[Hind] In Somaliland,
the growing demand for essential oils
has complicated the ancient trade for frankincense.
Harvesters accuse international buyers
of exploitation and lies.
Why did it come to you? Who are you?
We're journalists.
I mean, come on, VICE.
[Hind] What's really happening here?
I'm just gonna ask you to leave.
[Keegan] The government has no idea that you made this gun.
[Keegan] Ghost guns, firearms built from parts
you can buy online without serial numbers.
I've seen them used in awful crimes.
You can match the bullet to the gun.
But how do you match the person who pulled the trigger?
That potentially makes it impossible.
[Keegan] Impossible.
[Dimitri] Pandora's box has been opened.
You can't put them back into the box.
dramatic music
singing in native language
[Hind] We're in the autonomous region of Somaliland,
which claimed independence from Somalia in 1991
but so far hasn't been recognized
by the United Nations.
One of the biggest industries here
is frankincense from these trees.
But while CEOs in America reap the rewards
of the multibillion-dollar essential oils industry,
harvesters here accuse some international buyers
of exploitation and lies.
The essential oils industry is nestled
in a growing $4.5 trillion wellness craze
that runs from healing crystals to yoga retreats,
clean eating, and natural beauty trends.
[speaker] What's in this bottle?
I say love.
[Hind] This is doTERRA International,
one of the biggest purchasers of frankincense
from Somaliland and a major player in essential oils.
Hey, guys, I wanted to come on here
and talk about the king of oils, frankincense.
This brand doTERRA--
A must have.
[Hind] Founded in 2008,
doTERRA is a multilevel marketing company
that uses so-called Wellness Advocates
to sell their essential oils,
and frankincense is one of their most popular products,
retailing at $100 per 15-milliliter bottle.
So this is your tree.
speaking native language
Boswellia?
[Hind] But harvesters like Abdullahi Awad
who tap these Boswellia carterii trees for resin
can see as little as 0.5% of that value.
speaking native language
I can actually see the resin coming out of it now,
the little white droplets.
Somaliland claimed its independence from Somalia
after an all-out civil war in the late 1980s.
And it's more peaceful than Somalia,
which has been plagued by terror attacks and violence
by Al-Shabaab and ISIS.
Situated in the northern Sanaag region of Somaliland,
Abdullahi's trees are the primary source
of income for communities here.
speaking native language
[Hind] Harvesters have always sold their resin
through local buyers,
but now with corporations driving demand,
an industry of middlemen suppliers has emerged,
creating a blind spot for companies
as to how business gets done on the ground.
In Somaliland, doTERRA's supplier
is a man named Barkhad Hassan,
who runs the international
export company Asli Maydi.
[Hind] How were you introduced to Asli Maydi
and to Barkhad Hassan?
speaking native language
And how much more was it
to what you were previously charging?
speaking native language
Did you agree to be paid back in food?
speaking native language
[Hind] Multiple harvesting communities we spoke with
describe a pattern of being tricked
and not fairly paid by Asli Maydi,
but doTERRA claims that harvesters they source from
are paid fairly and receive both food and cash payments.
We had to give them
that seed of hope.
And it's been amazing to see the change
that has happened in just a few years.
[Hind] One of doTERRA's contributions to Somaliland
is the recent opening of a state-of-the-art hospital.
But for a company built on principles
of sustainable harvesting,
helping poor communities, and an ethical supply chain,
our reporting found a different reality.
[both] speaking native language
Wow. It smells so good.
East of Somaliland on the tip of the Horn of Africa
is Puntland, a state in Northern Somalia.
It's another major frankincense producing region
and hub for sorting warehouses.
Can I sit with you?
[Hind] What they're doing is they're flipping the resin.
And when they do that,
it separates all these little bits that you then throw out.
And these women are doing this all day.
50 kilos in one day? Wow.
While doTERRA boasts its Frankincense is sourced
from Somaliland,
praising its stability in the region,
NGO and government sources told us
that the majority of the resin exported
actually comes from Puntland,
where anyone doing business,
including Asli Maydi,
inevitably deals with the presence of ISIS
and Al-Shabaab.
One estimate suggests ISIS collects as much as $72,000
per month in extortion from local businesses.
We tracked down one frankincense trader
whose family has done business in Puntland for generations.
Can you explain the relationship
between businessmen and ISIS in Puntland?
speaking native language
Every single businessman has to do this?
speaking native language
[Hind] Without question?
What if you say,
"No, I don't want to pay you any tax
on my profit and you refuse"?
What would happen?
speaking native language
Has that ever happened before?
speaking native language
[Hind] In addition to allegations
of exploiting harvesters in Somaliland
and extortion by ISIS in Puntland,
there's also been an allegation of rape
made by a former colleague of Barkhad Hassan,
owner of Asli Maydi and doTERRA supplier.
Back in Somaliland,
we asked him for an interview and he agreed.
Let's get rolling, mate. I'm in a bit of a rush.
You're in a rush?
I've got things to do, darling.
-Yeah. Of course. -You know?
-Is the mic working? -I'm good.
Can we just get on with it, mate?
Come on.
If you could introduce yourself and what job you do.
My name is Barkhad Jibril Hassan,
proprietor of Asli Maydi.
Who are you selling to internationally?
And how much do you sell?
I don't want to divulge because there's a NDA-
there's a NDA there.
So it's...
it's...they're big buyers, let's put it that way.
The essential oils business in the U.S. is absolutely massive,
and the focus very often with the businesses
in the United States is how it's taken
and bought from a sustainable supply chain.
And is that something that you are made aware of
when you're working with international buyers?
Yes, I think we were ethical.
We try our best, you know,
sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes it works.
When doesn't it work?
When you have unintelligent people around,
you know, and not understanding how things work.
There were individuals that we spoke to that said
that when they first did business with you...
-Yeah. -That Alsi Maydi came in,
paid deposits, gaining their trust,
but then didn't follow through on the full payments
and instead paid using food and not money.
I mean, the Somaliland has a legal justice system.
Why did they not go to it and arrest me
and take me to court or something like that?
Can I ask you a question? Who are you?
-Are you auditing me? -We're journalists.
-So we're journalists. -Journalists.
Well, you know, you know,
the journalists, you know, fake news is a time...
you know, this generation now.
I mean, come on, VICE.
[laughs] Right.
I'm not putting you down. I'm not. It's just my opinion.
You're absolutely allowed your opinion.
-I have...right. -So you're saying
that you've never paid anyone with food
instead of cash?
Um, let me explain something to you, how the trade works.
These people are... how can I say?
Um...
They complain a lot.
-You been to Erigavo? -[Hind] Mm-hmm.
You've seen the multimillion dollar hospital there?
We were having problems in Erigavo
because I think you had been contacting some people--
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Do not-do not accuse me of something I have not done.
-Let's get back to the question. -No, no.
You accuse me of something. Let me defend myself.
[Hind] We'll get into it. I haven't even said--
speaking native language
[Hind] I haven't even said what we allege.
speaking native language
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
What's going on? What's going on?
I have no idea.
speaking native language
[Hind] No, no, no. There's a few questions I have.
I have a few question. Why has this just happened now?
This is all a bit suspicious.
Less than 15 minutes into our interview,
a government employee with close ties
to Hassan conveniently interrupted,
falsely claiming we didn't have permission to film.
I'm pretty convinced that this was all set up
to show that he was willing to talk to us.
But this just shows how far he will go
to try and stop journalists from digging in
to what's really happening here.
With our reporting cut short in Somaliland,
we traveled to Vermont
to speak to the former colleague of Barkhad Hassan
who accused him of rape.
tense music
-Hello. -Hi. Good morning.
[Hind] Dr. Anjanette DeCarlo is a sustainability consultant
whose research has been funded by major cosmetic
and essential oil companies, including doTERRA.
What is a sustainability consultant?
I'm trained to work at source
where things come from specifically to see
if they're being harvested or gathered
in a way that's sustainable and ethical.
The trees are not dying because of this amount of bark,
that it's from the overharvesting.
[Hind] In 2016, Dr. DeCarlo says
Hassan became the gatekeeper of her access
to frankincense communities in Somaliland.
And admits she was initially charmed by him,
even attracted to him.
She says their relationship was emotionally charged
and intense, but never acted on.
And as she discovered his business practices
were negatively impacting local harvesters,
she says he became obsessed with controlling
the narrative around his business.
At what point did you realize
that what he was doing
was a big part of the problem?
I realized...midstream,
that we had a really serious problem
with unsustainable practices.
And there was a lot of chaos surrounding it.
[Hind] On one of her trips in 2018,
DeCarlo says Hassan's driver
asked her to bring $15,000 cash
to this meeting with government officials.
But she refused.
There's no evidence doTERRA was involved in this request.
[Anjanette] That evening, he called and he says,
"You know, I'd like to have you guys for tea."
We'd never been invited to a house of his before.
We're hanging out, we're having tea, we're talking.
And he turns to me, he goes,
"Hey, I want to show you some very unique frankincense."
I wanna show you something.
And I go through the door,
and he pushes me through a second door.
And he locks the door and...
starts grabbing me.
And I'm saying. "No."
I'm saying, "What are you doing?
What the fuck is happening?"
And...he pushed me pretty hard.
And I fell on my knees.
And he sexually assaulted me.
You say assaulted, um, raped?
What went through your mind afterwards?
Do you remember your thoughts?
I wanted to just get out of there
was the most pressing thing for me,
that I was fixated on getting out of Somalia.
It was a gray area.
Somaliland's not a recognized country.
I didn't report it to a police officer and embassy.
I'm an independent contractor.
So I really didn't think anything could be done for me.
Did you tell doTERRA?
When I got back to the United States,
I reported it to a company that I was working with.
And how did they respond?
I don't know what their response was,
but shortly after reporting it,
I started receiving harassing texts from Mr. Hassan.
So he knew...that the company he was working for
knew about what had happened.
Somebody told him that I had...
reported that he had assaulted me.
And I still, to this day, do not know who told him that.
[Hind] DeCarlo insists that without transparency
in the supply chain, abuse can take place.
And as the demand for frankincense
continues to grow,
it's the essential oil industry
that needs to take responsibility.
Okay. Hey, guys.
We're at doTERRA's headquarters in Utah,
and we've come a long way to get here
because we've called and we've emailed continuously
to try and get an on-camera interview.
And so far, they've just refused to meet us.
So my name is Hind Hassan.
[receptionist] Okay.
-I'm a journalist at VICE News. -Okay.
And I'm wondering if there's somebody that I can speak to...
-Yes. -About some allegations
that have been made against
doTERRA's supplier in Somaliland.
If you guys just want to take a seat here...
-Thank you. - Or in our lobby.
[security guard] I've been told to ask you to leave.
Oh, but I thought that we were gonna get somebody
from PR to speak to us.
Like I said, I'm just gonna ask you to leave.
I don't know any of the background behind it.
They don't want you here.
Okay.
I guess there's nothing we can do.
So we come in, security has come,
and they've told us that we have to leave.
So that's what we're gonna do.
After visiting doTERRA's offices,
we followed up with a detailed list of allegations,
and they provided a statement that says, in part,
"DoTERRA works closely
"with our independent sourcing partners
"to create ethical and sustainable supply chains
anchored in our sourcing guiding principles,"
and continues,
"We take any allegation of improper conduct seriously,
"and, as a result, are commencing an investigation,
which will include outside counsel."
We also contacted Hassan
who denied the allegations against him and said,
"The Frankincense trade in Somaliland
is more sustainable than it has ever been in the past."
Separately, he vehemently denies
that he raped Anjanette.
Back in Somaliland,
Abdullahi continues to tap trees for frankincense,
but he says he's no longer selling to Asli Maydi.
There are people all over the world
who buy essential oils
made from the frankincense that you create.
Can you explain just what impact
this has had on you and your community?
speaking native language
dramatic music
[Keegan] So we're here with agents
from the California Bureau of Firearms.
They're looking for people who are prohibited
from owning firearms by the law.
They have a database that tells them
when someone's had a mental health crisis,
domestic violence.
There's about 25,000 people
in the Armed and Prohibited Persons System.
25,000 people in California are prohibited from owning guns?
-Yeah. -So the idea is to identify
the people who could be using those guns for violence,
who are not supposed to have them,
and then stop the crimes before they happen.
Ideally, yeah, whether they are building--
[Blake] 10-4. Thanks. Proceed.
[Keegan] These officers are looking for a suspect
who had a mental health crisis
and lost his right to own a gun.
The man was supposed to hand over his firearms.
Now the police have come to take away weapons
that he registered with the state.
In a lot of ways this strikes me as, like,
dystopian for the Second Amendment community.
It's like they're literally coming for your guns.
[Blake] Right, but we're not coming
for 99.9% of the population's guns.
We're coming for the people
that lost the right to have guns.
[Keegan] California's program for confiscating guns
is supposed to keep weapons away from dangerous people.
But a new type of firearm has created easy access to guns
that are unregistered and untraceable.
Ghost guns,
firearms without serial numbers,
built from parts sold by hundreds of websites
or made with a 3D printer.
They're turning up in deadly mass shootings
and at crime scenes across the country.
Since 2016, the number of
ghost guns linked to crimes
and recovered by police
has increased
over 1,000% nationwide.
President Biden is trying to fight back.
In early April, he announced new rules
to outlaw ghost gun kits with all the parts and tools.
If you buy a couch you have to assemble,
it's still a couch.
If you order a package, like this one over here,
that includes the parts you need,
the directions for assembling a functioning firearm,
you bought a gun.
This is the gun.
[Keegan] But Biden's new rules are limited.
There's no real way to stop someone from going online
and buying all the parts separately
and building an untraceable gun
completely off the government's radar.
tense music
[Byrd] It's very simple, bro.
It don't take a fuckin' genius to do this shit, bro.
I ain't even graduate from high school.
[Keegan] Byrd sells illegal guns to gangs in Los Angeles.
In the past few years,
ghost guns have become his main business.
[Byrd] Once you drill out the holes,
there's some little tabs that come right here.
You take this shit, and you snap them off.
Boom, boom.
Get this all nice and smooth.
And once you're done, man,
put all your little parts back in...
You got a fucking gun.
When did you hear about ghost guns?
[Byrd] Maybe like five years ago.
When I found out about it,
I was like, "Nah, this can't be real."
They was like, "Look, bro, this all you got to do.
"Go to this website, boom, boom, boom,
and you're gonna get your shit in the mail."
This is shocking that this is legal.
[Byrd] It's hella shocking.
The mark up is great. You what I'm saying?
Like, I'm selling the gun that I'm getting for 300,
400 bucks on the internet for like 1,500.
So I'm making a killing,
and I'm just building it within 45 minutes to a hour.
The government wants you to put a serial number on it.
They want you to register it.
But nobody's doing that.
Nobody gives a shit about that.
You know, like, this is the way right now.
[Keegan] When Byrd sells a gun on the street,
it's against the law.
But ghost guns can still be perfectly legal.
As of today, only 11 states and Washington, D.C.,
have laws restricting unserialized firearms.
California's laws are among the toughest in the nation,
but Attorney General Rob Bonta
says the state is still being flooded with ghost guns.
[Rob] Just over the course of two years,
we saw the increase in guns seized--
ghost guns seized in California from 1,600 to 12,000.
And now about 30% of the guns seized in California
are unserialized ghost guns.
They are off the books, not in any of our systems,
not following our regulatory safety regime.
And we're seeing them used in awful crimes,
murders of people, mass murder sometimes.
So, uh, i-it's a problem.
And so we know that the existing rule
needs to be changed,
and that's what we're focusing on.
[Keegan] Bonta and California's governor
are pushing controversial bills
that mimic an anti-abortion law in Texas.
One proposal would enable lawsuits against almost anyone
who makes or sells ghost guns.
tense music
Dimitri Karras recently opened a store in Arizona,
where ghost gun parts are unregulated.
But he's also been doing business
for years in California,
adhering to the state's strict firearms laws.
So if I wanted to build a ghost gun, right,
like if I came in and said,
"Okay, I want to get it... start from scratch..."
[Dimitri] Okay.
You guys have the parts to do all that here?
I have the parts that you could use to assemble it,
you're going to have to go out and do all that work to cut it,
and I'm not gonna help you with that.
But honestly, it's a really cool process to go through.
We build computers, we build cars, we build houses,
and this is an extension of that mentality.
[Keegan] How does the government regulate making a gun at home?
And when does a hunk of metal become a gun?
The way it's worked up until this point,
-I can show you if you like. -Mm-hmm.
[Dimitri] You'd have this,
which is a receiver for an AR-15.
Your magazine would go there.
Your trigger would come out right there.
Um, but this is a completed firearm.
And to buy this, you'd go through the normal processes.
And then this over here is a hunk of metal
that is not a firearm yet.
[Keegan] This has some holes drilled on it,
and this one doesn't.
Under the law, this is a gun, and this is not.
[Dimitri] Under the current interpretations, yeah.
However, the ATF, the way that their rulings have gone,
I could draw a dot here and a dot there
and just me drawing that dot on this thing
technically, they could determine it to be a firearm.
[Keegan] In early April, the ATF issued new rules
trying to clarify when gun parts legally become firearms.
an unfinished AR-15 part like this one
isn't legally considered a firearm
until it has markings for drilling holes
or sold with parts or tools to complete the assembly process.
Anyone with basic gun knowledge
can avoid a background check or registration
and acquire all the parts needed
to make an untraceable weapon.
The Pandora's box has been opened.
And no matter how hard you want to ban them or get rid of them,
you can't put them back into the box.
There's more guns in this country than there are people.
And so any attempt from the federal government,
it's not gonna work in this country.
Are you gonna have police officers sitting down at Lowe's
to make sure that I don't buy pipes?
Because I can go down to Lowe's,
and for about $10, I can make a shotgun.
[Keegan] The term "ghost gun" is new,
but homemade improvised weapons without serial numbers
have been around for a long time.
On the other side of the country,
the NYPD has been pulling these types
of non-factory weapons off the street for decades.
So many guns.
This was a homemade firearm
-in a flashlight. -[Keegan] This is a flashlight?
[Emanuel] Flashlight that was converted into a firearm.
-Wow. -You have this...
Two pen guns, for example,
and then simply releasing, fire a projectile,
-gunshot. -That is terrifying.
Even without serial numbers,
the NYPD can still connect bullets from a crime scene
to a specific gun by running a ballistics trace.
So this is a ghost gun.
We're going to generate a test fired projectile
and a test fire to start shell casings in the tank.
[gunfire]
[Keegan] The police collect shell casings
and bullets from the tank,
then study them under a microscope.
The aim is to match guns to suspects
and crime scene evidence.
But a ghost gun disrupts the process.
The right is the bullet that we just fired
in the tank from the ghost gun.
She's looking for similarities
and differences between the two.
[Keegan] Every firearm that shoots a bullet
is gonna leave distinct markings
like the ones we're looking at under this microscope?
[Emanuel] Correct.
[Keegan] So the ghost gun hasn't changed
this part of your job.
What makes it harder is, like,
tracing back where that ghost gun came from.
That's the ghost part.
It potentially makes it
-impossible. -[Keegan] Impossible.
VICE News contacted over 50 police departments
across the U.S.,
major cities that kept track of ghost guns
shared data showing a surge in unserialized weapons
recovered in recent years.
And new technology is already making ghost guns
even more difficult to contain.
In the last decade,
3D printed weapons have evolved
from flimsy plastic to include AK-47s,
AR-15s, even rocket launchers.
dramatic music
[Ethan] I have a short little stubby grip
that I just finished designing.
So let's print one of those.
And we'll do it in carbon fiber.
[Keegan] Hobbyists like Ethan Middleton,
create new gun designs,
and share the files online for anyone to download.
Wow, this looks super futuristic.
The future is now, old man.
-[laughs] -It sure is. Wow.
[Keegan] The government has no idea that you made this gun
and have it in your home right now?
I try to keep everything as legal and open
and public as possible
because I love the sharing of information.
But if I wanted to print it
and didn't want anyone to know about it, no.
Printer's not connected to the internet,
nothing else, um, would really indicate
to anyone else that it's here, so.
[Keegan] What would you do if, like, tomorrow
there's a mass shooting and the gunman is wielding,
you know, one of the frames that you designed?
Would that change what you do?
[chuckles]
I'd feel pretty devastated if any of my firearms
showed up at a crime scene.
Um...
Honestly, it would... that'd really suck.
But bad people are just gonna do bad things.
[Keegan] Ethan took us to a farm
where he showed us his 3D printed gun,
a 9mm MAC-11 he calls the Mac and Cheese.
So all my designs are food based.
And this one uses a MAC-11 upper receiver.
I'm in Wisconsin, we're a cheese state,
so MAC, cheese, Mac and Cheese.
[chuckles]
-This is metal from a factory. -Correct.
This is something you 3D printed yourself.
-Yeah. -This is the ghost gun,
-the blue part. -Correct.
So this is the regulated part
that people want serial numbers on is the blue part.
-Mm-hmm. -That's the lower receiver.
Just insert in there,
slap it on the ass, and then just charge it.
You should be ready to go.
Here we are.
Okay.
[gunfire]
[rapid gunfire]
-Wow. -Hell yeah.
That's the Mac and Cheese.
[Keegan] I mean, that shoots super smooth.
I mean, I've shot a lot of factory guns,
and I mean, I could tell 'cause it's blue,
but other than that, it'd be hard to tell the difference.
Yeah.
[Keegan] 3D printed guns
have started turning up all over the world.
In Europe, where gun laws are strict,
and in the hands of rebels
fighting a military dictatorship in Myanmar.
The mission for Ethan and others
is to enable anyone to build a gun.
They call sharing the digital gun files the Signal.
[Ethan] Information can be dangerous and scary,
but any bit of information needs to be out there
for everyone.
How's the little guy gonna stand up
to the big government with their overreaching boot
just coming down to squish them?
[Keegan] If the government decides tomorrow,
we want to outlaw 3D printed gun files,
is there any way for them to stop it?
No. Short of trying to ban
the literal zeros and ones that make up the file,
there's not really a way to stop the Signal
once it actually hits the waves.
[Keegan] Ghost guns are now available to the masses.
For the government and those who want gun control,
it's a growing threat.
But for anyone who wants an untraceable firearm,
they're now the weapon of choice.
[Byrd] 3D printing is always gonna be the future.
They can't stop that.
So if you know how to build a gun by hand, you could.
I don't think there's ever gonna be an issue.
There's nothing they can do to stop this.
Nothing they can do to stop this, really.
dramatic music