I'm Loraine Ballard Morrill. Mike Papantonio is one of the few living attorneys inducted
into the trial lawyer hall of fame. He's a TV host and commentator, and has worked on
major legal cases, focused on big pharma, tobacco weapon manufacturers and the automobile
industry. He's also the best-selling author of legal thrillers informed by his cases.
Mike's newest book, "Inhuman trafficking," who he has co-authored with Alan Russell is
based on the case about human trafficking that he's working on. And the book is in the
tradition of the legal thrillers of John Grisham. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you, Loraine. Well, let's talk about the state of human
trafficking before we get into the novel itself. What is happening? What, first of all, what
is human trafficking and why is it such a big business?
Well, first of all, it's emerged as a $42 billion a year business, and we have a real
misconception about what it is. What we focus on with the lawsuit that we filed, it's a
national lawsuit that's going to hopefully drive this entire litigation, is the corporate
side of it. The idea is we think that most of the time, it's just one individual who
traffics two or three girls. Very, very different. As a matter of fact, this, this book, one
of the models that it uses is the trucking industry model, where we find that, that women
are, girls mostly 14, 15, 16 year old girls, are trucked from LA to, to the East Coast
and up the Eastern seaboard. And what they do is they, they, they take a semi, they break
it into maybe six or seven different little rooms. They stop along the way at truck stops.
They say, we're coming, we'll be there at three o'clock, everybody converges on that
truck stop. And, you know, has sex with these minors and, and leaves. And, and to understand
that it, it, you don't do that, one person doesn't do that. It takes a lot of cooperation.
It takes cooperation of the truck stop. It takes the people that are organizing the logistics
of the trucking process. So it's very different from what most people think, Loraine. Another
case that this book focuses on, happened 60 miles from us, where they brought in H2B workers
from, from the Ukraine. Told them that, how would you like to work in the service industry,
come to the United States and we'll, we'll, we'll teach you how to do that. And they have
something called a step up process. It's used very often in this, in this business, where
they hire them as a, maybe a greeter at a restaurant.
And they say, how would you like to make more money? And then that same restaurant owns
a strip club, and then they move them to the strip club as a greeter. And then they say,
how would you like to make more money than that? And then they put them on a pole dancing
at a strip club. Then the next and final step is always, how would you like to meet Tom?
And Tom is a trafficker and they disappear. So it's a, that's the exactly what happened
just 60 miles down the road. But that happens all over the country. I mean, it's, we, we're
just, we don't seem to be aware of what's happening in our backyard.
Well, you know, that is really one of the reasons why you write these books, because
it's an opportunity to shed light on some very important issues that are not often,
or maybe as well reported as we would hope they would be. And that brings us to your
book, "Inhuman Trafficking." So let's talk about the, the plot really does reflect the
case that you were just talking about. Tell us more.
Well, the plot centers around several different parts of human trafficking, and every part
that it centers around is actually part of a case that we're handling. The, the, what
I've tried to do and this is, I try to do it with every book. Corporate, corporate media
in a lot of ways has become somewhat dysfunctional and I can say that because I've worked corporate
media for a lot of years, I've done MSNBC, CNN, liberal commentator for Fox. I've basically
done the spectrum. And what's happened is advertisers have taken control of what's delivered
in corporate media. So if I were to go on the air and I would say, you know, I really
want to talk about this hotel chain because this hotel chain understands exactly how they're
enabling all this, that it would be impossible. I mean, I, I've, I have been on so many, so
many times where I've been, you know, the tease coming up, Mike Papantonio talks about
Bayer corporation. In between the tease and actually going on the story is killed because
that particular entity, that corporate media gets advertising dollars from Bayer.
So, you know, it's the same thing here. We, we've run into the same thing here. The corporate
media has done a very, very poor job having people understand what's happening here. The
opioid case that I have going on right now, we filed that one too. We started the opioid
litigation in this country and after we did people started paying attention. And, you
know, out of that, out of that came a book called "Law and Addiction." So this is the
same pattern. It's the same pattern that I use, you know, regularly, and I've done it
for, for many years. So my hope is they read the book, they're entertained. They say, you
know, that certainly grabbed my interest, but they learn something about the, about
the trafficking industry that they didn't know. And all of that that's in there is absolutely
true. It's all based on actual facts that we have uncovered in our, in our litigation.
And, and I think that's, that, that makes it a little more interesting because you know
your takeaway is that you learned something. Well, I guess the, the additional aspect about
your book is that not only does it inform you about the overall issues, but it also
brings it down to the human cost because you're talking about actual characters in this novel
that you write that, that reflect the reality of what it's like to be swept up into this
horrible situation. Yeah. Well, for example, it centers in heavily
in Las Vegas, they, you know, people don't understand there are hotels and casinos that
keep, there's a floor that they keep in many of these casinos in Las Vegas where they have
their high rollers come in and the high roller has access to these girls. And it, it, it
takes so, so a lot of the books centers around what's going on in Las Vegas. What's going
on in, right down in Florida, where, where the trafficking begins. And, and the point
being is if we will just pay attention, we come away and we say, well, maybe there's
something I can do, might be a little, but maybe there's something I can do. So my hope
for the book is to, you know, be able to read it sitting on the beach maybe in an afternoon
and come away and say, wow, I didn't know that.
Well, you have taken on some pretty big cases that really speak to the connection between
corporate greed and, and some of these horrendous situations like the opioid epidemic and certainly
human trafficking. You seem to have chosen a particular direction in your legal practice,
which is, you know, basically trying to right some wrongs. And I wonder if you can talk
a little bit about what is it that drives you?
Well, I mean, the, first of all, you have to have a, you have to have a setting that
where the organization has the ability to do that. We, I don't know whether you knew
this or not, but we initiated the tobacco litigation in this country. The law firm is
67 years old. And so we started that litigation and it gave us, it gave us the ability to
do a lot of other things. Look, here, here's, here's how this works and people they're just,
they, they, sometimes aren't aware of the facts. Most corporations want to do, they
want to do a good job for us. They want to make our lives better and they do, they do
a tremendous thing, but then there's this other, they're the outliers. They aren't the
norm. They're not the majority. These corporations who are aberrational in the way that they
treat people and the way that they, the way they evaluate what their role in society is.
And, you know, most of this, most of these cases, Loraine, I'm sitting across the, when
I'm taking a deposition or in trial, I really am across the, the table from a sociopath.
I mean, they don't look like one, because they're, they're dressed up in Armani suits.
They have Rolex watches on. They, they've driven up in a, in a Bentley. They have an
MBA from Yale or Harvard. They don't look like that child out on the street corner with
a hoodie on selling marijuana. So we treat them differently. For example, I can't, the
number of lives that have been lost in human trafficking is staggering. A child that goes
in is, is trafficked at age 15 will not even make it to 19. They will commit suicide. It'll
be homicide. It'll be drug overdose. It'll be sexual diseases that kill them. Opioids,
same thing, 150 people a day dying from opioid addiction.
And so how, how have we gotten to the point to where we say these people aren't, this
isn't manslaughter, you say, somehow this isn't manslaughter and we look at it and we
say, we, we, we kid ourselves into believing that something's different because that CEO
looks different. You know, he doesn't look like, he doesn't have a hoodie on. And so
we have to change that culture and every time I write a book, that's my goal, to get people
to think a little bit differently about this double standard that exists in this country.
And it, it's, it's white collar crime. And I haven't seen an attorney general in the
last, in my, in my adult life that has seriously taken on this issue. Every time you think
that, yes, they're going to come through, they're a miserable failure in their effort
to try to curb what happens on Wall Street. What happens with corporate America when they
do bad, sometimes you have to perp walk them, and they're not willing to do that.
I'd like to thank you so much for spending time with us and telling us about your book
and also about the implications of corporate greed and the human trafficking business.
The book, "Inhuman Tafficking," written by Mike Papantonio, along with Alan Russell,
based on the case he's working on currently on human trafficking. Thank you so much for
joining us today. Thank You, Loraine.