Hot Money: Agent of Chaos

In this special bonus episode from The Financial Times, "The Broker" tells the story of how a failed baseball hopeful and disgraced stockbroker reinvented himself as one of America’s most consequential modern arms dealers.

From a family-run warehouse in Virginia Beach, Will Somerindyke built his company into a crucial conduit in the Pentagon’s covert supply chains — sourcing Soviet-era weapons for wars in Syria and Yemen before emerging as a central player in Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

As artillery shells became the most sought-after commodity of the war, he placed a multimillion-dollar bet on reviving crumbling Cold War factories in the Balkans, transforming himself from middleman to manufacturer.

Based on months of reporting, The Broker traces Somerindyke’s rise through the shadow world of privatized warfare — where geopolitics, profit and personal ambition collide — and reveals how modern conflicts are sustained not only by soldiers on the front lines, but by entrepreneurs who move the weapons behind the scenes.

This piece, written by the FT’s Miles Johnson, host of Hot Money Season 2: The New Narcos, was originally printed in FT Weekend.

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In our season finale, Sam discovers a different narrative about Marsalek’s life in Russia. And a tip from long ago resurfaces. 

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A Marsalek-backed ring of operatives goes on trial in the UK for espionage. A treasure trove of text messages reveals their inner workings.

Get ad-free access to the entire season of Hot Money: Agent of Chaos by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Access ad-free episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows with Pushkin+.

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Back in Vienna, Sam investigates another Marsalek plot. One that nearly toppled Austria’s intelligence agency.

Get ad-free access to the entire season of Hot Money: Agent of Chaos by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Access ad-free episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows with Pushkin+.

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How does one become a spy? Sam speaks with a former Russian intelligence officer about how Marsalek might have been recruited. And to what ends.

Get ad-free access to the entire season of Hot Money: Agent of Chaos by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Access ad-free episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows with Pushkin+.

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On the ground in Austria and Germany, Sam digs deep into Marsalek’s past. His odd habits. His strange house. The hypnotic effect he had on former colleagues. And how he is remembered by childhood friends.

CORRECTION: In this episode, we reported Marsalek left home just before taking his final school exams at age 17. We’ve since learned he was 18 when he left home.

Get ad-free access to the entire season of Hot Money: Agent of Chaos by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Access ad-free episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows with Pushkin+.

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Sam tracks down an old contact in Tunisia.  A former UN official living off grid. He reveals how he ended up involved in one of Jan Marsalek’s wildest schemes.

CORRECTION: In this episode, we reported that Marsalek told Killian Kleinschmidt that he arrived in Syria in a Mig 8. That was an error. Killian only recalls Marsalek saying that he arrived in Syria in a helicopter, not specifically a Mig 8. 

Get ad-free access to the entire season of Hot Money: Agent of Chaos by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Access ad-free episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows with Pushkin+.

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As Sam arrives in Vienna, a political bomb explodes. A secretly recorded video exposes ties between the far right and Russia, plunging the Austrian government into crisis and revealing a world where people like Jan Marsalek can thrive.

Get ad-free access to the entire season of Hot Money: Agent of Chaos by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Access ad-free episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows with Pushkin+.

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A series of clandestine lunch meetings leads Sam’s editor to send him off to Vienna, in search of one man.

Get ad-free access to the entire season of Hot Money: Agent of Chaos by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Access ad-free episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows with Pushkin+.

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When reporter Sam Jones asks questions about disgraced financial executive Jan Marsalek, he discovers a world of warlords, espionage, and disinformation.

Coming June 10 from Pushkin Industries and The Financial Times

Get ad-free access to the entire season of Hot Money: Agent of Chaos by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Access ad-free episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows with Pushkin+.

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Law enforcement cuts off the Kinahan cartel, and a little red notebook in the back of a car might finally reveal who killed the electrician in Almere.

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Daniel Kinahan is more influential than ever, but law enforcement may finally be catching up. 

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An undercover operation in New York reveals a connection with Tehran.

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Back in the Netherlands, the high-tech unit of the Dutch police works to crack the murder case.

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No longer safe in Europe, the cartel bosses move to a city that is attracting criminals from around the globe.

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International law enforcement is after the Kinahan cartel, revealing just how big the operation has grown.

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An enterprising Dublin drug dealer makes the most of a revolution sweeping across Europe’s criminal economy.

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When a Dutch crime reporter makes an unbelievable discovery, a small-town murder case begins to look like an international assassination plot.

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Hot Money is back with a new season that begins with a mysterious murder in a small town and leads to a cocaine super cartel and a secret proxy war between democracies and dictatorships.

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In the season finale, Alex and Patricia discover how Visa and MasterCard became the reluctant rulers of porn. And they figure out what being ruled by credit card companies means for the porn industry today.

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Alex and Patricia track down the family behind OnlyFans, the site that has transformed online porn by shifting power back to performers. But there is a whole other side to the OnlyFans story. 

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One of the biggest porn companies in the world was forced to radically change its practices. But another porn giant changed almost nothing.

Patricia travels to the company's Prague headquarters to understand why. 

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A billionaire hedge fund manager reads a scathing column about a popular porn site. Hesends an angry text to the CEO of MasterCard. Almost overnight, the biggest porn company in the world changes dramatically.

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How is it legal for porn sites to host millions of videos uploaded by users? The answer is in the story of an Ohio family in the early 1990s.

In this episode: a family IT business, an FBI raid and a court case that set the precedent for porn – and for tech giants like Facebook and Twitter. 

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When Fabian Thylmann ran into trouble with the law, a former Goldman Sachs banker swooped in to buy his porn sites. But nobody knew who he was. He managed to keep his identity a secret for years --- until Patricia rumbled his game. 

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A decade ago, a computer programmer named Fabian Thylmann began to build one of the biggest porn empires in the world.

How did Fabian do it? He was good with money in a business that was starved of finance. He convinced Wall Street to bankroll his vision to take control of the industry.

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Stoya is a porn star who saw first-hand how a firehose of free porn online transformed the adult industry.

She sends hosts Alex Barker and Patricia Nilsson a quest: Find out who is in charge, and get to the bottom of how the business of porn really works.

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When Financial Times reporter Patricia Nilsson started digging into the porn industry, she made a shocking discovery: Nobody knew who controlled the biggest porn company in the world. Now, Nilsson and her editor, Alex Barker, have figured out who the guy was, and much more. Their reporting reveals a shadowy power structure that includes billionaires, tech geniuses and the most powerful finance companies in the world. Coming June 7th. 

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