Secret Service Agents Reveal CRIMINALS' Most Shocking Mind Control Tricks

[00:00:03] Ever notice it's always the overconfident leader that thinks cybercrime doesn't apply to them who gets selected and hurt the most? Moving Target. Books 1 and 2, out now. Hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audiobook. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and independent bookstores. Book 3, coming soon. Be a Moving Target.

[00:00:43] Ever notice how certain you are that you'll spot a criminal? That you'll know a con artist when you see one? Here's the problem. Look, a Secret Service agent spent 25 years interviewing terrorists, cybercriminals face-to-face, and he still got it wrong. Why? 70% of people think they're above average intelligence. 70%. Or above the 50%. That's not math. That's overconfidence.

[00:01:12] And overconfidence is confirmation bias. Your brain deciding it already knows the answer, then finding facts to prove itself right. The people running cybercrime organizations, they're counting on you doing your math that way. Brad Beeler worked biker gang homicides, polygraph pedophiles, watched confessions happen because of one thing. Your gut instinct is usually your biggest liability.

[00:01:41] You're absolutely certain you'll recognize a cybercriminal when you see one. Today you'll learn why the odds are you won't. This is Cyber Crime Junkies, and now the show.

[00:01:55] All right. Well, welcome. I am your host, David Mauro.

[00:02:18] And in the studio today is one of the most interesting guests we've had on our show since Chris Voss joined us and graced us with his time. Brad Beeler joins us. Brad, welcome. David, thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. Thank you.

[00:02:32] Really excited about having you. 25 years with the U.S. Secret Service, eight years at the National Center for Credibility Assessment, and now a book called Tell Me Everything that is essentially the operating manual for human communication that none of us were ever handed in our youth. I've been looking forward to this one, so let's dive right in.

[00:02:55] Your book, it's broken up into four main parts, right? And you talk about, in the beginning, you talk about horns and halos, the concept of horns and halos, like judging people in the first hundred milliseconds, and then confirmation bias kind of locks it in. Can you let me know what your thoughts are? And I've got a window open. I'll be right back.

[00:03:19] Yeah, no problem. Yeah, absolutely. With horns and halos, it's one of those things where 200,000 years ago, walking the plains, our ancestors used this to quickly determine, is that rustle in the bushes? Is that something that's going to hurt us? And so as a result, it's something that protected us.

[00:03:37] But unfortunately, as much as that helps us, using our eyes and ears in those situations, it hurts us in common everyday situations because that gut instinct is overwhelmed by the cognitive biases and influence principles, whether it be from Cialdini to Dale Carnegie. These type of biases actually work against us when we don't need them in a evolutionary standpoint, in a fight or flight situation.

[00:04:01] Walk us through how, first of all, for those that may not be attuned into all of the different types of bias, walk us through high level, what confirmation bias is, and then some of the types of it. Because you just touched on a couple of them, and I know it, but oftentimes my listeners could be business leaders in manufacturing, and they're not used to it, right?

[00:04:25] Yeah. So just at a 20,000 foot view, confirmation bias is, once I make that initial perception of what I believe, once I assign that horn and that halo, I'm going to then look for things that, once again, confirm that, right? So that's the beauty of that. And I'll give you two quick stories. So the first story is basically a chihuahua and a pit bull. And it's one of these things where we're doing it. Well, it's one of the first stories that you talked about, right?

[00:04:50] So you were serving, was it a search warrant or something like that? And you saw a chihuahua and then he bit your groin or something like that. So walk us through what happened. First of all, what happened there? So we're doing a search warrant on an individual that's downloading child sexual abuse material. So we're doing the search warrant. And I always like to, after I do the search warrant, walk through the house to try to get a good idea of what makes these people tick. But my partner and I come into the kitchen and we see the chihuahua and we see the pit bull.

[00:05:19] And there's obviously stereotypes according to those animals. So we affix the horns. One would think the stereotype being the chihuahua is not going to bother me. I've got to watch out for the pit bull, right? One would think, right? So as my front side focus is on that pit bull, the chihuahua starts creeping and creeping and creeping. And thanks to Duluth Trading Company and their fire hose material pants, nice shout out to them.

[00:05:44] The chihuahua jumped up and got a mouthful of between my legs and he latched on and I had to holster up. My partner's laughing at me. I think the pit bull is probably laughing at me because his toady is now taking care of business. Jeez. But it was one of those things where that's confirmation bias. That's a great example of it. Yeah, it is. It's sad that you had to experience it to have that good analogy, but that's an analogy that is really because everybody would assume that, right? Everyone would assume that.

[00:06:14] 100%. And I will, David, I'll put that into a case perspective is I was working a biker gang case or a motorcycle bike case. And we had a missing female who was dating a hangaround and a one percenter. So anybody that's watched, whether it be Sons of Anarchy or they have a higher level understanding of how biker clubs work is a one percenter. They have a stereotype associated with them. They commit criminal activities, so on and so forth. And this individual, the one percenter was about 6'4", 260.

[00:06:43] The ATF individuals associated with this case said, yeah, he's a bad guy. He's probably killed people. The hangaround, 5'6", 120 pounds, dripping wet, looked like Eddie Haskell. Okay, just looked like unassuming individual. So I said, you know what? I'm going to polygraph the hangaround first because maybe he saw something. Maybe he is afraid to talk about it. So the hangaround actually failed my polygraph when I asked the question regarding, were you involved in the disappearance of this female? Now, my confirmation bias, because I talked to the original detective, said, yeah, we don't think he had anything to do with it.

[00:07:13] We think it was the one percenter. My confirmation bias kicked in. And for three hours, I was like, you know, what did you see? Let me help you out. Let me protect you. And the whole time, he's like, that's not it, Brad. That's not it. He kept saying that's not it very specifically. And thankfully, there were some detectives that were loosely associated with the case that didn't have that confirmation bias. And what they did is they were able to walk in and say, hey, Brad, you mind if we chat with him for a second? And they just asked him the question.

[00:07:42] Hey, you keep saying, what's it, Bob? What is it? Or that's not it. What do you mean by that? And he goes, oh, I killed her, cut her up in six pieces and threw her in the Illinois River. So it was the little guy that actually had done that. Somebody that confirmation bias would say it's not him. He's probably just along with the tougher guys. 100%. As I had misaffixed those horns and halos based upon, you know, perceptions. And then based also upon the information that I had coming from the detectives.

[00:08:12] And everything that I took from that interaction was, you know, I was filtering out the things that said he might have did it. And I was taking into the things that said no way that he did it. And it was a bad read. And we do that a lot. We give too much credit to gut instinct. In law enforcement, we walk up to a car and it's a street stop. Trust it. Cover, concealment, run away, call for backup. But when it comes to dating, when it comes to who are you going to promote, this type of stuff, engage in multiple interactions.

[00:08:40] Because if somebody has been that Eddie Haskell, if they have been taking advantage of making a good first impression, let's don't rely on it. Let's make sure we get consistency at play. And that's where a lot of online scams come in, right, is they have the expediency. They make a great first impression. They use authority. And all of a sudden, hey, go get me these green dot cards right now. You know, like that doesn't make any sense. We've been emotionally hijacked. Yeah, and it really seems, especially in some of the romance scams or the pig butchering scams that are long plays. Yeah.

[00:09:10] Like six months, nine months that they are nurturing their target. And then the ask comes. It seems like they understand the playbook. They understand that it's got to be done slowly. You've got to demonstrate trust. Like they'll do things that will confirm trust. And then they'll launch. Yeah, they will groom. And they will do what, sadly, because I sadly had to work a lot of cases involving pedophiles. Pedophiles do a lot of the same things that are. It's very similar, actually. Yeah. Yeah, it's very similar.

[00:09:40] They groom. And they do a lot of the same things that our counterintelligence operatives do when they try to turn a foreign source. They will spot. They will assess. They will target. They will engage. And here's the thing, and I know you've probably talked about this, David, in previous episodes, is before, when I started in Chicago in 1999, we'd worked the 409 Nigerian print schemes that came to a facsimile machine. We'd worked the black money schemes. They were not targeted. They were just literally, we are going to send 100,000 of these and hope we get one.

[00:10:08] But where that's changed with AI is now they're going to take my LinkedIn. They're going to take my website. And I see this after I wrote my book is I will get these very, very targeted pitches about what my book is, what my book's about, what my background is. And you can just see that it's very specific. And that's where they're going to be much better. Yeah, they've studied it. Yeah, I mean, we do talk about it quite a bit.

[00:10:33] But I mean, like phishing emails, the ability that AI, when they're using AI right, for bad, right, for malicious purposes, they are able to do complete reconnaissance so quickly. They're able to craft the social engineering messages that are local, that have local sayings in them, local phrases that only somebody from that area would say, right?

[00:10:58] They'll say a sentence a certain way and afterward, we'll look at them and they'll be like, there was no way we would have known that it wasn't real. And I'm like, other than verify the human, which is why a lot of us are saying we have to get away from verifying the medium. Forget the email. The email could be perfect now. That's the difference, right?

[00:11:22] The old mantra of like, well, check the link, check where it was from, you know, look for spelling errors or grammar and like all that's gone. It's been gone for a while. The key is if don't ask whether it's real, ask what it's asking you to do. If it's asking you to do something that is against your interests or releasing of sensitive data, then confirm the human. Like go and walk down the hall. Just check with the human.

[00:11:49] No one's going to be mad that you checked and you'll be surprised that 90% of the time they'll be like, I didn't send that. Right? Right. I mean that and that is kind of the state that we're in. Yeah. Trust but verify. Reagan said it long ago and we just don't do it. Right. So many years ago, David, when we were younger, what did we do? If we had a journal or we had a diary, we put our stuff under the bed. I mean, I kind of followed him. Like I thought he was right about a lot of stuff. Yeah.

[00:12:16] I just did like his – it was timeless advice. It was advice that worked in the 90s, worked in the 80s and 90s and works today. Right? Yeah. If you slow down – and it's counterintuitive, right? Because the push is to rush. The push is to have urgency and do that. And there's a neuropsychological component to that, isn't there? You talk about it in your book. Yeah. No, absolutely. Raising of cortisol. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:12:45] They're going to – the hope, the fear, they're going to play off that dopamine. They're going to play off that cortisol. Well, neurochemicals are so powerful and have so much control. And the same thing that I'm going to try to do to push that in my advantage to get people to open up, they're using the same principles to withhold the truth, to shroud and camouflage the truth. And when they are equipped with the fact that we no longer put our stuff in diaries, we put them online.

[00:13:10] And that online information, especially in dating scams, I can become your mythical Prince Charming so easy because I know your pain points. I know what you like. I know your leisure activities. And those are going to be my leisure activities. And we like people that are like us. Exactly. And you can do so much reconnaissance through AI and you can even research somebody that loves this hobby, right? What type of things do we talk about? You can get all of this from AI in an instant now, right? Yes.

[00:13:38] And then be saying those things and mirroring and doing all of those things. That really makes the person feel comfortable and gets their guard down. Yeah. You know, you talk about the trust bank. You say where first impressions are like deposits. Tell us about that. Tell us about how you use that and leverage that. Yeah. So I guess the way I would look at it, David, is the way we communicate. We have words. We have the way we speak the words.

[00:14:08] And then we've got the music video. So I love Brazilian jiu-jitsu. My Brazilian jiu-jitsu professor is from Brazil. And he never spoke English until he moved to the United States at 18. But when he was in Brazil, what was his favorite musical group? Aerosmith and Red Hot Chili Peppers. He didn't understand a word that they were saying, right? But he loved Flea and Chad Smith. And he loved Anthony Kiedis because they made, they put life into those lyrics and the music videos. So, so much of communication.

[00:14:35] And I know there's all kinds of statistics that are kicked around. But it's not the words. I can give you the best pitch, the best scam pitch, whatever the case may be. But it's how I present it. And it's how I say it. And it's how confident that I am when I put it out there that's so important. So for me, that communication, it's the DJ that's seamlessly putting it all together. And when I have a scratch on the record that doesn't go, or that's when your little ears pop up. And you're like, hmm, something's not right.

[00:15:05] So I have to, as a scammer or as somebody that's trying to communicate well, I have to be the perfect DJ that puts all of that together in a timeless fashion. And so if I have the information about you on the front end, if I have the right time, the right place, if I get you in the right headspace that I can take advantage of, I can seamlessly put all that together. And like you said, sometimes it's the slow burn. Is that with the pig butchering, right? A lot of times it's you show them a little bit of money on the front end. And that's what, oh, what's it?

[00:15:35] Which confirms it. And then you show them a portal or a report from an account that's all fabricated. And it shows that your $500 went up to $2,100. Well, that's great. If I did that with $500, what if I put in $5,000? What if I put in $50,000, right? And you start to think that it makes sense. You feel like you're the smartest person in the room and you're...

[00:16:04] Yeah, you're like, none of my buddies know about this. Wait till I tell them. And then you never tell them because you're embarrassed that you lost your 50 grand. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Season nine of Cybercrime Junkies is here and it's unlike anything else. We've gained exclusive access to remarkable leaders and have more sarcasm, fun, edutainment this season than ever before. Catch us on LinkedIn and Substack.

[00:16:32] Subscribe and watch us on YouTube and Rumble. And don't miss the first two books in our trilogy called Moving Target. Available in audiobook, hardcover, and paperback everywhere you get books. This is Cybercrime Junkies. Now let's get back to the show. It's the Dunning-Kruger effect. You know, what is it? 70% of people think they're above average intelligence. So we have a problem there.

[00:17:00] We have a problem when 70 to 80% of everybody thinks they are above average. Yes. Yes. Well, we see that every day, right? People are very, very adamant, very passionate about things they're completely wrong about. Well, and then you've seen it, David. You tell them, I will literally, I remember 01, 02, I remember going out. Guy had come up from Kentucky to Chicago and it was a black money scheme. They literally, for your people that don't, I mean, no, you know what it is.

[00:17:28] But literally, they almost create like a jack-in-the-box and they put like money in it and they put this chemical and they put a bunch of construction paper in there and they turn it. And well, this is how we're going to get the money out of Africa. And by using this special solvent, it will clean it. And they will preload it with a couple hundreds and they'll turn the crank and like the jack-in-the-box will open up. And you think, how would anybody fall for this? And yet people will buy the solution and you will go to them right afterwards and you'll be like, this is a scam. And they're like, no, it's not.

[00:17:58] Right. Same thing on- I watched it work. Yes. It's legit. They don't want that validation and that influence principles are so strong is that they don't want to be proven wrong. Is they will fight with you and you'll be like, look, I'm a secret service agent. This is what I do for a living is work these organized crimes. Nope. I'm telling you, it's real. Unbelievable. Yeah. You know, you talk about what you just mentioned, remind me that in the book you talk about detecting deception.

[00:18:25] Like how the secret service does it is you don't really study the fakes. Focus. You train on the, you, you don't focus on the counterfeit currency. Yes. Right. You, you master the real thing. Walk us through that and what, because first I want to understand what you meant. And, and then I think there's, there's a lot of analogies there to cybersecurity today. And that's kind of what it is.

[00:18:50] It's, it's the analogy of if you understand the authentic, and that's what we do when you learn counterfeit money, there's a million ways money can be counterfeited. But if you go to crane and company where we make our paper and you go to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and you see how the sausage is made, then I can look at any bill and I can say that's genuine. If I can do that with genuine, then if it's not genuine, it's counterfeit. So it's easier. And it's the same thing with, with human behavior. Long ago, Paul Ekman did a study on detection of deception.

[00:19:18] It was the biggest one that I'd ever done, 10,000 people. And he found that the average was 54% of people. So like we have 100 people, 54% are effective at telling truth and deception. That's the rate that they're at. So they're wrong 46% of the time. Yeah. Wow. And he had a broad cross-section judges, attorneys, police officers, FBI agents, college students. And one of the craziest things that he found was the biggest purveyor of being able to determine truth and fiction were Secret Service agents.

[00:19:48] And we were about 75% to 80%. And he bowled it down to observation skills that we constantly watch people. I think it's deeper than that. I think it's because in our job, we see a lot of innocent people and we deal with a lot of guilty people. Whereas a lot of those other people put a very high base rate on deception. They thought more people were lying to them than actually were. Right. Because it's cool to catch a thief. It's cool to catch a liar. Right.

[00:20:15] So they want to be like, I'm the one who caught him. Yep. The lie buys. You know, what I found was interesting is in the book you talk about, there's all this body of work about micro expressions and little things. And personally, I've always thought it was kind of nonsense because I'm like, there are so many different people with so many different life experiences, biological, neurological conditions, habits. Right. Right.

[00:20:44] Like they, depending on how much they slept or ate or didn't eat, like they could have a tick, they could have a twitch. They could be having micro expressions that are meaningless. Right. And I'm like, I don't want to put that much emphasis in there. There might be some trends. If you see the same person in the same environment and then you see them again, perhaps there could be something. But in general, when you're just analyzing somebody off the cuff, like I find it very hard. Tell us about what your findings are.

[00:21:14] Yeah. So micro expressions are very, very difficult. I know Ekman studied cross-cultural. He looked at primates and I think it's how we define what is a micro expression. For me, a quick furrow of the brow, like I just did. And I know your listeners won't be able to see that, but if I see that, that's a macro expression. It's something I can visibly see in real time. To me, that is huge because that can come off as contempt. That can come off as just, Brad, I just didn't understand you. An eyebrow flash can come off as I'm tracking.

[00:21:41] Your little head nod that you're doing right now on TV shows I understand and I'm tracking. So for me, macro expressions are unbelievably effective because I grew up, my best friend for the last 35 years is deaf. And I had to look in his eyes. He had to look in my eyes. He would read my lips. I knew sign, but I had to look in his eyes and he was so expressive with his body language. I bet that is why you are so good at this. You know what I mean? Like think about it.

[00:22:07] You've learned to communicate outside of language, right? And neuropsychologically or biologically actually, right? Our limbic brain that drives behavior has no capacity for language, right? The thing that actually makes us do stuff doesn't understand language, right? We wrap it in language and words and stuff, but the words – it's why we understand all the data and all the facts and yet something doesn't feel right.

[00:22:37] So we don't act on it, right? Yeah. It's a baby and it's a dog. And what I mean by that is a baby and a dog can't understand words, but how do we approach them? We approach them with our eyes up and we have a little softer voice, right? If I come up to a baby and I say, you're the ugliest baby I've ever seen in my life. Super happy. It will have no idea. It'll be – The baby is super happy. Yeah, it'll be goo-goo-ga-ga, right? Because he doesn't know. Right, because he doesn't know. It's the tone. It's everything else.

[00:23:04] The same thing on a subway if I'm in a country in which I don't speak the language. I'm going to be able to watch people and I'm going to see are they agitated? Are they in stress? Are they in distress? And that's the key thing with body language is that's what's so effective. When you look at Dr. Abby Maronio, when you look at Joe Navarro, their big thing is body language is not about detection and deception. It's about stress and distress and comfort. And if I can pick those things up, that's so helpful because as what I'm saying making you uncomfortable.

[00:23:34] Well, don't do that. I want to de-escalate. If what I'm saying is making you comfortable, rinse and repeat and keep putting it on. I'm going to look at those closed anchor points when you're crossing your arms and you're crossing your legs. It may just be cold. But if I'm associating that with what I just said, hmm, interesting. Is what I just said, did that make them uncomfortable? Or did that anchor point go away because of what I just said? Okay, I like that. So to me, it's about observation.

[00:24:03] So many people, they don't look people in the eyes. They just sit there and they talk. They engage in this little transactional conversation. I had to be present just like, but Doug, my friend had to. And I think that's what helps me so much is staying engaged. And as far as being an active listener, your listeners need to do this. We can listen at 500 words per minute. That's why people could listen to this podcast at two times speed. But we speak at about 150 words per minute. Therefore, we become lazy and we think, what should I say?

[00:24:32] When should I say it? Whatever the case may be. I want when you're listening, I want you to think of like machine gun tracer fire. And I want you to think of every fifth word. I want you to repeat it in your head. And when you do that, you realize, wow, I'm really engaged in this conversation. It causes you to shut up too. Is that good communication is like good podcasting. We do our prep on the front end. You read the book. You meet me in the green room for five, 10 minutes. That's our first impression. You let the other person talk 80% of the time. You follow it up.

[00:25:01] You keep up the guardrails. If I go down a rabbit hole, you pull me back. You advocate for me. That's good communication and it's good podcasting. I love it. That's fantastic. Let me ask you something that I don't have on my list of questions, but I've always, I still don't. I'm really fascinated by it because I think the justice system could move a lot faster. Is the polygraph.

[00:25:23] If like we've come so far with the ability of people like you to leverage polygraphs, to tell whether someone is more likely than not, or, you know, with a certain reasonable degree of certainty telling the truth or not, like what is your opinion on why it's not admissible in court? Like, shouldn't it be? I mean. No, no, no. No.

[00:25:51] And I say that, I say that as an, I say that as an acolyte. I say that as an acolyte because you said, you said it best. You said it as more likely than not. Right. We can't. And in a criminal courtroom, that's not. Beyond a reasonable doubt. Right. That's not the standard. In a civil courtroom though. In a civil courtroom. Yeah. The preponderance of the evidence is the. Let's say if that was the case and that would be like how we choose to hire people. Right.

[00:26:18] Is, you know, we have a preponderance that you signed up for a job that requires you to have a top secret security clearance and you didn't pass the polygraph. Therefore, there's a preponderance of the evidence that we don't feel comfortable. Yeah. But do I want to put somebody in jail for 25 years based upon a polygraph result? No. It's the best mousetrap we have. It's the best mousetrap we have. But the problem is you have, I mean, you've seen polygraph on Jerry Springer and that's what people believe it is. That's not polygraph. I can take that 54%. And I'm not talking me personally.

[00:26:46] I'm talking about very good polygraph examiners, local, state, and federal. And if they do what they need to do and they have good quality control process and the guard rails are up, they can probably get in the mid to high 80s as far as percentages. That's a huge increase, but it's not perfect. No, and it's not. You're right. And I should have qualified that because I would think in certain cases, I would think it could be very useful.

[00:27:14] Like I could see it being useful in business, right? In operations. Like people would be so, think of the, but then again, it could destroy culture. Like, oh, you don't want to work there. They issue polygraphs. People are like, well, that's a little scary. You know, but if it's, if it's not prying into other things and you're just about like, did you commit this internal fraud? I want to do a polygraph. Yeah. So I will say this is that their employees have what's called the polygraph protection act. It was in the eighties.

[00:27:43] And so therefore you don't see too much of it on the civil side, but I will say this when it comes to child exploitation. Right. So since 2004, so since 1994, the Secret Service has been partnered, congressionally mandated from the National Center of Missing Exploited Children to assist in child exploitation cases. So since that point, we've done about 9,000 polygraphs on shaken baby cases, cases involving

[00:28:09] molestation where people travel for the purposes of, or they engage in the download of child sexual abuse material. I will say this in the last 15 years, we've done over a thousand of these exams. When people show up to meet an undercover police officer who they think's young, a young kid, or that we subsequent to a search warrant for child sexual abuse material, 60% of those individuals in our interactions admit to hands-on contact previously with a minor. Really?

[00:28:37] Without polygraph, all those cases would have not been founded. Right. It's such a, in that niche, it's an unbelievable tool, polygraph is, force multiplication. So the child exploitation space is huge for us because these people do this stuff in the dark of night. That's a very good nuance. That's a very good nuance. So it's not even necessarily whether they are telling the truth or not about the facts currently,

[00:29:02] but by leveraging them, you're able to get probable cause or find reason to... Yeah. And those are the people that admit. So I throw that 60% number out. That's not just, they had problems on the polygraph. Those are the ones that say, I did that thing. Right. And granted, when you look at that target basket of people that we're talking to, these are people that made overt attempts to travel to meet an underage person or have, and we've

[00:29:30] proven it, downloaded inappropriate images. So I don't want to say we're fishing with dynamite, but we're dealing with a segment of the population that is very problematic. And these are teachers. These are police officers. These are clergy. You know, so these are people that are, you know, the best, what we thought were the best of society, but they're camouflaged a lot of times with their authority that they take advantage of. Absolutely. You make a good analogy in the book and you talk about low and slow barbecue.

[00:29:57] For an audience of business leaders, right, that aren't necessarily hyper-technical and they're never going to get to interrogate, you know, a homicide suspect. But what does low and slow look like? Let's say a leader is sitting across the conference room table from an employee they may believe committed internal fraud or something like that. Yeah. Well, you hope. So the analogy there being is you hear the term grilling with interrogation. And I don't know about you, but you grill hamburgers.

[00:30:27] You don't smoke hamburgers. All right. Having been in work with raising children or uncovering the truth. No, it doesn't. It also doesn't work with brisket. All right. It works in Hollywood, right? It works in Hollywood. It doesn't work with brisket. It's exactly. No, you need 12 to 18 hours at 225. I'm having been in South Carolina now and Missouri and Texas. I know good barbecue and I'm blessed to have it. So the key thing for that is the employees is know your people.

[00:30:55] If you know your people on the front end, if you prepare, if you have those communication pathways on the front end, it's not going to be grilling. It's not going to be strange. It's not going to be some alien interaction where they're in the C-suite for the first time. Because as a good supervisor, you're not just walking the hallways at 830 and 430 to see when did they come in and who left early. You're walking at 10 and 2 and you're walking into people's offices and you have an open door policy and an open door philosophy where if you have an open door policy, have the door open.

[00:31:23] And when somebody walks in, front of the line with them, move to a different seating area, get away from your computer, shut your phone off. Don't just turn it over and engage with them. And when it comes to low and slow, it's not making that accusation immediately. You want to think of a Catholic confessional. Why is a Catholic confessional good for communication? Why is a therapist's office good for communication? Why is a doctor's office communication? You have a professional. There's a level of confidentiality having been raised in that environment.

[00:31:53] Yeah. You can say anything you want. 100%. And no one ever finds out. There's confidentiality. And you know what? There's not judgment either. Right. Is if you were, you know, if you went in there and if it was a fishbowl and people could see inside, that would be a problem. Totally different. If there was one of these fancy microphones in there, it'd be a problem. If when you said something, the priest furrowed his brow and said, really? You did that? Yeah. Like I can't, I'm so ashamed of you. I can't believe it. That would be very problematic. Yeah. You wouldn't be coughing up what you did.

[00:32:22] But if you will bring somebody in and you have a neutral environment and you have the right time, the right place, the right headspace where you sit them down, you frontally align and you talk to them and maybe you prime it. And what I mean by priming it is, let's say, David, I'm looking at you for potentially embezzling a small amount of money. We're not talking huge amount of money, but maybe you did some annual leave, played some games with your annual leave. And I sat you down and I had a 10 minute conversation with you about how things were going, so on and so forth.

[00:32:51] And I said, David, I'm just going to shoot you straight. All right. We've looked at this. We've looked at that. I want to tell you, we don't have perfect, perfect people in this corporation. But what I'm looking for is I'm looking for perfectly honest people. And I'm looking for people that when they make a mistake, they accept responsibility for it so that I know that I can trust them moving forward. And I'm going to tell you right now, I know that there's been some games played with your annual leave. And what I would like to believe is you had some situational factors at play that

[00:33:20] caused you to do something that you normally doesn't do. And now I'm going to give you the microphone. I just want you to explain me not the what. I just want you to explain me the why. Okay, Brad. All right. I did it. I did it. No, that's really good. I like that. And what I've also seen people do and tell me if this comes up is they say, hey, they play like, well, I'm not the bad guy. I have to go explain this to the other leadership. Can you help me explain this? Like, yeah. Context. Right.

[00:33:49] Like, give me some context about this so that maybe it doesn't look as bad because right now it kind of looks like this happened. And then you get them to kind of elicit more information. And then. Yeah. David. The more they talk, a bone will come out. Right. They'll start admitting other things. Yeah. We want to be what's called their buddy. And it's an analogy that I think kind of sums it up. And yeah, it was like blame, understand, diminish, develop. And then the why. Right. Yep. You focus on the why and not the what. So you'd be their buddy.

[00:34:19] And it would be similar, like if you were going through a personal issue, let's say you were going through a divorce or, you know, a breakup or something like that. What would your best friend do? First, your best friend would be somebody that likes, trusts and respects you. But your best friend would be like, who would they blame? They blame the other person. Oh, you know what? She was terrible for you. This, this and this. They would understand, man, they have tactical empathy. And then they would diminish the impact by saying, hey, there's other fish in the sea, dude. Time heals all wounds. Whatever the case may be. You're going to be fine. Right. And that's what we do.

[00:34:46] I mean, when we interrogate people, if we were going to interrogate Harry S. Truman at the Nuremberg trials, let's just rewrite history and say, you know, things were different. And we were going to interrogate Harry for firebombing Japan and dropping two atomic weapons. What would we do? Well, we'd be their buddy. We would start off by blaming the Japanese for bombing Pearl Harbor. We'd say, you know, Harry, we were following Monroe Doctrine. We were in the Western Hemisphere. We were minding our own business. And they killed 3000 of our soldiers, sailors and airmen on December 7th. Then I would understand.

[00:35:15] I'd write letters to mothers of people that were dying at Peleliu and Iwo Jima and Okinawa. And I would diminish impact. I'd say, Harry, let's be honest. You killed a million people, but you probably saved 5, 10, 15 more million by not invading mainland Japan. All right. I demonstrate tactically by saying, Harry, I mean, look, I mean, it'd be like a doctor at two in the morning in an emergency room and a kid comes in and he's got a mangled leg from a car accident. And you got to make a decision. Man, I might be able to save the leg, but the kid may turn septic and may die.

[00:35:43] So if I take the leg, kid's going to live. And you make that terrible decision to take the leg. But it was the best, worst option. You took the leg in this situation, Harry. And then I'd focus on the why. We've discussed the why, Harry. You know, I know the why. The buck stops here. You're a good man. What did you not do? You didn't take this and try to conquer the world afterwards. Any other world leader would have done if they had harnessed the power of the sun. You know what you did? You rebuilt the world. Okay. After that, you rebuilt the world because you're a good man. That's an interrogation. And that's how we talk to people.

[00:36:13] It's just a conversation. That's really good. And the thing is, if I want to interrogate Adolf Hitler, I have to talk to him like he's Harry S. Truman. If I want to interrogate Osama bin Laden, I have to talk to him like he's George Washington. Everybody is the hero of their own adventure. Everybody had situational factors in their life to do that bad thing. And after having talked to thousands of criminals, there's probably only 10 that were unbelievably evil, that were irredeemable.

[00:36:42] Every moment of their life, they were trying to hurt people. The vast majority of people were good people that did an evil thing. And I try not to hate the sinner. I just try to hate the sin. Stay with us. We'll be right back. So AI is a thing. If you are rolling out AI, you need to do it right. Unlike other technologies, when you have the right security and governance in place, AI doesn't become more restricted.

[00:37:11] It actually does the opposite. It unleashes all the creativity and collaboration that will make you more productive than ever before. And it shouldn't cost you an arm and a leg. So contact NetGain at NetGainIT.com. That's NetGainIT.com. Find out how we're helping small to midsize organizations roll out AI that makes a huge difference and boosts their bottom line.

[00:37:38] Contact NetGain or visit us at NetGainIT.com today. That's a really good point because I've heard that over and over from a lot of different guests and a lot of people in law enforcement and intelligence, right?

[00:38:00] That it's – they're really looking at the action because the people will deceive you because the people don't seem that bad because generally this isn't a Greek tragedy, right? People aren't walking around as all evil, as all good, as all – right? You really have to focus on the act, right? 100%. And a lot of times it's access. A lot of times it's access.

[00:38:24] With scams, with trauma molestation, with crime, you know, I spent way too much time in college studying criminology and we'd have an old formula and it was need, ability, and opportunity. So if I need something and I have the ability to do it and I have the opportunity to do it, like I may want to have a million dollars via the Bernie Madoff scheme. Well, I need the money but I don't have the ability to do what Bernie did and I don't have the opportunity to do what Bernie did. And then you add in stressors and then you divide that by morality and the chances are you're going to get caught.

[00:38:55] Right. And that's criminal activity. And when you look at online activity, what's the problem? People need money. It's not too hard, ability and opportunity. Morality is the touch point. But if they've got stressors, that kind of puts a wet blanket on that. And what are the chances? What are the chances I'm going to get caught if I'm in insert whatever country you want to talk about that has a, you know, Russia. Right. Or it's decriminalized. It's not considered a crime. Right. I mean, that's that's why so much of it is so popular.

[00:39:25] Plus, there's also tell me what your impression is. To me, I've always looked at the cultural aspect. Like they grew up, if you grew up in that part of the world, you've grown up. And if you're in your 50s or 50s, you grew up your whole life at the kitchen table thinking the American middle class are evil. Like that we are the bad guys and that they are the good people. Right.

[00:39:50] So as a young child, you grew up valuing Mother Russia and valuing all of these things for good reason. Right. And they're not all bad reasons. But we've been like the bias there is that we are bad. So when they harm a business or they harm, you know, a group here in the States, there's very little empathy because to them, they're doing what they believe is right sometimes. Right. Yeah.

[00:40:16] Some of that from a cultural like anti-U.S. sentiment. Some of it is also from the standpoint of look at what the U.S. GDP is, whatever, for many trillion dollars. Right. Versus ours is one one thousandth of that. They can afford it. Right. That's their justification. I mean, when you look at the old 409 statute in Nigeria, it's, you know, I've had so many Nigerian criminals that just look at me and go stupid Americans. Like that's the justification. Yeah. And how stupid are they to fall for this?

[00:40:45] So, yeah, there's there's that for sure. That's unbelievable. One thing that you mentioned when you're interviewing, I thought it was interesting when you're interviewing somebody that winds up being innocent and you ask them questions like, you know, what? What should happen to somebody that did this? Yeah. The innocent person views it much more harshly. They're like lock them up. That person should be locked up. Right.

[00:41:10] Whereas a guilty person might might try and minimize it, might try. Yeah. You know, everyone deserves a second chance. You don't know. Is that a sign that's proven to be, at least in your experience, proven to be somewhat of a good guide? So the key there is tend. OK, it tends to. All right. So there's. Tends to. Yeah. When we look at detection deception, we look at these behavioral analysis questions.

[00:41:36] So many people that if they take them to the bank and say this is 100 percent or the other side, there's researchers out there say these are worthless. Right. The truth is somewhere in the middle. If I use them on serious crimes on someone that hasn't been in the system, then maybe understands why I'm asking these questions. These questions can be extremely useful. So, for instance, I have countless cases that I could point out. But let's say we had a sadly a 10 year old girl here in South Carolina died. Stray bullet. And the individual that committed the act, we didn't know it at the time.

[00:42:06] But I said, you know, hey, if you're a judge in a situation like this, what do you think should happen to somebody that causes the death of a child? Now, you and I are both going to say, I don't know, bury him under the jail. Right. Exactly. Let me 15 minutes with him. This person said, you know what? Everybody deserves a second chance. Yeah, that to me is just a red flag. That's a huge. And the other question we follow that up with is, hey, can you come up with three reasons why you think someone would do something like this?

[00:42:35] And that operates on recency bias and availability bias. So they open up the file cabinet in their brain. And a lot of times what deceptive people will do is they'll tell you the actual reasons why they committed the case, which is so helpful for me because now I know where the dartboard is. I know their own rationalizations, minimizations and projections. So in this case, I said, can you come up with three reasons why you think somebody might shoot somebody else? And he goes, I don't know, disrespect. I don't know. Maybe they're afraid. I don't know. Maybe motive. Yeah. He said, but it was this last one was very specific. He said, I don't know.

[00:43:04] Maybe they just bought a really nice brand new gun and they were showing it off their buddies. And somebody saw that and things popped off. And you're like, wow, that's very specific. Why do you think he ultimately admitted? Yeah. And that's what he admitted to was he said, you know, I was showing off my guns. Some other people took that as an affront. They pulled out their guns and I fired first. So it was very helpful to have that information. So those are two really good questions. And then the other question is a bait question. And you got to be careful with this. And I never say I have this evidence.

[00:43:34] I never lie to people. I never present false evidence to people. And I always start off trying to get the truth. I don't start off trying to get a confession. But let's say in this case, I said, hey, I'll omit his name. But hey, John, you know, if we were to wipe your hands down. So the shooting happened two days prior. I said, if we were to wipe your hands down right now, would we see any gunshot residue? Because he'd said he hadn't shot a gun in a month. I said, will we see any gunshot residue in the last 72 hours where you shot a rifle?

[00:44:03] Well, you know what? Now that I think about it. I was out back. Yeah. So the story, the story fell apart. And that's when we get into who, what, whom, or why. And we get the provable lies. And thankfully, he finally came in on it. So just a couple of little hacks. I do it with my kids. It works very well. Oh, yeah. That's good. When we look at the key thing with detection of deception is if I ask you a yes or no question, I should get a yes or no answer. And I should get it in a timely fashion. And if I don't, that's a red flag. And when I say red flag, it's just a follow-up.

[00:44:33] It's not you're instantly lying. But if I say, did you shoot that man? I shouldn't hear, did I shoot that man? Yeah. I should hear yes or no. And when I don't hear yes or no, if I hear repeat the question, if I hear long latency. So latency or delay is one of the first things that I look at. If you go no, no, and then there's no. And then vocal inflection is sometimes tied in with that. But if I ask my daughter, if I say, Sydney, did you clean your room? Yes. Okay.

[00:45:01] Well, that's a yes that's like, do you believe me, Dad? And I'm going to follow it up. Or liars lie specifically. Yeah. Can I still go out is what she's saying. Or they lie specifically. You know, she had to get her homework done before she goes out. And I say, did you get all your homework done? I got my math homework done. Right. Not the whole truth. And that's. Yeah. So she's not lying. She did get her math homework done. No, my kids were very good at the selective truth. Yeah. They don't want to lie, but they're overly selective.

[00:45:31] So you just follow that up with what other homework you got, man. I got my biology. So don't let people give that open narrative where they can be that dog off the leash and go wherever they want. You probably have somebody that tells tall tales in your world, David. And when they tell you about what they told the boss or their luck with the ladies, just let them tell it. You don't want to call them a liar. And at the end of it, be like, wow, you said that to the boss. All of a sudden, you're going to see that change to, well, in so many words. Right. Right. Yeah. So that's a nice little way. He knew what I meant. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:46:01] That's really good. You know, you talk before we wrap up, you talk about cortisol and dopamine and controlling that. And to me, I find it so interesting because in social engineering, that's what it's all about. Right. You're that's that's why things are done with urgency. That's why things are, you know, when there's a ransomware attack that we've we're first responders. So we've been with business owners that have literally passed out like they see their entire

[00:46:30] lives go in front of them and they're and they just feel like, I can't believe we didn't take this more seriously earlier. What do you do? Like, how do you manage that? What what insight can you share about how to control observation first? Like, I'm going to look at, you know, your surroundings and I'm going to get some some interesting things, whether it be social media or physical surroundings. I can look at your backdrop and I can see certain things that I might be able to latch upon. Right. Whether it be kids.

[00:47:00] Let's say I see a fish in the background that you go fishing, whatever the case may be. If I get in a conversation, I'm going to talk about family, education, employment, leisure, and I'm going to spend most of my time on leisure activities. Why? Because we make a conscious choice to do those things. Right. And if I find some in a way, it means more. Right. In a hundred percent. In a way, it does. Yep. And what I want to avoid is I want to avoid the me too. And so let's say you like to run and you tell me that, Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Oh, I'm running a 5k.

[00:47:28] I don't immediately follow that up with, Oh, I did a 5k. That's exactly right. Cause that doesn't build the connection. Asking more about the person. Yes. And how many other 5k they've run. What is it about running that you enjoy so much? Your eyes light up. What's your favorite race? Oh man, I did a half marathon in Chattanooga. It was awesome. Well, what was it? What was so great about it? Oh, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Right. I'm getting all this free information and they're bathing in dopamine and they're associating

[00:47:58] that because the greatest voice to our brain is our own voice. So when we hear ourselves talk and when we're bathing in that dopamine, who are we associating that with? The person we're talking to. Right. So I'm doing nothing other than doing follow-up questions. And let's say I'm a runner too. By asking informed questions about what's their nutrition, what's the shoes, what's the this. And then you follow it up with, do you run? And that's my chance to now get that connection.

[00:48:27] So get rid of me too. We have fun suckers in every communication that want to put the spotlight on them. Yeah, that's so important. That's fantastic. Well, Brett, fantastic. We'll have links to the book. Tell me everything. I am getting the hard cover and it will be on my bookshelf. Fantastic book. Really, really good. I mean, it is up there with Chris Voss's Never Split the Difference, which is a high compliment coming from me because I was a huge fan.

[00:48:58] Really good. Just very practical. Really good insight, man. It's really good. I encourage everybody to get it. We'll have links to it in the show notes. What do you have coming up? Share with everybody. You're on LinkedIn. You're on social media. Yeah, LinkedIn. Brad Beeler, 1865 is my moniker on LinkedIn and also Instagram. I like to put a ton of content on there. So a bunch of podcasts. And I try to obviously take some tidbits from that and put it online.

[00:49:26] So hopefully some people can have some takeaways. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, man. Thank you. Wish you nothing but the best. And thank you for your service. Being with Secret Service is phenomenal. It's a very, very non-glamorous, really, really important job. Yeah, I've been blessed to have a wonderful wife that missed 18 anniversaries as a result and stayed with me for 27 years. So I've been blessed. That's fantastic. Well, God bless you both and your family.

[00:49:55] So thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. Thanks a lot for having me on, David. Great, buddy.