(man speaking, played backwards)
MARIANA VAN ZELLER: Before the assassinations,
before the hitmen, the fire bombings,
the torture chamber, and the underground pills,
there was this email from my son's middle school,
warning parents about ecstasy pills
that kids had ordered online
in a transaction that had seemed all too easy.
I've done stories about most illegal drugs,
but I hadn't paid much attention to MDMA.
It was a party drug and had seemed too soft,
or too tame, to warrant that kind of deep dive,
at least until I came to understand the forces
lurking beneath the surface.
♪ ♪
♪ I don't care ♪
♪ if the room's spinnin' ♪
♪ Will you talk to me? ♪
♪ I don't live alone this time ♪
♪ I don't live alone ♪
MARIANA: How many people do you think you've killed?
I don't know.
For me it's no problem.
♪ ♪
♪ Woo! ♪ (echoing)
♪ ♪
MARIANA: Okay. He's there. I see him.
Yeah, that's him.
Cigarette in mouth.
I'm in downtown L.A. at 1:00 A.M.
to meet with an underground party promoter named Ziggy.
I'm Mariana. ZIGGY: How are you?
MARIANA: Nice to meet you. ZIGGY: Nice to meet you.
MARIANA: So, you guys keep the gate closed and...
ZIGGY: We have to, you know?
MARIANA: What do you call a party like this?
ZIGGY: Well, this is the true underground.
MARIANA: And what makes it underground?
What, what is it?
ZIGGY: Obviously the sales of alcohol.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
ZIGGY: Ecstasy, everything you can imagine.
MARIANA: It's the ecstasy scene that I've come to check out.
The letter from my son's middle school
had been a warning to parents about three teens
who had just overdosed on a bad batch of ecstasy
that they had bought online and received through the mail.
Is ecstasy a big part of it? Do people...
MARIANA: Would you say that it's, is it popular right now?
♪ ♪
MARIANA: Inside, partygoers are rolling,
a term used to describe the whirlwind of energy,
pleasure, and abandon fueled by ecstasy pills,
pills sold by this man who goes by the name of Pito.
What do you have in your hand, by the way?
MARIANA: Holy moly! Wow!
Oh, so the liquid is only up here?
This is ecstasy?
MARIANA: What kind are these?
MARIANA: And they're good quality?
MARIANA: How do you know they're good quality?
MARIANA: How much do you buy it and how much do you sell it for?
MARIANA: $2,000? Okay.
MARIANA: So you have about 20 here.
How much do you sell per, per pill?
MARIANA: That's a markup of over 1,000 percent
from wholesale to retail.
MARIANA: Indeed, it's a drop in the ocean.
In the year prior to the pandemic,
the business of electronic dance music was soaring.
160 million festival tickets were sold worldwide.
And the consumption of ecstasy by attendees
is a very open secret.
How do you get your stuff?
MARIANA: Here in the U.S.?
MARIANA: And do you know how he gets it?
How it's shipped or...
You don't ask him any questions?
MARIANA: Pito wouldn't connect me to his supplier,
so I had to do some digging.
Eventually, I found someone willing to talk.
♪ ♪
Up in the Bay Area, I've made contact with a crew
that is pressing their own ecstasy pills.
Their leader is a man named Sai, who has agreed to meet me
with the condition that we not reveal his actual voice
or the location where we're filming.
♪ ♪
Sai? Is that how you want to be called?
SAI: Yes, please.
MARIANA: So, what do you do here, Sai?
SAI: We make ecstasy.
MARIANA: Is this the end product?
SAI: That is the end product.
They're Blue Buddhas, 200 milligrams of MDMA.
MARIANA: So, what's the difference
between Molly, ecstasy, and MDMA?
SAI: MDMA is just the raw ingredient
in its pure crystal form.
Molly is usually referring to this in a capsule form.
And then ecstasy is a pressed pill.
MARIANA: Oh, so that's pure MDMA?
SAI: Yep.
MARIANA: Can I see, can I touch it?
SAI: Go for it.
MARIANA: Can I smell it, or is--
SAI: Go for it.
MARIANA: What happens?
SAI: Just don't sniff too hard. You'll be fine.
MARIANA: That's, yeah, it smells.
SAI: A little flowery. A little sweet.
MARIANA: Yeah, definitely sweet.
MDMA is the chemical signature of the molecule first created
in a lab in 1912 by the Merck pharmaceutical company,
where scientists were attempting, but failed,
to create a blood clotting agent.
In the 1950s, the U.S. government experimented
with MDMA and other psychedelics,
hoping they could be used as a truth serum,
but they, too, abandoned the effort.
Later, in the 1970s,
psychedelic chemist Sasha Shulgin
saw a different path for MDMA.
Recreating the molecule in his lab,
he experimented on himself,
then gave the drug to therapists
to treat patients struggling with emotional trauma,
work that is again picking up steam today.
But in the 1980s, when word got out of MDMA's euphoric highs,
the drug jumped to the streets.
Clubs in cities across America began openly selling MDMA pills,
now branded with a new name--ecstasy.
MARIANA: Does it have to be exactly 20?
SAI: Yeah.
We want to crush it up so there's no hot spots
and the pills are evenly dosed.
MARIANA: How many pills can you press
with that amount of...
SAI: This is an extra 100 pills.
MARIANA: 100 pills?
SAI: Yeah.
MARIANA: How much do they sell for?
SAI: Uh, retail on these are $20.
MARIANA: So, you can make $2,000 from just today
from the pills you're pressing today?
SAI: Yeah.
MARIANA: How much did buying the actual MDMA cost,
just the raw materials?
SAI: Uh, I'd rather not say.
MARIANA: That means you're probably making
good money from this.
SAI: Yeah, it's mostly profit, let's be real.
MARIANA: Right.
SAI: And now it's time to really mix it.
MARIANA: Oh, so now it's all just mixing.
SAI: Now it's just mixing. Now we wait.
MARIANA: What kind of people buy and use MDMA,
you would say, compared to other drugs?
SAI: Uh, I mean, ravers, obviously, a lot of ravers,
but people of all sorts, like older people, professionals.
I've been at parties where there's grandparents there
who are rolling and they're just, like,
a cute, little old couple
in love with each other, having a great time.
It's nice to see.
MARIANA: Do you ever worry that this might land
into the wrong hands?
Like a person who's too young to try it
or who's not in the right place,
and things can go wrong real fast?
SAI: For sure.
I mean, the kid thing I kind of feel okay about,
because it's pretty bitter.
It's very bitter.
And, I mean, like, there's only so much I can do about that.
Wrong person? I don't know.
No, I guess it's just their own personal responsibility
to not do that, because what can I do about that?
MARIANA: So, when was the first time you ever tried MDMA?
SAI: Almost five years ago,
and it was just me and my friend by ourselves,
and we were just overwhelmed.
We were just so, like, sensitive to everything.
We just turned off the lights,
sat there in darkness for a second,
and then just ended up, like,
walking around the park all night and talking
and, like, really connecting as people.
MARIANA: Did you like it then?
SAI: I loved it, yeah.
I felt like it opened this emotional window
that's been closed my whole life.
I just didn't know it. And it was blasted wide open.
And then when the drug was off, like when I came down,
it closed, but it never closed all the way.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: Wow. Now, totally blue.
So, this is the actual pill-pressing machine?
SAI: Yep. This is a TDP 5.
MARIANA: And how many pills can you do?
SAI: So, when it's plugged in and automated,
it's 3,500 an hour, I believe.
MARIANA: Wow!
SAI: It's very quick.
So, it's been filled, and now the press comes down.
Pressure's applied.
(pill drops)
MARIANA: Oh, wow! So, here it is.
So, this is worth $20, yeah?
SAI: Yep.
MARIANA: Why not make this stuff yourself, the actual pure MDMA?
SAI: The chemicals are just too closely watched.
It's pretty hard to source the ingredients
and get away with it.
MARIANA: MDMA must be synthesized
using a substance known as a precursor.
It was originally oil from the sassafras tree,
but today the labs that make the drug
do it largely by working with synthetic compounds.
And where does this come from?
SAI: Usually Amsterdam.
MARIANA: That's right-- Amsterdam.
The famously tolerant capital of the Netherlands
is also the world's epicenter of MDMA.
The reason goes back to 1985...
MAN: The Drug Enforcement Administration is announcing
its intention to place the drug known as MDMA,
or by the street name ecstasy,
under emergency controls in Schedule I.
MARIANA: ...when the U.S. government named MDMA
as a Schedule I drug.
At the time, nations around the world quickly followed suit.
But the Netherlands didn't institute a ban
for three more years, and criminal groups took notice,
using it as a hub to legally produce MDMA
and then illegally distribute it around the world.
It's 30 years later, and the industry in Holland
is still flying high.
♪ ♪
I'm here to find out how Dutch MDMA reaches American shores.
And there's a charismatic trafficker
with American ties who has agreed to meet me.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: I've been looking for a route into the underground,
and I'm hoping Steve Brown can help me.
(ding)
He's agreed to a meeting, right on the Amstel River.
And you were born in the United States, right?
STEVE BROWN: I'm born in the United States.
Came here with my father and mother back to Holland.
My father was a GI, so that's how he met my mother.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
STEVE: And when I was growing up with my own family,
I have lived about ten years in the States.
MARIANA: By the time he retired,
Dutch-American trafficker Steve Brown
had moved ecstasy across the globe.
And I'm hoping he can introduce me
to current players sending pills to the U.S.
How did you get started in the, in the drug business?
STEVE: We started out with a youth community center
called the Happy Family, and we only were selling hashish.
I'm talking seventies and eighties here.
MARIANA: Like Amsterdam's red-light district,
the Happy Family and other coffee shops
that sold weed and hash
revealed the boundaries of Dutch tolerance and profitability.
According to Steve,
he was raking in $20 million a year at the time,
mostly from illegal drug sales.
And when did MDMA sort of enter the scene?
STEVE: The eighties.
The ecstasy pill is introduced here by the Israeli Mafia,
and so they asked me, because I had
at the Happy Family a lot of customers,
if I wanted to sell that pill on behalf of them.
MARIANA: So you were one of the first people ever here
to sell ecstasy?
STEVE: I was the first on the record.
MARIANA: Are you still involved in the drug business?
STEVE: No. I went with pension, already 15 years ago.
MARIANA: But you still have contacts?
STEVE: Yes.
MARIANA: So if we wanted to gain access
into this drug underworld here in Holland,
would you be able to help us?
STEVE: I will do really my best, but it's very dangerous.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: Steve says that competing criminal groups
and widespread access to weapons
created an "anything goes" atmosphere here.
He begins by putting me in touch
with people connected with European distribution.
MARIANA: Oh, can I see that?
MARIANA: Is it because it's high quality?
MARIANA: And where is this made?
MARIANA: For how much time of work?
MARIANA: Oh, wow.
But what I'm really in search of
is connections to the U.S. market.
What other countries are you guys selling MDMA to?
MARIANA: And to the U.S.?
MARIANA: Why not?
MARIANA: Wow.
MARIANA: Because we know that Dutch pills
are going to the U.S.
Who's--how are they getting there?
♪ ♪
MARIANA: So far, I've come up short
with connections to the States,
but an American source has sent me here,
to a warehouse in a town one hour outside of Amsterdam.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: Can I come in?
How are you?
MARIANA: Notorious...
MARIANA: P-I-G for pig?
MARIANA: Why that name?
MARIANA: (chuckles) This is ecstasy?
NOTORIOUS P-I-G: Yeah.
MARIANA: And what is this? What is it?
MARIANA: Salvador Dali, the Spanish painter?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: He was actually my favorite painter growing up.
MARIANA: (laughs) Is it really your favorite pill?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah. MARIANA: What is this?
MARIANA: Oh, yeah, they have the Maserati symbol and everything.
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: Where are all of these going to?
MARIANA: You're shipping them all to the U.S.?
MARIANA: So you're not afraid of American authorities?
NOTORIOUS P-I-G: No.
MARIANA: For three years? NOTORIOUS P-I-G: Yeah.
MARIANA: How do you ship all this stuff?
How do you ship it to the U.S.?
MARIANA: Oh, so you're hiding the address, right?
MARIANA: I'm not gonna say the whole name,
but it's Ryan something
and going to Michigan, United States.
And this one is Christian, going to Colorado.
This one is going to Florida. Ecstasy pills.
MARIANA: Oh, wow. So, it's tons of packages.
MARIANA: So this guy received...
MARIANA: Wow! How do these American people,
how do they even know, how do they contact you?
How do they know, where do you sell?
MARIANA: Yeah.
MARIANA: That you've posted?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
♪ Beat, beat, rock, to the rock beat, beat ♪
♪ ♪
MARIANA: What strikes me as remarkable
about Piggy's Telegram channel,
which he has branded "Dope Discovery,"
isn't just the hundreds of videos plugging his wares;
it's the unbridled joy he takes
in thumbing his nose at the police.
So, you have fun doing this? This is like...
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah. (laughs) MARIANA: ...fun for you?
MARIANA: Why is the Netherlands such a center for production
of MDMA and ecstasy?
MARIANA: Okay. But if they were able to get into this, this room
and see all this and arrest you...
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: ...with all this stuff, or in your car, wherever...
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: What would happen to you?
MARIANA: Yeah. You did?
MARIANA: For how long?
MARIANA: 150 hours of community service, that's it?
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: Given the lenient sentencing laws
in the Netherlands,
it makes sense that so many criminal groups
have set up production here.
Back in the States, large ecstasy busts are rare,
but they do draw serious jail time.
15,000 pills would result in federal charges,
a minimum sentence of ten years and a fine of $4 million.
What about overdoses?
Do you get scared about, I don't know,
people receiving this and taking it all?
MARIANA: Wow. NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: And how did you feel about that?
MARIANA: Oh, did you worry about, I mean,
didn't the police investigate then, who sold him...
MARIANA: Death is bad for business, so Piggy says
he tests the purity of his products regularly,
a preventative step meant to guard against
the kind of overdose that I was informed about
from my son's school.
What supposed to happen?
MARIANA: So it's definitely MDMA.
NOTORIOUS P.I.G.: Yeah.
MARIANA: How do you get your pills, by the way?
MARIANA: So, you don't think it's worth it,
me asking you to talk to the guy that doesn't like you?
MARIANA: Why do you have a shotgun here?
MARIANA: It's tempting to think of Piggy as an anomaly,
but after my conversations with Steve Brown,
I realize that would be naive.
How much has it changed, the drug underworld,
from back then to these days?
STEVE: So the business in the beginning
was actually not really violent at all.
MARIANA: And nowadays?
STEVE: Well, if you compare with that time,
it's a difference between day and night.
Step by step, the violence get worse, worse, and worse,
up to today.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm. And now?
STEVE: And now, 30 years later,
it's a commercial billion-dollar business,
and in every billion-dollar business, people will kill.
Killing is normal now.
I myself have been shot.
I have one bullet in my liver and one through my arm.
MARIANA: You know, I grew up in Europe.
Holland is the last place where you'd expect this violence.
You know, they give--
You know?
♪ ♪
MARIANA: By definition, black markets operate
with their own set of rules.
When times are good, money and market share
are low-hanging fruit.
But increasingly in the Netherlands,
when a deal goes south or a player feels threatened,
the kind of justice handed out
has nothing to do with courtrooms.
(explosion)
MAN: Politie!
♪ ♪
MARIANA: In 2020, at a Dutch harbor, police officers found
seven shipping containers converted into prison cells,
a trove of stolen police uniforms,
automatic weapons,
and this, a fully soundproofed torture chamber,
complete with dentist chair,
hedge cutters, pliers, and scalpels.
That raid showed everyone that a new level of violence,
the kind usually seen in narco states,
has arrived in the heart of Europe.
I want to connect with someone
close to the violence and mayhem
to find out why things are falling apart.
And Steve Brown says he knows someone I should talk to.
Have to go right?
But there's little else he's ready to reveal,
until we're all in the same room.
STEVE: This is a very, very old friend of mine.
We will call him not his real name, you must understand that,
because he's still an active killer and hitman.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: How did you first become a killer, and why?
MARIANA: So, how old were you?
MARIANA: Were you involved in the drug business at the time?
MAN: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARIANA: And how many people do you think you've killed?
MARIANA: But is it--
MARIANA: And who are these people? And why--
MARIANA: So all people involved in the drug business?
MARIANA: What's the process like?
How does it work? How do you...
MARIANA: So, you spend two to three weeks
doing surveillance on the person before?
MARIANA: What guns do you usually carry with you?
MARIANA: Do you have AK-47s here, as well?
STEVE: They sell them here for 1,000.
They're very cheap. They come from the East Bloc.
MARIANA: I understand that you don't think
these people are innocent, but at least, I mean,
you at least have thought of their mothers
and their children?
MARIANA: There's a casual air to all of this
that I find quite unsettling,
because if there's a perception amongst traffickers
that violence and killing carry no consequences,
then it's open season on anyone perceived as an enemy.
If myself or a journalist coming here
and doing some sort of reporting that you wouldn't like,
would that be a reason to kill a journalist?
MARIANA: Oh, so you've had situations in which
you've gone to journalists and warned them,
do not mention my name or my family name.
MARIANA: If they had done it again--
MARIANA: Then you would have killed them?
MARIANA: Every crime journalist walks with a target
on his, or her, back.
In the last decade alone,
136 journalists have been killed around the world.
But it's honestly shocking to hear it described
in such casual terms by a person
who actually accepts money to pull the trigger.
So you're saying that you have,
many times in the past, intimidated journalists?
MAN: Yes.
MARIANA: Threatened them and told them that they can't
report on you or your family, or else you would kill them?
MAN: Yeah. Yeah.
MARIANA: I'm trying to get a sense of how much--
MARIANA: Yeah. How much back then
and how much do people get now?
MARIANA: But of course, the price depends on the target.
And some targets are bigger than others.
It was one year ago
that the country's most famous crime journalist,
Peter R. de Vries, was ambushed as he stepped out
of a TV studio in downtown Amsterdam.
(gunshots)
REPORTER: Celebrity Dutch crime reporter
Peter R. de Vries has died after being shot in the street.
De Vries, who was 64, was a frequent commentator
on television crime programs.
MARIANA: I want to understand what the killing meant
to Dutch society.
These men, who have arrived for our interview
in bulletproof cars
and under the protection of seven government agents,
are friends of De Vries whose own lives are now at risk.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: I started looking into ecstasy
after receiving an email from my son's school.
But following the trail of this party drug
has led me further and further underground.
And now, here in the Netherlands,
I've arrived at a somber anniversary,
the death of renowned crime journalist Peter R. de Vries.
These men are friends of De Vries,
lawyers Peter Schouten and Onno de Jong.
PETER SCHOUTEN: Well, what actually happened
was that Peter was shot, executed from close range,
in a very busy area in the Netherlands,
and without knowing, he had been observed already
for a long time.
The killer walked up behind him and shot him five times.
MARIANA: The story began in 2018,
with a Dutch-Moroccan trafficker named Ridouan Taghi.
One of the people working for his organization,
named Nabil B., turned himself into Dutch authorities
and agreed to testify against his former boss.
ONNO DE JONG: When you are becoming a crown witness,
you go and talk with the police in secrecy,
in total secrecy, and you make statements.
PETER: And in this case,
this protection agreement was also made,
and it means that Nabil was in a secret location
and that also his family should be protected,
and there it went wrong.
MARIANA: Just a few days after giving his statement,
Nabil's brother, who was not involved with organized crime,
was murdered at his print shop.
PETER: And more than a year after the brother was killed,
the lawyer who assisted Nabil
was shot dead in front of his house
by people sent to him to, yeah, basically liquidate him,
to execute him.
ONNO: And it sent a shockwave throughout society.
And I always experienced it as very naive, because they say,
"Well, this, this, this is not happening here.
This shouldn't happen in Holland.
We're so nice, and we're a lovely country."
Well, we are not anymore.
PETER: Yeah, that was a message to put fear in society.
You could see it as the start of narco-terror in the Netherlands.
MARIANA: Into that vacuum stepped Peter R. de Vries,
who recruited Peter and Onno to take on the job
of becoming Nabil's new legal team,
while himself becoming a high-profile advisor
for the witness.
He's seen here reading the text of his shoulder tattoo.
PETER R. DE VRIES: All...
(applause)
...all that is necessary for the triumph of evil
is good men do nothing.
(cheering)
PETER: Peter had the enormous sense for justice
and an enormous sense to fight injustice.
And he was basically the only journalist
within the Netherlands who, besides reporting on crime,
really picked up a case and then helped the victims.
MARIANA: But not everybody had warm feelings
about Peter de Vries,
especially those in the underworld, like Steve Brown.
STEVE: You want to know, of course, about...
MARIANA: Yup.
STEVE: ...the "crime journalist,"
Peter R. de Vries.
But I have to tell you honest,
I might not be the right person to ask about him
because I'm sworn enemy of him for over 30 years.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: From the beginning of
his career, De Vries was known
to seek out high-profile targets
and had his crosshairs on Steve Brown,
leveling accusations and launching sting operations
that they broadcast on Dutch TV.
This confrontation was Steve Brown's response
to a report that De Vries had broadcast on TV.
(speaking Dutch)
MARIANA: You didn't like each other. But I mean--
STEVE: That's an understatement.
MARIANA: I understand, but there's certainly a part of you
that was shocked by the fact
that a journalist of his caliber was killed.
STEVE: No. No, you know what is shocking?
Generally speaking, I'm against murder.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
STEVE: It's always shocking if somebody gets shot.
MARIANA: Steve Brown had nothing to do
with the murder of Peter R. de Vries,
but it's easy to see how reporters in this world
can make lasting enemies.
PETER: It was incredible, and it was hard for Dutch society
to see somebody like that being shot.
It was, actually nobody feels safe anymore
at a moment like that in a country.
MARIANA: And that, perhaps, was the point.
Currently, Taghi and 16 associates
are on trial in the Netherlands,
with 700 army and police officers mobilized
to safeguard the courthouse.
I came to the Netherlands to track the major source
of American MDMA, but found a country
starting to resemble a narco state.
A Dutch newspaper reporting on drug traffickers
was recently rammed in a van attack.
A news magazine was hit with an anti-tank rocket.
And 94 hand grenade incidents were reported by police
in a two-year span.
It's a wave of violence that has all of Europe wondering,
what could possibly come next?
♪ ♪
MARIANA: Did you know Peter de Vries?
GABRIELLA ADER: Yes. Yeah. Personally.
MARIANA: Personally?
GABRIELLA: Yeah, yeah.
MARIANA: Like Peter de Vries,
who was murdered for getting too close to Dutch traffickers,
Gabriella Ader reports extensively
on the Dutch underworld.
When you found out, what was your reaction?
GABRIELLA: I was very startled and, unfortunately,
I cannot say it was a huge surprise.
MARIANA: Huh, really? Why not?
GABRIELLA: Yeah. My family's from Sicily,
and I can't even tell you
how much it now resembles the situation there.
MARIANA: With the Mafia? With the Mob?
GABRIELLA: Yeah. I even spoke to lawyers, almost crying,
who told me, "Yeah. I just want to stop this job."
Because, you know, they used to have a lot of respect
for attorneys, journalists, et cetera,
but that's just all gone.
And you also see it now, for instance,
if you see the trial, it is not normal.
There's so many police cars, so many army members are ready.
And then everybody thinks the Netherlands is so progressive
and that we're always in control.
But now you can see, I don't know. Do we?
MARIANA: I'm European. I was born in Portugal,
lived most of my life in Portugal,
so the fact that this is all happening right here
in the Netherlands is really mind-blowing to me.
GABRIELLA: Yeah. It is. Because there's so much money involved.
So, the stakes are just too high.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
GABRIELLA: And also, I think, what I hear from colleagues,
or from attorneys, is that really the climate has changed.
It became so much more violent.
MARIANA: Mm-hmm.
I'm assuming it also sort of had a negative effect on journalism,
anyone trying to investigate the crime world here.
Now people are more scared, right?
How's that affected your job?
Are you more scared to do what you do?
GABRIELLA: I did get myself unregistered
when I bought an apartment
because I didn't want people to trace me.
MARIANA: Wow!
So, basically, you didn't put your name on the...
GABRIELLA: Yeah. You can't find me.
MARIANA: You can't find you.
GABRIELLA: Yeah. So, I'm not scared,
but I do take care of things.
And I just think twice before I do something.
MARIANA: The people I'm meeting next are also taking precautions
to keep a low profile.
But in this case, they're not worried about the police,
they are the police
and are so concerned about counter-surveillance
that they've asked us to keep their location hidden.
(door opens)
Thank you.
ANDY KRAAG: Go ahead.
So, this is our mock-up facility.
This is where you have all the hardware
that's been used in labs.
You have the boiler systems, the ventilation systems,
and the tableting machines.
MARIANA: So, this is what's used to make MDMA.
ANDY: This is actually what was confiscated during raids.
MARIANA: Andy Kraag is a former special forces officer
in the Dutch Marines who now leads the Netherlands'
National Criminal Investigations Division.
What can you do, as a police agency, to stop this?
To try to stop the violence
in the drug business from happening?
ANDY: Yeah. Well, in recent years,
we've had pretty good successes internationally.
We were able to get into the communications
of those drug criminals.
We could actually real-time monitor
what those criminals were doing.
It was as if we were sitting next to them at the table
and we could constantly anticipate what they were doing,
and then we could act accordingly.
(shouting)
MARIANA: The operation he's referring to
involved a company called EncroChat,
whose encrypted phones were widely used
by criminals across Europe.
In 2019, Dutch, French, and British authorities
hacked the phone system,
giving them direct insight into criminal networks,
which resulted in thousands of arrests across the world.
It's a sting that had a profound impact
on the drug underground of Europe.
Even Notorious P.I.G. had mentioned it when we spoke.
MARIANA: Oh, yeah, the encrypted chat,
where they could read encrypted chats. Yeah.
MARIANA: And what does that mean for you?
For your business?
♪ ♪
MARIANA: What was the most surprising thing you found
through the EncroChat investigation?
ANDY: It is as if you have one big wiretap
on the complete criminal underworld.
We knew that the drug business was intense, that it was high,
but we didn't knew that it was that big.
The revenues worldwide, of Dutch MDMA worldwide,
was almost up to 19 billion euros.
MARIANA: Wow.
ANDY: Yeah.
MARIANA: Are you seeing international groups coming in,
or foreign groups coming into the Netherlands?
ANDY: Our Dutch criminals, you see them working
closely together with Mexican criminals.
They just switch products.
MARIANA: They bring cocaine in and they take MDMA out?
ANDY: So it's, it's cocaine for MDMA, it's MDMA for cocaine.
MARIANA: You know, I've reported extensively in Mexico
on the drug business there,
and when we talk about torture chambers
and intimidation of journalists
and even the killing of journalists,
there's enormous similarities to what's happening
in Mexico with the drug war.
ANDY: If you look at Mexico, if you see what's going on there,
of course that scares us, so we're very alert
of more symptoms of that moving into Holland.
MARIANA: And are you seeing more violence
in the Netherlands right now?
ANDY: It's becoming more violent, yeah.
Demand worldwide is growing, and that means there are
more drug criminals, more competition.
And with competition comes violence by definition.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: The global MDMA business is a wheel,
and it is now turning full circle,
taking me back to America,
to a mailbox in central New Jersey
where clients of the Notorious P.I.G.
await their product.
♪ ♪
MARIANA: I've left the Netherlands behind,
but I'm here to see some pills created there.
I think this is it.
I think they're expecting us.
(clears throat) Yeah.
MAC: Hi, Mariana? MARIANA: Yes, it is.
How are you, Mac? Nice to see you.
MAC: Nice to meet you. MARIANA: You, too, finally.
MAC: Yes.
MARIANA: So I heard you got the package?
MAC: I did.
MARIANA: How are you? I'm Mariana.
ADRIAN: I'm Adrian, how are you?
MARIANA: Good, nice to meet you.
Notorious P.I.G. asked two of his customers,
whom we'll call Mac and Adrian,
to let us know when his next shipment arrived.
So these are the packages?
MARIANA: No, I don't, actually.
Can I just see them before you open it?
MARIANA: So is it usually in packages like this?
MAC: Yes.
ADRIAN: Yes. And it came ripped, too,
so I just, kind of, like, taped it up.
MARIANA: It came ripped?
ADRIAN: A little bit.
MARIANA: Oh, wow.
ADRIAN: So, here's the crystal.
MAC: That's pure MDMA.
ADRIAN: Yeah, it's pure MDMA.
Same presses he uses to make these Maserati pills.
MARIANA: Oh, these are Maseratis?
ADRIAN: Yes.
MARIANA: We saw these in Holland.
These two are small-time dealers.
They'll repackage and sell Piggy's MDMA and ecstasy,
tripling their $500 investment.
So, how many of these packages do you get?
MAC: Maybe five a month? Once a week.
MARIANA: So every week,
you're receiving packages from Notorious P.I.G.?
MAC: Correct, correct.
MARIANA: Can I talk about the elephant in the room,
which I haven't yet?
MAC: Sure.
MARIANA: That's sitting right there, which is a 9-millimeter?
MAC: That is a 9-millimeter, but it's actually a ghost gun.
MARIANA: It's a ghost gun?
So you use this mainly here for protection
because you're operating a drug business out of your house?
MAC: Correct.
MARIANA: Notably, even on this side of the Atlantic,
the top concern of dealers is not law enforcement,
nor is it protecting innocents abroad.
Have you heard how the drug trade in the Netherlands
is fueling the violence there?
MAC: No, I--
MARIANA: Including the death of journalists.
Priority number one is safeguarding profits.
MAC: I guess, to answer your question directly,
no, I haven't.
I guess it does concern me, but it doesn't concern me
to the amount that I would let it affect my business.
MARIANA: Apathy is a luxury that's not available
to Tahmina Akefi, a Dutch journalist
who was engaged to Peter R. de Vries in 2021,
at the time he was murdered.
I'm so, so sorry for your loss.
MARIANA: Did you ever think that something like this
would happen in your country?
This was possible?
That a murder like this, out in the open, would be possible?
MARIANA: Do you feel like the Netherlands
is becoming a narco state?
MARIANA: Do you think that the users, you know,
the casual drug users that are, you know,
at parties using MDMA,
which the, the Netherlands is such a center for,
do you think that they're aware that their drug use
and them buying drugs
is actually funding these criminal organizations?
♪ ♪
MARIANA: In every drug story I've ever done,
I encounter this disconnect
between the violence of the trade
and the ignorance of the end user.
Maybe it's unreasonable for a club kid in downtown L.A.
to consider Peter's death, and the deaths of so many others,
before getting their fix.
But the complicity is real.
Without that demand, there's no supply chain,
no billions in profits, and no blood.
♪ ♪
Captioned by Side Door Media Services