Name: The Drug Mule Scam (Full Episode) | Trafficked: Underworlds with Mariana van Zeller | Nat Geo
Uploaded: 2026-01-14T17:25:12.000Z
Duration: 44 min 21 s
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The second conditional

So I got a message on Instagram a little over a year ago from somebody saying that her dad was a victim of a scam and explaining everything that happened and asking if there was anything I could do to help.

Participle clauses

The message said, finding your show is the first glimpse of hope I've had in two years.

He's my father and he will die in prison if I can't figure out how to bring him home.

She said she was the daughter of a 70 year old grandfather from Minnesota she claimed is wrongfully imprisoned on drug trafficking charges 9,000 miles away in Mozambique, Africa.

When I responded, I had no idea I'd be pulled into a global search for answers, climbing the ladder of a sophisticated African mafia I never knew existed.

Weasel blowers are being killed in the process of exposing the underworld.

My mission, to go undercover and come face to face with Rodney scammers whose goal is to transform ordinary citizens into criminals.

You know, I get a lot of messages from people who think we're being scammed.

But yours particularly resonated with me because it's actually a scam that I'd never heard about, but

also because I'm very close with my own father.

So, Nicole, tell me what happened to your dad.

Should I start way back at the beginning?

So after my mom died, Nicole tells me her father Rodney was a down on his luck out of work truck driver.

When he started receiving a series of emails, it seemed to be an unbelievable stroke of good fortune.

A previously unknown relative in Italy had left Rodney an inheritance of $10.5 million.

And they said it was sort of a distant family member.

And they had said that they reached out to other family members and received no response from them and that he was the next in line to be contacted.

The emails asked Rodney to pay a processing fee to release his inheritance.

If Rodney agreed to travel to Maputo, Mozambique, everything would be paid for.

He would then take them to Europe to claim his $10.5 million.

And when he came to my house and told me, the first thing I thought of was like, okay, you're gonna get kidnapped and put into a diamond mine.

So you were skeptical right from the beginning?

But I think once they said that they would pay for it all, that's what got him.

Are they going to fly me halfway across the world if this isn't real?

So this is the email that started it all.

Goodluck Jonathan, which is interesting because Goodluck Jonathan was actually the president of Nigeria.

Rodney also received emails from someone impersonating the governor of Nigeria Central Bank.

Our payment officials that you will meet will give you some gift items capable of enticing our other officials at the payment transfer centers in other countries.

So basically, they were already immediately telling him that they were going to give him a bag with something that he was going to have to transport.

And did you go through these emails, by the way, before he left?

So you only had access to these emails after.

According to Nicole, when Rodney arrived in Mozambique, he was met at his hotel by someone who handed him a suitcase.

On July 26, 2019, while attempting to board his next flight, airport security pulled him aside and discovered that hidden inside the suitcase was heroin.

The story exploded into a national news scandal.

An American drug trafficker caught red handed A few months after his arrest.

Rodney Baldas was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Knowing her father is likely to die behind bars, Nicole has spent the past four years desperately trying to prove his innocence.

I understand where people perceive it as, well, he should have known, but

my dad was going through a lot of emotional stuff.

Rodney's wife had passed away, and Nicole believes her father was desperate to save the family farm.

This financial windfall would allow him to do it.

And he thought that, you know, maybe if I can actually make this work, then I can buy the farm.

That was his motivation, was trying to save the farm.

70 years old, widowed, broke, living in the middle of nowhere.

I've reported on scamming operations from West Africa to the West Indies and the Middle east, but

I've never seen anything like Rodney's case.

Most scams take place inside the Internet.

Scammers and their victims never physically interact.

But Rodney met his contacts face to face.

Was Rodney a willing drug trafficker, or did someone else turn him into a mule?

To answer these questions, I need to get closer to the scene of the crime.

Eladio Sabunietim is the defense attorney who represented Rodney Baldas at his trial.

For example, When I asked Eladio if the hotel had security camera footage that could have verified Rodney's claims, he said he requested this from the court.

But Only the court could have subpoenaed this evidence.

Eladio emailed Nicole and repeatedly asked her to wire him $5,000 for a very particular reason.

For your father to get out of jail, you have to buy the judge, bribe the judge.

And this is done by talking to him once or twice.

Bribery to a judge is very normal in Mozambique.

I wasn't able to independently verify whether Hilario offered this money to the judge.

He tries to convince me it was for his services, not the bribe.

But the only thing he proves is that this whole case stinks.

From the lack of evidence presented by the defense to what I learned next, It's hard for me to believe that Rodney was sentenced to 18 years in prison in just a single day, and

no further investigation was conducted by the local authorities.

The public prosecutor never responded to my request for an interview, and the United States Embassy officially declined.

I was unable to reach the judge who handled Rodney's case for comments.

I'm 10,000 miles away from home and no closer to the truth.

Which means there's only one person left for me to talk to and one place left to go.

I am not guilty of being a drug trafficker.

I did not expect to end up in this situation, but here I am.

Mashava prison was built to house 800 inmates, but today it's packed with three times that number.

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The Drug Mule Scam (Full Episode) | Trafficked: Underworlds with Mariana van Zeller | Nat Geo

eventually

evidence

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