A real-life coyote or a con? - Bellingcat [View all]

Excerpt from the article

An alleged coyote holding a walkie talkie crouches by some mangroves. In another video, he speaks to the camera about the fact that new floating barriers deployed in the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande won’t stop him crossing the river.

The only problem – we geolocated this footage to a Marina south of Miami, Florida, almost 2,000 km away from that river on the US-Mexico border.

Bellingcat and our investigative partner the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) analysed his TikTok account of 150,000 followers which alluded to people smuggling activities via hundreds of videos and posts. Scores of people requested information about being smuggled or working as a smuggler, but we found many of the account’s claims don’t add up. Experts told us the account portrays a cartoonish version of real life smuggling.

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.