Whale Hunting

This week on Whale Hunting, we're bringing you a special episode from Project Brazen's archives that asks: How did an Ivy League activist become a global fugitive? Whale Hunting host Bradley Hope first met Adrian Hong in 2011. In this audio short, Bradley recounts his first meeting with Adrian, a Yale drop-out who led an underground organization working to undermine Kim Jong-un's regime by helping...

Dr Ruja Ignatova has been on the run since 2017 after orchestrating one of the biggest scams in history. This week on Whale Hunting, Bradley chats to Jamie Bartlett, the author and broadcaster who brought Ruja's shocking story into the mainstream with the hit podcast The Missing Cryptoqueen. Her OneCoin scam was somewhere between a crypto rug pull and a multi-level marketing scheme that pulled in...

Think of your favorite mafia movie or narco show. Then think of its female characters. How many of them fall into the following categories? 1) long suffering wife 2) hot girlfriend 3) victim of crime. Probably a majority, right? But like any other industry, there are women out there running drug operations — even building empires — and journalist Deborah Bonello has been following their stories in...

Gangsters of the past may have headed to their nearest payphone to make risky calls, but modern day criminals have a much more convenient option: encrypted cellphones. The question is, who makes these phones and secure apps? In 2018, one phone app came along that was specifically marketed to criminal clientele. It was called Anom, and its mass adoption by organized crime groups around the world wo...

Like night needs day, criminals have always needed money launderers. But how is the digital revolution changing the laundering business? This week on Whale Hunting, host Bradley Hope speaks to Geoff White, author of the new book Rinsed, about the increasingly sophisticated digital skills used by money launderers around the world. Together, they discuss how the industry has embraced new technology,...

Many journalists have that one story they just can't let drop. For Nicky Woolf, it was this one. In December 2014, at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Rosemont, Illinois, horror unfolded at the final night of Midwest Furfest, the world’s largest convention for Furries. There's an attack. Poisonous levels of chlorine gas sweep through the hotel corridors, nineteen people are hospitalized and hundreds are...

Once upon a time, in a land far away, corporate interests didn't rule the political roost. It's hard to imagine today, when Big Oil, Big Tech and Big Finance (among other 'bigs') all muscle in on US democracy, grappling for the attention and affections of elected representatives. Indeed, a whole industry has sprung up to mediate this muscling, and you can find it on K Street. Home to Washington DC...

We’re back and we’re kicking off season two with a bang! This week on Whale Hunting, host Tom Wright is joined by Jane Perlez, long-time Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, and now host of the new podcast FACE OFF: The US vs China. The show dives into the defining issues of the US-China rivalry, from espionage to technology, nuclear arms and cultural exchange – because there's nothing wro...

Thanks for listening to season one of Whale Hunting! The podcast will be back very soon with brand new episodes on everything from President Xi of China to corporate lobbying in Washington, Furry subculture, female Narco bosses, and much more.  In the meantime, we wanted to share an episode from one of our favourite shows: the 404 Media podcast. The team at 404 Media report from the frontier of te...

The consequences of Jho Low's colossal fraud continue to be felt on several continents. In Malaysia, the trial of former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has entered its fifth year, with new testimony from ex-1MDB lawyer Jasmine Loo. In Switzerland this month, two PetroSaudi execs, Tarik Obaid and Patrick Mahony, have insisted to a judge that their company was not a sham set up to siphon money...

If your loved one was kidnapped by a terror group like ISIS, your first instinct might be to scream for help from the rooftops. This, Daniel Levin says, would not be a good move. Daniel has spent years working on all kinds of conflict resolution, from freeing hostages to bringing political adversaries to the table or helping countries recover after civil war. This week on Whale Hunting, host Tom W...

Lewis A. Kaplan has been a district court judge for almost 30 years, but even he was staggered by the audacity of Sam Bankman-Fried. “When he wasn’t outright lying, he was evasive, hairsplitting, dodging questions,” Kaplan said when he handed the FTX fraudster a 25 year prison sentence last week. Zeke Faux, a reporter for Bloomberg, was there to watch the sentencing. He's met SBF a few times – bef...

We all know that advertisers are snapping up our digital data: what we buy, the websites we visit, the content we consume – even where we are at any given moment. But fewer people know that this data isn’t just being bought by companies trying to sell us things. It’s also being bought by the government and intelligence agencies. These mass data purchases (often via shadowy middlemen) is what inves...

Imagine a digital virus that could destroy your computer. Not crash its system, but actually wreck the physical hardware – say, melt the motherboard or burn up the hard drive. It might sound dystopian, but in fact, this kind of virus was discovered in Iran in 2010. And it wasn’t just wrecking a humble laptop – it was sabotaging Iranian nuclear infrastructure. The virus (or worm) became known as St...

Hollywood movies would have you believe Interpol is something like the world’s police force. The reality is quite different. This week on Whale Hunting, host Bradley Hope talks to Jane Bradley about what Interpol is really for, and the complicated politics at play within its ranks. Jane is the New York Times’ reporter for the UK and along with Pulitzer and Orwell prize nominations, she also holds...

Most of the time, drug wars happen in the shadows, in underworld deaths and disappearances. But when journalists and lawyers start getting gunned down on the streets of Amsterdam, and burning cars are crashed into newspaper offices — well, you’ve got all the makings of a European narco state. This week on Whale Hunting, host Bradley Hope sits down with Mitch Prothero to discuss the sentencing of t...

How fast can you set up a shell company? We bet Jason Sharman can do it quicker. A Cambridge academic, author, and an expert witness, Professor Sharman is also a founder of the niche sport of time-trialed shell company formation. He’s spent more than a decade studying corruption, money laundering and tax havens, visiting at least 20 so-called treasure islands during his studies. This week on Whale...

Picture the scene: you’re luxury glamping in the Saudi desert, the darkening sky already awash with stars above you. You’re about to enjoy all the splendour of an evening amongst the Saudi royal court when Johnny emerges from his opulent tent, acoustic guitar in hand. That, I’m afraid, has been the fate of Mohammed Bin Salman’s courtiers in recent months, ever since the pair began their budding br...

The man at the heart of the German Wirecard scandal, Jan Marsalek was once believed to be a straightforward fraudster. Recent reporting, however, has revealed him as a potential Russian intelligence asset. Dan McCrum, investigative reporter for The Financial Times, is well versed with Marsalek’s shadowy ways. Investigating Wirecard saw him tailed by private detectives and smeared with sham allegat...

When the Sheik of Dubai’s daughters tried to escape their father, world powers turned a blind eye. But investigative reporter Heidi Blake was determined to document their plight. Writing for the New Yorker last year, Heidi unraveled the disturbing story of Emirati princesses Latifa and Shamsa, and how Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum crushed their bid for freedom. This week on Whale Hunting, B...

Yaroslav Trofimov is a seasoned war correspondent whose career spans the tumultuous events of the early 21st century, from Iraq to Afghanistan and the frontlines in Ukraine. This week on the Whale Hunting podcast, Yaroslav joins host Tom Wright to take a deep dive into his war reporting career – including his latest work, a new book titled 'Our Enemies Will Vanish'. The book chronicles the first y...

If there’s one thing dictators and autocrats hate, it’s transparency. If they got it their way, they’d step onto private jets and vanish from all oversight. Luckily, people like Emmanuel Freudenthal are paying attention – even at 30,000 feet. This week on Whale Hunting, Bradley Hope is joined by Emmanuel, an investigative journalist and a director at Dictator Alert, a project that aims to illumina...

Leonard Francis executed a naval corruption scheme like no other – plying admirals and officers with booze, parties and prostitutes in return for lucrative navy contracts. His story involves sexual kompromat, a daring escape to Venezuela, and now, a prisoner swap with a suspected money launderer. But how did Whale Hunting host Tom Wright discover this shocking scoop? And what was it like spending...

How can journalists, activists, dissidents and even lawyers and business leaders protect themselves from the threat of private surveillance? That’s the question we’re looking to answer this week on Whale Hunting, with a special interview from our archives. Back in 2022, Whale Hunting host Bradley Hope took a look into the hidden world of private surveillance – a world he’s gotten to know personall...

It’s been more than nine months since Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was wrongfully detained on espionage charges. Just a few weeks ago, Putin rejected an American offer for a prisoner swap to help free him. But how did we get here?  This week on Whale Hunting, we’re running a special episode on Evan’s story. This episode originally aired in May 2023, just weeks after his arrest. Un...