The Fugitive British Gangster Instagramming His Crimes in Africa: Sam Walker
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Yep. Go to Carvana.com to finance your car the convenient way. It's March 2024 in the Sierra Leonean capital city of Freetown, a place torn by war, poverty, Ebola and way more, but rich in diamonds buried deep beneath the red soil that lies in the hinterlands between Sierra Leone and its troubled neighbor Liberia.

Mines stud the border. They're manned by indentured laborers and they churn out around $100 million a year. Small fry in the scheme of things, perhaps, but a huge deal for some of the poorest people on Earth. Not least, those who've seen the precious stones feel violence for decades.

Millions of dollars, they're also a big deal for a notorious gangster from the British city of Liverpool, who incidentally has just rocked up in Freetown after a strange and winding journey from his home turf. Sam Walker is a 35-year-old career criminal who's been in and out of prison since a huge police bust in 2009. He looks the part, cropped Fanta black hair and a goatee that looks like it's been penciled on by a club rep in Magaluf.

Walker loves the sound of his own voice too. And he posts an almost daily slew of braggadocio to his social media accounts, where he's become something of an unlikely celebrity. But why is Walker thousands of miles from home, in one of the poorest cities on the planet?

There's a short-ish answer that after dodging the cops on a charge of driving while disqualified, a pretty nondescript crime for him, he hopped on a private plane to Belgium, then got to Spain and travelled by boat across the Mediterranean Sea to Morocco, where he embarked on a three-day car ride through the Sahara Desert. He's posted about it the whole time, of course, putting on his Instagram a quote, step-by-step guide on how to get out of the UK when you're wanted by the police.

You can't use an airport, he adds, because they will nick you. When Walker makes it to Freetown, he posts again, taunting Liverpool cops, backdropped by shanties and bustling traffic. Better luck next time trying to catch me when I go out the country next time, he says. Walker's followers love it. His father has Sierra Leonean heritage, and he says he's going to help people in the slums, turn his life around and do something for the people.

He accuses local charities of corruption and he begins work building a well in one of Freetown's poorest hoods. He starts calling himself the leader of the People's Revolution, TPR, and models himself as a, ready to klaxon, modern-day Robin Hood. Cue adulation from Walker's online fans, but others are less impressed.

If convicted of driving while disqualified, he would have probably got banned from driving for a year and a fine, one source tells the independent newspaper. Instead, he's gone to Africa and put taunting videos online. And now he's going to get jailed if he comes back. He seems a complete moron. But Walker's only a moron if you forget one glaring fact. The diamonds.

The gangster may claim to be in Africa on a spectacular goodwill mission, but as days turn to weeks, his true motives for the trip become very, very clear indeed. Sam Walker may be a clown, but he's no Robin Hood. Welcome to the Underworld Podcast. Hello and welcome to the weekly podcast about crime, crooks, gangs and illicit networks all over the beautiful world.

I am Sean Williams of New Zealand and I'm joined by Danny Gold in New York City. We are both members of the fake news media and we've been in more awkward situations with gangsters than your mum. Oh, when did you get funny? About four years ago, you just didn't notice, mate. Yeah. Um...

So you did a pretty hard hitting show last week on the Chepitos. You know, I was feeling terrible last week, but today I'm feeling great. Not at all as if we just recorded the other one yesterday. But we've got something a little less cartel-y and a bit more clown-y today.

And that is the tale, as you might have guessed, of serial criminal and stealth soul Robin Hood, of Sierra Leone, of all places, Sam Walker. So if Hush Puppy is a warning not to Instagram your crimes, this guy is like the Don't IG Your Crimes the Musical.

Yeah, and for those of the new listeners who haven't been with us a while, that was kind of like our catchphrase or our motto back in the day, just because there were so many gangsters and wannabe gangsters getting caught by law enforcement simply because they put everything they were doing on Instagram, just for, not for business purposes, but for, you know, clout, Instagram purposes, whatever, whatever the kids are saying these days. So we sort of came up with this idea

This thing that we always said, which was don't Instagram your crimes, don't broadcast what you're doing, because that is how law enforcement makes cases right now. And it's just not a smart thing to do. I mean, we talked about, I think, I've done a bunch of stories in St. Louis with these kids that I used to tell them, like, you're posting up stuff on Instagram, maybe not doing crimes, but with stacks of thousands of dollar bills. The police have charged you with multiple things before. They know you don't have a job. What do you think they're going to do? So,

So, yeah, a little underworld lore right there. Yeah, we're going to get to some of this guy's better posts, and there are quite a few of them. He does this amazing thing where he's like, I'm a drug dealer, allegedly, and he thinks of just saying allegedly in front of like, I did this crime, is getting him off. But also saying really great about this episode is that Sam Walker is all over the internet, and his ego is like,

thinner than the leather chaps danny used to wear in the club so i reckon he's going to respond to this oh which would obviously be great and uh and sam if you're listening come on the show doing it in the view but i get to ask real questions like i don't know what's that thumbnail on youtube going to be journalist owns violent gangster is that what's going to get us clicks i don't know yeah i mean your only fans uh for it didn't work so this is probably the best thing that we have going for us

I mean, I spent like 40 bucks on that pedicure. Don't make that for me. Anyway, a reminder to like, subscribe, join the Patreon if you can. Really helps us out and puts the pod first. But you know that stuff already. Who is Sam Walker? And how has he ended up in, of all places, Sierra Leone?

By the way, you know, a quick aside, I take a little issue with what you said. Sierra Leone's actually, you know, I was there in 2015 doing the Ebola stuff. It's got some nice things going on there. You know, some beautiful hotels, beautiful places, great, great, great people. And you can actually get really great Middle Eastern food there because there are all sorts of shady Lebanese businessmen who are doing God knows what and may or may not be connected to Hezbollah.

Also, shouldn't we do a shout out because this the idea for this show came from a listener, right? I think someone pointed this guy out.

Yeah, somebody on Instagram. I can't remember his name, but remind me when you hear this and I'll plug it next episode. Yeah, yeah. Cheers, mate. So the story of Sam Walker. This begins around 20 years ago in the northwestern English town of Halton, which I'd never heard of before. And it's a short ride from Liverpool, which is Britain's fourth biggest city. Probably my favorite city out of London. Like really, really cool place.

Beatles, football, big dock city shipbuilding, huge in the Industrial Revolution, of course, when it welcomed migrants from all over the world. It's got a huge Chinese population. And this is nuts, right? Almost three quarters of the city is of Irish descent, which is barely believable. I mean, some people even call Liverpool the, quote, real capital of Ireland.

which, I'm not casting any aspersions, goes a tiny way of explaining why there's always been a strong criminal underworld in the city. It's always nice hearing that from a London voice. Stuff coming off the ports, off the books, businesses, and there's a big, big connection to the conflict in Northern Ireland and all the guns and illicit cash that brought back in the day. I think you've done a bunch of stuff on like...

Northern Ireland, how they've pivoted to organise crime since the Troubles died down. But yeah, people can listen to those shows too. And Liverpool has birthed some of the most notorious gangsters in Britain, from Curtis Warren, who we covered like forever ago and was once Interpol's most wanted man, to Stephen French, an underworld tough nut who went all Guardian Angels against drug dealers back in the 1990s. More on him later.

Latterly, the city's gangs have risen to the summit of the British underworld and they dominate the market in illegal firearms according to the National Crime Agency, which is Britain's group against organised crime. The spillout from the EncroChat hacking in 2020 by cops revealed that over 70% of weapons in the UK leads back to Liverpool and its surrounding areas.

and they've even forged close ties with South American cartels. According to the NCA's Matt Perfect, I think he's the firearms lead there, quote, you look at the consistent demographic of unemployment and deprived areas and how serious organised crime has evolved. If you did an assessment on how society has evolved with serious organised crime, Liverpool's gangs have probably been at the forefront.

And more recently, Liverpool's underworld has been dominated by groups from, well, where else? Albania. Albania mentioned. It's been a while. But around 2007, they were just a blip on the horizon. Yeah.

Yeah. Have you heard anything about the, uh, the hell banions in London? I know we did an episode on them a while ago and, uh, about controlling the ports, I think up in, uh, in Belgium, but I haven't heard much on that in a minute. Well, there was a huge bust, right? There was like a cross country bust. I think maybe in the Netherlands, like a few weeks ago, I think we should cover it actually. Like they brought in all law enforcement from all over Europe and they busted, I'm pretty sure it was an Albanian coat ring, but yeah, that's the last I've heard about them. Yeah. Maybe they're doing that well that even,

We are. We aren't hearing about them. I was going to say, you know, I have a bunch of family members and friends that have gone to the Albanian coast for the summer. Apparently, it's like the new hotspot in the Mediterranean, still super cheap. And I guarantee you a lot of money being washed through those hotels. But I hear amazing things about visiting Albania in the summer.

Oh, it's such a beautiful place. I would go back there in a heartbeat. Yeah, it's like, oh man, it's so cheap and so beautiful mountains. And it's like, I don't know, a mini Lebanon in every single way, I guess. Anyway, this time, so around 2007, that is when Sam Walker is making his rise through the city's ranks.

as part of a crack and heroin ring working out of Halton, which is just across the River Mersey from Widness, where my best mate is from, so hi Sam, and Liverpool, where the river cuts right through. He gets the nickname The Crucifier after he allegedly, I'm doing it now, drills into the palms of an underworld rival,

And his guys are making pretty decent cash, all told, around $5,000 a day from the trade. It's not Escobar, of course, but it's not bad. One of the reasons they're able to do this is by using a dealing method called county lines.

Which I'm sure we've mentioned before, right? But for those of you unfamiliar, the British government describes county lines as, quote, gangs and organised criminal networks involved in exporting illegal drugs into one or more importing areas using dedicated mobile phone lines or other forms of deal lines. They are likely to exploit children and vulnerable adults to move and store the drugs and money, and they will often use coercion, intimidation, violence, including sexual violence, and weapons.

So a common feature of county lines is the exploitation of young and vulnerable people, many of whom have severe disabilities. And if any of you have watched the excellent Line of Duty, you'll be aware of the next level of this, which is when dealers take over a property often belonging to a disabled or abused person. I think in the show it's a kid with Down syndrome. And that's called cuckooing. That's pretty grim stuff.

And this means that Walker and his pals are able to get a grip on the huge drug markets of Liverpool and Manchester and all the towns and cities around them while laying low in Halton and avoiding any confrontation with law enforcement. And the northwest of England is a big place, around seven and a half million people. And English people, they really, really like drugs. Fact checked. True. Yeah. This is a cash cow.

Until that is January 2009. And that's when Merseyside cops bust Walker's crew as part of a six-month investigation called Operation Strikeout. The police seize over $20 million in drugs, luxury cars, cash and jewellery. Walker gets lured out to deal himself as part of the sting. And when he sees footage of him dealing crack out of a car to an undercover cop, twice, he pleads guilty to four counts of conspiring to supply Class A drugs. He's buggered, basically.

Wow. I mean, that's really surprising. Like if they had that much cash flow, I'm surprised to see him dealing hand to hand like that. I mean, maybe it was, you know, wholesale, but still seems pretty sloppy for someone bringing in or who had enough money where there was $20 million worth of assets and money lying around.

Yeah, I mean, this guy, his middle name is Sloppy. He is Sam Sloppy Walker. I mean, we're going to learn a lot more and a lot more egregious stuff that he did after this. Because Sam Walker's story is just beginning at this point. While inside prison, he posts phone pics of him skinheaded and smoking weed in his cell. And that earns him more time on his sentence.

He's also listed on dating site Flirt-O-Matic, which is a dangerous thing to do in prison, I'm guessing. Walker gets out on parole in May 2012, but in December that year, he leaves a threatening message on a policeman's home phone. Again, not clever. And in June 2013, he's nabbed driving a car through Liverpool city centre without a licence and against the terms of his parole. Walker is re-arrested and he's ordered to spend an additional nine months behind bars for these two crimes.

In December that year, Walker is caught up in a case where three balaclava-clad men have broken into a Runcorn home, that's the town next to Houghton, with Beretta air pistols. They've held the homeowner at gunpoint and stolen a bunch of stuff from her safe.

One of these three men is a career robber named Ashley Udu, who then tells a court that Walker's been sending him threatening messages not to grass. Quote, you've said shit all in the police statement, calling me a gangster and I'm involved in guns and drugs. This is Walker, of course. And he goes on, quote, then you're going around saying you and me will end up fighting. Listen, mate, the moment you and me end up fighting, I'll be straight on the phone and sending someone to your mum's address to turn her life upside down.

You only need to look back at my last court case and remember what happened to the grasses on that one. Yeah, I mean, don't Instagram your crimes is a good saying, but also like don't leave recorded messages where you're basically admitting to crimes. Like that's also a really good thing to just ingrain in yourself if you're living this sort of lifestyle.

Yeah, agreed. I mean, if you're going to do it, don't do it to, well, one of two people, right? Don't do it to cops and definitely don't do it to heroin addicted armed robbers because they tend to be not the most reliable of colleagues for crime.

So Walker apologises for threatening Udo's mum, so you know, there's a point in his wing column. But in a subsequent hearing, he tells the court his alleged accomplice is a, quote, scumbag, adding, I'd be really surprised if you could find two brain cells in his head. I'm not a robber. I'm a drug dealer. Both are occupations, criminal occupations. They're completely different. No way at 30 I'm going to commit aggravated burglary and get 15 years. It makes no logical sense.

I might as well have just stayed selling drugs, but I chose not to. Which, you know, that makes some logical sense. And Walker is found not guilty of the entire thing. Although telling someone not to grass about it, that's a bit sus. I don't know. It's pretty lenient, I would have said. But is he ready to turn his life around, Danny? I'm going to go with no.

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In February 2014, authorities jail Walker for possession of MDMA and a grand in counterfeit cash. He tells the judge he's got the cash selling a laptop to a bloke down the local barbershop, which, you know, I can actually believe because me and my mates got a bunch of counterfeit 20s from a guy down the local pub as teenagers and they all worked out very, very well.

But the jury doesn't believe him, and that's perhaps because, in a previous case, Walker had outlined exactly how he'd get away with dealing counterfeit bills.

This is probably the first example of Sam Walker, like, Instagramming his crimes to some extent, but by no means it's going to be the last. In 2014, he makes national news when he threatens England football star Ross Barkley, then playing for local side Everton on social media. Quote, inbox me a number for you, you little rat. Add in quote. Amazing. You know what this is about, so don't act stupid or your footy career will come to an end.

Three years later, when Barkley is knocked out at a Liverpool cocktail bar, I mean, not out of the cup, like out by being punched in the face, Walker posted the star quote, had it coming to him, getting banged out again last night by one of the lads. That's what he gets for thinking he could go around trying to blag the lads birds a little gimp.

Which, yeah, that's quite funny. Anyway, great player, Barkley. I always thought he should have done way better with his talent. Here's where the British tabloids start calling Walker a notorious gangster or a, quote, underworld leader. And that's just nonsense, man. The guy's a career crook, sure. He's pretty funny, but he's pretty small time compared to the guys running the show up north. I mean, it's all about the stuff he posts, really. It's all a bit of a circus and the media love him for it.

Next up is a wrap for Dangerous Driving, when Walker is caught doing 100mph down country lanes in a Ford Focus, which, you know, a Ford Focus, that's not the easiest thing to do. He's only stopped by a police stinger in the end, and when the cops catch up with him, Walker claims he was only driving like a maniac to try to fit up officers for planting drugs on him, which, I guess that's 4D chess in his world, and obviously very, very dumb.

Standing in the dock again, a judge tells Walker, quote, you're 33 now and your record is just dreadful. There really isn't any way of describing it. Here you are at 33. When you look back on the last 15 or 16 years, you spent most of that time in prison. You've thrown it all away, which I think is what your ballet coach said, right, Danny? Modern dance. Ah, right. Yeah, got it.

The judge then goes off on a tangent about Walker perhaps having had a bad life growing up, but Walker shoots right back at him. You're wrong though, I've got no excuses. I don't think the world is against me and I committed these crimes. And he's told to be quiet. And then the judge tells him he's way worse for making the choices he has. Quote, it is utterly astonishing that nobody was injured or killed. Walker then shouts and tussles with court wardens, screaming about paedophiles getting community sentence. Quote,

I mean, we're not talking about a master manipulator here.

Walker is basically a bit of a narcissist. He loves the limelight. And if committing crimes is the way he's done it till now, why stop?

While he's in jail this time round, he starts an online beef with Stephen French, the guy I mentioned at the top of the show. Walker claims on Facebook that French had been sexually assaulted by Jimmy Savile. If you don't know him in the US, he's a very notorious British paedophile and a long time darling of the BBC. And that French had kept quiet about in his biography, putting other kids at risk.

Now, French is pretty genuinely hard, and it takes some stones to call him a pedo. It's also very, very funny. French mostly just brushes Walker off, but this whole world, French and Walker, and a ton of other small-time crims, they belong to this really weird gangster subculture in Britain. I like to call it the Guy-ritification of organised crime, but it was around way, way before lock-stock.

Here's a cut from Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men, which is kind of the Mona Lisa of this stuff. And that's when he meets French in one of the episodes.

I've come to meet a man with a reputation as one of the hardest men in Liverpool. This is one hard nigger to kill. A man who terrorised the underworld with extreme violence. Even drug dealers? I'd lift up my balaclava and say, it's me, the devil, what are you going to do about it? A man who left drug dealers living in fear that he'd come knocking on their door. He's a fighter all the time. A man they called the devil. P.A.!

What's with like the British documentary TV series industry where like they just take these actors like Danny Dyer or who's the ball? Ross Kemp and

And just like make them basically reporters for documentary series for like the next decade. Like that doesn't happen in the States really. No, it doesn't. It's like, it's a really deeply British thing. Incidentally, right, Ross Kemp, he's done some pretty nutty documentaries. He also lives in Dartford, where my family lives. And Danny Dyer, he was like a protege of Harold Pinter as a stage actor as a young kid. He's had the weirdest career ever. Football factory though. Yeah, football factory is solid.

Football factory rules. Yeah. There is this whole generation of like gangsters, sovereign rings, pinstripe suits who make a decent living off this sort of low rent hard man image. Dave Courtney, who died earlier this year,

He was kind of the torchbearer for the whole thing. Biographies with size 24 font with red titles like having it large or putting the boot in this kind of thing. Dave Courtney became an actor in piss poor VHS straight to telly movies of which snatches like only the Hollywood version thereof. Although I will not have a bad word said about Gatwick gangsters. It's a work of true art. And if you haven't seen it,

I mean, it's just the most incredible thing. It must have been shot on like a hundred quid budget. It also stars a long retired snooker player. Yeah, you've got to find it. I'm sure it's on YouTube.

I've put a great piece by Clive Martin at the fence on the reading list where he goes to Courtney's funeral earlier this year. It is awesome. According to Martin, Courtney quote appeared on everything from a big nasty freestyle to an array of zero budget crime movies shot chiefly on industrial estates such as killer bitch and the seminal triads yardies and onion bar cheese. He

He made branded content videos for Vice and appeared on an episode of Sky One's Brainiac trying to crack a safe in what I remember as a purple velvet suit.

He acted in a blue movie or two, including the comedy porno Lock, Cock and Two Smoking Bimbos. And there is even a rancid track named after him. Look, I'm not going to pretend to understand your culture, but I would. That movie sounds amazing. This comedy porno. I didn't know that was a thing that people did. Oh, man. Like, there's so much more. But I should do a whole show about these like weird gangsters because it would be a really, really good one.

He is amazing, Dave Courtney, or he was amazing rather. I mean, I genuinely, genuinely think this whole like shit low-rank gangster thing is an expression of post-colonial British self-loathing. Oh, don't go all academic on us, you nerd. I mean, yeah, I will do for just two seconds more. I mean, we can't just fully enjoy being good at stuff like you guys can, hence the current thing with the football team. But anyway, thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Let's move on with the story in hand.

In 2017, so at the same time Ross Barkley is getting, quote, banged out, which I love as a phrase, in a cocktail bar, Walker has a brawl and he's arrested at Manchester Airport as he's about to board a flight to Dubai. And then he's done for another round of driving without a license. We're up to 2018 now. And this is where Walker's tale goes from the strange to the ridiculous.

Walker, who's posting all the time to social media at this point, gets folks to donate food, toys and a bunch of other stuff. And then he fills up a shipping container with it all and he sends it to Sierra Leone. And when he gets to the country, he delivers the supplies and he installs a water pipe. And he tries to transform himself into this reformed Robin Hood guy. And then he gets back to England and he's thrown straight in prison again.

Now Walker, he is no 50 Cent, who is probably the greatest poster of all time. His YouTube videos are him moaning about men who get used by women, like kind of sort of mini Andrew Tate stuff. Him cutting the queue on the motorway, which absolutely boils my piss. And there's a good one on how to make an extension cable in a prison cell, which is probably the best one he does.

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So Walker doesn't have the gift of the gab, it's got to be said. In 2020, Walker is given added time on his sentence when he arranges for prison guards' cars to be torched while he's behind bars. And there are a lot of catchphrases we could get out of this one. Walker tells prison staff that, according to the Liverpool Echo newspaper, quote,

He had a line of kids waiting around to do whatever he wanted. And he would find offices' addresses, and he would send people around. I mean, just why, mate? Did he actually pull that off? Yeah. I mean, he doesn't... He, like, sets one on fire, but he doesn't really torture it. He's not Mambouché in any way whatsoever. No, but it's a little bit of a power move on his part, you know? I mean, he's stupid and, like, openly bragging about it. I think Boucher, his whole thing was like, hey...

I'm clearly doing this, but you're not going to get any evidence that I'm doing it. And that sort of seems a little bit more effective if you want to stay out of prison. Yeah, I think the way Sam Walker would do it is he'd threaten the guards, then he'd torch the cars, and then he'd post to TikTok saying that he torched the cars allegedly or some shit like that. I mean, I think there was another part of that story that was like some kids threw battery acid on the cars, so it's just ruined the paintwork. I mean...

Yeah, it's not like narco terror, but it's just like narco annoyance, I guess. In 2022, he releases a teaser for a documentary he calls The Bad Samaritan, which is, I think that's amazing. And he says it's going to be on Channel 4, which is one of the biggest channels in the UK.

But it seems like this production company, which is led by a former BBC presenter, had made a sizzle reel for it, which is like, I guess, what would you say that is? Like just a trailer. And then it either dropped out of the project or failed to sell it. The sizzle reel, right? What is that? Yeah, it's a sizzle. Like you put together a little bit of footage to try to get funding for a full project, you know? So you put together like two or three minutes of like highlights or like even just one scene sometimes that's really good just to try to generate more investment so you can do a bigger project.

And

Or just sell a project in general. But yeah, it's like a trailer, basically. Yeah, it's really weird, this thing. It's six minutes long. It's him bragging about random stuff that's clearly made up. And I was like, this must be a vanity project. He must have just got some random guy he knows to do it. No, if he's got this thing, it seems like on par for the kind of exciting doc series stuff that you'll see on, you know,

Anyway, moving on. Reputable channels that we know. But now we're going to skip on to March 2024. And that's the story from the cold open. And that, of course, is when Walker makes his long, circuitous journey into Sierra Leone for a second time, going via Morocco and the Sahara. And this time he's up for spending a bit more time in West Africa.

Posting to IG and TikTok where he has almost 200,000 followers, Walker says that quote, I'm going to the slums to get these kids their operations so they can see their families again. Then posting a video of him with a bag full of 50 pound notes, I mean that's like 65 bucks today sadly, he says quote, I could be in Marbella or Dubai living life but I chose to go to the slums to follow my vision of changing the lives of so many people in the slums and

who have no hope or opportunity to better their lives that have been failed by charities. And he posts subsequent videos of him hanging out at a secure compound with an armed guard, and he goes off on charities like Save the Children, saying that he can install fresh water, or saying that rather, if he can install fresh water, why can't they? He also posts slightly weirder stuff, like a video of guys allegedly smoking human bones and getting into a zombie state. I think we can play some of that now.

And this is why it gets called a zombie drug because these people be coming to a zombie-like state. So what you'll start doing is either just like that as you see here or also what you'll start doing is smacking their heads against walls, just acting like little weirdos. But this is what happens. This makes crack in England look like candy because

This is all a different level, a completely different level. I mean, it just looks to me like these guys are just hanging around minding their own business. But I don't know. I've never been to Sierra Leone. Danny, you have. Did you smoke any bone when you went? I did not. 2015 Sierra Leone with Ebola around, which I was there to cover, was not a good time to be smoking bone.

No, definitely not. You could say it's 0% THC, high in TH knee. That's awful. There we go. That's just terrible. But Sam Walker is not really trying to hide his other motive for being in Sierra Leone. The one I think is by far his primary motive. I mean, it's not I think, it just is. In one post, Walker says his charity work will be financed by a company he's set up called Chameleon Diamonds.

And chameleon diamonds are apparently a real thing. They're a bit of a fable thing in the diamond world. Quote, fascinating and rare and possessing a unique ability to change color. And they can do this in response to heat or light, according to noblegems.com. You get their first shout out on this pod.

In another social media post which he titles, And then another clip shows him with fistfuls of what are supposedly diamonds and gold bars to be weighed. He's even arrested by authorities which is...

blatantly attempt to bribe him, which he must have done. And when he's released, Walker posted, quote, Yeah, that's...

That is what people say when they've been bribed at gunpoint. Like I said, foreigners coming in for Sierra Leone's diamonds are nothing new. In recent years, the Russian mercenary group Wagner has teamed up with diamond mafias in Central African Republic. Actually, we should get the writer James Pogue on the show soon because he just published an amazing piece on Wagner in the C.A.R. for Granta.

Yeah, I was there in 2013 during the outbreak of the war, and it was like – there was like the one nice hotel in town where everyone stayed because it was the only place you could really stay. And there were always like shady kind of diamond merchant type guys there trying to make deals. But I think a lot of it is also fake. I mean the CIR stuff, Wagner, that's real. But this guy, Sam Walker, like unless you're –

heavily connected and extremely powerful or connected to powerful people, which I don't think he is.

Like, you're not going to be really setting up shop and getting diamonds. You can't just waltz in there. It's not easy. Even if you're like a little bit of a gangster here, you're not going to be able to like make your way into that. So I'm kind of, I don't know, I'm not really buying it, but there is a big industry of ripping off foreigners with fake diamonds. So that could be a thing that he's probably trying to get involved with or that's being done to him. Yeah, true, true. I didn't think about the fact they might be fake. Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, we're going to dive into this now a little bit, like go off on a bit of a tangent, but...

Revenues from Sierra Leone's diamond mines, like there were a big reason that the country descended into a brutal civil war, and that was between 1991 and 2002. The Revolutionary United Front, they enslaved rural workers, forcing them to produce so-called blood diamonds to fuel the war. That's, you know, you'll know that from Leonardo DiCaprio's terrible South African accent. And they display...

Dude, don't you? That movie was great. He had a great South African accent. That diamond's mine. That's my attempt on that. Yeah. These RUF fighters, they displaced almost half the country's 4 million people, and they made a reputed $200 million each year from blood diamonds.

And they got the backing of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia just across the border, led by psychotic dictator Charles Taylor. So much for a people's revolution there.

In the year 2000, blood diamonds steamed back into the headlines when police stormed the hotel room of a Ukrainian-Israeli named Leonid Efimovich Minin in a small town outside Milan, discovering him naked, surrounded by a gaggle of sex workers from Russia, Albania, Italy and Kenya, and freebasing blow.

And this guy is the leader of something called the Odessa Mafia, named after the city of Minin's birth. And the cops that night find not only a pallid and hopped up Minin and his female quartet, but half a million dollars worth of uncut diamonds that he's got from the border regions of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Here's this pretty extraordinary report from PBS, quote...

Cops found a duffel bag filled with more than $35,000 in American, Italian, Hungarian and Mauritian currency. That's when you know you've made it. From a briefcase and piles scattered around the rooms, police found 1,500 documents in Russian, Ukrainian, French, German, Dutch, English and Italian related to Minin's wide variety of business operations.

Specific findings included documents on his dealings in oil, timber and consumer goods, an inquiry by Minin into providing Nigeria's mobile phone network, a follow-up by a colleague on Minin's proposal to sell a Ukrainian aircraft carrier to Turkey, an offer for Minin's Beijing representative asking him to ascertain whether Liberian President Charles Taylor would be interested in establishing diplomatic relations with mainland China, etc.

correspondence between Minning and President Charles Taylor's son, Chucky, and a record of a $10,263.02 payment to Mark Rich, better known for his 11th hour pardon from President Clinton on charges of fraud and extortion. I mean,

Yeah, this guy is like a lot of different gangsters rolled up in one. But the most important of all of these things are several items of evidence that Minin is becoming one of the world's biggest arms traffickers. He's got MOUs with a deposed head of state in the Ivory Coast, catalogues of weapons and bank documents detailing a deal for 113 tonnes of bullets. I mean, Minin was basically a second Victor Boot and his case shows how massive the market in blood diamonds was at the turn of the millennium. I mean...

He's also kind of a... what's that guy who sold London Bridge as well? Or the Eiffel Tower? He's a bit of that rolled into one. I think his name was Victor something. Anyway, earlier this year, Walker says, that's Sam Walker of course, that he shipped most of his diamonds over to Dubai. Quote, I'm using parts of my profits of these diamonds to fund this freshwater for 10,000 people. So my diamond company is doing fine.

This is clearly a cover story. He's been at these mines since he skipped over from the UK. He's posted about inspecting and selling diamonds, building a water pump in a Sierra Leonean slum. I read an article that claims it costs around $8,000 to put in water pump tech for a village of around 150 people in Sierra Leone, but that some have done it for even under a grand. So let's charitably say that Walker is putting in a well for 300 people at a cost of 16k. I

I mean, this is back of a fag packet maths, but I reckon he can make that back with a single two-carat diamond, and he's going to be getting tons of them. Yeah, I don't know if I... I mean, I'm skeptical. Like, it could be true, but I'm skeptical this guy's really making bank like that and finding diamonds like this. Like, he's not the first two-bit, like, half a gangster to show... I mean, like, can't you just make fake diamonds these days anyway? They do the lab-grown ones, but you still make more money from the... You know, people don't want that. These are still...

and much more profitable. But I just like, I feel like every, didn't Boris Neyfeld, we talked about him. He went to, God, I forget where, maybe Mozambique, no, not Mozambique, but he went Angola, right? To get involved with a diamond mine in the 90s. And it was like a huge disaster and they lost a ton of money. And those were like,

They were not Sam Walker. They were like seasoned, hardened Russian gangsters with international connections who trafficked kilos of heroin across borders. Like they weren't low rent types. You know what I'm saying? And it didn't work out for them. So I just feel like this is a perennial sort of play that people like that. I don't know. I'm just skeptical. That's it. Yeah. I mean, he's not Boris Mayfield. Let's just say that. I mean, so this is like...

A picture-perfect example of how the poorest people in the mineral-rich country get completely shafted. Like, this man is coming in. Let's just say he's nicking all the diamonds, but he might be getting ruined himself on the back of fake ones. I mean, he's paying no tax. He's shipping a lot off to Dubai, and he's giving them, what, like a single water well in return? Yeah.

Yeah, Sam Walker may call himself a Robin Hood, but I think he's more like the Sheriff Nottingham. And I cannot wait for him to hear this episode and get back to us and come on the show and have a good old chat. Brave guy in New Zealand over here. Yeah, until next week.

so