💰 Pig Butchering and Medical Refugees: The Buckmaster Show Exposes America's Dual Crisis
Why seniors are being digitally slaughtered while veterans seek healing across borders
Based on the Buckmaster Show for 7/7/25, a daily radio show in Tucson, AZ, interviewing local newsmakers. Analysis and opinions are my own.
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
A radio show in Tucson revealed two major problems: criminals are using sophisticated text message scams to steal money from older Americans, particularly through fake romance relationships that lead to cryptocurrency investments, while at the same time, Mexico is actually doing better economically than the U.S. in many ways, and American veterans have to go to Mexico to get medical treatments that work better than what's available here because our government won't allow them, even though American scientists developed some of these treatments.
🗝️ Takeaways
📱 "Smishing" (SMS phishing) has become the weapon of choice for digital predators targeting seniors
🐷 "Pig butchering" scams combine romance fraud with cryptocurrency investment schemes, causing losses exceeding $1 million
🇰🇭 Cambodia's scam industry generates $12.5-19 billion annually (60% of their GDP) using enslaved workers
🥇 The Mexican peso hit its strongest point on July 4th, while its economy outperformed expectations
🇨🇳 Chinese infrastructure investment in Mexico far exceeds U.S. efforts, creating strategic advantages
💊 American-developed cancer treatments are banned in the U.S. but are successfully used in China
🎖️ Veterans cross borders to access Ibogaine treatment for PTSD because it's illegal domestically
💸 Elder fraud disproportionately impacts older adults because they have more accumulated wealth to lose
Scam-busting and Border Blues: When Capitalism Comes Home to Roost and Our Neighbors School Us on Survival
Another Monday in monsoon season that forgot to monsoon, another day in Trump's America where the real storms brewing aren't in the sky but in our collective consciousness.
Bill Buckmaster's July 7th radio show on Tucson's KVOI 1030 delivered more truth than a Sunday sermon and twice the fire, featuring guests who pulled back the curtain on two distinctly American tragedies: how late-stage capitalism has weaponized loneliness into a profit center, and how our stubborn exceptionalism blinds us to solutions flourishing right across our southern border.
The Predatory Precision of Digital Desperados
Brian Watson stepped into Buckmaster's studio carrying the weight of three decades investigating financial crimes as an IRS special agent.
Now serving as a community outreach specialist for ROSE (Resources Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly), Watson has witnessed firsthand how modern scamming has evolved from crude email schemes into sophisticated psychological warfare targeting our most vulnerable communities.
Because nothing says "greatest country on earth" like systematically terrorizing the elderly through their cell phones.
The latest weapon in this arsenal?
Smishing - SMS phishing that transforms our pocket computers into weapons of financial destruction. Watson explained how these text-based traps masquerade as urgent communications: "So a month or two ago, it was tolls. You forgot to pay this toll. I got one of those." Now they've evolved to impersonate the DMV (or MVD here in Arizona), threatening suspended registrations with all the theatrical menace of a collection agency.
But here's where it gets genuinely sinister. Watson shared a sample message that read: "If you don't pay by June 20th, you're going to get reported to the database, you're going to get a suspended vehicle registration, suspended driving privileges, and then you may be prosecuted."
The cruel genius lies in targeting precisely the qualities we should celebrate: "The people who fall for these scams Bill are people who are law abiding citizens. People who are rule followers, who are just good, honest people."
In other words, the system punishes virtue while rewarding sociopathy. Peak capitalism, folks.
The Grotesque Geography of Greed
The scope of this digital disaster defies comprehension. Watson revealed that Cambodia's scam industry now generates between $12.5-19 billion annually - equivalent to 60% of their official GDP. It's an economic miracle built on misery, employing over 200,000 people working under conditions the UN describes as modern slavery.
Imagine building an entire national economy on exploiting American retirees. That's some next-level international irony right there.
But the crown jewel of contemporary cons is what Watson calls "pig butchering" - a term so viscerally unsettling it demands attention. This isn't your garden-variety romance scam; it's methodical psychological manipulation that would make Machiavelli blush.
Watson explained: "The scammers refer to their victims as pigs and they want to fatten them up for slaughter and they do that by getting them to invest in cryptocurrency."
The process is diabolically patient. Scammers cultivate relationships over months through dating apps or random text messages, building emotional connections before introducing investment opportunities. Watson described how they create fake trading portals showing massive returns: "It looks like something you might get from your financial planner and it'll actually show you made 500%, 1000% gains." The psychological manipulation peaks when they refund initial investments to build trust before encouraging victims to mortgage their futures.
It's like MLM schemes and romance novels had a baby and raised it on pure evil.
Watson shared the heartbreaking reality of a Phoenix woman who lost $200,000 - about 80% of her life savings - to this scheme: "This is a very smart lady. And I talked to her and she lost about 80% of her life savings." The financial impact varies dramatically by age group, as Watson noted: "If one of my parents lost everything they have, it would be absolutely financially tragic... as we get older, we accumulate wealth."
The latest evolution involves the gold bar grift, where fraudsters impersonating FBI agents or bank security convince victims to convert savings to untraceable precious metals. In 2024 alone, this particular predatory practice pilfered $219 million from trusting Americans.
Border Correspondent's Uncomfortable Truths
Enter Keith Rosenblum, the show's monthly border correspondent whose credentials span congressional aide work and border reporting for major Arizona publications. Rosenblum possesses the rare ability to puncture American exceptionalism with uncomfortable truths delivered through sardonic observation.
Finally, someone willing to say what we're all thinking: maybe we're not the smartest kids in the continental classroom.
His central thesis challenges every MAGA fever dream about Mexican inferiority. With 125 million people and a robust economy, Mexico increasingly resembles the responsible sibling in this North American family.
While Americans debate tariffs and build walls, Mexicans are buying Chinese BYD electric vehicles for $25,000 - cars with 500-mile ranges that make Tesla's pricing look like highway robbery.
Rosenblum's assessment cuts deep: "Mexico was not far from saying yes to the Axis powers in World War II. We should not be taking them for granted." He continued with characteristic bluntness: "Don't take Mexico for granted. It is our backyard, I guess, geographically, but it is not our backyard politically or people tire of things."
Turns out treating your neighbors like vassals for a century creates some resentment. Who could have predicted that?
The Chinese Chess Game We're Losing
Perhaps most sobering was Rosenblum's analysis of Chinese infrastructure investment in Mexico. While America exports democracy through drone strikes, China builds actual infrastructure: "Virtually every sophisticated project has Mexican footprints, Chinese footprints on it. So whether it's the solar fields, whether it's the car companies, now whether it's high tech, whether it's at the universities."
Mexico's strategic advantages include world-class ports that could eventually challenge American shipping dominance: "Mexico by virtue of having 7,000 miles of coast has four or five world-class ports... that are much more sophisticated than ours. And that's because the Chinese have been working with them."
While we're busy building walls, China's building bridges. Guess which strategy actually works?
Healthcare Hypocrisy and Medical Apartheid
The conversation's most damning revelation centered on American healthcare's regulatory rigidity. Rosenblum chronicled the Warburg methodology - a cancer treatment developed by University of Arizona researchers that's being used successfully in China but remains banned in the United States.
This regulatory stranglehold extends to Ibogaine, a West African botanical treatment showing remarkable success treating PTSD and addiction among veterans in Mexican clinics.
Rosenblum's passion became palpable: "You have amazing stories of vets having gone to one place called beyond the UN, another calling something like a mission from within... these vets, one after another, get up and give these wrenching testimonies about what Ibogaine has done for them."
So let me get this straight: we send veterans to fight endless wars for "freedom," then deny them the freedom to choose their own medical treatments. The cognitive dissonance is absolutely stunning.
The success rates speak volumes. While traditional VA treatments achieve maybe 20-25% success rates, Ibogaine demonstrates dramatically higher effectiveness. Yet it remains classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning our government officially considers it to have "no medical benefit" despite overwhelming testimonial evidence.
Rosenblum's frustration echoed through his words: "I believe that as with Trump lots of things that could never have happened in a Biden or any Democratic administration for that matter... things that could never have happened there are some good things that can with a drastic change in personnel."
Because apparently it takes a wannabe authoritarian to grant veterans basic medical autonomy. The irony meter just exploded.
Economic Indicators of Imperial Decline
The Mexican peso hitting its strongest point on July 4th - Independence Day, no less - serves as a perfect metaphor for American decline. Rosenblum explained the fundamentals: "Because of their budget, their house is in order. They don't spend money that they don't have... Because they have, the oil prices are holding firm, they have oil. Because their unemployment rate is low."
Meanwhile, Americans increasingly seek medical care across borders to escape a system where "every dollar we spend, I think it's 35 cents actually winds up with a medical provider and the other 65 cents goes to administrative costs."
Nothing screams "greatest healthcare system in the world" like forcing cancer patients to become medical refugees.
The Intersection of Exploitation
These seemingly separate issues - elder fraud and healthcare apartheid - represent two sides of the same capitalist coin. Both exploit the vulnerability for profit, whether through sophisticated psychological manipulation or regulatory capture by pharmaceutical interests.
The elder fraud epidemic flourishes precisely because our economic system has atomized communities, leaving seniors isolated and vulnerable. Meanwhile, our healthcare system prioritizes pharmaceutical profits over patient outcomes, forcing desperate Americans to seek healing across borders.
It's almost like organizing society around profit maximization instead of human welfare creates predictable problems. Revolutionary concept, I know.
Questions for Reflection
As you navigate this landscape of legalized exploitation, consider: How do we reconcile claims of being the "land of the free" with regulatory systems that deny citizens access to potentially life-saving treatments available elsewhere?
When our economic policies and healthcare restrictions drive Americans to seek solutions across borders, are we witnessing American exceptionalism's natural evolution or its complete failure?
Building Bridges, Not Walls
Despite these challenges, hope persists in unexpected places. Organizations like ROSE demonstrate how community education can combat predatory practices. Meanwhile, brave veterans sharing their healing stories challenge medical orthodoxy and pharmaceutical monopolies.
The solution isn't building higher walls but building stronger communities - communities that protect their vulnerable members and demand healthcare systems that serve people, not profits.
Want to stay informed about these critical issues affecting our communities? Support independent journalism by subscribing to the Three Sonorans Substack - because corporate media won't tell these stories with the urgency they deserve.
What Do You Think?
The intersection of elder exploitation and medical apartheid reveals deep systemic failures in American capitalism. How can communities better protect vulnerable members from sophisticated scamming operations? Should Americans have the right to access medical treatments available in other countries, even if they haven't completed FDA approval processes?
Share your thoughts below - because these conversations are how change begins, one uncomfortable truth at a time.
Have a scoop or a story you want us to follow up on? Send us a message!
