The Hidden Third

Mariana van Zeller
  • 4.6 (533)
  • Documentary
  • Updated Weekly

From Emmy and Peabody Award–winning journalist Mariana van Zeller comes THE HIDDEN THIRD, a weekly dive into the underground markets that quietly power a third of the global economy. Every episode Mariana sits down with people who know these worlds firsthand - the hustlers, smugglers, scammers, kingpins, and those trying to shut them down. The series reveals how they function, why they endure, and the profound ways they impact us all. New episodes drop every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. The Hidden Third is a co-production of Muck Media and The Roost Podcast Network.

  1. 14h ago

    From College World Series Hero to $32M Ponzi Scheme

    Go to https://meetfabric.com/HIDDENTHIRD and apply today, risk-free  He was a College World Series champion, a pro baseball prospect and a relative of Tampa mob boss Santo Trafficante Jr. Then a gambling addiction drove Sam Favata to run a $32 million Ponzi scheme that sent him to federal prison. In 1979, Sam hit .418 for Cal State Fullerton, a national college record that stood for 16 years, and scored the winning run in the school's first College World Series title. The Milwaukee Brewers drafted him. Two years later, in Modesto, an 87 mph fastball hit him in the head. He needed surgery for three brain bleeds, and doctors weren't sure he'd survive, let alone walk or talk again. Nine months later he was back on the same field, and almost 5,000 fans gave him a three-minute standing ovation after his first hit. But Sam was already hiding something. He placed his first bet at 19, at a Las Vegas craps table on a road trip with his Fullerton teammates, and lost everything his father had given him for the weekend. On the drive home, he realized he was more upset about losing at the casino than losing at baseball. He kept that secret for 26 years. Gambling ran in the family. Sam was born in Tampa, and his second cousin was Santo Trafficante Jr., the mob boss who ran Florida and pre-Castro Cuba for the American Mafia. Trafficante was later tied to the CIA's plots to kill Fidel Castro and long rumored to be connected to the JFK assassination, which he denied under oath. Sam's father ran bolita numbers for the organization before he walked away and moved the family to California to give his son a different life. Sam talks about growing up close to that world, and about the secret Trafficante is said to have revealed about Kennedy on his deathbed. After baseball, Sam built a career in mortgages and started a family with his wife, Sandra. He talks about losing their baby son, Joey, and the grief that followed. Through all of it, his gambling kept growing: VIP status at Caesars, a $1 million credit line at the Rio, a $985,000 win on a March Madness parlay. Then, in 2005, he bet $1.425 million on a single regular-season NHL game and lost. To keep chasing his losses, Sam turned his Orange County company, National Consumer Mortgage, into a Ponzi scheme. He persuaded more than 200 people to refinance their homes and invest with him, promising returns of 30 to 60 percent. There was no investment. According to the SEC, he used more than $10 million of their money to pay off his own gambling debts. Some victims lost millions. We also talk about Dodgers legend Steve Garvey, Sam's friend, who endorsed the company without knowing about the fraud and later testified as a character witness at his sentencing. When federal investigators contacted his wife in 2006, it all came crumbling down. Sam pleaded guilty to mail fraud and spent 33 months in federal prison at Lompoc. His father died while he was inside, and he couldn't go to the funeral. Today Sam is in recovery from gambling addiction, a quarter of everything he earns goes to restitution, and he'll be paying his victims back for the rest of his life. Americans legally bet more than $160 billion on sports last year, and there's a sportsbook on every phone. Sam's story is a warning about baseball, the Mafia, addiction, fraud, prison, grief and what gambling can take from someone before anyone around them notices. Join The Hidden Third Patreon today! https://patreon.com/TheHiddenThird The Hidden Third is a series of intimate conversations with people who have lived inside hidden worlds, from crime and addiction to exploitation, survival and recovery. Hosted by award-winning journalist Mariana van Zeller. Follow Mariana:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marianavz/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marianavanzeller X: https://x.com/marianavz/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  2. Sep 30

    Evan Rachel Wood: The Cost of Speaking Out Against Marilyn Manson

    Disclaimer: Marilyn Manson, whose legal name is Brian Warner, has denied Evan Rachel Wood’s allegations. He has previously said that her claims are “horrible distortions of reality” and that his intimate relationships were consensual. In January 2025, Los Angeles County prosecutors announced that no criminal charges would be filed following a four-year investigation, stating that the domestic-violence allegations fell outside the statute of limitations and that they could not prove sexual-assault charges beyond a reasonable doubt. The DA’s office also said it “recognize[s] and applaud[s] the courage and resilience” of the women who came forward, noting that their advocacy helped bring greater awareness to the challenges faced by survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault. Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/HIDDENTHIRD  and use code HIDDENTHIRD and get $150 if you win your first $5 lineup!  Evan Rachel Wood has spent much of her life in the public eye, from Practical Magic and Thirteen to her unforgettable role as Dolores in Westworld. But in recent years, Evan has used her platform in a very different way, speaking publicly about the physical and psychological abuse she says she experienced during her relationship with Marilyn Manson. In this episode, Evan shares more about that relationship, including the sexual assault she says she experienced during the filming of Manson’s 2007 Heart-Shaped Glasses music video. She talks about the control and isolation she says she experienced, her use of alcohol and drugs during those years, and what it took to survive and rebuild her life. Manson has denied the allegations. We also go back to the beginning. Evan remembers auditioning for Interview with the Vampire, a role that ultimately went to Kirsten Dunst but helped get her noticed. She talks about moving to Los Angeles with her mother, growing up as a child actor in Hollywood, and appearing in Practical Magic alongside Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Then came Thirteen. Evan was 14 when she made the R-rated film that became her breakout role. She talks about having to kiss a 23-year-old actor and the impact that experience had on her. It was an early lesson in how little control a young actor can have over what is asked of them. Evan also talks about the backlash she faced after naming Manson publicly, and how speaking out has affected her career, her family and her sense of safety. She reflects on following the very public Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial while dealing with the fallout from speaking out herself, and on the messages later made public between Depp and Manson, in which the two men discussed Heard and allegations of abuse in crude and dismissive terms. She also helped pass California’s Phoenix Act, which gave survivors of domestic violence more time to come forward by extending the statute of limitations from three years to five. That fight became part of the HBO documentary Phoenix Rising, which follows Evan as she prepares to name Manson publicly and works to create more time and support for survivors who may not yet feel ready, or able, to come forward. Join The Hidden Third Patreon today!https://patreon.com/TheHiddenThird The Hidden Third is a series of intimate conversations with people who have lived inside hidden worlds, from crime and addiction to exploitation, survival and recovery. Hosted by award-winning journalist Mariana van Zeller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  3. Sep 23

    He Helped Save Thousands of Abused and Exploited Kids

    Join The Hidden Third Patreon today: https://patreon.com/TheHiddenThird Try ZipRecruiter for free at http://ZipRecruiter.com/HIDDENTHIRD  Jim Cole spent two decades as a Homeland Security Investigations special agent, working child-exploitation cases. Early in his career, he saw a problem. Investigators were focused on the people making, possessing, and distributing child sexual abuse material. But the children in the images often went unidentified. Jim helped change that. In 2010, he founded HSI’s Victim Identification Program from scratch, including the first dedicated Victim Identification Laboratory at HSI’s Cyber Crimes Center. Its purpose was to answer a different question: Who is the child in the image, where are they, and are they still in danger? Sometimes the answer begins with a clue most people would never notice: a window, a label, a piece of furniture, a blanket, something in the background that can lead investigators to a child. The program has helped identify and rescue thousands of children around the world, and it continues to operate today. When Jim began tracking victim identifications at HSI in 2011, the agency rescued 262 child victims that year. The following year, after the program’s methods and technology were put in place, that number rose to more than 1,000. This is not an easy subject for a podcast. But given the scale of this crime, and the people most affected by it, it is an important conversation to watch and share. In 2025, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline received 21.3 million reports of suspected online child sexual exploitation. Those reports contained 61.8 million images, videos, and other files. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Jim takes Mariana back to his early years, from his time in the U.S. Army to becoming a patrol officer and then a detective on a Native American reservation in Oregon, investigating everything from narcotics to violent crime. He explains how a series of seemingly accidental turns led him into the work that would define his career. Jim tells the story of one victim, abused by her father, whose case changed the course of his career and made him determined to focus on identifying children. He also tells Mariana about the schoolteacher who abused children for years before Jim’s team uncovered what he had done. They discuss the tactics offenders use to groom children and why the people posing the greatest danger are often not who a child or family expects. They also talk about how artificial intelligence is changing this crime, from the creation of new synthetic abuse material to the ways technology can make it harder for investigators to tell what is real, identify victims, and keep up with the volume of material online. Jim also reflects on the toll of doing this work for decades, what he has carried with him, and why he continues to fight for children who might otherwise never be rescued. Jim now serves as Senior Advisor for Cyber Strategy and Child Protection at Our Rescue, a nonprofit whose mission is to end human trafficking and child exploitation. He also co-hosts Unlikely Allies: Inside Our Fight with Sonny Von Cleveland, a previous guest on The Hidden Third. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  4. Sep 16

    The Vigilante Hunting Bullies, Scammers and Predators

    Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/HIDDENTHIRD and use code HIDDENTHIRD and get $150 if you win your first $5 lineup! Get 15% off OneSkin with the code MARIANA at https://www.oneskin.co/MARIANA #oneskinpod James McGibney is the man who took down Hunter Moore, the "King of Revenge Porn" behind the notorious site Is Anyone Up. He infiltrated Moore's operation, bought the site out from under him for less than $15,000, and turned it into an anti-bullying platform. That story became the hit Netflix documentary The Most Hated Man on the Internet. But that was more than a decade ago. Today James, a former Marine and cybercrime investigator, is going after something much bigger and much darker. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Mariana Van Zeller sits down with James to talk about his current investigation into two loosely connected online networks called The Com and 764. The Com is a sprawling group of mostly young people, some as young as 15 and 16, who trade stolen data, run crypto scams that have drained hundreds of millions of dollars from ordinary people, swat their enemies, and in some cases prey on underage girls. 764 is the offshoot that has captured the FBI's attention for coercing minors into producing sexual and self-harm content, sometimes pushing them to suicide. James walks Mariana through how he traced these networks from low-level "script kiddies" all the way up to what he calls the head of the snake in Pakistan. Along the way he uncovered a billionaire's son who allegedly trafficked a 16-year-old girl into Miami and beat her on tape, a teenage girl who laughed on a recorded call as her crypto scam victim killed himself, and a group of young men flashing quarter-million-dollar nights at Miami clubs while underage girls walked past bouncers uncarded. The conversation moves through the sextortion crisis pushing American teenagers to suicide before their parents ever find out, why crypto scams have quietly surpassed drug trafficking as the most profitable criminal enterprise in the world, and somewhat of a disagreement between Mariana and James over cheaters.com and the question of who the bully actually is when you publicly out someone for cheating. It also goes somewhere personal. James opens up about his own childhood in foster care and about watching his foster sister be sexually abused. He talks about why every case he takes on today, he takes on for her. There is a lot more in this one. A guy in Texas moving faster than the FBI because subpoenas take months and he doesn't. Living armed, with private security at the house, because that is now the cost of doing this work. An ISIS hit list. More than a thousand death threats sitting in his Instagram inbox right now. And a very simple explanation of why you should never, ever connect to the free Wi-Fi at your hotel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  5. Sep 9

    Trapped in Bolivia's Deadliest Prison. Then She Took It Over.

    Use code HIDDENTHIRD at http://Monarch.com to get 50% off your first year of Monarch Core! Sharon Yitzhaki was 20 years old when she was pulled off a plane at a Bolivian airport. Authorities searched her bag, and the second bag she was carrying, which belonged to her boyfriend. Hidden in the false bottom was 10 kilos of cocaine. She had no idea it was there. Her boyfriend had abandoned her days earlier, telling her he'd been deported and asking her to meet him back in Amsterdam, where they both lived. Instead, Sharon was sent to Miraflores, one of the most violent women's prisons in the world. What happened next is one of the wildest true stories I've ever heard on The Hidden Third. Inside Miraflores, Sharon was beaten, electrocuted, and developed a severe cocaine addiction. She got clean by asking to be locked in solitary confinement for a month. She adopted a one-month-old baby born inside the prison. She fell in love with a cartel leader locked up in the men's prison next door, and ended up running the drug trade inside her own prison. She was finally released through a Papal edict from Pope John Paul II, and then had to flee the country to avoid being sent back to prison. In this episode, Sharon opens up about betrayal, hope, addiction, motherhood and love behind bars. As well as what happened to the man who betrayed her and to the woman who brutalized her and countless others inside Miraflores. Her bestselling memoir is now a feature film called 10 Kilos, in theaters now and coming to digital worldwide on September 29, 2026. WATCH 10 KILOS Movie🎬 Find a theater near you 🎧 Bonus content, uncut interviews, and behind-the-scenes on our Patreon: patreon.com/thehiddenthird 👉 Subscribe for more stories from the hidden economies most people never see. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  6. Sep 2

    She Escaped Traffickers, Then Was Kidnapped Again

    https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/HIDDENTHIRD and use code HIDDENTHIRD and get $150 if you win your first $5 lineup!  Sex trafficking survivor Lurata Lyon was kidnapped twice. First, at 17, by a trafficking network in Bosnia while fleeing the Yugoslav Wars. Then, after escaping, by Serbian paramilitaries who held her captive for six months. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Mariana van Zeller speaks with Lurata Lyon about surviving war, sex trafficking, human trafficking, kidnapping, captivity, trauma, and the long road to rebuilding a life after violence. Lurata was a teenager when the violence surrounding the breakup of former Yugoslavia forced her to flee her home in Serbia. She made her way to Bosnia, where she was kidnapped by a human trafficking and organ-harvesting network. She escaped. But after returning to her hometown, she was taken a second time by Serbian paramilitary forces. Held in solitary captivity for six months, Lurata survived abuse, torture, and the constant fear that she would not make it out alive. Her father ultimately arranged for her to be smuggled out of the country in the back of a truck. She arrived in the United Kingdom as a political refugee and began rebuilding her life from scratch. Today, Lurata Lyon is the author of Unbroken: Surviving Human Trafficking. She is an international speaker, public-speaking and presentation coach, and human trafficking advocate who uses her experience to raise awareness about sex trafficking, sexual exploitation, survivor recovery, resilience, and life after trauma. Sex trafficking is not rare, and it is not limited to conflict zones. The International Labour Organization estimates that 6.3 million people were living in forced commercial sexual exploitation worldwide in 2021, nearly four out of five of them women and girls. In the United States, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received 50,123 signals in 2021, including calls, texts, online chats, and tips from people seeking help or reporting possible trafficking. Even though human trafficking is often discussed through statistics, headlines, and criminal cases, Lurata’s story helps us understand the human reality of sex trafficking and survival. It also shows how war, displacement, fear, isolation, and the search for safety can make people vulnerable to exploitation. #SexTrafficking #HumanTrafficking #SexTraffickingSurvivor #HumanTraffickingSurvivor #HumanTraffickingAwareness #SurvivingSexTrafficking #YugoslavWars #WarSurvivor #PoliticalRefugee #TraumaRecovery #LurataLyon #MarianaVanZeller #TheHiddenThird Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  7. Aug 26

    Ohtani's Bookie Is Out of Prison — And He's Talking

    Try ZipRecruiter for free at http://ZipRecruiter.com/HIDDENTHIRD  Go to http://Quince.com/hiddenthird for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Matt Bowyer — the illegal bookmaker at the center of the Shohei Ohtani–Ippei Mizuhara betting scandal — is back on The Hidden Third, and this time he's talking from the other side of federal prison.  The last time Matt sat down with me, it was 11 days before he self-surrendered to FCI Lompoc. His underground sportsbook had handled more than $1 billion in bets in a single year, taken action from roughly 700 to 1,200 clients (including Shohei Ohtani's former interpreter, who stole nearly $17 million from the Dodgers superstar to cover his losses), and helped trigger one of the biggest gambling scandals in Major League Baseball history. Now he's out,  released early after six months, and the story has only gotten stranger.  In our conversation, Matt takes me inside Lompoc: how contraband gets in, how the “cars” (prison crews) really run the yard, why a pouch of "carnitas" (shredded pork) is the closest thing to currency, and how he ran a full business from behind bars — concierge service, personal chef, the works. He tells me what he actually believes about what Shohei Ohtani knew — or didn't know — about Ippei Mizuhara's bets. He opens up about how prison changed him, why he thinks Resorts World Las Vegas got off easy with a $10.5 million fine, where he lands on the explosion of legal prediction markets and sports betting apps, and what he's building next now that he's a free man.  This is a rare, unfiltered look at how the illegal sports betting world really works, from the bookie known as "bookie to the athletes."  TOPICS COVERED  • The Shohei Ohtani betting scandal, explained by the bookmaker at the center of it  • Ippei Mizuhara and the $17 million embezzled from the Dodgers  • Life inside FCI Lompoc federal prison camp  • Running a business from behind bars  • What Matt believes Shohei Ohtani knew (and didn't know)  • How illegal sports betting operations actually work  • Resorts World Las Vegas, the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and the $10.5M money-laundering settlement  • The Nevada Black Book and Matt's nomination  • Prediction markets vs. sportsbooks vs. offshore books  • Athletes, gambling addiction, and what MLB still doesn't want to talk about  • What Matt is building now that he's out  #ShoheiOhtani #MattBowyer #MathewBowyer #IppeiMizuhara #OhtaniScandal #SportsBetting #IllegalGambling #MLB #Dodgers #TrueCrime #Investigation #Podcast #MarianaVanZeller #TheHiddenThird #ResortsWorld #Bookmaker #PredictionMarkets #Kalshi #Polymarket #Lompoc #FederalPrison Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  8. Aug 19

    The Man Governments Send to Negotiate with Terrorists | Tom Gregg

    Hostage negotiator and UN mediator Tom Gregg on Afghanistan, the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange. He has spent more than twenty years in rooms most of us will never see. Tom Gregg is a conflict and hostage mediator — the man governments send when they need to talk to people they officially refuse to communicate with. He was the UN's man in eastern Afghanistan, the most dangerous corner of the country, when a full-blown insurgency against America took hold. In September 2006 a suicide bomber assassinated Governor Hakim Taniwal, the man he worked alongside — a former university professor who'd come home from exile in Australia to try to rebuild his homeland. The next day a second bomber walked into the funeral and blew himself up among the mourners who'd come to bury him. He has mediated in Somalia, Nigeria and the Sahel, negotiated with kidnappers to bring hostages home, and run back channels for the United Nations, the U.S. government and the World Health Organization. When Kabul fell in August 2021, the UN sent him in to open the first face-to-face talks between the United Nations and the Taliban leadership. He almost never gives interviews, because almost none of his work can be discussed. This is one of the very few long conversations he has ever done. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Tom Gregg sits down with me to explain how the invisible business of negotiation actually works. We talk about: The 2014 Bowe Bergdahl exchange: five Guantánamo prisoners for one American soldier, and how a deal that big actually gets done Flying into Kabul days after the Taliban takeover to open the UN's first face-to-face talks with the new regime The Haqqanis: how the family America armed to fight the Soviets became the deadliest enemy the U.S. faced in Afghanistan Washington armed the father. The son now runs the police. How Sirajuddin Haqqani went from a ten-million-dollar FBI bounty to Afghanistan's interior minister The morning a suicide bomber killed Governor Hakim Taniwal, who he worked alongside in Gardez, and the second bomb that hit the funeral the next day Why those two attacks were the first sign that America's plan for Afghanistan was already failing How a kid from Australia ended up as a UN Political Affairs Officer in the most dangerous corner of Afghanistan The backpacking trip that changed his life, and the time he almost got mugged in Mexico City — the strangest night of his life Negotiating vaccine access with armed groups, and what it takes to get a nurse safely into a war zone Private diplomacy at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva, and what an NGO can do that no government can What Afghanistan looks like in 2026, with Pakistan now bombing the same provinces the insurgency once crossed from How Bono once told him he was against Bill Clinton engaging Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin leader the U.S. had banned for twenty years — and how watching that gamble help deliver the Good Friday Agreement changed his mind about talking to your enemy Why the most consequential work in the world is done by people whose names you will never learn His PTSD, how he got better, and why he believes communication is the only thing that ever really ends a war If you're interested in war, hostage negotiation, Afghanistan, the Taliban, intelligence, diplomacy, or the hidden systems that decide who lives and who comes home, this conversation goes somewhere almost no interview does. Subscribe to The Hidden Third on YouTube, and follow, rate and comment on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. It genuinely helps. Get exclusive episodes, behind-the-scenes conversations, and unaired footage from stories we couldn't tell anywhere else at Patreon.com/thehiddenthird Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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4.6
out of 5
533 Ratings

About

From Emmy and Peabody Award–winning journalist Mariana van Zeller comes THE HIDDEN THIRD, a weekly dive into the underground markets that quietly power a third of the global economy. Every episode Mariana sits down with people who know these worlds firsthand - the hustlers, smugglers, scammers, kingpins, and those trying to shut them down. The series reveals how they function, why they endure, and the profound ways they impact us all. New episodes drop every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. The Hidden Third is a co-production of Muck Media and The Roost Podcast Network.

Information

  • Creator
    Mariana van Zeller
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    51
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    The Hidden Third

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