A Phantom’s Tale: The Coyote Influencer on TikTok - bellingcat
A Phantom’s Tale: The Coyote Influencer on TikTok - bellingcat
He had tens of thousands of followers and posted regularly about his alleged people smuggling activities, but we found many of his claims didn't add up.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Bellingcat contacted the account holder – a man who goes by the name Maldonado- and in an unexpected turn, he claimed to help people cross the US-Mexico border undetected without charging them and without receiving permission from organised crime groups.
In some videos Maldonado is featured on camera, he is seen wearing vaguely camouflage clothes often with a walkie talkie and the audio accompanying these clips often involves discussion of smuggling activities.
However, rather than showing any ‘border barrier’ installed in the Rio Bravo, we geolocated it to Black Point Marina in Florida described on Google Maps as a “waterfront hangout featuring a dockside eatery, picnic pavilion, fishing jetty & jogging trail.”
The same phrase repeated by Maldonado became viral two years earlier in a video posted by alleged members of “La Chapiza”, a term associated with armed men serving the sons of former Sinaloa cartel Leader Joaquin Guzman Loera, also known as “El Chapo”.
We showed Maldonado’s account to Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, Professor at George Mason University and expert in organised crime, immigration, border security, social movements and human trafficking.
She told us that TikTok posts about smuggling operations exploded after Title 42 was introduced by former US President Trump in 2020, allowing US border officials to turn away migrants on the grounds of preventing the spread of Covid-19.
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