Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 1/16/24 – Television viewers, are you ready to get “Trafficked?”
Award-winning journalist Mariana van Zeller explores the inner workings of the most dangerous black markets on the planet in her new show on the National Geographic Channel, “Trafficked: Underworlds.” The 10-episode program, which makes its premiere Wednesday night at 9/8 Central, looks at the darker side of life.
In each episode, she investigates a different underworld — from the trade in body parts and hired assassins to sextortion and the smuggling of brides — to meet the players, learn the business, and better understand the world’s multitrillion-dollar shadow economy.
In Wednesday’s first installment, van Zeller shines a light on the business of assassination. Hitmen murder nearly 3,000 people a year around the globe, yet little is known about them. What drives a person to make a living out of killing?
In this episode, van Zeller journeys inside this violent trade, first tracking down an assassin in her hometown of Los Angeles before heading to a country where contract killings have become an almost daily occurrence: South Africa.
In future shows, she will look at Sextortion, a new blackmail scam in which compromising photos are used to extort victims; the sale of human remains, which generates billions of dollars; black market meds, the trafficking in prescription drugs, the illegal trade in wild apes; the smuggling of migrants into the U.S.; hashish smuggling from the hills of Morocco; the drug-mule scam; illegal gambling; and the mining of gold to fund terrorism worldwide.
A Peabody Award winner, van Zeller is a Portuguese journalist and correspondent for National Geographic Channel. She was the chief correspondent for Fusion (until the channel ceased its operations in December 2021), and is a former correspondent for the “Vanguard” documentary series on the former Current TV.
