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State Farm encourages small business owners to get insurance for their businesses. Shopify helps businesses sell their products online and in-person. Easterday Farms, a family-owned agricultural operation, faced financial troubles due to Cody Easterday's failed cattle futures trading. He created fake invoices and a ghost herd to cover his losses. Tyson Foods filed a lawsuit and the Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation. Easterday Farms filed for bankruptcy, and local businesses were owed money. The farm's assets were sold, and Cody Easterday was charged with wire fraud and sentenced to prison. He still owed Tyson Fresh Meats $178 million in restitution. This show is supported by State Farm. You have insurance for your home, your health, and your car. Why don't you have insurance for your small business? So many small business owners think they don't need or don't even know about small business insurance. 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There are certain companies throughout agriculture that raise the bar, and I would like to think that Easterday Farms are one that continually raises the bar. I believe the future is great for Easterday Farms. We're all about the future. I mean, we're always looking ahead for tomorrow. You know, agriculture is our life. We eat it, we breathe it, we sleep it, and we wouldn't have it any other way. Easterday Farms was founded in 1958, when Urban Easterday purchased 300 undeveloped acres of land in the Columbia Basin in the Tri-Cities area of the eastern Washington state. 300 days of sunshine and nearby rivers provided a fertile ground for an agricultural revolution. The Easterday Farm and family has expanded ever since. Urban's son, Gale Easterday, and his wife, Karen, took over in 1979. Their five children made excellent field hands. Cody Allen Easterday, the highly ambitious youngest son, became an official partner in the business in 1989 when he was 18 years old. By age 20, he was managing it. The third generation of Easterday to do so. Since 1958, Easterday Farms has farmed the Columbia Basin of Washington state, supplying safe, nutritious, and affordable conventional potatoes and onions worldwide. Over the course of three generations, they have truly perfected the art of potato and onion production. By 2020, Easterday Farms had grown into one of the largest family-owned agricultural operations in the Northwest. A massive operation featuring 22,000 acres of potatoes, onions, and grain, 150 employees, and $250 million in annual revenue. The company also raised cattle for beef on feedlots outside of town. That's what got Cody Easterday into trouble. In 2010, Cody Easterday, on behalf of Easterday Ranches, entered into a feeding agreement with Tyson Fresh Meats, a subsidiary of the giant multinational corporation Tyson Foods. Tyson would advance money to Easterday, who would purchase and feed up to 180,000 cattle a year until they reached a desired weight. Then the cattle would be sold back to Tyson for slaughter at market rates. Easterday would keep the difference between the market price and the purchase price, minus the cost of feed and 4% interest. Depending on the quality of the beef raised and the selling price, it wasn't uncommon for Easterday to owe Tyson money at the end of a cycle. So, to hedge against potential losses, a common practice of farms of Easterday's magnitude would regularly purchase futures contracts on the price of beef. Here's how it works. Let's say you purchase beef futures for $1.40 per pound, and the market price of beef turns out to be $1.60 per pound. When those futures contracts expire, you would realize a $0.20 loss per pound. Then let's say you sell your cattle for the actual local price of $1.50 per pound. You would factor in that $0.20 futures loss to the $1.50 actual sell, and you would arrive at a net price of $1.30 per pound. Obviously, it works in the opposite way. If your futures contract prices exceed the market price at the expiration date. For instance, you buy futures at $1.40 per pound. The market price is $1.20 per pound, a $0.20 gain this time. But you sell your cattle on hand at $1.10 per pound. Add the $0.20 gain from the futures, a $1.30 net per pound. No major losses. No major gains. A conservative approach. That's hedging. Or you could just gamble and try to make as much profit as possible. That's what Cody Easterday was doing. And he was terrible at it. In 2011, Cody Easterday lost almost $14 million playing with beat futures. In 2012, he lost another $17 million. 2013, another $10 million. 2014, another $20 million. Finally, in 2015, he profited $7 million. Before losing another $6 million the following year. By 2016, Cody Easterday was $60 million in the hole. And it wasn't even his money. It was Tyson Fresh Meats money that they had advanced the farm to raise cattle on its behalf. So in order to get out of this predicament and pay his mounting debts, Cody Easterday decided to raise even more cattle for the company. Except these cattle would only exist on paper. That year, Cody Easterday began instructing his unsuspecting employees to create fake invoices for new placements to send to Tyson for even larger influxes of advanced cash. Cody kept a separate set of books on the ghost cattle to cover his tracks and calculate his debt, which he fully intended to repay after some successful futures trading. In 2018, Cody Easterday lost another $58 million. So the fake invoices continued, and the ghost herd ballooned in size. By 2020, Lock 99, the lot where Easterday's non-existent animals were assigned in documentation, contained 263,780 head of cattle. At the end of November that year, Tyson had grown wise to the scheme, and its executives and legal counsel scheduled a call with Cody Easterday. I screwed up, he admitted immediately. I've been showing more cattle in inventory than I have on feed. I violated your trust, but that is where I'm at. Okay, so what happened to the money? Pissed it away on the Merc, Cody told them. The Merc being a reference to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange where he was trading futures. Cody Easterday agreed to cooperate with Tyson's audit of his feedlots, and agreed to meet with officials from the company at their headquarters in South Dakota to delineate his fraud. The same day that meeting took place, December 10, 2020, Gail Easterday, Cody's 79-year-old father who helped build the family's farming empire, drove his Dodge around the wrong way on a highway off-ramp, colliding head-on into a semi-truck that was carrying Easterday Farms' potatoes. He was killed instantly. There were no break or swerve markings on the road. On January 23, 2021, Tyson filed a civil lawsuit against Easterday Ranches, alleging that the company had been defrauded out of more than $233 million. The U.S. Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation, and Easterday Farms and Ranches filed for bankruptcy. Tonight we have an update on the investigation into the Eastern Washington Ranch, accused of charging Tyson foods for cattle that it never actually had. Now the ranch has filed for bankruptcy, and the state is planning to look into the claims against them. The Easterday bankruptcy had a major trickle-down effect on the local Tri-Cities economy. More than 230 small businesses in the area were owed money. Farmers, truckers, veterinarians, and parts and supply stores. Few of them had contracts. Most relied on handshake deals. However, all the creditors were paid back when Easterday's land equipment and water rights were sold. Two bidders emerged at the auction for the primary lot, an organization owned by Bill Gates and the agricultural arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the latter of which won with a bid of $209 million. In March 2021, Cody Easterday was charged with wire fraud for his $233 million scheme against Tyson. It was also discovered that Easterday had defrauded a second victim, Segal Properties, out of $11 million. He pleaded guilty immediately and promised to make restitution. At a sentencing hearing in October 2022, Cody Easterday blamed his behavior on a gambling problem. Quote, It was in a weird, twisted way. The reason I was doing it was to fix the problem I had created. It was circular. There's no excuse. I've let a lot of people down, and it will be a long time to fix that if I ever can. I'm just sorry, and this is not the man I am. Cody Easterday was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced by 27 months when new sentencing guidelines for first-time offenders were retroactively applied. After the auction of the family's assets was finalized, Cody still owed Tyson Fresh Meats $178 million in restitution. But he had a plan to pay them back, even from behind bars. Cody Easterday sued Tyson Fresh Meats twice. The first lawsuit related to a 2013 agreement with a company to sell beef in Japan. It was branded Cody's Beef, and a smiling photo of Cody-san was featured on the packaging. Easterday claimed Tyson promised him half of the profits from the venture, which he never received. U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian dismissed the case because the alleged contract was too vague to enforce, and because Cody's, quote, unclean hands prevented him from claiming Tyson owed him anything. The second lawsuit held more merit because the claims were almost undeniably true. Easterday alleged that Tyson participated in, quote, anti-competitive, unfair, abusive, unjustly discriminatory, and deceptive acts and practices by forcing the cattle supplier to bear the risk of fluctuating prices. Tyson Fresh Meats could demand such arrangements because it held a near monopsony in the Northwest, meaning Tyson was one of, if not the only, cattle buyer. A packer forcing a feedlot to assume 100% of the risk associated with cattle allegedly owned by the packer is an anti-competitive arrangement that would not occur in a competitive market, the filing reads. That lawsuit was ultimately dismissed because Tyson argued it dealt with Easterday Ranches, not Cody Easterday personally. But that didn't make the accusations any less true. Cattle ranches had no choice but to contract with Tyson if they wanted to make a living or anything close to it. As a result, Tyson holds the power to demand essentially whatever it wants, requiring ranchers to operate on the thinnest of margins, which in turn makes speculative future trading, like the kind in which Cody Easterday was participating, necessary. And it's all by design, part of a larger agricultural economy that Tyson Foods pioneered, where competition is stifled, eliminated, or acquired, where inhumane treatment of its animals and employees is prevalent, and record profits are measured in blood-soaked dollar bills. I'm warning you now, this will not be a pleasant listen. The birth of the meat machine and its effect on planet Earth on this episode of Swindled. Swindled. Support for Swindled comes from SimpliSafe. What are you doing right now? Are you at work? Are you on vacation? Probably, right? Now let me ask you this. Is someone breaking into your house right now? Would you even know? I would, because I have SimpliSafe Home Security. 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People everywhere were trying to keep their heads above water, trying to make the best of what they had. And yet in the midst of such hardship, there was one man with a dream, a dream of providing for his family and maybe, just maybe, providing something more. That man was John Tyson, a man who worked long and hard hauling produce to markets in the North during the early 30s, planting those critical first seeds which would later become Tyson Foods. John W. Tyson sold his first chicken in the midst of the Great Depression. The 25-year-old, recently exiled from the family farm, found himself stranded in Springdale, Arkansas, where he hauled hay and fruit to make ends meet. During the off-season, Tyson bridged the financial gap by transporting chickens from Arkansas to places like Kansas City and St. Louis, where in the 1930s, the meat was still considered a delicacy. To transport the chickens to further destinations, John Tyson needed to devise a way for the birds to keep their weight on during the trips. So then Dad wanted to haul them farther than Kansas City and St. Louis, so he got the idea of putting a coop on the trailer and nailing it down and then leaving a little space and then nailing another coop and then he could put feed and water in that coop and he could haul chickens all the way to Chicago and Detroit and Cincinnati and that was the start of our company and Dad was a real pioneer. Ever the innovator, John W. Tyson soon developed new ways to generate revenue. To ensure a steady supply of chickens, he purchased in bulk from a hatchery and paid farmers a fixed price to raise them. Tyson also formulated his own chicken feed, which he sold to the farmers raising the chickens that he owned, making money from two steps on the supply chain. Eventually, he would add a third. Tyson bought his own hatchery. In 1947, he incorporated this company. But Tyson Feed and Hatchery was still a far cry from the behemoth it would ultimately become. It wasn't until John W. Tyson's son, Don Tyson, entered the picture in the 1950s that the industry was reshaped. The business became vertically integrated, meaning Tyson took control of every aspect of a chicken's life, from birth to plate. Tyson owned the eggs, the birds, the feed, the slaughterhouse, the processing plant, the trucking company. The meat never left Tyson's control. Thus, neither did the money. Profit margins grew larger than ever before, as did the chickens themselves. In addition to streamlining every step of the production cycle, Tyson began tinkering with the chickens' biology. Within a few decades, the bird had almost doubled in size, and about a third of the time, with less feed than nature had historically allowed or required. Don Tyson, who took over as president of the company in 1966, essentially created a new form of publicly traded agriculture, and it was perfect timing. Not just because his father, John W. Tyson, along with his wife, was hit and killed by an oncoming train a year later, but also because American life was rapidly changing to more widely include chicken products. Don Tyson had his own thoughts on the matter. My thoughts on life, it's like a train. Too soon, Don. Too soon. Under his leadership as chairman of the board, Tyson's foods continued to move forward. Major changes were happening in the chicken industry. Americans were recognizing the nutritional benefits of chicken, and per capita consumption was rapidly increasing. Tyson's Foods entered the 1970s with an annual broiler production of 72 million and the company's initial appearance on the Fortune 1000. In 1971, the company name was changed to Tyson Foods Incorporated. For Tyson Foods Incorporated, the 1970s was a decade of growth. The company's workforce, which now included women, more than quadrupled to keep up with the increased demand for the nutritious and delicious food. Evolving gender roles also paved the way for Tyson to squeeze even more profit from the animal by further processing chicken into quick, easy-to-prepare meals. By the end of the decade, the company was processing up to 230 million chickens per year, but not just chickens alone. In 1977, to hedge against the booms and busts of the chicken business, Tyson Foods also became the nation's largest hog producer. According to Christopher Leonard, who wrote a great book called The Meat Racket, which chronicles Tyson's rise to power, Tyson soon chickenized the pork industry as well, systematically butchered and processed in the most cost-efficient manner for which traditional pork companies could not compete. The other white meat, as it was marketed, was controlled by its own alternative. Beef would soon follow, courtesy of Tyson's multi-billion-dollar acquisition of Iowa Beef Processors, the country's largest beef company. By then, Tyson Foods had grown exponentially. The company spent the 1980s gobbling up everything in its way. Tyson has acquired dozens of competitors and suppliers, sometimes doubling in size by simply signing a check. And thanks to some union-busting, tax loopholes, tax breaks, federal subsidies, deregulation, a cozy relationship with fellow Arkansas native Governor Bill Clinton, and a lucrative partnership with McDonald's to become the sole supplier of the McNugget, Tyson became the largest chicken company in the United States by the mid-'80s. The once tiny operation was now a Fortune 500 company. In order to manage this new growth, we completed a new administration building in Springdale, Arkansas, near the place of John Tyson's humble beginnings. Now it was up to Don Tyson to pick up where John Tyson left off, to do his best, just as his father had always done. Don Tyson became a billionaire. When he took over as chairman of the company in 1967, Tyson Foods was earning annual revenues of $38 million. By 1990, Tyson was generating $3.8 billion a year and still growing uncontrollably. He'd built an empire that included thousands of farms that slaughtered and processed more than 2 billion chickens, more than 20 million pigs, and more than 7 million cows per year. Yet, looking at Don Tyson, you would have hardly known he'd reached such peaks. Besides the replica of Thomas Jefferson's Oval Office, from which he worked, that was accessorized with brass egg-shaped doorknobs and other chicken-related decor, and the yachts and the portfolio of property, Don Tyson remained a man of the people, even continued to wear the company's traditional khaki-colored uniform with name tag. We started wearing uniforms when our company was very small. It helped then. It helps now. We know each other. We go out to the plant. We go out to the chicken houses. And besides that, they're damn comfortable to wear. Don Tyson also kept alive Tyson Foods' tradition of nepotism. When he stepped aside in 1991, his son Johnny H. Tyson was waiting in the wings. Johnny's inevitable appointment to president and CEO rubbed many of the company's longtime executives the wrong way. There was nothing exceptional about the kid, but it didn't matter. Though a publicly traded company, the Tyson family retained 80 percent control and thus the final say. John H. Tyson, recently sober and born again, took over the company in 1998. His relatively short tenure was most remembered for ignoring his dad's advice and acquiring IVF, but also for blessing Tyson Foods with a little religious flair. Good food, good treats, good God, let's eat became the company's new slogan. Johnny also placed full-time clergy members in every slaughterhouse. One of the core values that we have is we strive to be a faith-friendly company. Johnny Tyson was out as chief by 2006. Non-family members have since taken over the role, but Johnny still sits on the board, as does his aunt, Barbara Tyson. The only family member that remains on Tyson's executive team is Johnny Tyson's 32-year-old son, John Randall Tyson, who, despite a lack of experience, was promoted to chief financial officer in October 2022. He was arrested a month later for getting drunk and falling asleep in a stranger's house. John, need you to wake up and talk to me before I drag you out of here butt-naked. Put your hands behind your back. No. Hands behind your back. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. This isn't your house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hands behind your back. You're under arrest. You're under arrest. Relax. John. Let's go, John. I'm going to sleep. No, you're not. You're going to jail. You're in the wrong house. I'm kind of curious if Mr. Tyson here is part of that family of Tysons that everybody seems to know about around here. John R. Tyson paid a $150 fine and apologized for his actions during the company's quarterly conference call. I'm embarrassed, he admitted. Not so fast, vegans. Now's not the time to get all high and mighty. Less than two months ago, Beyond Meat's chief operating officer, Doug Ramsey, was arrested for allegedly biting a man's nose, also in Arkansas, in fact, the same county. Ramsey is also a former Tyson executive. Today, Tyson Foods generates more than $50 billion in annual revenue and employs more than 140,000 people and operates in 32 states and 22 countries. It's the second largest processor of chicken, pork, and beef in the world and the largest in the U.S., producing a fifth of all the meat consumed in the country. Tyson owns Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Best Choice, Great Value, Meijer, Kirkwood, Publix, Ballpark, State Fair, and other brands. But the majority of its meat is sold unlabeled to schools, hospitals, restaurants, prisons, and other institutions. You are eating it, whether you know it or not. In an environment where few investors want anything to do with the food stocks, Tyson Foods has managed to do something remarkable. Its stock has caught fire. Tyson Foods is one of only a handful of meat companies that completely dominate the meat industry. The others, including Cargill, JBS, Smithfield, and Purdue, have all adopted the vertically integrated modern meat machine process that Tyson invented. And you would think that all that optimization and efficiency would lead to cost savings which would be passed on to the consumer. Think again. In September 2016, a food distributor filed a lawsuit against Tyson and other large poultry producers for conspiring to illegally inflate prices by nearly 50%. The companies, who are forbidden by antitrust laws from coordinating such things, artificially reduced the chicken supply in 2008 through a, quote, unprecedented destruction of breeder hens, and then did it again in 2011 and 2012 to drive up prices even further. The complaint alleged that the big producers were communicating with each other slyly by reporting data in a private industry publication. This is Tyson's CEO, Tom Hayes, in 2017. I wanted to ask you about the Securities and Exchange Commission's investigation into collusion within the chicken producing industry. Companies like Agristats that are data-oriented, are they wrong to be looking at this idea of collusion right now within the industry? Yes. That's funny, because when a grand jury like Tyson and other poultry producers as part of a Department of Justice investigation in April 2019, Tyson magically discovered evidence that some of its employees had participated in the scheme and disclosed that information to investigators seeking leniency, and they got it thanks to the Justice Department's Antitrust Leniency Program, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, rewards self-reporting by avoiding criminal convictions, fines, and prison time for cooperating employees. Tyson eventually paid $221.5 million to settle the case privately. The company did not have to admit liability. How convenient. Almost as convenient as rising inflation is for a company that salivates just thinking about gouging its customers. As Americans face rising prices for beef, chicken, and pork, one of the largest meat processors in the country, Tyson Foods, has reported record profits in the last quarter. And the cost of chicken will likely stay elevated as Tyson Foods and other companies cut back poultry production to boost margins. So they're basically admitting that, yeah, we had to raise prices on consumers because they went up, but we tacked on an additional 25% Tyson tax. Let's call it that. That's the beauty of being the only seller. You control the price. There's no competition. No free market. No mercy. Just keep pumping. Squeeze them even tighter. There's nothing but larger profit margins waiting for you at the expense of everything else. That's the beauty of also being the only buyer. You control the cost. One of the greatest things that we have to sustain is our relationship with our farmers. Because without that relationship, we don't have a business. Our relationship is a cornerstone of who we are. Let's explore that relationship. Remember, Tyson Foods owns the entire poultry process, from genetics to nugget. Their hens produce the eggs, which hatch in their facilities, which are eventually slaughtered in their building. Tyson retains control of the chicken throughout it all. However, what Tyson does not own is the farms. All that land, equipment, and time, it's cost prohibitive. A bad investment. So, to this day, Tyson contracts the raising and feeding of its animals to outside farmers. However, Tyson Foods still maintains control over those farmers through the use of restrictive contracts. And that's how our farms work. Tyson Foods actually owns the feed in the feed bins, and we actually own the chickens in the house. However, the properties, the equipment, the labor, everything around the business on the farm is actually owned by the farmer. Every six weeks, a Tyson representative delivers a batch of freshly hatched broiler chickens to farms where they will spend the next 40 days. Tyson also sells the required feed to the farmers, whose ultimate goal is to convert that feed into chicken meat in the most efficient way possible, since their pay is based on the weight of the flock. And those paychecks, determined by Tyson, vary wildly, and they're almost impossible to dispute. Bad luck can be fatal for a Tyson-contracted farmer. One bad batch of birds or a bad batch of feed can be enough to cause you to default on your debt. Debt that you only took on because Tyson pressured you into upgrading your equipment. Debt that you only qualified for because you had a contract with Tyson in hand. A contract that Tyson can choose not to renew at any point in time. You, the farmer, have no choice. What are you going to do? Hatch your own eggs, raise your own chickens, and then sell them to who, exactly? Tyson Foods and the like are the only buyers. You'd have to slaughter the birds and process them yourself if you wanted to compete. And let's be real, you can't compete. Building the infrastructure needed to operate would take an up-front investment of millions of dollars. Even if you were dumb enough to do that, you still wouldn't be able to produce a fraction of what someone like Walmart or McDonald's would demand. And even if you could, Tyson and friends could sabotage your operation by simply flooding the market and crashing the prices. A small farm like yours would drown in debt within weeks. For Tyson, it would be a rounding error. So if you can't beat them, join them. And don't make a fuss because Tyson has the ability to pick winners and losers. Constant complaining will be rewarded with chicks from older hens that aren't nearly as healthy. And Tyson representatives will pick your birds up early, which will cost you who knows how much in lost weight. Sounds evil, and it is, but all of these tactics and others were all but confirmed in a 2010 lawsuit against the company. A Tyson broiler clerk named Geraldine Henson was secretly taped by a former Tyson farmer named Norm Ranger. Geraldine admitted to Ranger that all of these things were happening, and later confirmed her account under oath in court. The jury found Tyson guilty of deceptive trade practices in that case for failing to disclose that farmers would not receive a fair return on investment. More recently, in 2021, Tyson paid $21 million to settle another lawsuit for conspiring with other poultry processors to suppress farmers' pay across the board. Cutting costs is the only ethos in which Tyson food divides. There's no better example of this than when the company calculates that it is no longer worth it to continue operating in a particular locale and shuts down its processing facilities, leaving its beloved farmers the quote, cornerstone of its business with a stack of unpaid bills and empty chicken poops. As the family of a Scott County man who spent nearly three decades in the poultry industry filed suit against Tyson food. The lawsuit alleges the company set up a scheme to keep local farmers like Gary Kiesler in debt, knowing the company planned to close what it called smaller-scale plants like the one in Dexter. The farmers say that they were forced to take on debt by investing millions of dollars as part of their contracts with Tyson to raise and care for chickens. Now, they're hoping to get at least some of that money back. You gotta hand it to them. That's some high-quality grade-A corporate exploitation. All the money, none of the risk. Additionally, cheap land and labor are not the only benefits Tyson derives from contracting with farms. There's also the added bonus of plausible deniability about what happens behind those barn doors. The following is a paid advertisement for the Swindle Valued Listener Rewards Program. 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Quite frankly, that is none of our concern. We've got mouths to feed. And that's your purpose, my cute little commodity. It all starts right here in this incubator. No, sorry. You will never meet your mother. Instead, later today we will ship you and the rest of your squeaky cohorts to a giant windowless warehouse to share with tens of thousands of other birds just like you. It'll be so dark you cannot see. So cramped you cannot move. But don't worry. You'll probably grow too obese to walk anyway after they pump you full of drugs and food. Your legs might hurt chronically. And your heart and lungs may fail from trying to keep up, but I promise you, you'll hardly notice. Because your skin and feet will be burning from all the ammonia stemming from the mounds of feces that you're forced to eat and sleep in every day. Oh, that guy? Over there? Yeah, he's dead. Too short to reach the water dispenser. Oh, the other one? Yeah, also dead. Got trapped in the automated feeder. You'll learn to maneuver around the corpses. We call them the lucky ones. You, on the other hand, will spend the next 40 days in misery, fear, and pain. You'll finally see the sun when we come to pick you up. You'll be shoved into a crate and then a Tyson-branded truck and delivered to the slaughterhouse promptly. Once you reach your final destination, you will be hung upside down by your feet, shackled to a conveyor belt. Your dangling head will pass through a bath of electrified water. This will be the last thing you ever feel, hopefully. While unconscious, the automated killing machine will decapitate you. What's that? Yeah, of course, there's usually a human standing by to finish the job if the cut isn't sufficient. We're not monsters, okay? Good question, though. Anyway, next you will experience the first bath of your afterlife in a near-boiling pot of water to loosen those feathers. Come now, right this way. Step right up to the plucking machine. Appropriately named, I might add. From there, your freshly bare skin will be quite literally eviscerated by some guy with a knife and a hairnet. Finally, after your organless body is rinsed, chilled, and tested, you'll be processed, battered, cooked, frozen, covered in cellophane, stamped into the shape of a dinosaur, or deep-fried and sold on the dollar menu. Thanks for your service. This happens to 200 million chickens every day. Sound horrific? Well, the reality can be so much worse. During my time as a PETA undercover investigator working in two slaughterhouses owned by Tyson, I saw terrible cruelty inflicted on animals destined to become food. In 2007, a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals investigator went undercover at Tyson chicken slaughterhouses in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. What was captured on tape can only be described as apathetic, cruel, and beyond the typical horrors of the job. Multiple instances occurred of chickens being violently thrown into shackles by workers from long distances for seemingly no other reason than for fun. This action would be repeated if the birds didn't stick, which led to some chickens hanging by their necks instead of their feet. In those cases, the supervisor instructed the undercover investigator to simply rip off their heads while they're still alive. I'm like, what am I supposed to do if a bird's head is stuck? Okay, if a bird's head is stuck, it's used. Go ahead and just pull it on off and pull the head off. In other cases, birds were sent to the killing machine fully awake because the stun bath malfunctioned, and sometimes the killing machines would miss the throat and lacerate the chickens' bodies instead. The supervisor had no solution for these mishaps. It's just the nature of the machine, the investigator was told. Perhaps even more disturbing, the undercover investigator witnessed slaughterhouse workers urinating in the live hang area, including on the conveyor belt that moves birds to slaughter. One worker even admitted to violently beating a chicken out of sheer frustration until its spine severed. Don't kick! No, fuck you. They won't let you hang them. Yeah, just straight up. Yeah, you can't get them up there because they want to put their head in the fuckin' way. Motherfuckers beat these fuckin' heads on the way. Yesterday, I ain't even gonna fuckin' lie, man. I straight broke one's back, dog. Really? Man. Motherfuckers hurt. Why? Fuckin' chickens made me mad. I hurt an innocent chicken because the other chickens made me mad. The other chickens can't fly, bitch. They can't fuck it up my nuts with this shit. Yeah. And you just smashed them? I smashed that motherfucker. PETA published the disturbing footage on the internet at torturedbytyson.com and submitted detailed complaints to prosecutors in Georgia and Tennessee. Tyson Foods responded to the quote, carefully edited video. Some of the videotaped activities we've seen online do warrant investigation. However, others are being misrepresented and sensationalized by PETA, the company said in a statement that also blamed the undercover investigator for videotaping the abuses instead of reporting them. PETA shot back, saying its operatives had quote, complained constantly to his superiors about the abuse, but no action was taken, and nothing much could be done. In most states and at the federal level, there are no animal welfare laws regulating the treatment of food animals while they're on the farm. That includes pigs, a highly intelligent and deeply social animal, the scientists have determined capable of feeling a wide range of emotions, including fear, pain and anxiety. And that fear, pain and anxiety were palpable when investigators for the Humane Society of the United States, acting on a tip, showed up at Wyoming Premium Farms in May 2012. The level of abuse was ruthless, Paul Shapiro with the Humane Society told CBS. As you can see in the video, workers were vicious with animals, punching them in the face, kicking them, cursing at them, jumping up and down on their broken limbs. This is the type of abuse that is so extreme, that most people would be appalled to bear witness to it. In the video, workers for Wyoming Premium Farms can be seen swinging and tossing live piglets by their legs and slamming them into the ground. Others were punted like soccer balls across the room. Most were ammonia burned from falling into the manure pits. Workers were also witnessed amputating tails and castrating the animals without administering any kind of pain relief. As a goof, they would reportedly throw the piglet testicles at one another or feed them to the mother pigs. Mother pigs who often walked around with severe rectal and uterine prolapses and other untreated injuries. The diseased and injured died slow painful deaths and would remain in their pens until they became mummified corpses. The Humane Society also reported that one rather heavy worker bounced on the back of an adult pig with a broken leg, leading her to scream in agony. Another tragic sow was found dead in a gestation crate half buried in food by the trusty auto feeder. No one noticed because gestation crates are designed to be narrow enough to prevent the pig from turning around. The mother pigs are forced to stand there day after day for the majority of their lives, feeding their soon to be slaughtered piglets. Tyson released a statement in response to the Humane Society's investigation. The company claimed it had no connection to Wyoming Premium Farms while in the same statement also confirming that it would suspend its purchases of sows from Wyoming Premium Farms. Chew on that one. The following year, 2013, another animal advocacy group, Mercy for Animals, sent an undercover worker to a Tyson pig farm in Oklahoma called West Coast Farms. That undercover worker witnessed and filmed what he described as commonplace and constant abuse of the animals. Punching, kicking, sticking fingers in their eyes and failed euthanasia attempts which included one man slamming a bowling ball onto a piglet's head. NBC News picked up the story. Again, Tyson responded, this time announcing new guidelines. In its statement, Tyson said it recognized that killing piglets with a blunt force has been, quote, historically acceptable in the meat industry, but, quote, may not match the expectations of today's customers or consumers. No, it certainly does not. But don't take it from me. Take it from this A-list celebrity who would never hurt the living soul intentionally or unintentionally. This is Alec Baldwin. On behalf of Mercy for Animals, if you eat chicken from Tyson Foods, you may be unknowingly supporting some of the worst animal abuse. Really? No one else was available? Come on, there's gotta be someone else. Hi, I'm Candace Bergen on behalf of Mercy for Animals. If you eat chicken from Tyson Foods, you may unknowingly be supporting some of the worst animal abuse imaginable. Okay, Murphy Brown will work, I guess. Continue, please. New hidden camera footage recorded by a Mercy for Animals investigator at Tyson Foods shows chickens shackled upside down, having their throats cut open, and getting their heads ripped off, all while they're still alive. The undercover Mercy for Animals investigation Candace Bergen is referring to took place in 2015 at TNS Farm in Dukedom, Tennessee, a supplier of the McNugget. The abuses witnessed are nothing we haven't heard about already, so I'll spare you the details, but it was business as usual. Chickens are extremely intelligent and social animals, with their own unique personalities and feelings, much like the dogs and cats we all love. But at Tyson Factory farms, these gentle birds are treated like yesterday's garbage. Their short lives are filled with misery and deprivation. Crippled by their own weight, these birds spend most of their lives lying in their own waste, with open sores and wounds, and barely able to move. This cruelty must stop. What do you think, Candace? As the largest meat producer in the world, and a major chicken supplier to McDonald's, KFC, Chick-fil-A, and many others, Tyson Foods has the power and responsibility to end the worst forms of animal abuse in its supply chain. But would they? Not soon enough. In 2016, Animal Outlook, formerly known as Compassion Over Killing, a non-profit animal advocacy organization, released its own undercover investigation video of a broiler chicken breeding facility in Virginia. This one featured acts of cruelty never before seen on camera, such as a supervisor suffocating a chicken by standing on its head, while admitting doing so was inhumane and illegal. His reasoning? He didn't want to get blood on his gloves. Also captured on camera for the first time ever, Animal Outlook's investigator documented a barbaric practice known as boning. In this context, boning is the practice of stabbing a dull plastic rod through a male breeder bird's nostrils. The plastic bone prevents them from fitting their heads inside food dispensers designated for females. Boning has been widely phased out across the industry, but clearly, Tyson was lagging behind. The wide bones physically block the birds from eating food from certain dispensers. Tyson responded to Animal Outlook's investigation on August 10, 2016. In a statement, the company said it was, quote, disgusted and outraged by what was shown in the video. Tyson announced that, effective immediately, the cruel practice of boning would not be tolerated at its facilities. The company also announced that it had fired 10 employees who were implicated in the abuse. Quote, we must do more to stop this inexcusable behavior. In a statement, Tyson Group president of poultry Doug Ramsey said, we're outraged by what's shown in this video. The actions of these people are egregious, inexcusable, and will not be tolerated by Tyson. Now, Tyson says 10 of the workers in the video have been fired, and the company has terminated its contract with the farm. In this case, the state of Virginia actually prosecuted nine of the former Tyson contractors, charging them with 24 counts of animal cruelty. On August 30th, 2017, all nine were found guilty. After the trial, Virginia State Attorney General Mark Herring stated, these convictions send a clear, strong signal across the Commonwealth that my team and I take these crimes seriously, and that those who commit cruelty to animals will be held accountable for their actions. Before the end of the year was over, Animal Outlook released another undercover investigation video of a Tyson farm in Virginia. Despite Tyson's public commitments to animal welfare, for the second time in little more than a year, our hidden camera footage is exposing systematic abuse behind this chicken titan's closed doors. As you'll see in this video, Tyson's tradition of torture continues. A month later, Donnie Smith, a former CEO of Tyson, brushed off the cruelty accusations, telling an audience at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that consumers are, quote, gullible about believing what they see on social media and in undercover footage. They have no idea how their food gets to the table, he said. And he's right. Americans have no idea how their food gets to their table, because they don't want to know. I mean, just go read the comments to this episode. I guarantee you, you will see people saying stuff like, I love you, but I couldn't listen to this one. That kind of blissful ignorance works in concert with industry secrecy and overreaching ad gag laws to keep the general public in the dark about what's on their plate, and it's working. We only know the extent of the cruelty because of whistleblowers and animal rights organizations, and that's just at a handful of facilities. There are thousands upon thousands of these places operating right next door to you. Imagine what we can't see. Honestly, you could probably walk into any Tyson farm or factory and find something horrendous. That's what this guy using the handle Minnesota Dusted on Twitter did in August 2020. He came across a random Tyson hog farm in Iowa and peeked in. Pure misery. And I am in a facility where they're supposed to be raising animals humanely. And what do you see? Nothing but dead pigs. Dead pigs that are in their facility that are hurting. You can see they've been dead for a while. You have bloody pigs that are over here. Bloody pigs that are dying. Absolutely sad that they got out. This is what we are dealing with, people. Look at this. Look at the sadness and the filth that these pigs are living in. Tyson Foods, you should be disappointed in yourself. Dustin called the sheriff's department who showed up at the same time a rendering truck arrived to pick up the dead bodies. This kind of crap gives the hog industry a bad name the truck driver said before adding you're never going to clean it up because it's money. Tyson reportedly found no evidence of animal abuse or mishandling in that case. Even if they had, as we've seen countless times, it would be easy for the company to distance itself from its independent contractors. Just a few bad apples, they would say. Definitely not the result of a system built with inherent exploitation and cruelty. But what happens if a Tyson representative is caught on tape discussing the abysmal conditions at a farm? Would the company still be able to feign ignorance? Let's find out. From August to November 2022, an undercover investigator for Animal Outlook worked at Janet Farm in Virginia. The investigator documented the usual abuses, acts of violence, food and water deprivation, rat infestations, and unaddressed animal injuries. But most alarming, considering we've all been properly desensitized to the violence by now, were the conversations between the farm owner, the manager, and a Tyson broiler technician advisor whose job was to monitor animal welfare. This broiler technician advisor had been monitoring Janet Farm for over seven years. Judging by the recordings, she was completely aware of the farm's poor conditions. In fact, Janet Farm was in such lousy shape that the owner expressed concerns to the farm manager that it would get shut down. The manager eased the owner's concerns by telling him that Tyson had never enforced any action upon them. The Tyson rep later confirms the reason why. Tyson doesn't want to pay for anything. Not here at least. We don't have any competition here, so they don't have to do extra stuff here. They do extra stuff at other complexes where they got other producers. On August 1st, 2023, eight animal cruelty charges were filed against the owner of Janet Farm, and nine cruelty charges were filed against its manager based on Animal Outlook's undercover footage. Tyson Foods said it severed ties with that farm before the footage was even released because of its own findings. We have a long-standing commitment to the welfare, proper handling, and humane treatment and care of animals in our supply chain, a spokesperson for the company said. Speaking of humane treatment, one of the most illuminating aspects of the Janet Farm case was a recording of the Tyson rep discussing and mocking the concept of free-range chicken. So if you think your hands are clean because your package of meat has an extra sticker on it, here's the ugly truth. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, chickens must have continuous free access to the outside for over half of their lives in order to be considered free-range. Chicken producers satisfy this requirement by installing a small door in the crowded barns, knowing that the majority of birds will never even realize it's there. Plus, again, they're too fat to move anyway. The USDA has no authority or manpower to conduct any kind of oversight on a farm's free-range claims. It's nothing more than a form filled out and filed away. There's no guarantee that a free-range chicken has ever seen a blade of grass. And according to a 2021 ProPublica investigation, they're slaughtered in the exact same buildings in the exact same way. The only difference is that a free-range chicken spent its 40-day life unaware of an open door on the other side of the room it could never reach. It's brainwashing bullshit, and you're eating it up. So what's the solution? I don't know. I have no answers. You've come to the wrong place for optimism, my friend. The war has been lost already. Convert to a plant-based diet, I guess, or wait on advancements in lab-grown meat. Become a pescatarian if you want to delude yourself into thinking the same atrocities aren't happening in the seafood industry. Sure, that might make you feel better about yourself, but in the grand scheme, it's like using a paper straw to combat climate change while Taylor Swift laps the globe in one of her private jets for the third time this week. It's an exercise in futility. In an ideal world, the entire human population would make immediate, sweeping lifestyle changes so that every living creature could live in harmony. But that would take time, money, effort, and discipline, the kind of which humanity will always lack. Not to mention other hurdles like mega-influencers and podcasters with HGH guts convincing man-children that meat consumption somehow correlates with masculinity. What are you going to do? Start eating carrots? Get a load of this pussy. At the end of the day, it's up to you and your personal moral code how much you can stomach. Don't let anyone like me tell you what to do. Life is short. Make it as comfortable as possible. Don't inconvenience yourself too much trying to limit your own culpability. And don't mind the man behind the glass pulling the levers of the machine. Or else you may realize you're nothing more than a factory farmed consumer with no choice in what you eat. 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Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way. Do retail right with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash crimes, all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash crimes to take your retail business to the next level today. Shopify.com slash crimes. A lot of times Tyson is the largest operation in a community. So, you know, we feel the responsibility to try to do as much as we can to give back in the communities in which we work and live. Benito Maldonado was told that Amador Anchado Rascón was the man he needed to talk to if he wanted to find his people jobs. Benito Maldonado was your classic middleman. He helped smuggle Mexican immigrants across the border and connect them to employers. Amador Anchado Rascón was the owner of a Hispanic grocery store in Shelbyville, Tennessee, where he used to work at the Tyson plant. Amador still had connections to other facilities too. In addition to employment opportunities, the jefe de jefes, as they like to be called, was also the guy who could provide forged identification, which could get an undocumented immigrant's foot in the door at several different plants across the country. Benito Maldonado and Amador Anchado Rascón formed a partnership in 1997. Benito supplied the workers. Amador provided jobs and identities. Over the next two and a half years, the two men smuggled about 150 people from Mexico to work at Tyson poultry plants in Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, and Arkansas. Tyson often paid $100 or $200 per head, concealing them on the books as recruitment expenses to temp agencies. Tyson Foods preferred the undocumented help for several reasons. For one, they're less likely to complain about the conditions, so you can give them the most arduous and hazardous jobs and you don't have to pay them nearly as much to perform them. Furthermore, they're less likely to report injuries, miss time, or file for workers' comp. In fact, according to OSHA, since 1995, the year the Hispanic influx began at poultry processing plants, injury and illness rates dropped by more than 40%. This reduction saved Tyson Foods millions of dollars in workers' compensation and insurance claims. According to CNN, Tyson attributes the drop to improved safety measures, but an internal memo from Tyson's vice president of labor relations at the time explicitly encouraged the hiring of Hispanics because their lack of understanding of English and their legal rights meant that they were less likely to take any action, legal or otherwise, against the company. If the undocumented did complain or threaten to file a claim, the plant bosses would simply threaten to call immigration. Of course they knew which workers held legal green cards and which didn't. They used it against us, a former worker told Fortune. Some supervisors would even leverage easier jobs for sexual favors. It was basically prostitution, one worker told the magazine, and there was always room for more. However, Benito Maldonado and Amador Anchondo Rescon's smuggling partnership ended in 2001 when Maldonado revealed himself as a federal special agent for immigration and naturalization services to a mid-level Tyson manager. Anchondo Rescon had already been ensnared and agreed to cooperate. The Tyson manager, however, refused and alerted Tyson's corporate headquarters to the sting. In December 2001, Tyson Foods, the corporation, was indicted on 36 counts of conspiring to import and transport illegal workers from the southwest border to 15 Tyson plants in nine different states. It was the largest smuggling case brought against a major American company. Tyson's near decade-long illegal hiring practices reportedly resulted in a financial gain to the company in excess of $100 million. The company denied it ever engaged in any illegal acts and said a few bad managers had acted outside of company policy. Those bad managers were also named in the indictment. Two executives at Tyson, Robert Hash, Vice President of the Retail Fresh Division, and Gerald Lankford, former Human Resources Manager of the Retail Fresh Division, and four former plant managers, Keith Snyder in Missouri, and Truly Ponder, Spencer Mabe, and Jimmy Rowland in Tennessee. 36-year-old Jimmy Rowland did not wait around for the verdict. On April 18, 2002, his body was found in the bed of his pickup truck, parked in a wooded pasture. A single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. Dude probably should have waited because most of the charges were dropped before the trial and everyone was ultimately acquitted, including Tyson Foods, Inc., which remains one of the United States' most dangerous places to work. Over the years, Tyson facilities have racked up millions of dollars in safety violations that have resulted in numerous deaths and hundreds of injuries, and that doesn't even account for the millions of dollars in fines for the untold destruction the company's perpetual pollution has wreaked on the environment and future generations. One of the most common hazards of the job is leaking anhydrous ammonia, a key chemical Tyson uses to refrigerate meat. The gas sucks the water out of everything it encounters, including your body. Death can occur within seconds. An ammonia leak is highly toxic. It's an asphyxiant. You breathe it, you could die. OSHA found 11 of what it calls serious violations. The fines totaled nearly $122,000. Why it reached that high was basically because of the repeat violations. According to the EPA, Tyson Foods accounts for almost 6 out of every 10 ammonia-related injuries. According to Tyson, this is because their organization reports the information more accurately than its competitors. Maybe, but another contributing factor could be the company's lack of preparedness. Tyson did not install employee alarms for chemical releases at its facilities until 2016, after a pipe ruptured at a plant in Hope, Arkansas, that almost killed Mimi Perkins, a sanitation contractor. Since we're on the topic, Tyson sanitation workers made the news again recently, in February 1923, when New York Times reporter Hannah Dreyer published a report about Packers Sanitation Services, the Blackstone-owned contractor that provides sanitation labor to Tyson and other large producers in the industry. The Department of Labor is now investigating Purdue Farms and Tyson Foods over possible child labor law violations. It follows a report from the New York Times earlier this month, mentioning an underage migrant worker who was severely injured while working for a sanitation company. The New York Times Magazine story detailed children as young as 13 cleaning blood, grease, and feathers from equipment with caustic chemicals and pressure hoses. Packers Sanitation was ultimately fined $1.5 million by the U.S. Department of Labor for employing children. The meat companies, such as Tyson, said any labor violations among its contractors were outside of its control. They faced no consequences. In response, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley chose Tyson as the example to use while introducing the Preventing Child Labor Exploitation Act, a bipartisan bill that's currently advancing through the Senate. I just don't believe, for instance, Tyson Foods, pick one, not so random, that says that all they just, they couldn't believe that there's child labor in their supply chains. I mean, who could have known? They know, they're exploiting it, they're profiting on it, and it's time we stopped it. Good luck. This is a corporation that, in 2016, took a lawsuit from 3,000 slaughterhouse workers in Iowa all the way to the Supreme Court because it refused to pay those employees for the time spent putting on and taking off protective clothing. That same year, an Oxfam America report detailed how some of Tyson's employees admitted to wearing diapers because they were not allowed to stop the line to take bathroom breaks. You're required to hang 28 birds a minute, so that's over 12,000 birds a shift per person. Tyson is about money and production. They do not care about their workers. Tyson will do anything to save a penny, so it should come as no surprise that in 2024, it was revealed that the company was leasing prison labor, which is unsurprisingly legal in America. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. Faye Jacobs, a prisoner who worked at an Arkansas prison farm that supplies Tyson, told the Associated Press she was paid two rolls of toilet paper a week, toothpaste, and a few menstrual pads each month. Tyson Foods generated almost $53 billion in revenue in 2023. And that's still not enough, apparently. Just recently, in 2024, the company agreed to pay $72 million to resolve its part of a settlement in a wage-fixing lawsuit brought by workers of the largest meat companies. The lawsuit claims the companies violated antitrust laws by sharing confidential compensation data with each other and conducting surveys and meetings to suppress wages. Like usual, Tyson did not admit any wrongdoing. But at no other point in recent history did Tyson make it more apparent that its employees were an expendable input to the machine than in the year 2020. According to the Black Hawk County Health Department, the company downplayed virus concerns and covered up the plant's outbreak to keep employees working, even though the county sheriff said the conditions in the plant shook him to his core. As COVID-19 spread across the world rapidly, Tyson sounded the alarm that America's food supply chain was breaking and fought to keep its plant doors open despite warnings to the contrary. The company lobbied governors and presidents, claiming to be very concerned about Americans going hungry, so concerned that it was willing to expose thousands of its workers and their families to the virus. Think about all the unprocessed meat and poultry, Tyson begged. Almost 900 employees at the Tyson Pork Processing Plant in Cass County have now tested positive for COVID-19. And President Trump's executive order to open plants back up being met with mixed emotions this evening. According to the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, between March 1, 2020 and February 1, 2021, at least 50,000 COVID-19 cases had been linked to the meat and poultry processing facilities in 38 states, resulting in almost 260 deaths. Wrongful death lawsuits have been filed against Tyson Foods specifically. Isidro Fernandez was a Tyson employee who died from COVID-19 earlier this year. Now his family is suing the company, claiming management was betting on how many employees would test positive for the virus. Tyson reported more than $2 billion in profits and long returns for shareholders in fiscal year 2020. Well, as long as they're happy, I guess, because their workers certainly are not. So, why not just quit then? This is America, right? They're free to leave their jobs. Because there's nowhere else to work in the rural areas that Tyson invades, genius, the local economy revolves around the meat industry. The whole town would dry up if a plant ever closed its doors, and the threat of that happening is always one underperforming quarter away. So, we work our fingers to the bone until our hearts pop, until our blood runs cold. Overworked and underpaid, but so what? That's what we are born to do. Another day, another dollar. It's honest work, if you can get it. What are you staring at, you fucking hippie? Pick up the knife, we've got mouths to feed. A consumer warning tonight, Tyson Foods is recalling more than 8 million pounds of frozen, fully cooked chicken products after three cases of listeria were discovered. One person has died. When Tyson Foods is now recalling close to 12 million pounds of frozen, ready-to-eat chicken strips because they say it might contain foreign materials in it, specifically we're talking about pieces of metal. Tyson Foods is recalling 36,000 pounds of chicken nuggets because they may have been contaminated with plastic. A massive recall of Tyson Foods products sent to schools and other institutions. The USDA says 190,000 pounds of ready-to-eat chicken fritter products could have harmful stuff inside. Tyson Foods is recalling nearly 94,000 pounds of raw ground beef products from its Amarillo plant. The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service says the products may be contaminated with, quote, extraneous materials, specifically reflective mirror-like materials. Now this consumer alert, Tyson Foods is recalling nearly 30,000 pounds of frozen, fully cooked chicken nuggets after several people found small pieces of metal inside. The recall impacts dinosaur-shaped fun nuggets. Tyson Foods. Making great food. Making a difference. Swindled. Swindled is written, researched, produced and hosted by me, a concerned citizen with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. Deformer, a.k.a. Fun Nuggets. For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok at swindledpodcast or you can send us a postcard at P.O. Box 6044 Austin, Texas 78762, but please no packages. We do not trust you. Swindled is a completely independent production, which means no network, no investors, no bosses, no shadowy money men, no plucking machines and we plan to keep it that way, but we need your support. Become a valued listener on Patreon, Apple Podcasts or Spotify at valuedlistener.com For as little as $5 a month, you will receive early access to new episodes and exclusive access to bonus episodes that you can't find anywhere else and everything is 100% commercial free. Become a valued listener at valuedlistener.com Or if you want to support the show and want something to wear that's damn comfortable, consider buying something you don't need at swindledpodcast.com.shop There are t-shirts, patches, hats, hoodies, posters, coffee mugs and more. swindledpodcast.com.shop And remember to use coupon code CAPITALISM to receive 10% off your order. If you don't want anything in return for your support, you can always simply donate using the form on the homepage. That's it. Thanks for listening. Hi, my name is Dee from Bozeman, Montana. Hi, my name is Tyler from North Carolina. Hi, my name is Sonja from Germany and I'm a concerned citizen and a valued listener. And I very much appreciate your time. Thanks to State Farm for supporting this show and helping our listeners protect their businesses and lives. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Talk to your local agent today. You know that's the sound of another sale on your online Shopify store. But did you know Shopify Power is selling in person too? That's right. Shopify is the sound of selling everywhere. Online, in store, on social media, and beyond. Do retail right with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash crimes, all lower case. Go to shopify.com slash crimes to take your retail business to the next level today. shopify.com slash crimes.