SHOCKING! The Sinister Group Behind Your Grocery Items | Candace Ep 186
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Well, the Diddy Trial is prosecuting the wrong case. And there's something fishy going on with Red Lobster's bankruptcy. Also, some of you might be wondering who the hell I am. So today we're going to take you all the way back to the first story I ever covered on TikTok, where I exposed that there's poison in the baby food. We'll also respond to some of your comments. Welcome back to Candace. Candace.

Our first story today is about food, a specific kind of food that most of you probably eat, but you probably never realized that this food has a serious dark side. And I'm speaking, obviously, about shrimp, endless shrimp, to be exact.

Last May, Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy. And at the time, I had mistakenly assumed that it was because of mismanagement in some sort of private equity buyout, like all the other cool kids these days. But it turns out that that's old news. Private equity had already been there and done that way back in 2014, when Red Lobster had been bought out by Golden Gate Capital.

And what did they immediately do? Well, if you watched our show yesterday, you would know that they sold off all of Red Lobster's real estate in a leaseback scheme, much like Toys R Us and all sorts of other brands before them. They actually used this leaseback scheme to finance their initial purchase of Red Lobster like a leveraged buyout that we already talked about. But color me surprised when I looked up who owns Golden Gate Capital.

It was founded by former professionals from private equity firm Bain Capital and its affiliate Bain & Company, led by former Bain Capital partner David Dominick. So you remember how last time we talked about how Bain Capital was the private equity arm and Bain & Company was the consulting arm and they would never work together, right?

But not only that, when you look up the real estate company that they partnered with in the deal, later that same year, 2014, they got busted for a little $23 million accounting error

This is coming from a couple of different sources online, as well as Wikipedia to summarize it all for us. The company was formerly known as American Realty Capital Properties, Inc. And it changed its name after an accounting scandal. Its name was derived from the Latin word veritas, meaning truth.

In October 2014, the company admitted to $23 million accounting error and fired Chief Financial Officer Brian Block. Lawsuits allege that insiders received over $900 million in fees from the company. In December 2014, Schorsch resigned as chairman. Remember, 2014, right around the time that they had just bought back all these properties from Red Lobster, that's when they were doing this whole accounting error.

In July 2015, the company changed its name to V-E-R-E-I-T, Verite, Verite. In September 2019, certain defendants agreed to pay $1.025 billion. So that's a little bit of a whoopsies. But anyways, we're getting distracted. Back to Endless Shrimp.

Endless shrimp led to an $11 million operating loss in Q4 of 2023. There was also the fact that when parties arrived at Red Lobster looking to pig out on a barge full of endless shrimp, they simply wouldn't leave. Burke's experience serving a man who put away 16 servings over the course of two hours was actually mild compared with some of the other stories I've heard.

Josie, 19, who also asked to be anonymous, super anonymous, worked at a now shuttered Kansas City Red Lobster where she watched a solo diner take down 30 orders of fried shrimp within four hours. According to the nutritional information on Red Lobster's website, that's something like 14,000 calories, bulking season. But if you read enough headlines and you quickly start to realize there is a shrimp-spiracy afoot,

And that's because Red Lobster was bought in its entirety by a company named Thai Union. Thai Union owned Red Lobster

And it's actually under investigation for its role in this whole debacle. That's because Thai Union not only owns 100% of Red Lobster, but was also historically a large-scale supplier to the chain. Just before this promotion, they eliminated all other shrimp suppliers. Thai Union is one of the world's largest shrimp suppliers, as well as all sorts of other seafood like canned tuna.

And I can only presume that their goal with Red Lobster was never to run a successful restaurant company, but instead to perform the world's first shrimp-based bust-out scheme. Because remember, the Red Lobster company had already been looted by private equity before Thai Union bought it. So unless Thai Union is dumb...

When they bought it, they already knew that Red Lobster was in big trouble. And when they owned it, what did they do? They cut off all the other shrimp suppliers and turned themselves into the sole provider of shrimp and then offered this crazy deal where Red Lobster tanked on buying endless shrimp from Thai Union.

And when you dig into Thai Union's most recent financial statements, they own 62 different seafood companies around the world, many of them specifically shrimp farms, packing, and distribution companies. But when you add up all the companies they own more than 25% of, that number jumps up to 76%.

Thai Union Group is the world's largest seafood company and ranked number one in the food production industry on Dow Jones Sustainability Index, which might be true as long as slavery isn't one of their metrics.

Because this report was produced by Sustainability Incubator just last year about the rampant human rights abuses in the shrimp industry. Thai Union is mentioned numerous times, often referencing their subsidiary Chicken of the Sea, which is one of the U.S.'s largest retail seafood suppliers.

The report points out that at the prices paid per kilogram in these source countries, it's literally impossible that slave labor and exploitation aren't involved in the supply chain. Based on their analysis, average monthly earnings for shrimp peelers are the lowest in India.

Yeah, I'm not sure what happens to Ecuador between where the shrimp are cheap and where the wages are recorded. Like maybe they're not even paying wages in Ecuador. I don't know. But suffice to say, it's probably not too good of an industry to be dealing with shrimp in Ecuador. This isn't just some harebrained theory that sustainability incubator cooked up. You might not have noticed the massive scandal that rocked the shrimp industry a decade ago, but we're going to dive all into it today.

But before we detail the modern shrimp slave trade, I want to read to you a bit from the book, The Secret Life of Groceries. Because you see, shrimp were notoriously hard to farm or domesticate. When put in farming conditions, their sexual development gets stunted by stress and females just don't develop ovaries for reasons we don't entirely understand. And the book goes into this in pretty interesting detail. And then stuff gets really wild.

The single great breakthrough came in a fittingly bizarre and brutal manner. Then, as now, those trying to make aquaculture work raised their shrimp in overcrowded tubs. And as their shrimp swam around and around in circles in these tubs, their outside eye would rub against the side of the tank. And slowly, after God knows how many circles in God knows what type of crowded environment, the outermost eyeball of the outermost shrimp in these tubs would eventually get rubbed right off, erased by friction. And from this misery, an industry was born.

It turns out that for as of yet biologically unexplained reasons, a female shrimp who loses a single eyeball gets fast-tracked through puberty, her ocular loss unleashing a cascade of hormones that begets ovaries in as little as three days. This was not predictable, nor does it fit with some grand anatomical theory of shrimp endocrinology, but it is very real, and some supremely attentive farmer noticed it and began snipping eyeballs off by hand in an attempt to replicate it.

Soon, the process went mainstream. It was studied and verified in the lab, and although nobody could quite explain eyestalk ablation, the quirky stride of science skipped merrily forward, pushing shrimp aquaculture into a new age. So, as this practice was invented in the 70s, Thailand was one of the world's leading shrimping industries because of the waters around Thailand. But now there was surging demand, and so they needed laborers to fill it.

Fortunately for the Thai shrimping industry, Burma is right next door. You might know it as Myanmar or Burma, depending on what time period your history book was written. There are no shortage of refugees trying to escape to Thailand from Burma, Myanmar, for a better life. There has been civil wars and coups and bloodshed in Burma since before most of us were born. And this book, The Secret Life of Groceries,

tells the story of a specific person who became a fisherman, not by choice, who came from Myanmar to Thailand looking for a better life and wound up as a slave to the shrimping industry.

Bit of reference on where he's coming from. There's no simple frame of reference for rural Myanmar at this time. It's futile and corrupt, trapped in time without electricity, running water, or paved roads, yet bedecked with assault rifles. Tun Lin doesn't grow up with a floor, but does remember his father's N-16 leaning against the walls of their hut. Transparency.

Transportation to the front is largely on ox-drawn carts. The country at this time is in perpetual civil war between the government and the communists, between small mercenary armies funded by industrialists and rival tribes, between ethnicities and religions in the different sub-regions, all of whom ally with each other and disband and realign to create chaos.

He leaves his home village without telling anyone, bringing three t-shirts, three pairs of pants, one blanket, and the shoes he is wearing. He doesn't have a proper bag, so he uses a plastic one. He crosses the border at the town of Miwadi, and it's easy. He does it all by himself, without a broker or a snakehead, just a matter of hitching a ride and dashing across a river a few meters down from the official checkpoint.

When I visit Mewati 18 years later, I see several people doing the exact same thing. From there, he walks up the steep bank and emerges on the Thai side of the border into a town called Mae Sut. He's all alone. The reality of being in Thailand, of the language being different, of knowing absolutely no one, hits home. And as that reality hits, a broker waves to him. Tung Lin says it seemed like he was waiting for him.

The broker is about 40 years old, his eyes smart and handsome, dressed in a blue long-sleeved shirt that is clean. So Tung Lin approaches and the broker asks him in Burmese, where would you like to go? And Tung Lin says simply, Thailand, not totally realizing he's already in Thailand.

The broker says that doesn't matter and puts his arm around him. The two of them walk back to a two-story brick house in Mae Sot. They walk side by side like they are on a date. The whole time, they talk in Burmese about Thailand. Tun Lin is very excited. The broker is laying out a future, telling him about the different cities in Thailand, the resorts in the South, the skyscrapers in Bangkok, the factories in Samut Sakon. And of course, he's telling him all about the jobs. The first thing he's told when sitting on the floor in this hut

He is very lucky. One of the migrants near him explains that Tun Lin has come at a very good time. It has been hard at the house. Some people have been waiting on the floor for over a week, but Tun Lin learns he should be very excited because the next day they are set to leave.

Trudeau's word the next morning the broker arrives. He tells them they are going to Chiang Mai, a city in the north. But he tells the group that the police are looking for migrants. They are making his job very difficult and dangerous. He explains that the military is pulling vehicles to the side and checking papers so to get to Chiang Mai without being arrested, they will have to go it by foot.

It is a 210-mile trek through a jungle over several mountains during the heart of the rainy season. Tun Lin does not know this because the broker does not say this. The broker does not take any questions or explain anything beyond how they are to leave town without attracting attention. Tun Lin is just excited to start.

It rains continuously the first day of the walk, and quickly, the group begins to break down. Many were sick and starving before leaving. Every night, they sleep outside, huddled in groups under trees or in small caves and overhangs in the mountain areas. The only food comes at two checkpoints per day, where the guide has arranged for meals to be stashed. Each of these meals is identical, tinned mackerel in tomato sauce. It is not one man per can.

Tung Lin says they split cans three, four, or five people per can. Tung Lin estimates that a group of 100 people left the house. By the end of this trip, he knows for a fact that he saw six people die of hunger or disease. Once they get onto a truck, they sit in rows so tightly packed it is hard to breathe. Then the door is closed. It is dark.

No one speaks. Tun Lin is not on one of the benches, but sitting on the floor with his knees tucked to his chest. He closes his eyes and tries not to think. Estimating from a map, driving with no traffic, their trip lasts 12 hours. He tells me there are no rest stops and that people cannot control themselves and they urinate and defecate in the truck. When they arrive, the back of the truck is open and they are told to get out. One by one, they unfold. People are crying. A woman near Tun Lin has died. She was suffocated or crushed. Tun Lin does not know which.

only that he sat so close to her the entire trip and that he had not thought about her. Once he gets put onto a boat, which he did not ask to be on, he cannot eat because he is seasick and throws everything up and he's not allowed to sleep. This continues for three days. It is at this point, the captain puts out the big canisters of instant coffee for the crew to eat.

Yes, to eat, not to drink. On the fourth day, doing work he does not understand among men who speak languages like Khmer and Lao, he can only partially communicate with, nauseated, starving, exhausted, Tun Lin says he becomes physically unable to continue working. And so he stops and goes to the crawlspace to take a nap.

This is his first beating. The captain finds him asleep. He then wakes Tun Lin up with a weapon. My translator insists on calling a yo-yo. It is a steel ball on an elastic cord and he swings it at Tun Lin, catching him across the face, then repeatedly on the shoulders. Tun Lin shows me his scars.

He says he has beaten many times over the years, but he will always remember this first one. Tun Lin says he is not beaten again after this. The captain merely has to point at this yo-yo for Tun Lin to increase the speed of his work until after waiting six months, he makes the mistake of asking for the salary he was promised because that's how they got him onto the boat, saying that he was going to have a job.

For this, he is beaten even harder than before. He learns now the captain owns him, that he bought him when he acquired his debt. His friend Tulek simply can't handle it. He is only a teenager and is weak, which means he is beaten more frequently. As the captain whips him, Tulek slowly loses his mind. After a particularly bad beating, Tulek gets very sick. He can't walk, and he is allowed to rest.

But, Tun Lin knows things are wrong. Whenever he asks Tulek questions, the boy will only laugh or cry. Soon after, Tulek refuses to work. It is now that he is beaten until he is unconscious and kicked into the sea. Months at sea pass into years. Tun Lin adjusts. He never enjoys life on the boat, but he learns it. He becomes good at it. He comes to do every job, sorting the fish, carrying them to the freezer on trays, patching, folding, pressing the net, and looking for rips, and more.

This is Tun Lin's second year on the boat out of what will eventually be 14 years at sea. At this point, he's a slave in the only meaningful sense of the word. He cannot leave. He is not paid. He was brought here a prisoner. He was sold in a cash exchange. He works under the threat of violence and he has seen those who fought back against that violence killed. His best friend on the boat, the only person he knew before boarding, was slowly driven mad and eventually he was killed too. Although they don't get a lot of sleep, this is where they sleep.

Tun Lin shares a crawlspace with Tulek and the rest of the crew before Tulek dies. Some closer to indentured servants, some free men who signed off on the

on their own volition, some who enforce the captain's orders, many in more than one role depending on the precise time you look, all sleeping together in a space less than a meter high. To get to the bed, they crawl on their hands and knees for about 12 feet into the darkness through an opening that can fit at most one person at a time. This is where Tulin sleeps when not working his 20-hour days. When I visit a similar sleeping hole on the Thai docks, the opening comes up just above my knee and it is warm, exhaling the dark, yeasty manure smell of the unwashed human body.

Thun Lin and all the rest of these workers are working in the fishing industry, pulling up all sorts of fish. But the waters of Thailand were getting overfished. And as they got overfished, more and more of that Thai fishing industry was actually based on the trash fish, the small fish, the guts, the things that actually can't sell as fish, but instead become fish meal.

and they never actually go back to port. They stay out at sea for years at a time, and they get other boats to come and resupply them and take their catch into port for them. And this describes how fishers like T'un Lin never see these small, unsalable fish make it to port. They are passed to a sister boat at a rendezvous...

at sea, traded along with food, cigarettes, Thai baht, and fuel. This is called transshipment at sea. It saves fuel for the larger refrigerated fishing vessels, and it allows some boats to stay out almost indefinitely, resupplied by others. They turn into floating prisons for trafficked workers. So once all this trash fish makes it into port after being out in the sun on a boat all day, then it gets rolled into the docks where it gets dumped out onto the ground into the sun all day to rot.

But within a day, a man with a rake and wearing dark rubber boots will push this pile of fish and fish pieces towards a growling mouth in the cement docks. It looks like a hole in the ground with two grinders in it for teeth, and it takes the rotting fish and pulverizes them further. The scent near the hole is deafening. If you really want to know what you're feeding your pets when it says...

Fish on the label. This is what it is. It is the smell of thousands of tiny rotting fish piled ankle high in the 90 degree Thai sun on a space that has held ankle high levels of tiny rotting fish for years. It is a hot smell, not just from the climate and the decomposition, but because there are furnaces just beyond. You can see them glowing behind the man with the rake.

The pulverized fish will pass on a conveyor belt toward those furnaces, getting cooked into a paste, then baked into meal. This will then be sold to yet another broker, bought by a feed mill, and blended with inputs from dozens of other facilities, all to create the protein base in pet food, food for fish farms, and the feed for hungry little shrimp.

But that is just the industry responsible for making shrimp food, as well as cat and dog food. The rest of the shrimp supply chain is brutal too. For example, here's another story from the shrimp industry.

Every morning at 2 a.m., they heard a kick on the door and a threat, get up or get beaten. For the next 16 hours, number 31 and his wife stood in the factory with their aching hands in ice water. They ripped the guts, heads, and tails and shells off of shrimp bound for overseas markets, including grocery stores and all-you-can-eat buffets across in the U.S.

After being sold to the gig peeling factory, the couple were at the mercy of their Thai bosses. Trapped with nearly 100 other Burmese migrants, children worked alongside them, including a girl so tiny she had to stand on a stool to reach the peeling table. Some had been there for months, even years, getting little or no pay. At all times, someone was watching.

Benjamin Lohr points out that this issue is multifaceted, and ultimately it stems from the modern world's globalized, insatiable demand for more for cheaper. It's a trend that permeates every aspect of our modern brand of consumerism, and there's no easy fix. Because when Thailand was exposed, new standards were imposed, and the Thai shrimping industry collapsed, only to move to countries like India and Vietnam. And now Thailand is at it again.

News misses this crucial distinction that the slavery never ended. It just moved into a new shadow somewhere else where American and Western consumers could shield their eyes from it and pretend that it wasn't happening. Thailand is now proposing repealing the legal standards that had previously cracked down on shrimp slavery and forced business abroad. The Thai government has been insistent that trade would not be affected by new guidelines, stressing that the EU—

with whom it currently is negotiating a free trade agreement, makes up only around 6% of seafood exports. These practices go wherever the shrimp industry goes. And lately, that's been India, because right now, India is our largest supplier.

It's no coincidence that Sustainability Incubator found wages to be the lowest on average in India and the prices the cheapest. Who knows what's happening in Ecuador? The market will find the cheapest supply wherever it can be produced, and that will always be a race to the bottom, and the bottom will always be slavery.

India became America's leading shrimp supplier, accounting for about 40% of the shrimp consumed in the U.S., in part because media reports including the AP investigation that exposed modern-day slavery in Thailand and their seafood industry. AP's 2015 reporting led to the freedom of some 2,000 enslaved fishermen and prompted calls for bans of Thai shrimp, which had been dominating the market, but unfortunately, that just moved it to India. Stories from India sound like this.

She said she works in brutal conditions, peeling, cutting, and grating shrimp in a factory for less than $4 a day, which is $2 less than minimum wage. The working conditions are tough, she said, wiping away tears with the corner of her red sari, standing for long hours in the cold while peeling and cutting shrimp takes a toll on my body. This woman said,

This woman is a 51-year-old widow, by the way. Baby, her last name, and other workers said they pay recruiters about 25 cents a day out of their salaries just to set foot inside the processing shed. Transportation and company buses is also deducted from some workers' salaries, along with the cost of lunch from company canteens. Many workers have no contracts and no recourse if they are hurt on the job. Another peeler said she suffers back pain all the time from the arduous work, for which she's paid about $3 a day.

Some have nail fungus caused by small cracks that allow germs to cause infections. Other women have fingers or even their entire hands darkening with frostbite. Mehta said that sometimes she has to amputate.

AP journalists observed dozens of women working in unsanitary and dangerous conditions. The shrimp pulled from outdoor ponds in barrels were swished around by hand in grimy water. Once rinsed, they were dumped onto ice-covered tables where women stood, peeling them one shrimp at a time. Many handled shrimp with bare hands. Some women had bandages on injured fingers. Some women's long hair dangled into the shrimp.

And you kind of expect that kind of conditions maybe in, you know, third world countries processing your food like India or Thailand. But the point of this is that Nikanti, the company that they were apparently peeling shrimp for, they present a very different image in the bottom section here.

A marketing video produced by Nikanti, which is projecting $150 million in revenues this year, shows shrimp peelers in a spotless room with shiny tables and workers wearing gloves, head coverings, face masks, rubber boots, and waterproof aprons. By the way, Nikanti is a subsidiary of guess who? Thai Union Group.

They, of course, denied the allegations, said the company had nothing to do with the peeling shed that AP had visited, and said that their branded truck was there only because it was being leased to another company. He provided a document that said that Nekanti was paid $3,600 for the four-month lease of a truck with the license plate number the AP observed. Sure, that document is A-OK, but...

You have to imagine what's going on out there when that's the image they're presenting and the actual conditions in these countries are like the stories that you're hearing. And I just wanted to give you a little image, a little visual of where all the shrimp in the world is coming from right now. But just to be clear, the shrimp industry works the way that the shrimp industry works. And if you want to sell shrimp for the prices that these countries are selling shrimp for, you have to compete with countries that are using slave labor. So,

Your bottomless shrimp is another man's, or child slave laborer's, bottomless despair. This year, in 2025, New Orleans hosted the Super Bowl. And someone had the bright idea of going there and doing a little testy-testy on the shrimp that they were selling in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities. Turns out,

Everyone lies. The testing was done by CD Consulting, made possible by a new testing technology that could turn results around in less than an hour instead of sending to labs and taking days. And what did those test results show?

Well, the cities with the highest shrimp fraud rate were Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg, Florida, at 96%. According to CD Consulting, only two of the 44 restaurants sampled were serving authentic shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico, a study found. In Baton Rouge, researchers sampled menu items at 24 restaurants and found nearly 30%, more than one in four, were misrepresented.

Family-owned shrimp business operating out of the Port of Tampa are struggling to survive while local restaurants bamboozle customers into thinking locally caught shrimp are being served. Family-owned and American businesses are the ones bearing the brunt of our desire for the most, the best, and also somehow the cheapest.

America and the Western world has this obsession with optics and ethics. We want to feel good about the products we're buying. We want to be absolved of our sins. But ignorance is not bliss. And many, not all, but many of these marks that are here to tell us that we're making ethical choices are essentially made-up stickers and rackets. Inspections are often half-baked, audits ineffective, loopholes unresolved.

are pretty much endless. This is another thing that Lore covers extensively and with great nuance in his book. It's a pretty rough story when you really get into it, and these types of stories are all over the place. You can't pay attention to everything, and you can't be ethical with every decision. You'll get decision paralysis. You'll never buy anything. You'll never eat anything. But

It is important to think about where your stuff is coming from, who's responsible for it, and what are the costs of low costs down the line.

We've got trade wars, inflation, global chaos, and a skyrocketing national debt. It's no wonder that gold keeps hitting record highs. With everything going on in the world, thousands of people are diversifying their savings with gold and silver. And they're turning to my gold partner, which is GoldCo. Right now, GoldCo is offering you a free 2025 gold and silver kit. Plus, you can get unlimited silver if you qualify. Find out how you can help diversify your savings tax and penalty free.

Visit CandiceLikesGold.com or call 855-222-GOLD. I'm sure you know that P. Diddy is on trial and it's ongoing. Details are coming out slowly.

A lot of people are following along with the live court updates. There's no video coming out of the courtrooms. Unfortunately, we're not going to get an Amber Heard talking about doing things on the bed or anything like that. But we are getting some funny court sketches and a lot of really, really awful stories from Cassie Ventura that really...

We're not going to talk about. I don't want to talk about them. You don't want to hear about them. If you really care about all the horrible things that Cassie alleges that Diddy did to her while they were dating and not dating and whatever else, you can read all about it on the internet. You can look up her original lawsuit because that is not the story. And I don't mean to say that Cassie's accusations are not important because they very much are. What I mean to say is that so far,

Everything that's being discussed in the courtroom is super not the story that we were all here to see. The actual story that I want to talk about, that I assume that most of you want to talk about, is the kind of story where Suge Knight famously accused Diddy of being a longtime FBI informant.

In April of this year, Whitney Webb released an excellent report about Diddy's early life, outlining how he attended a boys' school that was marred in numerous sex scandals and how his father was very likely a rat, an informant, that was eventually caught and killed. All of this was even before Diddy even got into the music industry, where his early mentors were linked to the mob and all sorts of other scandals. The real story is Lil Rod's lawsuit, which we've all seen and talked about before.

Lucian Grange, the CEO of Universal Music Group, was originally named in that lawsuit, and so was Universal Music Group and Motown, as well as many other people. But their names all mysteriously vanished.

But the lawsuit directly alleges that Grange was at the parties and presumably partially or entirely funding them at times. The lawsuit included what appeared to be screenshots from videos of famous people and told of coercion based on performing sexual acts on camera. It included many specific allegations about drugs, guns, prostitutes, even minors.

But the biggest bombshell in the lawsuit, as far as I'm concerned, and the thing that no mainstream outlet wants to touch, is the allegations of hidden cameras. Quote, while living and traveling with Mr. Combs, Mr. Jones discovered that Mr. Combs has hidden cameras in every room of his homes. Mr. Jones believes that Mr. Combs has recordings of defendants Lucian Charles Grange, Ethiopia Habter Mariam, as well as other celebrities, music label executives, politicians, and athletes.

Upon information and belief, these individuals were recorded without their knowledge and consent. And as is the case with the homosexual sex tape of Stevie J that Mr. Combs provided to Mr. Jones, Mr. Combs possesses compromising footage of every person that has attended his freak-off parties and his house parties. I don't think that all of those videos are the ones being shown in court. Just my suspicions.

Upon information and belief, due to this treasure trove of evidence he has in his possession, Mr. Combs believes that he is above the law and is untouchable. Upon information and belief, Mr. Combs employs Jose Cruz as his IT director. This writer has spoken to several former employees of Mr. Combs who confirmed that Jose Cruz is the gatekeeper to all of Mr. Combs' recordings. And I want to point out here,

This document was prepared by a lawyer and that lawyer has a legal duty to believe that all the statements in this document are true, at least to a certain degree. Like he cannot just lie openly. He cannot say that he spoke to all these other employees of Mr. Combs if he never did. That would be a disbarrable offense. And so this lawsuit has to at least have merit in the lawyer's eyes. And maybe it wouldn't all prove out in court,

But it's not just made up out of nowhere, right? And there are very specific claims. And there are screenshots that seem to show screenshots of video evidence. There's all sorts of stuff in there, okay? Pair all that with the fact that Diddy's head of security was Fahim Muhammad. Quote, in 2008, Fahim graduated from Sacramento State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Real Estate and Marketing.

Michael Jackson died just one year after Fahim apparently graduated from college. Fahim was Michael Jackson's head of security and apparently second on the scene when Michael died. Then Fahim winds up as Diddy's head of security. Kind of weird.

By the way, before we get off of Fahim Muhammad, remember his specialty in real estate from college? Well, he owns a real estate company and he apparently has land right on the Mexico border. Check this out. F

40 acres of land in San Diego County. That's what one dad gave his son for his 13th birthday. He posted about it on social media and their story went viral. Rapper Sean Combs even posted about it. Faheem Muhammad bought 198 acres out here in Boulevard to get away. It's real quiet.

The wall is right there. Yeah, this is not like Chicago, not like L.A. He lives in Los Angeles and runs a real estate business that buys and rebuilds properties in the south side of Chicago. He says to create a better living situation for the black community there. Fahim says his mom taught he and his siblings how important it is to own your own property and to help their community. So when his son, Fahim, recently turned 13, he gave him 40 acres. I thought

it would be a great opportunity to teach them a life lesson about the value of land. And they're teaching other kids from L.A. these lessons, too. So all them regular rocks you picked? They bring inner city kids out here to hike, ride ATVs and build campfires. And even though they're right beside the border wall, they've had no problems out here. These city kids enjoy their own private open space. They've had no problems out here. Remember, that's from back during Biden's term.

When there was all kinds of problems at the border, if you owned land on the border where no one was there, I have a feeling there were people jumping over a fence, dropping babies over a fence and running through your land. That's a whole other dig though. But just suffice it to say that I have questions about why exactly did you choose to buy all that land right on the border wall, Fahim, while you're simultaneously the head of security of this

sort of trafficking operation that's having these freak offs where there's allegations that there were party favors and stuff like that. Yeah, I can't help but feel like they they're trying the wrong case in court.

But ultimately, this stuff isn't new. If you're in the music industry, people have been whispering about Diddy ever since Biggie and Tupac were murdered, making way for Diddy's rise to superstardom alongside Biggie Smalls' ex-sidekick Jay-Z. And I just want to remind us all, too, of some of the more recent allegations that people have made against Diddy. But as far as Meek Mills, Puff Daddy, whoever, none of these s**ters, all you fake hard n*****,

you. No, no, hold on, hold on. All you fake hard niggas, f*** you. You know what I'm saying? I don't give a f*** because you can't shoot nobody anyway, and the reason why you got talked is because you did a deal, you f***ing fed. You know what I'm saying? That's why you got to come at me, because part of the deal for you to be a do-or-that and get out of jail is that you promised that you're going to go pull my co-car. So y'all niggas shut the f*** up about me.

Um, P.S. Today, while we were sourcing this clip, we accidentally noticed that the original Drink Champs video on their website, like on their YouTube channel,

no longer has that little section about Diddy being a fed. It appears to have been edited to cut that clip out. And we went back through it and rewatched it and tried to confirm. Check out what is now on the Drink Champs website as of, I think, a year ago. But as far as Meek Mills, Puff Daddy, whoever, none of these niggas, all you fake hard niggas, f*** you. Hold on, hold on. All you fake hard niggas, f*** you. You know what I'm saying? Y'all niggas shut the f*** up.

You see where it cut to a different clip? And then it came back to Kanye and you never got to kind of weird. And as best as we could tell, that happened somewhere like a year ago is when that video was uploaded. And my presumption would be that that has something to do with Diddy applying pressure and approach to his court appearance. But we don't know. We're just we're just noticing things, just noticing. But anyways, none of that is being mentioned in court right now.

It almost reminds me of a certain other sex trafficker who didn't kill himself. So just don't forget the real story because the real story is part of a much bigger picture. And I'm sure we'll be talking about that picture in stories coming up.

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And I also realized that based upon talking about the shrimp industry, there's a whole lot of other stuff that I kind of came up on, stories that I used to cover all the time, that we should probably revisit, teach you a little bit about where I come from, and teach you a little bit about what's in your baby food, as well as all the other products in your grocery store aisles. So,

Here's one of the first TikTok videos I ever made that summed up the whole first dig I did into grocery store aisles and into what's who really owns everything and what's

What are they putting in everything? After we discovered that Target has entire shelves of shampoo that are all owned by the same mega corporations, I decided to go look at a bunch of other products that we put on our bodies and into our various holes because we all get the sense that this is just the illusion of choice, but it's different when you actually see it.

Like this. Like the whole shelf of deodorant at Rite Aid that has like three options that are not mega corporations, but several that are specifically branded to look like they're natural and legit, like Schmitt's or Tom's of Maine. By the way, the women's deodorant was the exact same story. One option hiding down there in the bottom.

I went to the skincare aisles of several stores. They purposely brand it to look like it's medical and like doctor formulated. They advertise all over the place that it's trusted by experts, you know, formulated by doctors that work for Procter & Gamble and trusted by experts that work at Unilever.

Even at high-end beauty stores like Ulta, I only found two types of shampoo that were female or founder or family owned. The rest are owned by mega corporations and billionaire private equity, who I'm sure care a lot about your hair care and your health. They would never include carcinogens and toxic chemicals in their products. Obviously, all the class action lawsuits you can find on Google are just fiasco.

fear. But in some aisles, there are founder and family owned brands made by real people that actually care about you hiding amongst all of these other mega corporations designed to blend in. And so what I did is I started making spreadsheets and giving them out for free on my website with all the different types of, you know, health and

with all the different types of skin care, personal care products, shampoos, with lists of the different brands that we all consume on a daily basis and whatever mega corporations or businesses own those brands. Because I'm not trying to say that all of these brands are necessarily horrible for you. I'm just trying to say that when you buy these brands, your money is going to these mega corporations. And mega corporations pretty much all play by the same corporate playbook.

Target's top shareholders are Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock, along with a bunch of investment banks and private equity funds. In about four hours of work, their CEO makes as much as the average Target worker makes in an entire year, which only totals up to like $17.5 million in 2023. I mean, poor guy got a pay cut. How is he going to afford the mortgage on his extra condo in the Caribbean? He might even have to sell one of the yachts.

To be clear, that was a joke. I don't know if Brian owns any yachts.

Not trying to spread misinformation, TikTok, just pure facts. I'm sure Brian is a great guy. And a lot of people misunderstand my message as being like capitalism is evil and capitalism is the devil. And that's not really what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is that capitalism is what we make it with our capital. And when we all support giant monopoly megacorporations, we help to prop up this version of capitalism that is actually much more like corporate oligarchy.

and we inherently have the power to change it, or at least to push on it. If we stop spending our money on this and start giving more of our money to companies like this, we can very much change the world, which I know sounds corny, but it's true. The reason why megacorporations do this is so that they can maximize the chances of the most of our money being spent on their product.

But we all have the power to go into this aisle and to find that one little spot where the real companies owned by real people are hiding and to spend our money on those products. Because that money does not go to multi-million dollar CEO bonuses. It goes to employees at real companies that actually take care of their people.

It goes to voting for products that are not filled with chemicals. Chemicals that cause hair loss that then let those same companies turn around and sell you products to prevent hair loss. I'm not making that up. The aisle at Target has both those products, both owned by the same companies, both on the same shelf right next to each other. I can't imagine why.

So I know times are tight for a lot of people. I know the economy is horrible and it's probably going to get worse, but personal care products are a great place to start changing your spending habits because it's not like food that you have to consume every day and you have to spend tons and tons and tons of extra money to buy better brands.

You just have to buy, you know, a better brand once a month, you know, once a cup every couple of weeks. This is a multi-billion dollar industry. It's massive. And if we all start voting in it with our dollars, we stand to change everything.

thing. 2023 was pretty depressing, and I guarantee you 2024 is going to be just as or more depressing. But my 2024 is going to be all about things that we can do to change, to make the world a better place. And we all know the world is run by money. So start using yours to promote businesses that make the world better, not worse. What a throwback. That is where your boy comes from. And that's what I really got started on when I

Made my first TikTok video is how does this world work and who owns all the stuff that we use? And over time, as I looked at more and more products and more and more industries and just started learning about where all this money goes, I started to notice the patterns and notice how it works and notice solutions. One of my favorite places to start this dig that wasn't quite mentioned in that one is Hidden Valley Ranch.

Who do you think owns Hidden Valley Ranch? And I want to invite you to search that on the internet because all of you can do this research too. And it's not hard. You can do it in the grocery store on your phone. You can do it right now on your computer. But when you look up who owns Hidden Valley Ranch, you're going to screen something like this. And you'll find out that it's owned by Clorox, the bleach company.

But that's not the top of the chain. You look up who owns Clorox and you'll find out that it is a public company, like the kind of company you can buy stock in, right? And the word you need to look up in order to figure out who owns a public company is you need to look up Clorox Institutional Ownership. And when you do that, you get two screens like this, or you can go to a website that'll actually give you the full list. And it's not hard to find.

And when you go to a website like Yahoo Finance and you find the full list, you're going to notice something pretty quick.

The top shareholders of basically every company in America are Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. But BlackRock actually owns State Street, so it's just Vanguard and BlackRock. And then below that is always all the banks, fund managers, private equity, etc. And all of them are nothing like any of us. And the more you do this and look around, the more you'll realize that these same financial institutions are at the top of basically every public corporation in America, right?

Even ones that you think were natural and family or founder owned, like Dave's Killer Bread, nope, got bought out a long time ago by Flowers Foods. And when you look at Flowers Foods, Vanguard and BlackRock are the top shareholders. You keep doing this over and over for different industries, and pretty soon you notice that all kinds of different companies, food and beverage, banks, big tech, every single one of these companies

Little squares inside of these bigger squares are big companies that you will recognize the names of, and you can probably zoom in on some of them. And the red highlights are Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, and all the other names on those lists are their buddies. Notice there's even funeral and hospice care. They have water and utilities. They've got just about every aspect of our lives locked down in a big way. The entire market.

is kind of just one big conglomerated game where they all play their parts and they all have their different corporations, but they all are owned by the same financial institutions and all of them have a fiduciary duty to make their shareholders money. That's a legal thing. They are required by law at all of those public corporations to maximize shareholder value. And everything you're looking at on those lists,

are their top shareholders. So they are legally required to do what's best for all of those financial institutions, not for you. Once you take this into the grocery store and actually look at the products on the shelves, stuff gets pretty bleak pretty quick because what I started doing is just coloring it in. Anything that's owned by a megacorporation, whoops,

Oopsies, there's not a lot of options left. Notice the baby food aisle over there. That's not a single non-corporate option of baby food in that store. That's a Winco. We're going to come back to baby food. But it doesn't stop there. You can do detergent. Actually, the first one I ever did was tampons and feminine products. The cereal aisle, big moneymaker in grocery stores. And you could just go on forever. It never ends. And I did this for a whole year. Trust me.

But I said I wanted to come back to baby food because this is not just about who owns it, but it's about when their fiduciary duty is to financial institutions like the banks, their job is just to make the cheapest product that will profit the most, that will sell to the masses in whatever way they can. And when you're talking about something like baby food, there are serious ramifications for doing so. This report...

is an official report published by the U.S. House of Representatives where they ordered a study into what is in our baby foods. And they found that baby food was wildly tainted with arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. And I want you to notice the brands that are at the bottom of the screen where the logo of the House of Representatives is. That's Gerber, Happy Baby, Plum, all these different brands that you might think

I thought that plum was organic. Yeah, it's owned by a megacorporation. And when they tested what was in these baby foods, it was appalling.

The test results of baby foods and their ingredients eclipse those levels, meaning the levels that are accepted as safe, including results up to 91 times the arsenic level, up to 177 times the lead level, up to 69 times the cadmium level, and up to five times the mercury level that is supposed to be allowable in our baby food, which should be zero, but even so.

That's pretty dark. And if you didn't know that, if you didn't know who is making your baby food and how little they care about your baby's health, you would probably feed that to your baby. And a lot of you probably have. And I want to stress that you should not feel guilty about that. A lot of people can't afford other things. And most of your babies will be okay. But it is scary to know about. And it's important to look for solutions. And

Unfortunately, those solutions are not readily available or easy, right? You could make your own baby food at home by cooking all your food, but a lot of parents have to work all day, right? That's the whole point of having this convenient baby food. And we didn't even mention the formula, which is super messed up.

But one solution that I kept finding over and over again in every aisle, everywhere that I went, is that when you find brands that are owned by families, owned by their founders, owned by real people,

more often than not, those brands have more of a commitment to humans, to you, the customer. Because if they don't, they're going to get gobbled up. They're going to get crushed by the big competition. They need to do something outstanding. And usually they're real people too that have kids that are in this business for a reason. And so I started to notice that the family and founder-owned brands, for many obvious reasons, are on balance a far better option. And

It's not hard to buy family-owned. Often they're the same price. Sometimes they cost a little more, but really the hard part is just finding them because shelf space is for sale in the grocery store. And if you want to know about that, buy this book. Not sponsored, it's just amazing. Shelf space is purposely for sale so that they can monopolize the entire aisle and make it very hard to find all the little brands that compete with this giant corporate scheme. But if you know what brands you're looking for,

You can just go find them and buy those. And suddenly you can boycott the entire evil financial cabal all at once. So what I started doing years ago when I first, well, two years ago, really look, I'm real old. I'm like an old timer guys. I've been in this for forever, but all 2023 and part of 2024, I made these spreadsheets and I put them online on my website for free. And even though I have closed down that old store, cause I sucked at running a clothing store.

I still have those spreadsheets available on that website. The website is cancellousclothingcompany.com slash resources. And we'll have a link below. And the spreadsheets are up still to this day. It's Google Docs. So, you know, practice safe docs. But

I should warn you that they're going to be coming down soon because not because we hate the project or anything like that, but because we have something way cooler in the works. And I don't want to say too much yet, but let's just say that all along people have been asking me if you could use your phone in order to scan products and find out who owns them and all this stuff that was on those sheets and more, that would be a game changer. And

At a certain point, I received an email from two people out there that were like, yo, we took your spreadsheets and we made them into an app and we want to show you. And they're awesome. And they're total wizards. And there is an app coming.

I can't say too much just now, but it's definitely on the way and it's going to be sick. And we're going to put a link down below in the description of where you can go follow along in order to get the updates when that's ready. Because it's... And by the way, it's not going to be like some crazy profit scheme. We're not going to make a bunch of money off you. We're going to make a dope product that I'm going to use every day because we want you to be able to...

I mean, it's not about boycotting this or that or shutting down this company or that company. We're not here to tell you what's ethically right or what's healthy for you. We're just here to give you the information so that if you personally don't want to buy from Nestle for reasons, you can figure out what's owned by them because they own hundreds of brands. If you don't want to buy from Bud Light or from any old company, it's up to you. This will help you do it, right? For me, it'll be to help find family and found your own businesses. For you, it can be whatever you want.

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That's 800-795-1210 or visit americanfinancing.net slash Owens. We've been loving the comments that you guys have been sending in. It's been so humbling to receive so much support and so much good belly laughter from all the things that you guys have been saying. So to close out today, we're going to check in with some of your comments.

at ChrisMaz75 said, I am so impressed with Candace's choice, not only because Ian is fully capable of doing a good job, but because he has different political ideas than Candace does. And these two are teaching people how to disagree respectfully and still work together. Yes, that is what we need more of in this world. And I couldn't agree more. Candace, I love and respect her in every way. Even though we disagree on things, that does not matter. You can be friends with people regardless.

At Kenny Semper 2719 said, we got Ian Carroll filling in for Candice before GTA 6. Let that sink in. Classic. At Wearing Light Being said, Ian being so respectful of Candice's show to the point he was afraid to say hell. I genuinely didn't know and I didn't want to make a mistake. And I kind of like, I used to teach a lot. And so I kind of like getting back to my roots where you, you know, you're just making family friendly content. It's a good feeling.

At NCD48, all this and more on Candice. Then I was kind of hoping for a baby Ian Carroll montage. Don't hold your breath, but maybe we'll do something like that at the end of the time I'm here. I don't know.

At Faith Based Living 939 says, as a mother of four, thank you, Ian, for exposing these types of mafias. I mean, businesses. Yeah. If you haven't seen the episode that we did about Urban Air yet, both of the last episodes this week were about this crazy breaking story at Urban Air. And don't worry, we will be doing a whole bunch more about that whole debacle next week. We're just taking our time to get the story straight, to compile all the documents that we have.

and to really put together a great story because we want to do the best we can for Tiffany Cianci, for all the other children and families that have been affected by this, and hopefully to make a change.

At Cheryl Lynn 101 says, my husband strapped the harness for our nine-year-old and tested the clip system at a couple of these places. He was more aware of the risks than me. We've even gone to indoor rock climbing locales too, where he insisted on checking everything. He didn't care about offending people or pissing someone off, just measured insistence. Hearing this story makes me love him even more. Thanks, Ian. You did great.

That is a good man. More healthy masculinity where you're taking care of your family, making sure your kids are safe. Do not outsource your children's safety to an underpaid 16-year-old at a private equity-owned trampoline park. That is never a good idea.

At Ale de la Cueva said, my daughter worked at Urban Air. She was 16. She complained she received no training and had to harness the children. She quit because she said management was irresponsible. The place was a mess. Parents need to be aware of this place and that we are seeing at these places. Thank you for bringing awareness to this. Yes, I'm glad your daughter got out and is safe and no horrible scandals happened right on her watch.

at Gmatic Leon said, Tiffany is almost single-handedly raising awareness of how private equity is destroying small family-owned businesses. You are so right. Tiffany is an absolute rock star, a legend, and her story has been, she's been working so hard to get her story out, and it's just an honor to be able to help tell that story and to help spread awareness of not only what she went through, but what all these other families went through in secret arbitration that they were not able to speak about until now. And I just, I cannot but hope that

The best for all of these people that have been so harmed by it. It's a real tragedy. So on a positive note,

It's been really humbling to see you response me. Thanks for all the wonderful comments. It's really fun to read through them and giggle, share them with the crew, and just generally have a good time with you guys and with everyone here at The Candice Show. This is just the first week, getting my bearings, getting our stories straight. Next week, we got a whole bunch of bangers coming at you too.

But for now, that's all for this week. Be sure to like this video, share it with all your friends, subscribe to Candice's channel. Mine is linked below. Go off and have a great weekend. Stay healthy, be happy, and we'll see you next week.