tcould put our national security at risk. kristen nelson: they had, quote unquote, promised us a whole lot more work in this high speed rail. male: here he comes. stephen: work that bill nelson says never materialized. stephen: john fong yong's morning looks like thousands of other people's in the south bay, leaving his ranch style home bill: probably spent in the neighborhood of a half a million dollars for excavators, loaders, water trucks, in mountain view, hopping in the family minivan, and driving to his tech job at google. crew trucks to man up for this work. john fong yong: it will tell you which direction he's heading towards. stephen: after initially signing a contract in 2017 with stephen: we spent weeks watching yong drive from what property records show is his home to his work at google. dragados-flatiron for more than $2 million worth of subcontract male: it looks like he's going to work. stephen: we focused on yong because state corporation work on the high speed rail project, nelson's investment records list his home address also as the headquarters in manpower and machinery sat idle because high speed rail of a tech company called cloudparticle. authorities had not obtained the proper rights of way. and us homeland security records show cloudparticle employed more bill: not one work order we ever did, than 300 foreign students with f-1 visas in 2017. did we ever complete it, not one. stephen: as for the work the company did perform, the f-1 visa's optional practical training and stem kristen says it took up to seven months for the money programs allow students to work in the us for up to three years to funnel down from the state to dragados and then finally to her bank account. and when the progress payments did arrive, the checks did not in a field related to their studies. cover nelson construction's cost, a fraction of what business office other than that mountain view home. kristen says the contract called for. stephen: i'm stephen stock of nbc bay area, we've kristen: and then we received a five-- che. been trying to get you for months. stephen: when you were expecting $60,000. stephen: after he didn't respond to our calls and emails asking kristen: correct. how he employs hundreds of foreign students by another small company, west pacific electric, out of his mountain view home, we decided to wait against dragados, alleging very much the same thing. according to the federal suit, west pacific was brought on as a for yostnguthen: can we talk u about cloudparticle? what is cloudparticle? subcontractor, invested more than $2 million, then could not it's listed--it's listed as your home address. make deadlines because high speed rail did not have why is it listed as your home address? the rights of way to the land where the work was to occur. stephen: yong suggested we talk some place else and we readily agreed. david mendoza: very few were getting paid on time. john: can we find a different place to meet? stephen: david mendoza is project manager at the stephen: i'd be glad to. john: no, i don't-- minority business development agency in fresno. mendoza says many different business owners stephen: we'd be glad to talk to you, take my card. tell him the same story. john: no, no, i don't want to take your card. he says all of them are subcontractors who could not put stephen: we'll come back to yong in a minute because our research found that cloudparticle is not the only questionable company that reports employing hundreds their crews to work because of failure to obtain rights of waye of foreign students on f-1 visas. cases did not get paid at all. we uncovered at least 13 other suspicious companies frederick jordan: that's an issue because if you take six months to get paid, it doesn't matter when the payment like cloudparticle, each with unreachable corporate officers comes through, you're out of business. and an f-1 workforce comprised 9% stephen: a member of high speed rail's peer review committee, frederick jordan is president of fe jordan associates, overseeing f-1 visas in washington dc. rachel canty: we do data analytics, we have technology, a san francisco bay civil engineering firm that has we do a lot of vetting tools. visas in washington dc. helped build 35 different large public transit projects. so, there's a lot of things we do behind the scenes. giovanni perry: the abuse is a very small part of this program. in 2010, jordan helped launch a federal civil rights stephen: uc davis professor giovanni perry chairs investigation into high speed rail's hiring practices. the economics department there. he acknowledges there are security vulnerabilities with frederick: and i found out that they had zip minority, the program, but he says and our data confirms that the number almost zip small business, zip meaning zero. of students listed as working for suspicious companies stn: feral railroad administration make up a small fraction of the total f-1 students. told the high speed rail authority to establish a program and he points out there are many benefits for students, to help ensure fair hiring and, quote, prompt payment universities, and us companies. of subcontractors by prime contractors. but even while touting its benefits, supporters of the f-1 it's a problem jordan believes the authority program admit being troubled when we shared the list of 13 has yet to fully address. questionablepa frederick: i mean, that's an enormous problem. rachel: because they're on a list does not mean that we doot i mean, that--sometimes i can't sleep at night. it means that we might be actively looking at them right now. brian kelly: that is disturbing, and so, i would stephen: could this be a security risk to national security? like to understand what that problem was. rachel: anytime you have people in the united states that stephen: brian kelly is ceo of california's are doing something other than they've told us high speed rail authority. they're doing, there's always a risk. we asked kelly about the small business owners who say the but that is why we look at the companies very carefully, that's authority's failure to obtain land or rights of way before why we do data analytics, and that's why we do investigations. st coany's in a financial hole. mark warner: this is clearly a problem area. stephen: senator mark warner of virginia is ranking member they would go out to the site, wasn't ready. on the select committee on intelligence. the right of way wasn't procured or they weren't ready. he believes we've exposed a loophole that did that play a role? is a risk to national security. brian: i can't tell you it didn't play a role. i mean, look, i've already said the right of way issue mark: many of these shell companies, we don't have any ability to pierce that veil. after we're already in construction is problematic. we need that information not just in terms of the f-1 visa stephen: some of these subs aren't getting paid. how is that possible? program, but candidly against potential terrorist financing, how are you helping small business when you're not paying them? brian: high speed rail now has had something like 31 straight crime, other national security threats as well. months of no late payments, so let's be very clear about that. stephen: which brings us back to john fong yang's home now, these are disputes largely between in mountain view. contractors and subcontractors. remember he promised to talk to us while we were standing in a parking lot at his other workplace. and we are hearing from the small busine stephen: why did you have f-1 visa workers? and we will try to work with the contractors on more timely where do you want to meet? stephen: yong would not answer or even give us payment between the contractors and the subs. stephen: as they map out the next segment of construction to a time or place to meet.mpl? be built into bakersfield, kelly says his team will only hire did they pay you? john: no, no, no; sorry, i think you're too aggressive. contractors to begin construction after high speed stephen:te, got in his car and drove away, rail buys the land or obtains the proper rights of way. and we never heard from him again. stephen: we also reached out to the people listed as company stephen: a spokesman for dragados flatiron joint venture officials and all those other businesses we said it values its relationship with all contractors talked about in that story. and suppliers, and makes payments within set timelines. they never got back to us either. we also asked google several times to comment high speed rail officials recently announced they settled about john fong yong's job there. a $134 million claim with dragados over delayed payments they never returned our phone calls or our emails. to that company because the rail authority had not obtained coming up next, ever wonder what happens to all those stolen phones? the proper rights of way for the project to proceed. well, we investigate a pilfered electronics pipeline that wraps up tonight's investigations. that stretches from the bay area all the way overseas. if you have a story, please call us. call our tip line at 888-996-tips, or just send us an email. until next time, we'll keep digging, so please join us nightly on nbc bay area news, where we investigate. east bay that would be easy to miss if you didn't know what was there, but police say it's one end of an international ♪ right now on "access trafficking pipeline for stolen phones and other electronics. hollywood" father/daughter bond they called it the largest fencing operation in the bay between he and gianna from area, as least, as jessica aguirre reports, until fremont universal studios hollywood, this is "access hollywood." ♪ police teamed with other departments to break it up. jessica aguirre: they're fast and furious, hooded thieves >> welcome to our weekend edition. dashing into apple stores, stealing thousands of dollars with of iphones and laptops in seconds. this week was a hard one with your cell phone, the modern y the tragedy of kobe bryant. and everyone remembers exactly where they were when it happened. he effected everyone in a for thieves looking to make easy cash.00 t$1,000 . positive way. if you didn't know him personal, jessica: that's the going street price fremont police lieutenant it didn't matter. >> and kobe's beloved daughter, mike tegner says fences, buyers who traffic in stolen property, are willing to pony up for new iphones on the black market. taken in the helicoter crash. fremont is among the cities in the bay area in the midst of an >> we're taking a look back at the father/daughter bond of kobe auto burglary epidemic, fueled, tegner says, in part by black and gianna. market demand for stolen phones. mike: we believe they're one of the main reasons that the auto >> the basketball gen burglary rate in the bay area is so high. jessica: you're going after the bigger fish. mike: we're going after the bigger fish. jessica: tegner's team says they soon found that fish. she's got it. yeah, that's all her now. oakland pd had zeroed in on a crew tied to more than 60 thefts of new iphone shipments to stores across the bay area, big money losses male: going down, t-mobile going down. jessica: this video captured one of those robberies. police say they tracked several of the tech thieves here to torspin wireless, a store tucked inside this hayward strip mall that buys, sells, and trades cell phones. mike: we heard about this place, and the word on the street was it was the biggest in the bay area. jessica: fremont pd set up a surveillance operation that lasted months. what they found, torspin wor po they wanted and the top dollar price they were willing to pay. mike: i never saw one customer just go in there and buy something that a normal store would sell. it was always people bringing in product and leaving with money. jessica: one of those alleged customers, former oakland raiders football player isaiah langley. detective zemlok says the cornerback and an accomplice walked in with a bag full of phones and walked out with the stacks of cash. the player, police say, among the many hawking phones to torspin. mike: they were purchasing anywhere from 25 to 100 phones on a daily basis. jessica: what kind of money is that? mike: my estimate is they're spending anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 a day paying out people. jessica: so, some guy could come in and make 30 grand by selling phones? mike: we watched that happen, yes. jessica: our cameras were watching too from an undercover van nearby after nbc bay area learned of the investigation over the summer. we watched customer after customer walk in and appear to sell phones.hamma, abdul janah, and muhibullah nuristani to other wireless stores, one in san francisco, a third they own at el cajon. mike: and then about once a week, they would travel down south and sell those products in bulk amounts. jessica: we're talking about thousands and thousands of phones. mike: oh, easy, easy. jessica: detectives understood the in, but they wanted to know where that stolen phone pipeline ended. that meant getting into business with torspin, selling them mike: devices that we had sold were ending up all over the world. jessica: a global operation that led to dozens of places, and singapore among others. two weeks ago came the big takedown. undercover cops set up a deal too sweet to resist, 900 brand new iphone 11s offered to nuristani and his associates. officers from multiple agencies raided torspin and seven other properties tied to the accused fencing ring, arresting the store's three owners, seizing 350k in cash, along with a bounty of firearms cops say were legally bought. the added bonus, an unexpected strange new thread for police to pull on. mike: they had an ipad up and there was somebody watching jessica: and where wasf uthat from?he shop. mike: well, our investigation led us to believe that it was somebody in turkey. jessica: for now, that turkey connection is a mystery that detectives are unsure they'll ever solve. what they do know is that the bust disrupted business and sent a warning to fences all across the bay area. stephen: now, all four men arrested have pleaded not guilty to felony charges of receiving stolen property. when we reached out to them for comment, their attorneys told us by phone, "they have no prior criminal record, and they deny knowing any of those goods were stolen." well, coming up next, we'll take a look at ongoing risks with pg&e equipment, the same kind that sparked a monstrous wildfire and destroyed the town of paradise. to deal with the problem.icians but they wouldn't. so we took it to the voters and forced big tobacco to pay its share of healthcare costs. we fought oil companies for new clean air laws and closed a billion dollarto f. by going directly to the people we got results. that's not something you see a lot of from washington these days. i'm tom steyer and i approve this message. let's make change happen. the wildfires that rage across california seem to get worse every summer. and it turns out that some of the biggest fires have been started by powerlines either falling or arcing in high winds, spitting sparks onto dry grass and brush below. pg&e is on the hot seat for not fortifying its systems better. nbc bay area investigator reporter jaxon vanderbeken uncovered visual evidence that shows what key equipment failed and started california's deadliest wildfire. jaxon vanderbeken: the camp fire burned for weeks, long after it destroyed the town of paradise. but it didn't take long to find out what caused it. a worn c hook like this one on a pg&e transmission tower snapped, causing the line to hit the tower and setting fire to the dry vegetation below. dan mulkey: i can't imagine how it got that bad and no one saw it. just flabbergasted. ja he now consults. we showed him photos we obtained from the inspections of other c hooks on the caribou-palermo transmission line, where pg&e acknowledges the camp fire started. dan: this is as bad as you can get, just terrible. jaxon: that's because all these hooks held up the high voltage line. when just one breaks, the line can fall or hit the tower, touching off an explosion, like what happened in the camp fire. we also showed the photos to bob bea, a professor emeritus at uc berkeley who has been studying disasters for decades. the welfare of an entiret community hanging by that hook." of extreme damage doesn't happy overnight. he says the steel was worn down over time by what engineers call fretting corrosion. bob: those two services sand each other, so one surface wears into the other surface. it takes a long time to develop, high stresses on-- and sometimes water. jaxon: and you've got all that here? bob: yes. jaxon: and it's not just the hooks. look at the steel plate that held one of those hooks in place on one of the towers. dan: it's just amazing that it was still up in the air with that much damage. jaxon: mulkey questions how pg&e could have missed so much erosion for so many years. dan: that level of damage, it really makes me wonder about the whole inspection. what the heck is going on? you know, you're not finding things that should be obvious and are things that are absolutely critical. how much more is there out ther jaxon: we sent these pictures to pg&e and asked just that. the utility told us it has covered some 5,000 miles of transmission lines in high fire threat areas from top to bottom through ground, climbing, helicopter, and drone inspections. but the company didn't address how they apparently missed all those worn hooks and steel plates in earlier inspections. stephen: when we return, we'll look at the broken promises behind california's high speed rail project, and speak with small business owners who say the endeavor has pushed them to the brink of ruin. case in point, if you savget xfinity internetple.