficult to conceal, so the Zeta engineers painted them camouflage to blend in with their environments.
27:49Once the antenna infrastructure was established, the radio Zeta network was ready to go live.
27:56The Zeta engineers created a proprietary encryption code that was impossible for police to decipher.
28:05Plus, the code could be changed at any time for extra security.
28:10Hundreds of Zeta foot soldiers called halkons or hawks were all armed with handheld radio devices.
28:18These devices could transmit encrypted messages at any time.
28:22The radio signal traveled deep into the countryside, where it was picked up by an eight-foot repeater antenna camouflaged next to a tree or hidden in rock formations.
28:33The repeater then boosted the signal hundreds of miles to other receiver antennas and other gang members up and down the Gulf Coast.
28:43Radio Zeta gave the cartel the competitive edge they were after.
28:47For the next few years, they were winning the communications arms race with rival gangs and the police and expanding the rampire.
28:56But their network wasn't completely untouchable.
29:01Eventually, the police started to discover the locations of the rogue antennas, thanks to intelligence gathering, exhaustive searches, and tips from informants.
29:09It wasn't just the police.
29:13Rival gangs were locating the Zeta antennas as well, at which point they usually sabotaged their capabilities or destroyed them outright.
29:21With the secrecy and stability of the radio network compromised, once again, the Zetas had to devise a plan to rebuild their communications chain.
29:32The solution was the most brazen and most dangerous element of Radio Zetas' evolution.
29:38The plan was to take over existing commercial radio towers from telecom companies like Nextel and reprogram their equipment to broadcast the encrypted Zeta messages.
29:52Instead of erecting isolated antennas in hidden locations, the Zetas attached parasite antennas to existing cell towers pretty much in plain sight.
30:02Once the piggybacked antenna was attached, the Zetas layered in their own network signals and let the strength and capacity of the commercial towers do the rest.
30:12To pull off such a technically challenging and audacious scheme, the Zetas had to enlist help outside of their ranks by any means necessary.
30:21Don't forget, these are ultra-violent criminals.
30:26So they hijacked the commercial towers by force, through fear and intimidation.
30:32They also kidnapped between 30 and 40 professional engineers to create and maintain the new signals.
30:40Between 2008 and 2012, there were news reports of 36 communication specialists who were disappeared in the northeastern corner of Mexico.
30:52There were no ransom notes and it was unclear exactly what kind of conditions they were living in, but they were definitely working for the Zetas.
31:00The new strategy for expansion and control had the desired effect.
31:06The Zetas were top dogs in the Gulf area of Mexico in the late 2000s.
31:10But with that growth came a shift in organization that contributed to the demise of Radio Zeta.
31:17As the network grew increasingly complex, the Zetas needed to create several command and control centers, which required intricate computer systems to manage communications.
31:28Up until that point, the network was still being managed by individuals on the ground, frequently in multiple locations.
31:36And while the new headquarters literally centered the operations, it also made the network more vulnerable.
31:42It would only take one coordinated police raid to dismantle the beating heart of Radio Zetas' communications network.
31:49And essentially, that's what happened.
31:51A command center in the border town of McAllen, Texas, was raided as part of a larger DEA investigation.
32:00The front of the operation was a radio shop and a warehouse that was managed by Luis Estrada, the chief technical officer himself.
32:10The arrests and seizures that followed the raid did not put an end to the Zeta crime ring, who, to this day, continue to find new ways to profit from illegal drug trafficking.
32:22But their ingenious creation of a complex radio network underscores the lengths a cartel is willing to go to protect their operations and avoid capture.
32:32On November 23rd, 1923, six miles from the New Jersey shoreline, the U.S. Coast Guard ship Seneca fired shots across her bow towards another vessel, the Tomoka.
32:53The Pursuit ship was captained by William McCoy, a mild-mannered boat builder with no previous criminal record.
33:04After a back-and-forth exchange of machine gun fire, McCoy and his crew gave up and surrendered to authorities.
33:12When the officers boarded his ship, they found 200 cases of illegal whiskey.
33:18But this was a mere fraction of the original cargo.
33:21McCoy had set sail with 4,200 cases of illicit booze.
33:28In 1923, America was already three years into the Prohibition era.
33:33Those are the 13 years when it was illegal to manufacture, to transport, or to sell alcohol.
33:39But after his arrest, McCoy insisted he hadn't broken any laws.
33:45Nonetheless, he was a wanted man, a primary target of the U.S. Attorney General's office.
33:51McCoy's capture put an end to one of the most brilliant and inventive rum-running schemes in history,
33:58eluding the police and maintaining top-shelf product the whole time.
34:04There was big money to be made to replace the defunct alcoholic beverage industry.
34:09Organized crime rings started to spring up across North America,
34:12solely for the purpose of the illegal booze trade.
34:15The most notorious, of course, being Al Capone's gang in Chicago.
34:21The trick was to stay one step ahead of the U.S. Bureau's federal agents,
34:26who were given a wide range of powers to intercept the flow and purchase of alcohol.
34:30The Bureau of Prohibition paid low wages, which allowed them to hire thousands of agents very quickly.
34:38As a result, there was a spike in police raids on illegal drinking establishments across the country.
34:46The feds also tightened security by adding a Prohibition border patrol,
34:50in addition to the existing U.S. Customs and U.S. Immigration border patrols.
34:54Crackdowns at the borders forced the bootleggers to come up with more ingenious
35:03and downright devious methods for smuggling liquor.
35:07Individual bootleggers transporting booze by land would hide the alcohol in automobiles,
35:12under false floorboards, or in fake gas tanks.
35:15But even modified cars could only transport a limited amount of product.
35:19Boats and ships could carry a much larger cargo.
35:21And there were additional advantages.
35:26Water routes weren't under nearly as much surveillance.
35:29Smugglers could choose their routes quickly, from rivers to lakes to the coast.
35:34And even when they were discovered, it was easy for them to change course on open water.
35:41It was an opportunity too good to pass out for yacht builder William McCoy,
35:45who, along with his brother Ben, owned and operated a boat service just north of Daytona Beach, Florida.
35:53When the McCoy brothers saw other shipbuilders starting to smuggle liquor for big profits,
35:58they decided to sell their assets, buy a schooner, and make a plan for their new line of work.
36:04Since they were already based in Florida,
36:08McCoy looked to the nearby Bahamas as a perfect source for alcohol.
36:13Many Bahamians were already making huge profits from Caribbean rum.
36:19The Bahamas was also the inspiration behind McCoy's plan to evade strict U.S. marine laws.
36:25American ships and vessels were still under U.S. law,
36:31even when they sailed outside of territorial waters.
36:34So McCoy, realizing that the Bahamas was a member of the British Commonwealth,
36:39sailed his new schooner to Nassau and bribed the authorities there to obtain a sham ownership.
36:45He even flew a British flag.
36:48In what would be his first taste of rum running,
36:53McCoy sent sail from the Bahamas with 500 cases of rum,
36:56which he sold in Savannah, Georgia, for $10 a case.
37:00In less than two weeks, he made $15,000,
37:04basically enough money to pay for his new schooner.
37:07But the fake British paperwork could only do so much to protect McCoy and his crew.
37:12Once he was within the U.S. territorial waters,
37:15defined as three miles from the shore,
37:16he was within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Coast Guard.
37:20So once again, McCoy had to come up with a plan.
37:23This time, how to smuggle large quantities of liquor into the U.S.
37:28without entering U.S. territory.
37:32The plan that McCoy devised was eventually adopted by hundreds of smugglers
37:36up and down the U.S. coastline,
37:38a network of vessels known as Rum Row.
37:43It was brilliant in its simplicity.
37:45McCoy sailed to just outside the three-mile territorial limit.
37:50His schooner loaded to the gunwales with cases of rum,
37:53where he dropped anchor.
37:55And then he waited.
37:59When McCoy's customers received word of his arrival,
38:02they would drive their boats out from the shore
38:04and right up to his schooner to make their purchase.
38:07So technically, it was only the customers who were breaking the law,
38:11and only the customers who risked getting caught by the Coast Guard.
38:18McCoy and the other smugglers would post large handwritten signs on the ship's riggings,
38:24advertising the names of the liquors they were selling along with the prices.
38:27By the summer of 1920,
38:31McCoy was making regular runs from NASA to points off the coast of New York and New Jersey.
38:37As his profits grew, so too did the demand for alcohol.
38:43It was a bit of be careful what you wish for.
38:45Business was booming, which was great,
38:47but McCoy wasn't able to keep up with the growing demand
38:50because his schooner could only hold 1,500 cases of liquor.
38:55He couldn't make up the shortfall by sailing faster or making more trips.
39:00He was already at capacity and losing business to other smugglers.
39:05There was only one solution.
39:08I'm sure at some point he realized,
39:10we're going to need a bigger boat.
39:13So McCoy took some of his profits and invested them in a second ship.
39:17A 130-foot fishing vessel he called the Tomoka,
39:21which could hold 5,000 cases of liquor.
39:25The purchase of the larger ship solved McCoy's capacity problem,
39:28but the Tomoka was slow in the water,
39:30and it was made even slower when loaded down with cargo.
39:35So McCoy did something ingenious.
39:38He added a 400-horsepower Liberty engine to the boat
39:42to give it some additional kick.
39:44Liberty was an airplane engine left over from the First World War.
39:49Back then, the U.S. government had tasked top engineers
39:52to create an engine with high power-to-weight ratio
39:56that could be mass-produced quickly.
39:58Basically, they needed an engine that could rival those of the German warplane.
40:02These powerful, water-cooled engines were manufactured
40:07by several companies across the country,
40:10including Ford, Buick, Cadillac, and Lincoln,
40:13at a rate of 150 engines per day.
40:17The original commission was for 22,000 engines,
40:21but by the end of the war, there was a surplus of 13,000.
40:25So the government started to sell them off at $100 apiece.
40:31McCoy replaced the 50-horsepower engine on the Tomoka
40:34with the new Liberty engine
40:36by bolting it to a massive oak stringer
40:39running nearly the entire length of the boat itself.
40:42At 400 horsepower,
40:44this retrofit made the Tomoka much faster.
40:47The added engine allowed McCoy to be literally up to speed
40:52with the other smugglers.
40:54It also made the Tomoka powerful enough to outrun the Coast Guard.
40:57McCoy and the smugglers like him
40:59were essentially inventing the modern speedboat.
41:05To lighten his cargo,
41:07McCoy devised a new method for packing
41:09and concealing the thousands of contraband bottles.
41:13Instead of heavy wooden boxes,
41:15McCoy came up with a lightweight solution.
41:18He wrapped six bottles with paper in a pyramid shape
41:21and then covered them with straw
41:23and sewed them into a burlap bag.
41:25He called the new package the burlap.
41:29These lighter burlaks could be stacked
41:32and stowed efficiently below deck.
41:34They looked nothing like bottles of alcohol,
41:36so it was easier to fool the authorities.
41:40Once the cargo was delivered,
41:42the burlaks were easy to dispose of,
41:44unlike wooden crates.
41:46The burlap sacks were lined with salt,
41:48which made them sink very quickly when thrown overboard.
41:53With Rumrow firmly established
41:56and the smuggling techniques perfected,
41:58McCoy continued to grow his business for two more years.
42:02But it was only a matter of time
42:04before the authorities caught up.
42:06In response to the over 150 known vessels of Rumrow,
42:12the Coast Guard went through a massive expansion,
42:14from 4,000 officers to 10,000.
42:17They also created a new fleet of ships called Cutters,
42:20specifically designed to intercept the Rum Runners.
42:24They also refurbished Navy destroyers for the same purpose,
42:28retrofitting powerful engines to reach 15 knots
42:31and attaching one-pound cannons and machine guns.
42:35These things were battle-ready.
42:38By 1923,
42:40William McCoy was known to authorities
42:42as one of the most successful smugglers in operation.
42:46But unknown to McCoy,
42:47the U.S. had secretly negotiated with Great Britain
42:50to revoke the treaty law,
42:52which allowed the Coast Guard
42:54to arrest smugglers in international waters.
42:58By the time the Coast Guard ship Seneca
43:01caught up with McCoy,
43:03six miles from the Jersey Shore,
43:05the Wiley smuggler had shipped
43:06a staggering 700,000 cases of alcohol.
43:12McCoy spent nine months in jail for his crimes.
43:14And even though he pleaded guilty,
43:16he continued to insist that he'd broken no laws.
43:19After his release, though,
43:21he never went back to Rum Running.
43:23The following year,
43:25the U.S. government increased
43:26the international waters border
43:27from 3 to 12 miles.
43:30It was just one of many changes to the law
43:32as a direct result of the Rum Row vessels.
43:35But the smuggling continued,
43:37and prohibition wasn't repealed until 1933.
43:43William McCoy will go down in history
43:45for his ingenious and creative methods
43:47for smuggling alcohol.
43:48But it was his reputation
43:50as an honest and fair businessman
43:52who sold only the best liquor
43:54that earned him the nickname
43:56The Real McCoy.
43:58Deborah McCoy's lives in everystream for its conquerors.
44:04$10 million viel incomplete for his,
44:05and prove her that I knew
44:06would never most arrive.
44:07He wrote all of the miracles
44:08and says,
44:08so you should have
44:08a little bit,
44:09a little bit,
44:09a little bit,
44:10like,
44:11a little bit,
44:11a little bit too.
44:12So we finally,
44:13a little bit.
44:15Bye-bye вам sack of the weather.
44:22Facebook live week alone here at Jamaica
44:23is a verywhere
44:24and yet,
44:24we are on for the training
44:26On the other six miles,