#331: Children’s Charity selling students to rich donors to "fund their schooling"
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Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. In China, most deals are made at the dinner table.

If you need to raise capital for your product or if you need to raise capital for your company, the first thing that you do is you book a private room at a nice restaurant. You order the most expensive dishes on the menu and then you start pouring the drinks. You quite literally wine and dine the potential investor. And CEO Chen said,

He knows the drill. I mean, he knows this song and dance like the back of his hand. The businessmen will always ask him about his personal life. They're trying to get a feel of how much CEO Chen can invest into their business.

Then they're going to try and talk to him about his hobbies. They're trying to build rapport. I mean, he has sat through so many of these, he could basically finish the businessman's sentences. Our product is truly the best. It would be really hard for you to find a product out there on the market of this caliber, of this quality. I test all the products myself. Nothing gets past me.

CEO Chen is smiling. He's bored out of his mind. I mean, there is absolutely nothing here that he hasn't heard before. So he decides that night he's going to excuse himself from one of these boring business investor meetings, walk to the bathroom, and on his way back, he knows that's the signal. The businessman is going to feel the anxiousness. The food's getting cold. It's about time to go home. The restaurant's going to close up. He needs to go in for the kill.

When CEO Chen sits back down, the businessman leans over the table. We also give back to our community. You know, we want to make sure that we're not just taking from the locals. We want to lift the locals up. We have programs for students in small towns to get access to better education.

CEO Chen nods. I mean, this is so expected these days. What is a corporation without a mission statement? The businessman pulls out his phone. He's smiling down at his phone like a proud little dad. And this is the final sell. Here's one of our students. Do you want to see? So this one in this video, she's getting surprised. Yeah, we're going to surprise her with the scholarship. And where is this girl from? The businessman doesn't even look up from his phone. He's still watching the video. He just says elementary school.

Elementary school. Elementary school? Yeah, fifth grader. The businessman swipes on his phone and this one, he's pointing aggressively at his screen. This one, I've been eating her since she was 11.

In every single one of these videos, the businessman showed CEO Chen there was an elementary schooler, a middle schooler, in a hotel room being essayed by an old middle-aged man. The businessman would point at his screen and say, look at how grateful these kids look.

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As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. We did have our wonderful Mandarin-speaking researchers help with the gathering of data for this case, but like we say in all cases, any and all, especially the international ones, if there is anything lost in translation, miscommunicated, or any additional information that you would like us to know, please let us know down in the comments.

And a few quick episode notes. With the exception of three people in today's story, everybody else's identities have been protected and news sources have referred to them with pseudonyms. That is exactly what we will be doing as well. Another quick disclaimer is there is heavy discussion involving essay of a very vulnerable group of underage victims. If that is something that's going to bring you to a very dark place, please rest, take care of yourself, and we will see you in the next one.

And with that being said, let's get started. Chris's parents would never say it to Chris's face.

because that's their son. But they both felt it. I mean, he was kind of in this downward spiral. I mean, they had never witnessed it before, so they can't even reference a previous incident. But it's like he was going faster and faster, deeper down into this dark hole, like a little racetrack, where just spirals shorter and shorter near the end. I mean, the spirals get twistier and shorter and the turns are sharper and you need to go slower so that you can be safe in one of those like winding parking lots.

but instead their son Chris is stepping harder on the gas pedal he's going a hundred miles per hour and there's nothing they can do about it and they don't even know why they don't even know where he's trying to go what's happening to him they keep visiting him in his room honey please you cannot just stay in your room all day you have to go to work

They try to open up the curtains, bring some light in, but Chris doesn't even look up from his computer. He's in a trance. It's like he's looking for something on the internet, but they don't know what, they don't know why, and they don't know why I can't wait until after work. Chris's manager has been calling all morning. You cannot keep calling out like this, Chris. This is unlike you. And if you keep doing this, there's just no way I can keep working with you.

Chris does not care. He's on his computer and when he's not on his computer, he's on his phone and he's scrolling and he's like vigorously typing something. Who is he talking to? We don't even know. His parents don't know. And then one day it happened. What Chris was looking for, he found it. He had spent months looking for this and it came in the form of a text message. A video file was sent. Another video file was sent. Ding! Another one.

The file names were just one word, names of women. The first video was titled File Name May. Chris is in his bedroom and he's looking at these messages come in and his finger is hovering over the downloading symbol. I mean, his eyes, they finally seem alert. It seems like this is the first time that he's been alive in months. This is the Chris that everybody used to know. He's waiting for this file to open and he's swallowing. Everything he had done had been leading up to this very moment. Downloaded.

He clicks the file May and his screen goes black. And in an instant, the phone comes back alive. He squints his eyes and there on the screen is a really weird hotel room. There's not enough lights, but it's almost like a motel room. There's this shabby bed that's pushed up against the wall and the comforter looks like there's probably stains on it. It's not a it's not a luxurious stay.

There's a middle-aged balding man in frame. He's wearing nothing but his eyeglasses, completely naked. He's fixing the camera that's pointed towards the bed. And then he turns around and you can see on the bed is this mass of bunched up cream colored blankets, like a lump in the blanket.

Chris exits the video and clicks on another video. Very similar setup. The same man, the same glasses, the same nudity, the same lump in the back. The videos all ranged between 20 minutes to over an hour long. And each of them depicted a very real, very brutal essay. And the victims were 12 years old.

There are over a billion websites on the internet. Okay, add in like another 30,000 websites on the dark web. That's like, that's a lot of websites. And usually those two feel very separate. Like you don't go to the dark web. You don't download Tor just so you can browse around on Reddit. You go there because you're looking for something. Maybe you're looking for someone. But there's this website in China.

And it feels like it belongs on the dark web. It feels like it somehow slipped through the cracks onto the surface web. It feels illegal to be looking at this website. At first glance, it's not that strange. And it's not famous of a website. There's not that many monthly visitors. But the ones who do go on that website every single month, they're frequent. And they're usually very important people. Businessmen, investors, donors, fathers, police officers, etc.

They go to this website to check if their favorite company has new product up. And on the website, there are pictures of the products neatly organized in rows. Picture after picture of girls. It looks like a yearbook. It looks like a yearbook with their names underneath it, but also listed are the cities that they live in, which school they go to, and a number.

a price tag attached to each of their names. And at the very bottom of the website are the words, kill two birds with one stone. What does that even mean? Someone or something is being sold and there's endless amount of buyers willing to line up. May and Sarah were sitting in a car. They're staring out the window.

The drive to the city is very exciting. For them, it's very different. So the taxi driver, his name is Ren, or at least that's how he introduced himself to them. He had even opened the door for the back for them and they were giggling and they slid into the back seat. They were being driven to the hotel to meet their sponsor. Now, on the way, May and Sarah are almost overwhelmed by all the exciting possibilities. The whole ride, they're gossiping and giggling about, what are we going to do with this sponsorship money? I mean, we could probably do anything.

I mean, of course, we've got to pay our tuition. That's the whole point of the sponsorship money. But if we had any extra, what are we going to do with it? Should we come back to the city? So as the drive goes on, their adrenaline, their excitement is getting bigger and bigger. This is like the opportunity of a lifetime. It's going to change their future. That's how they feel.

They get to the hotel in the city. Ren opens the door, brings them to the front door of the hotel, and they meet their sponsor, a middle-aged man with this kind of rat tail hairstyle in the back. He meets them with this big smile and he's giving them hugs. He kind of seems like a dad. He seems very kind, fatherly. Like if you were to get into trouble, he would try and save you. But Sarah and May, I mean, they're distracted. They want to soak in their environment. They just want to be here.

They all walk into the hotel together, all four of them. They check in with the receptionist and the two girls are kind of standing behind the men and they can't help but notice that the receptionist keeps staring at them and Mae keeps fixing her hair and her clothes. Like, why does she, what's wrong with this? Like, is there something on my face?

The men grab their keys from the receptionist and they start heading up to their hotel rooms. May's holding Sarah's hand and the two of them, they're thinking silently, okay, I wonder what the setup's gonna be. So if May and Sarah are sharing a room, is May gonna sleep on the left side of the bed or the right side? Maybe there's gonna be two beds in that room. They get to the end of the hallway and one of the men grabs May and says, this is our room and practically throws her into the room.

and slams the door shut. The same thing happens to Sarah. Before either of them can scream, say anything, or protest, they're in their rooms with a strange middle-aged man. The room is terrifying looking. It's dimly lit. The window is next to the bed.

The man instructs May to sit on the bed and she's hugging her knees up against her chest and she feels very, she feels like a prey. Like this predator is just walking around the room. He's so busy. He goes to the corner of the room and he's setting up this tripod. He's fixing his hair. There's so much happening and she doesn't know what to do. She can't scream. She's terrified. She doesn't know if she runs down, what happens next. She doesn't even know what this man is planning. With every step closer to the bed,

Her eyes start to fill with tears. And right when he gets up in front of her face, he makes a quick glance to the corner and Mae glances over and there's a camera set up on that tripod pointed directly at the bed. The man makes sure that it's recording, that the red blinking light is on, and he starts undoing his zipper. He says, good, it's set up. Now let's play. Mae's sponsor would essay her that day.

The man forced May onto the bed in front of the camera and carried out his meticulously executed plan, all with a big smile on his face. I mean, this was all planned. May's age, innocence, vulnerability. This is exactly what he was looking for. To him, this was top tier. People would pay premium for someone like her. And at that moment, all of May's dreams of sponsorship money or even a future, gone. Nothing's going to be the same after this.

Mae would later realize that the red stains on the yellow comforter were her blood. This was her first time and she did not even understand the concept of what had just happened to her. In the hotel room next door, Sarah experienced the same exact traumatic and horrific pain and Mae is laying there scared, afraid to move a muscle. She's like frozen in fear. But when the man was finished, he got up, starts rummaging through his pants pocket on the ground

opens up his wallet, counts out $113 and throws it onto the bed. And then he takes out his own pocketbook to write down all of his expenses, like a little receipt catalog. He smirks as he writes, amount $113 for charity funding.

There's no exact number on how many pedophiles are hiding around us. I tried to look into it. There's estimates that say that they make up between 1 to 5% of our population, which sounds...

I mean, it doesn't sound small considering who these people are, but it sounds small in the grand scheme of numbers, right? But let me put it into perspective. That is anywhere between 78.8 million people to 394.5 million people who could be classified as pedophiles.

One netizen comment reads, former foster care worker here, I can confirm that the percentage of child molesters an average person interacts with in a day would stun most people. I mean, they just, like the amount that you see on the street, that you've met in your life, that you work with, that you hang out with, you wouldn't even know. They look like the person in line at the grocery store. It doesn't matter their age or social standing. There is nothing that lets you know who they are. And what's crazy is that they actually have a community of

I am a thousand percent certain that I have made it to various, various different watch lists. Even during the research of this, we came across websites that were catered towards these pedophiles. I felt like I was doing something illegal by being on these websites. And they're not catering to pedophiles in the way that you're thinking, but in the sense that these websites claim they provide support for those who do not physically harm minors.

They just want to. They just have the attraction. They just have the thoughts, but they don't physically go and harm people because they don't want to hurt anybody. Listen, I don't know. I don't know. Okay. A New York Times opinion piece reads, a pedophile should be held responsible for his conduct, but not for the underlying attraction. They and other pedophile advocacy organizations, right?

That's a real thing. Pedophile advocacy organizations. Wow. Yeah. They argue that there are differences between pedophiles and predators. They're saying a pedophile is someone who just has that attraction but has not offended. A predator has the attraction and has offended. Now they're saying, they argue that brain scans between pedophiles who have offended and harmed children and those who have not and are fighting the want to, I guess, they're different. Right.

a former teacher and quote Christian father of three stated that they will be quote coming out as a pedophile. They came out. Yeah. His name face, everything out there. He's an advocate for destigmatizing pedophilia.

He stated, in the 50s, every male I knew was sexually attracted to children. Little girls. I talked to dozens, hundreds of people who had the same experience as I did. I don't know if it was everywhere, but in those days, it sure seemed like it. It seemed very normal. A lot of his argument relies on the idea that as a society, we stigmatize this quote disorder and people with these thoughts will not seek help. And therefore, if they are not seeking help, they will have higher risk of offending and creating victims.

One psychologist stated, we can protect our children by giving pedophiles the change, the chance to seek help, to give them the chance to go see a therapist. It's very important that we don't stigmatize people for their sexuality. However, in the same article, even she admits that she would never want these people to be around her future children.

And just to clarify, pedophilia is not categorized, nor is it recognized as asexuality. It's not. It's a disorder, technically, if we're being technical with it. So I'm not very sure what the messaging here is. One netizen comment reads, hearing, quote, this predator has never offended is the same as, quote, this tiger has never eaten a child. Do you think parents are still cool letting their kids go into the tiger's cage at the zoo?

And look, I rarely pick a hill to die on, but this one seems somewhat appropriate. Prioritizing the safety of children seems so much more vital than prioritizing the feelings and comfort over an adult who have incredibly destructive, harmful, vile feelings towards someone in society that we have a social contract to protect. So I don't know what we're getting at here for these groups, but there's a lot of them.

There was one organization called PIE, which stands for Pedophile Information Exchange. For 10 years, they campaigned to abolish the age of consent.

They had these monthly magazines, and in one edition, they posted an article that asked the question to the audience. They said, hey guys, public, how about this one? Got them, okay? It reads, if all the pedophiles in communities, schools, or private schools were to strike, how many institutions would be forced to close? What does that mean? Basically saying, we are such big parts of the community.

There's so many of us. We could make a difference. Yeah, we're contributing to society. How many institutions would be out and closed if it weren't for us? If we all went on strike because of the age of consent?

And the way that they said communities, schools, private schools. So it's very clear what types of occupations a lot of these people are choosing. And I'm not saying that everyone with this occupation, obviously, please, let's use critical thinking skills. That's not what I'm saying. But you get it. These people seek out these occupations for very heinous reasons. There's even symbols. Symbols that will...

If you see this symbol, please be alarmed. There are symbols that pedophiles will use to find each other out in the wild. The FBI released a list of logos used by pedophiles to find each other, and one of the most famous ones being a blue spiral triangle. So if you were to start with a dot on the page and then draw out a triangle and then another triangle outside of it without lifting your pen off the paper, that's what this looks like. But it has to be blue and it has to be a triangle. That means purple.

boy lover, that is an adult that is interested in boys. But there's two versions of this. If you draw that same triangle spiral in a very shaky, shaky manner, almost as if you're drawing it with your non-dominant hand, that means that you seek very young boys because it looks like the scribbling and doodles of a young boy.

The FBI has stated that these people will wear jewelry with these symbols, rings, necklaces. They'll have emblems on their notebooks, laptops, stickers of this. They'll put it into their social media profiles. They'll put it everywhere so that they can find each other and commit crimes together. Many of them will identify each other out in the wild so that they can trade victims or trade videos.

Yeah. And to make matters more concerning, according to various studies, there is no evidence that pedophilia can be cured, but the evidence all points to suggest that they're all around us and we can either ignore it and hope for the best and stay in our homes or we can figure out how they're finding these victims.

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There are two things that predators will go after, vulnerability and opportunity. You cannot have one without the other for predators. An article in the New Yorker about this subject reads, the successful predator does not select his targets arbitrarily. He culls them from a larger pool, testing and probing until he finds the most vulnerable.

And in China, the most vulnerable are in the rice fields. I mean, technically, the most vulnerable are the ones in the mountains, the children's that are in the mountains. It's such a problem that there's actually a term for them. They're called left behind children.

So what happens is in these small rural towns, parents will give birth to their children and they'll realize that they don't have enough money to put food on the table. So they leave. They leave the small town, go to the neighboring city, and they work all day. They work the day shift. They work the night shift. They sleep in dorms and then they wake up and do it all over again. They never see their kids. They might see their kids once a year. All they do is send money back to the small town so that their kid can survive. Now, this kid is usually left to be raised once

by another kid, their older sibling, who's still not an adult, or maybe a grandparent. Either way, there's not a lot of supervision. There's not a lot of money. It's a huge vulnerable population. One child said, when it rains, I'm scared to be inside the house. I'd rather be outside in the house getting rained on because when I'm inside, I feel like the tiles of the roof are going to break off, fall down, give me a concussion or kill me.

A lot of these kids are actually forced to work very early on and in this case, this small town of Baisi, they were known for rice farming. So that's what they did. They would go rice farming and it's freaking hard. It's complicated. It takes twice the amount of manual labor than growing corn or potatoes.

They had a lot of water rice fields. So rice is grown in patties. Think of it like infinity pools stacked on top of one another, but without the glamour, without the coolness. It's shallow and it's very humid. There's a lot of bugs. There's a lot going on. There's chemicals and they're massive. You probably won't drown in any of these rice patties unless you're drunk or someone wants you dead.

or you're a kid because technically kids drown in like two inches of water if they're not careful. Oh, and my husband was telling me about this in China that some of these rice paddies, because water is a breeding ground for bugs and bacteria. There's just no way around it. It's just really hard to regulate. He said that sometimes, and this is not all, depending on where you're going and how it's taken care of, sometimes you'll walk through the rice paddies, lift your leg up, and there will be leeches stuck to your leg.

Yeah, it's a common type of bugs in water. Don't freak out. Your rice is clean by the time it hits the supermarkets, but that's just the process. It's not a pretty process.

Now, once the predators find a place of vulnerability, a place with a bunch of holes that they can poke into, they wait for the perfect opportunity. Because remember, like we said, they like to find opportunities as teachers, as religious leaders, people of authority that deal with children. And again, critical thinking, not saying those occupations are inherently bad people. There's so many amazing people just saying they look for those occupations.

This is the type of area where children rarely get to even eat vegetables. A single vegetable is like two pennies and they can't even afford that. Their daily meals are just rice. So these kids, they come home from the rice fields, they eat a singular bowl of rice and that's it. That's their life. So naturally, there is an opportunity for better living.

Send these kids to school. Set up a charity to help these kids from this small rural town go to school. Because in these towns, you don't even get access to a free elementary school or middle school or high school. You got to pay. You got to find money so that you can travel there. Oh, yeah. That would be a win-win of an opportunity, wouldn't it? Because wouldn't the kids be so grateful that they're willing to do anything for you?

that they get the chance to escape the mountains. And the angel of the mountains was their ticket out. The angel of the mountains was a man in Baisa named Wang. Wang created the Baisa Charity Foundation. He is a fascinating character. He is one of, okay, one of the hardest art schools in China to get into is the China Academy of Arts. They've got an acceptance rate of 2%. Wang was going to go there.

He got in, got his acceptance letter. And that was the easy part. The hard part was the tuition. Art is a profession only meant for the wealthy. He didn't have the money and he couldn't go to that school. And after feeling this guttural pain that changed his life completely,

He never wanted another single person on this planet to feel that frustration and unfairness. It's just so unjust. And he would work every day for the rest of his life if that's what it meant to make sure no one went through what he went through and cut.

That is his pitch for every single interview he does as the angel of the mountains, the founder of the Baise Charity Foundation that helps students get to school. They called him the Apollo on Earth sometimes. He had so many... Apollo? Yeah, Apollo, the Greek god of healing, truth, poetry, art, music.

The angel of the mountains would sit there and do these interviews with this wooden shack in the back. And he would talk about how he loves uplifting his small community. He would sit there and he'd say, I just remember I was teaching for a school a few years ago, art, of course, you know, and I came to school one winter. I mean, the wind was going to shake the whole building down. And I'm just looking at these kids like these poor kids. They can't even draw. Their hands are shaking from the cold. They can't even fly.

can't even focus in class. There's no light in the classrooms because there's no electricity. The windows are so small and dingy. We can't see what we're drawing on the roof. The roof leaks. So every time it rains, it rains inside the classroom onto the paintings that we're doing. I mean, I just kept thinking to myself, how is this possible? I got to do something about it. If I don't do something about it, no one's going to do something about it.

So at first I went to the local community and I said, hey, can you please help out? And they're like, we don't have money. If they don't have money, we don't have money. Those are our kids. So then, you know, I reached out to big corporations and I'm pouring my heart out to them in these letters. I'm reaching out to like the top 500 companies in the nation. And I'm saying, save these kids. We got to save. This is the future of our nation. Are these kids safe?

They have to walk hours in the cold in nothing but little patched up clothes that barely cover their skin. I mean, when it rains and it's wintertime, their clothes turn into a sheet of ice on top of their bodies. That's just the winter. During the summer, they don't even shower. The school is on top of a hill. And when it rains during the summer, the mud, it's a mudslide. He'll just look out his window and the kid's gone with the mud.

Anyway, nobody was helping. So Wang was going to help them himself. And his business model was quite simple. He would create a website, a charitable foundation website that would show off pictures of the children as young as elementary school to as old as high school. You would see pictures of them, little blurbs about what they wanted to study and how much it would cost to sponsor them.

From there, the angel of the mountain would split the donors into two categories, pure versus conditional. Pure donors would donate out of the pure goodness of their hearts and expect nothing in return, maybe a tax write-off sheet. The conditional donors would donate, but they saw themselves more as buyers. There are three ways that you can sponsor children on the conditional side.

The first is just through purchasing the product. Donate a smaller amount and you will get a collection of videos to choose from. The file names are always the girls' names and you can match them up to the website to get more information about them if you're interested in what you see in the video. Then you head to the next tier of donorship. The second tier is creating product yourself or interacting with product. And I say product because that is how they operate their business.

For an unspecified, ever-changing, depending on Wang's feelings, you can purchase a product for the night. You have the choice to create your own videos with the product as well.

The third is called a loan. This is the highest tier of donation. You can loan out a product for a long period of time. Winter and summer breaks, when school is out, if you are a big donor, you can request to have a student intern with you in your home 24-7 for the entire break. That is the highest tier of donorship.

Now, the reason that I can't give you exact pricing is because Wang would change his pricing for different quote types of products. The three biggest factors to the product's price, quote product's price. And again, guys, I keep saying product because that is how he is operating this business, not because I think humans are products. I hope you guys understand that. The three biggest factors that would change the price for the product is if this is their first sponsorship or not.

In text messages, they refer to it as pure or not. If this is their very first time ever or not. If it is, the price goes up. The second is age. The younger, the higher the price. What age are they looking for, you ask? There's a text message between a donor to Wing that read, now these girls are too grown up. Let's not play with them anymore. Let's find better ones.

Wang himself once stated, some elementary school kids are considered too old.

And third is aesthetic. If someone is pretty, that will also change the asking price as well. If they are pure, it starts at around $1,418. If they are not pure, by the way, if they are not, then it's closer to $422. If they are older or not as aesthetically pleasing and not quote pure, Wang would charge $282 for a night.

There are two ways that Wang would recruit students to be featured on his charity website. And most of them had no idea. They think that they're getting tuition. They think they have a chance at tuition. If someone goes onto the website and likes them, they think they can go to school. The first way is that Wang would go and ask all the local teachers, hey, give us a list of students that can't afford next year's tuition. Send us pictures and a brief little bio about their lives. And if chosen, they're going to be featured on the website for sponsors to choose from to see who they want to support.

Side note, there are actually a lot of questions on whether or not these teachers knew what was going on. Some students remember a female teacher giggling about how Wang was her friend and how he's very perverted. A teacher said that? Yeah. So that's my friend, but he's perverted? Yeah.

So there's speculation that the teachers were making some commission. Some of them. I'm sure not all of them. Now, the second way would be Wang himself would go poverty hunting. That's literally basically what he's doing. Vulnerability hunting. He would quite literally find the most broken down shacks in the village, visit and tell the students, I can give you hope at life.

He would take pictures of them, put them up on the website. Jenny ends up being on the website. She's one of the girls on there. And she feels genuinely excited when this opportunity approaches her because she's like, for the first time ever, I mean, it almost feels illegal to be hopeful. That's how she feels.

And on top of that, a donor had chosen her to be the student that they wanted to sponsor. Jenny didn't even know how the money was going to get to her because she had to pay the tuition soon. So she reached out to Wang and said, I saw that someone donated to me and picked me on the website. Like, thank you so much, first of all. And did he wire the money to you? If you need a service fee for it, it's okay. I can just take a small portion of it. You're so hardworking, Mr. Wang. I understand.

So there had been a rumor, a very well-known rumor, in fact, amongst all the kids that even though all over this website, all over in Angel of the Mountains interviews, Wang states that he gives 100% of the donation to the students. The kids knew that wasn't true. They're like, no, Wang almost never gives you any money. And if he does, it's never the tuition money.

So she's like, oh, well, I heard about the rumors. So I just want him to know I feel comfortable just getting a small, any amount, any amount is fine for me. That's how Jenny is responding. And his response is, what do you understand? You're very hardworking. I know it's not easy for you either. I just take money for website operation.

He's so blunt with the way he talks about how he's scamming people. Jenny knows that she's entitled to 100% of the donation, but even when she tries to be considerate, he almost gaslights her like, are you kidding? Of course I'm taking some of your money. But she's like, that's okay. This is my lifeline though. There's nothing I can do about it. I just need a little bit of money. Jenny gets a small portion of her tuition that week and now Wang wants his money's worth. He asks Jenny if she wanted an opportunity to earn more money. He sends over a picture of a man in a white shirt saying,

And he texts, are you willing to spend summer and winter breaks with him as his lover? The man's going to give you $4,224 a year. Jenny doesn't want to do it. I mean, in what world would you want to do that?

But also, that's a lot of money. That could change her life. Also, her future kids' lives. I mean, I know to some of us, it's a lot of money, but it might not be generational change of circumstances level of money. But to Jenny, it was. This could change the future of her family's bloodline. But again, the idea of it, she wants to throw up. She wants to gag. Jenny asks Wang very nicely, can I think about it after college? I just want to focus on my studies. And then after college, I can do that when I'm older since he's old.

Wang just ignores her and keeps talking about how rich the investor was to try and get Jenny excited about the idea. But it did the exact opposite. So one day they're sitting there and Wang's like, do you know how rich that guy is, Jenny? You don't know, do you? Jenny sits there quietly. He's so rich, he lost $250,000 in a single day from the stock market. Not even phased. Nothing. That's a drop in his bucket for him. Jenny stared at her feet and she realized what that meant.

This was a businessman who thought $250,000 meant nothing to him. And yet to that same man, Jenny, a human being, was only worth $4,200. She said in that moment she felt so utterly insignificant in this world, she realized she could never take this deal. She couldn't. She asked Wang, does he like us kids though? Wang responded, kids are a hobby for rich people. How old is Jenny? Like 13.

Another student from Jenny's school had experienced the same thing, but she had been essayed by Wang. She remembers afterwards, Wang didn't even have the decency to drive her home. Not that he's anywhere near a decent guy, but he dropped her off at a train station, handed her a box of pills, birth control.

pushed them into her tiny little hands. And when she got home from school the next day, she waited until the rest of her family went to sleep, went under her blanket, reached for the flashlight that she kept by her bed, clicked it on and tried to read the instructions on the back of the birth control. She was 12. So if you're a reporter going undercover,

There's a few rules that you need to follow. One, know your purpose. Two, access the risk. Three, choose your cover and stick with it. Four, gather evidence. Five, protect yourself and others. Six, report responsibly.

Chris broke every single one of these rules. This is the guy from the beginning of the story whose parents saw him spiraling. He broke every single one of these rules. He's not assessing the risk by showing up at the school, taking a tour, hoping that he could save a few kids. He's just trying to infiltrate this trafficking ring. He's putting his own life in danger. His gathering of the evidence, all those CP videos that are now on his phone, it's reckless at best.

And now Chris is hanging out with Wang quote touring schools, checking out the product, aka. Now the plan for Chris was to get away from Wang, try and talk to some of the students, find out a way to contact them, build a report with these students' testimonies, and then go from there. So Chris is a good guy? Yes. Once he gets those videos in, Chris takes a three-day train ride to the person who sent it to him, Wang.

He's like, I want a taste of my own product. I want to purchase products from you. I liked the videos. I liked what I saw. Let's see if I can get a product in person.

So he goes to Baisa to visit with Wang and to go to schools, tour villages to see what the product is looking like in person. Chris just keeps trying to get a second alone with a single child, or at least he's trying to look into some of their eyes and somehow communicate like, hey, I'm one of the good ones. Like I'm here to save you, but it's not working. He spoke with close to 80 kids online

all under Wang's close eye. He got nothing. Nothing was done from that trip. And it's driving Chris crazy. He's spiraling even more. He's not going to work. This is all he's focusing on is trying to take down this trafficking ring. He doesn't know how.

When Chris gets back home, he tries to match the file names of the CP videos that he got with the girls' names on the website. He reaches out to them directly, tracks down their WeChats, reaches out to them directly, and the first one that's willing to talk to them is Mae. Mae starts telling Chris her story. She said, Yeah, no one in this world hates Wang as much as I do. He ruined my entire life. It all started when she was in elementary school. It had been years since.

Wang got her pregnant recently in middle school. She didn't even know what being pregnant was or what it was supposed to feel like. Her grades just started slipping. She wasn't feeling good. And eventually she had to drop out of school because her stomach started to show. You know, it's funny, isn't it? Because in this evil, sick, twisted way, everything that she worked so hard for to be in school, the reason she even knew of Wang was to get tuition to go to school. Without this, there was no way she could have an education. Her parents made $14 a month. She had two younger siblings.

and then she had to drop out because he essayed her and got her pregnant all those years of enduring wang's twisted requests demands assaults to receive tuition was for nothing wang essayed her filmed it then blackmailed her into filming more essays with him i mean otherwise he said he's gonna spread that video everywhere on the internet and then from those assaults may became pregnant

Mei told her aunt and she ended up getting a termination, but Wang was untouchable. Mei tried to scare him with the evidence that she was pregnant with his child, but he just threatened her. You tell anyone, I'm going to spread your videos everywhere on the internet. You'll never be able to look someone in the eye ever again. Mei said, Wang himself told me that he showed my videos to a ton of men out there. I really want to kill him. I really, really want to kill him.

But again, what can she do? Wang went on to threaten the safety of Mei's family. He would allude to the fact that he wanted her little sister next. But if she doesn't want her little sister to go through the same thing as she did, the only way he would be willing to not look at her little sister is if she brought him virgins.

May sent over a voice note to Chris to prove that Wang was talking to her about how he needs pure girls to sell to investors who donate money. He offered May a finder's fee of $1,400 for every pure girl that she found for him. So we can only imagine how much he's selling these girls for.

May told Chris that in a sick, weird way, the angel of the mountains, and maybe because this is his nickname, he would even take 12-year-old girls into the mountains, the literal mountains in Baisa, and film essay videos in the woods. Have you thought about suing him? No. We're afraid. I mean, he has our videos. He's going to spread them. I feel helpless. This whole town is in the palm of his hand.

Talking to May, Chris discovered that together they had over 27,000 pieces of evidence including photos and videos, chat records, audio records, victim statements. Chris gathered that there were at least 30 to 40 victims. And after talking to May, Chris felt compelled to help. Like he had to do something about this. He's the adult, May's still a kid. But he has videos of CP on his devices. Technically, he offered to purchase CP.

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Have you heard of the Trojan horse defense? In the UK, there was a man that came home and his seven-year-old daughter ran upstairs and she's like, "Daddy, there's something on the family computer and it's not very nice."

He's confused. He goes downstairs to the computers to investigate and he sees that the family computer looks possessed. It's like glitching. It's turning on and off. It's popping up new browsers, Googling things without anyone touching the mouse or even being in the vicinity of the computer. But because but probably the most alarming part, every time the browser would start up, the landing page would be a CP website on the dark web. Wow.

The dad called the computer manufacturer, reset his computer, and things kind of went back to normal. I mean, it would still glitch, but it wasn't CP. A few weeks later, there's a knock at the door. Police storm the place, seize the family computer, arrest the dad. They found 172 images of CP on his computer. The dad was facing 10 years in prison. And as much as all the people around this man's life wanted to believe him, it's kind of like,

I mean, if you found out that someone in your life was busted for CP, I think it would be very hard to believe their frantic calls of, you have to believe me, someone hacked me. You have to believe me. I don't know what's going on. I would never do something like this. I have a young daughter. Is this a real case? Yes, it's a real case.

The dad argued in court that all the images were planted onto his computer by a virus. He was one of the first people to use this defense successfully. Forensic analysts were able to uncover that he had opened up random emails. I don't even think that he clicked a suspicious link. He just like opened up an email and his computer was infected. That's all it took.

Yeah. That is terrifying. I mean... So scary. And then also, like, when the damage is done, at that point, even if the court proves his innocence, like, it's pretty much done for. Yeah, it's done for because even today, there are netizens on Reddit questioning. Yeah, like, when you have your name associated with that kind of, you know, it's...

That's terrifying. It's so scary. I mean, it's scary in both ways because this can happen to a lot of innocent people, but it can also be used as an alibi for actual predators. So it's a dangerous double-edged sword. Now, Chris is in a trickier situation.

He wasn't even a journalist. He did not go undercover as a journalist. Chris is just a random civilian who decided to be a web sleuth and now had videos of CP on his phone. How is he going to turn around and tell the police that he went undercover? Undercover for who? Chris was not working for the National Police Department to bust child trafficking rings. He was not working for a media company that sent reporters undercover to expose dangerous groups to the public. He's just literally a random civilian.

Chris was part of a charity, like a real charity in his local town, and they would support smaller charities in small rural areas. And they supported Baise Foundation. So over the years, Chris decided, hey, if I'm going to spend money on a charity, I might as well do it directly. So he started donating to Baise. He would sponsor children and everything was going well until he gets a text message from one of the students he sponsored and said, hey, can you send me the money to me directly instead? Instead of to Mr. Wang?

And he's like, why would I do that? Mr. Wang does 100% of the accounting and he gives you 100% of the money. And the girl said, no, he doesn't. And he keeps saying, if I want any money, I have to go to the hotel with him. And now Chris was like a dog barking up a tree. He's like, got to get to the bottom of this. He's invested. That's his money that we're talking about. That's funding assaults and all these shady things. He uncovered that this is all front. It's a front for a child trafficking ring.

Chris calls up his local police in his town and he's explaining the whole situation to them just saying things like I mean yeah I thought it was a little strange that the guy who runs it he's taking the donations directly into his personal account but when I talked to him about it he's like well it's a one-man show I don't have the operating license but I'm not officially registered but you get it I'm the angel of the mountains I'm trying to help these people Chris didn't question it but then that text message it changed things for him and he started freaking out and then

And then he saw this comment on the website because he like went down this rabbit hole. He goes on to the buy still website and he sees that someone had commented. Hey, are you helping children? Are you making porn videos?

And he was like, wait, the hotel, the porn videos. Chris stated that everything clicked in that moment for him. Every other little thing that he just brushed off or didn't think about twice was coming in full circle in the worst way possible. There was a brief conversation in one of the charity group chats where Wang offered to send a student to a donor for the winter break. He assumed it was some sort of internship or job opportunity.

But no, sometimes donors would text into the group chat that they donated and Wang would respond that he's quote sending over two girls. Chris thought that he was talking about sending two girls profiles over so that the money donated would go to those two girls. But now, now he's realizing that's not what he was saying at all. It's crazy that they just messaging. In a group chat. Yeah, with Chris in there. With pure and conditional donors.

So it's like you would have dirty donors in there and then real donors in there. That's what's crazy. They're so blatant about it. They don't care. So the quote pure donors, they're just simply donating and they have no idea what's going on. They're like, Chris, they're like, oh, I want to donate. I'm donating. That's it. They don't know what's going on. They don't know that this is shady. They feel good that they're helping a smaller foundation. So they're just just that ballsy. They're just messaging in front of everyone. They don't care.

So Chris creates a new social media profile, calls himself Harry. Harry is the business owner in the aquatics industry. And all Wang needed to know was that Harry was rich. Yeah, Harry is fake rich. Chris is not rich. He's losing his job for this, okay? And then using his fake persona, Harry, Harry spends two months trying to win over one of the highest donors in the charity, a businessman named Mr. Zhang. And after bonding with him, Mr. Zhang recommends Harry to Wang.

And that's when the CP videos were sent. Wang even texted him. What are you looking for? We've got it all. Elementary, middle, high school, college. I can get you anything. Then he starts getting those CP videos. And with each video, Wang told Chris whether or not the girl was, quote, pure or not, or whether this was, quote, breaking the purity in the video. And at the end, Wang tells Chris slash Harry, if you send over money, I'll introduce these girls to you.

So Chris is explaining all of this to the police and he's like, that's how I ended up taking a tour of the town, going to the school, talking to one of the victims. Like, please, you have to believe me. I never wanted these videos to begin with. And the police on the other line, listening to all of this, they pause for a moment. Wait, you said this happened in Baisa? Oh, then buddy, you got to call them. They hang up.

It is an alarming reaction to say the least. But Chris is like, okay, that was really weird, but I'm going to call Baisa. So he calls the right jurisdiction and the second police officer is not any nicer. They just keep interrupting him in the middle of the story. You said you have videos? Then you need to bring it into the station. No, I can't take it over the phone call. No, no, you don't, you're not grasping the severity. It's people are getting hurt right now. They hung up on Chris.

Soon after, Chris receives a text message from Wang. You want to die? You ever come to Baise with evidence, you'll never go back home. They found out? Yeah. So Mei said that Wang runs the area. Potentially he... Oh, the cops. Yeah. Wow. And...

You know, Chris is shaking. He doesn't know what to do. He tells May to be careful. And she tells Chris, this is expected. This is his world over here in Baisa. This village, it's his. He runs it.

So Chris thinks, okay, the police are disgusting pigs. I'm going to go over them. I'm going to go straight to the media. He starts reaching out to local media companies to cover his story. He said that he would turn over all the evidence, but nobody reached back out. Nobody wants to do anything about it. The police won't listen. They're probably in on it or protecting Wing. The media won't even email him back. The victims are too scared to go to the public. I mean, no one blames them for that, but there's no way to stop this trafficking ring. He felt like a broken man.

And I'm sure it would have been easier for Chris to live the rest of his life not knowing about something like this and still thinking that people are out there and they're good people. But now that he knows, he tries to stop the devil and the devil wins. Chris has nothing to show for everything that he tried to do. So July 20th, 2014, Chris deletes all the evidence on his phone and he tells May, I'm sorry. And she responds, it's okay. I understand. You tried to help.

Wang was still free to shop for more donors. More victims were being created and Chris could do nothing. August 13th, 2015, about a year later, Wang is at home. The TV is on in the background. He's distracted when something perks his ears up and he's like, what the hell? It feels like a Black Mirror episode. He hears his voice coming out of the TV. A news network.

He walks over to the TV thinking it's another rerun of one of his amazing Angel of the Mountains interviews, but the words coming out of his mouth, it doesn't make sense how the TV is playing this. It's he's saying this one. This one was only 12 at the time when I ate her. She only has her grandma to take care of her. Oh, this student. So hardworking. She helped me run the charity foundation for a little bit because she wanted to earn more money. You know, the lighting on this one's not good, but this was her first time.

You know, sometimes I'll even eat the girls before I give them to the investors because I just want to make sure that they're going to perform well, you know? BySif Foundation, a charity focused on providing student aid to underprivileged children, was being exposed for a child sex trafficking ring. On TV. On TV.

But there's no actions taken. There's about to be. So exactly a year ago, when Chris decided to give up, he deleted all the CP videos off after the police did nothing. The media companies didn't reach back. He deleted everything off of his phone and he got a phone call right after. Hello? Hi, I'm a reporter with the Guangxi Radio and Television Network. I want to help you. The reporter is CEO Chen.

He's the one from the dinner. And because they didn't have enough evidence for a year, they spent gathering evidence and CEO Chen went in with secret cameras and caught all of Wang's dirty business on film. So another one went undercover. Yes. They released all the footage in a documentary exposing Bai Si and Wang. And unfortunately,

I really wish that this could be a very clean cut ending to the episode, but it's not. It took almost 10 days for the police to arrest Wang. Everyone was terrified for their safety. Right after the show aired, May received a text message from Wang demanding to know she was the one that went to the media with the story. He threatened to find her. She said she had nowhere else to go. She can't afford to stay anywhere else. Nobody's willing to take her in. So she had to go up into the mountains, find a quiet spot and sleep there.

Wow. Wang was finally investigated by the police. There was evidence that Wang tried to delete all the CP off his devices, but they were able to recover many of the files. About 40 videos of CP in his computer, all named after the victims. Many of the victims did not want to go to court. And, I mean...

Yeah, that makes sense. The police already had a ton of evidence. I mean, just so much evidence. Why make the victims go through another round of trauma in a small town? Being a victim and coming forward to protect others and stand for justice is not, for some reason, seen as a heroic thing in some towns. Not just in China, but like everywhere, even in the US. It's almost seen as a way to like shame your family name. Or did you ask for it? Or were you receiving money in return? Mei said after...

Everyone found out that she was a victim. Her uncle came up to her and said, leave and go as far as you can. You're a disgrace to our family name. She felt like she was losing the family's face. When other victims saw what happened to May, none of them wanted to come forward. The police weren't even treating the investigation sensitively. When they were investigating victims' stories, not the victims, but they're like trying to get stories, they would keep going to the victim's place of school or work if they were grown up to talk about what happened to them.

So all their co-workers would find out and their lives would be ruined again and they'd have to start over. Sometimes male police officers would barge into the victims' homes to ask random questions about clarification for their statements. One of Wang's favorite statements was, money makes the devil work for you.

This was a crime that hurt a lot of girls. If a family in a small rural town in China has five kids and they only have enough money to send one kid to school, because there's not schools on every corner. It's an absolute journey for a lot of these kids. There are some children in these rural areas that have to tightrope 30 feet above a flowing river, then walk seven miles through a forest just to get to school. And this is not an exaggeration.

There's a literal town that makes you do that to get to school. And then you have to do it all the way back home. And then when you get home, you probably have to cook for your grandparents because your parents aren't home. You got to clean up around the house and try to get food on the table. So usually they'll send sons. So what did the girls do? Usually they just get married until they saw Baise. They thought this is my chance to go to school and have a future.

A lot of the male students listed on the website because they can't just have a charity for girls, or at least Wang didn't want to because maybe it's suspicious. All the male students, they got their tuition in full because they weren't interested in the male students.

Side note, Wang is married, by the way. This is the husband. Thankfully, he has no children, but he's married. And the wife was accidentally sent CP by Wang. Like he was trying to send it to somebody else and send it to his wife by accident. Yeah, a lot to unpack, a lot to say. But later, after the trial, after the arrest, she was asked about it. And she just responded to a victim's family, essentially. I'm rich and I have children. Men are no longer important to me.

What are you rich off of? What kind of response is that? She's rich because the foundation made over a million dollars in donations and they spent most of it. They kept most of it. They had multiple properties. They were investing in duck farms. They had a $20,000 car in a village that most people make $100 a month.

So the investigation into Wang started and all the money in his bank account was frozen. But this happened around school enrollment season. The best situation here would have been to for the authorities to take the funds out of the frozen bank account and give it to the children that were promised their tuitions. But they didn't.

They just didn't. So all these kids, they're victims. And now they can't even go to school because they have no tuition. So maybe the government could have gotten involved and paid for all their tuitions, right? But no, they just have no tuitions. And please, like, don't be judgmental about these kids, please. Like, I think it's very hard to understand very specific circumstances because I think that's what caused them to react like this.

A lot of students stated heartbreakingly that they would rather have had Wang back. They felt like Chris was the bad guy because they thought, yeah, we'll be assaulted, but at least we have a future. But now what? The damage is already done. This already happened. And now I can't go to school. Everything that happened has gone to nothing. And like,

Just really sit with that for a second, because at first glance, it's kind of harsh to hear. It does. It almost makes you like, oh, oh, that doesn't make sense. Like, that's not right. Right. But that's how desperate they are to have an education. They're willing to do anything for a future.

And this is a very sad reflection of society and not on these particular students, just to clarify. So Chris sees what's happening. He tries to get donations to send these kids to school, but nobody wants to donate with anything connected to BISA anymore. I mean, it was just really, really, really bad. Chris even got a text message one night from one of the victims that said, you're not actually a good person.

Eventually, the local government agreed to cover tuition costs for a few of the victims. But still, I mean, that means nothing. May was later interviewed and she stated, there are some things in life that even if you escape, how long can you escape for?

I have to face these things sooner or later. When the news initially broke, there were a lot of negative comments about May and that's why she had to leave her hometown. And a lot of negative comments, crazy enough, but from netizens. And May remembers reading all these hateful, just dripping with evil comments about her. And she would think, now that I think about it, I'm kind of glad my parents don't know how to read because at least they won't be able to know about what they're saying about us online.

Sarah, May's friend from the hotel, stated, in my family, we have four siblings in school, so tuition is huge. We live with my grandma, and I just thought I could just lift the burden by getting tuition and applying for BISA. That's what I did. And then after it happened, I mean, what could I do? I couldn't report it to the police. What if they don't believe me? I don't want to tell my friends about it because I'm scared that they're going to think I'm weird. I was so young at the time, and I thought Wang was so kind. I mean, so kind. Seeing us

impoverished children he would help us out but now that I think about it I see him really differently I think he really is the devil the trial took place October 13th 2016 originally three victims were willing to testify but the media released their identities and published pictures of them so they pulled out from testifying I know it's a mess yeah

In the end, after impregnating minors, essaying people, running a trafficking ring, all of that, infecting victims with STDs, Wang was only sentenced to 16 years in prison. 16, one six. The taxi driver Ren that went to the hotel with May and Sarah was only given five years in prison. And there is a netizen comment about this case that reads, stomp out that little cockroach. The darkness can't hide them anymore. But have you heard the truth about cockroaches?

When there is one, there are thousands. None of the businessmen, investors, donors were arrested or even investigated. And that is where I leave you with this case. What are your thoughts on this whole thing? And how many of these foundations do you think are operating like this out there that we just don't know about yet? Please let me know. Please stay safe. I'll see you guys on Wednesday. Bye.