TIGER WOODS ARRESTED AGAIN: FOOLS, CRASHES & $100M COCAINE IN BANANAS

0:03 Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning. I'm Garrett Fisher. Wednesday, April first, twenty twenty six, April Fool's Day. No jokes today. I considered it, I really did, but the news had a better idea. Sometimes the world just writes the cold open for you, and today the world showed up with a mugshot. Tiger Woods was arrested Friday afternoon on Jupiter Island, Florida, on charges of driving under the influence, property damage, and refusal to submit to a lawful chemical test. The fifteen time Major champion, fifty years old, rolled his land Rover onto its driver's side after clipping the rear of a pressure cleaner truck on a two lane residential road not far from where he lives. He crawled out through the passenger window. Nobody was seriously hurt. Then the police arrived, and Tiger Woods's problems got a lot more complicated. Martin Cay Sheriff John Budenseik held a press conference that afternoon.

1:03 His words were measured, careful and damning in the way that only understatement can be. Woods, he said, was traveling at a high rate of speed when his vehicle overtook the truck and clipped the back end of its trailer. The truck driver had seen the range rover coming fast in his mirror and tried to edge off the road. There was no shoulder. There was nowhere to go. The land rover swerved, caught the trailer, and went over on its side. Sheriff Budenzeke added quietly that had there been a vehicle moving in the opposite direction at that moment, we would not be talking about a story with no injuries. We'd be talking about something much worse. When officers reached Woods at the scene, they immediately suspected impairment. He agreed to a breathalyzer. It came back triple zeros, no alcohol whatsoever, but he refused to take a urine test. Investigators believe he was under the influence of some kind of medication.

2:00 Woods himself told officers he had injuries from prior accidents and surgeries and he had taken medication for them. No drugs or medication were found in the vehicle, and because he refused the uranalysis, as the sheriff put it directly, we will never get definitive results as to what he was actually impaired on at the time. Of the crash. Woods was booked at the Martin County Jail at around three in the afternoon. He was held for the mandatory eight hours under Florida law for dui arrests. Shortly before midnight, he was released, photographed grimacing in the passenger seat of a black suv easing through a swarm of paparazzi into the Florida dark. This is his second dui arrest. The first was in twenty seventeen, also in Florida, also with no alcohol involved, also with prescription medication at the center of the story. He was found to sleep behind the wheel, then engine running, car damage visible barely coherent on dashcam footage.

2:59 He later said it was a bad combination of painkillers. After back surgery, he checked into a clinic. He pleaded guilty to reckless driving. He came back. This is also depending on how you count his third serious traffic incident. The worst was February twenty twenty one, when his suv ran off a coastal road in Los Angeles at high speed. He suffered multiple fractures in both legs, ankle injuries requiring rods and pins, and foot injuries that took years to address. He said later that doctors had discussed amputation. He came back from that too. He came back from all of it. The two thousand and eight US Open on a broken leg, the two thousand and nine scandal and the divorce and the public apology, the knee surgeries, the back surgeries, the Achilles rupture. In twenty twenty five, he just played Tuesday night in the TGL League Finals at a venue in Palm Beach Gardens. His team lost, but by all accounts his ball speed was impressive. People were talking about the Masters, it starts April ninth. There was a soft deadline approaching for him to decide whether to compete. He was also days away from having to give an answer on whether he'd serve as US Ryder Cup captain for the twenty twenty seven matches in Ireland. Three days after playing golf on Tuesday night, he was in a Florida jail. Kevin Kisner, his TGL teammate, was doing color commentary at the Houston Open on Saturday. When someone asked him about it. He called it very disturbing. He said Woods had been working

4:31 hard trying to get back into shape, signed up for the US senior open. He was trying to do anything he could to play again. That's the picture Kisner painted, a man fighting, and then Friday happened. A source described as being close to Woods told People magazine that his inner circle is worried. The quote that stuck with me. Tiger has yet to look in the mirror and say you're fifty years old and need to act like it. The source went on to say he's frustrated and depressed about his state of health, that he's enabled by people making money off his talent and reputation, and that once he gets real people do still like Tiger. He is a good person. That quote is doing a lot of work. Frustrated, depressed, enabled.

5:17 Those are not the words of someone who thinks their friend is fine. As of Monday, no court date had been set. Florida defense attorneys have noted that without the year analysis, it may be difficult to prove Woods was actually impaired by a controlled substance, which is what the Dui statute requires. That could leave the refusal to submit charge a second degree misdemeanor that carries up to sixty days in jail. Whether that charge survives a trial is a different question. Tiger Woods has had lawyers before. He will figure something out legally. That's probably not the point. The point is this. The man was playing golf three days before this happened. He was trying. His body has been dis mantled and rebuilt so many times that it's hard to keep count of the surgeries. And somewhere in all of that physical suffering, in all of that pain management and rehab and desperate clawing back toward a game he loves, something is going wrong. Something has been going wrong for a long time. The question his fans are asking is Tiger Okay deserves a more honest answer than anyone in his orbit seems willing to give. Russell Brand.

6:41 The name has been in the news cycle for going on three years now, and it moved again this week, not forward toward resolution, but sideways into delay. A London judge confirmed Monday that Brand's rape and sexual assault trial in the United Kingdom has been rescheduled from June to October. Had been set for the summer, it is now set for autumn. If you are one of the six women whose allegations formed the basis of these charges, you have been waiting since at least September twenty twenty three, when this story first broke publicly, and now you are being told to wait a little longer. Let me walk you through where this case stands, because it has grown significantly since the original charges. The Crown Prosecution Service charge Brand in April of last year with five counts, one count of rape, one count of indecent assault, one count of oral rape, and two counts of sexual assault. Those charges stemmed from allegations made by four anonymous women. The alleged incidents took place between nineteen ninety nine and two thousand and five, when Brand was in his mid to late twenties building his career as a stand up comedian before his television breakthrough. He appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court in May and pleaded not guilty to all five charges. Then in December, the Crown Prosecution Service filed two additional charges, another rape and another sexual assault, linked to allegations from two more women. Brand pleaded not guilty to those as well, six accusers in total, now seven charges. The Metropolitan Police

8:12 began investigating in September twenty twenty three after a joint investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel four's Dispatches program, in which five women described their alleged experiences with Brand. That reporting triggered the police inquiry that ultimately led to the CPS charges. Brand has denied everything consistently and publicly. Last May, when the original charges were filed, he posted a video to x, his preferred platform where he has built a significant following in recent years among people who described themselves as skeptical of mainstream narratives. In that video, he said, and I want to be precise here. He told his audience he had been quote a drug addict, a sex addict, and an imbecile, but that what he never was was a rapist. He has leaned heavily on his conversion to Christianity and his public discussion of past addiction and recklessness as a kind of character testimony, the implication being that the person he was then is not the person he is now. His defense will have months to prepare for October, his accusers will have months to wait.

9:20 That asymmetry is worth sitting with for a moment. No reason has been publicly given for the trial delay, at least none that the reporting make clear. These things happen in complex, multi charge cases with multiple complainants scheduling, legal preparation, court availability. It doesn't tell us anything about the merits of the case, but October is a long time from now, and if you're counting, it means the women who first came forward in twenty twenty three will have been living inside this legal process for the better part of three years before a jury gets to weigh in. Brand meanwhile continues to produce content. He has a large and loyal audience. He remains a public figure with a platform. We'll be following this trial closely. When it finally begins October, we'll get here. I want to tell you about James Farthing.

10:14 I want to tell you this story slowly because it takes a moment to fully appreciate the scope of what has happened in the roughly eleven months since this man won the lottery. James Farthing, fifty one years old, of Georgetown, Kentucky, purchased a powerball ticket last April. He won not a small amount, not a lucky scratch off amount. He won a one hundred and sixty seven million dollar jackpot one hundred and sixty seven million dollars. This past Saturday, March twenty eighth, police in Lexington, Kentucky, arrested him on charges of burglary and drug related offenses. According to an arrest citation reviewed by local outlets, Farthing allegedly entered a residence without authorization and stole twelve thousand dollars in cash. A resident said she saw him on her security camera before she heard a loud noise that sounded like her door being busted open. Then she noticed twelve thousand dollars was missing.

11:11 Twelve thousand dollars. The man has one hundred and sixty seven million dollars or he had it. We'll come back to that. This was not a lapse in judgment. This was not a bad night. This was Farthing's third arrest in less than a year since winning the lottery. In November, he was charged with wanton endangerment and leaving the scene of an accident following an alleged hit and run collision in Fayette County. Wanton endangerment, for those unfamiliar, is a serious charge. It means your actions put someone at unreasonable risk of death or serious physical injury. He allegedly hit someone and drove away. In February, he was charged in Scott County with intimidating a participant in a legal process.

11:55 That's witness tampering territory. That's someone who knows they're in legal trouble and trying to manage the people around them. And then, weeks before this latest arrest, Farthing pleaded guilty to assault of a Florida police officer. Bodycam footage which local TV has obtained, reportedly shows him kicking the officer in the face at a bar. This happened back in April of last year, right around the time he won the jackpot, actually, and he just resolved it with a guilty plea. He is now awaiting arraignments in two separate cases. In April, he was set to appear Monday afternoon on the burglary charges. A ten thousand dollars bond was posted Sunday, ten thousand dollars bond for a man with one hundred and sixty seven million. Now, I'm not going to stand here and pretend that winning the lottery automatically makes someone's underlying problems disappear. It doesn't. People who were struggling before sudden wealth often struggle after it, sometimes more acutely, because the money removes consequences without removing causes. If you were self destructive before, you're still self destructive. You just have more resources and more exposure and more people watching. The research on lottery winners and outcomes is not cheerful. But Burglary, a man with one hundred and sixty seven million dollars allegedly busted open someone's door to steal twelve thousand in cash.

13:22 That's not a money problem. That's something else entirely. And whatever that something else is, eleven months of consequences have not touched it. We'll see what April's court dates bring. And finally, and I say finally with some relish, let's go to Southampton, England, where the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency announced this past Saturday that it had charged three men with importing Class A drugs following the discovery of nine hundred and forty three kilograms of cocaine hidden inside a shipment of bananas. Nine hundred and forty three kilograms at a street value of seventy five million British pounds just under one hundred million US dollars. The drugs were found inside a shipping container at Southampton Docks that had sailed from Nicaragua by way of Panama. Border Force officers working in partnership with the NCAA opened the container on March eighteenth and found the cocaine inside banana packaging. The operation led to charges against three men, Daniel Dumitru thirty seven years old from the West Midlands, Andrew Smith forty six, from Merseyside, and Joshua Berry twenty eight from Hampshire. Dumitru and Smyth appeared at Southampton Magistrates Court on March nineteenth, the day after the seizure. Barry appeared in court on Saturday.

14:51 All three have been remanded in custody and are expected before Southampton Crown Court on April seventeenth. Barry faces an additional charge of producing Class B drug. That detail suggests he may have had a broader role in the operation than simple importing. The NCAA's branch commander, Saju Sassakumar said in a statement that this was a massive amount of cocaine destined for the streets of the UK and that seizing these drugs deprives the crime group behind it of huge profits that cannot be plowed back into further offending. That's the formula take the money, take the product, cut the funding chain. What gets me about drug cases like this is the audacity of the method. Bananas sailed from Nicaragua through Panama to Southampton. Someone somewhere looked at the global banana trade, one of the most heavily trafficked agricultural commodities in the world, billions of dollars of product moving through ports every year, and decided the volume was a feature, not a problem. Blend the cocaine into the noise. You're not hiding drugs, You're hiding them inside commerce. It did work this time. April seventeenth, Southampton Crown Court. We'll see what the evidence looks like when they get there. That's Daily Crime and Justice for Wednesday, April first, twenty twenty six, April Fool's Day. Tiger Woods rolled his land Rover on a Jupiter Island road Friday afternoon and spent eight hours in a Florida jail. His second DUI arrest, his fourth

16:23 serious traffic incident, no alcohol, possibly medication. The Master starts in eight days. His inner circle is worried. Russell Brand's UK rape trial, seven charges, six accusers, has been pushed from June to October the women wait. James Farthing won one hundred and sixty seven million dollar powerball jackpot last April. He's been arrested three times since the latest allegedly breaking into a home to steal twelve thousand dollars cash, and three men are facing drug charges after nearly one hundred million dollars worth of cocaine turned out up hidden in a banana shipment at Southampton Docks. No jokes today, Sometimes the calendar just hands you a theme. I'm Garrett Fisher, See you tomorrow. This is Daily Crime and Justice. Disclaimer.

17:16 Daily Crime and Justice is a production of Calaroga Shark Media. This program covers active legal matters, ongoing trials, and criminal justice news. All suspects and defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Charges are allegations, verdicts are facts. We try to know the difference. Research and scripting for this episode were assisted by AI tools and reviewed for accuracy. But we are not lawyers. We are not your lawyers, and nothing you hear here is legal advice. We are journalists, or close enough. If we get something wrong. We want to know if you have information about a case we've covered, contact the appropriate life law enforcement agency, not us. This is entertainment. The underlying stories are not