Operation Underground Railroad

Prior to founding O.U.R., Tim Ballard served 12 years as a U.S. Special Agent for the Department of Homeland Security, on the Internet Crimes against Children Task Force and the U.S. Child Sex Tourism Jump Team. According to Ballard, he was frustrated with the lack of strategies employed to rescue kidnapped and trafficked children in underdeveloped nations, and the inability to prosecute offenders in non-U.S. related cases.[12][13] Subsequently, he left the government in October 2013 to found Operation Underground Railroad.[12][13][14] The organization was founded in Salt Lake City, Utah, but they also have offices in Southern California.

To help raise awareness and support, film producer Gerald R. Molen approached Ballard to document preparation and activity relating to a few covert operations for a feature film. The documentary, titled The Abolitionists, was released in early 2016.[15]

According to the organization, O.U.R. works with supporting governments and organizations in one or more of the following activities: prevention, discovery, preparation, rescue, victim recovery programs, and fundraising efforts.[12][13][16] Its members are of former military and law enforcement officials and other support volunteers. Operations are segments of any coordinated effort, training and/or direct involvement to rescue trafficking victims. O.U.R. states it does not work independently, or without government participation and support.[17][18][15][13][19][12][14]

A 2020 Vice News investigation found that the organization employed "a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading". For instance, O.U.R. claimed that it rescued a woman named "Liliana", who according to court testimony escaped by herself. The organization's spending also lacks transparency.[7] A 2021 follow-up article further criticized O.U.R.'s practices, which included using inexperienced donors and celebrities as part of its "jump team", a lack of meaningful surveillance or identification of targets, failing to validate whether the people they intended to rescue were in fact actual trafficking victims, and conflating consensual sex work with sex trafficking.[20]

Ballard and supporters of O.U.R. have been criticized for promoting the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory.[21][22][23]

On August 27, 2020, Lynn Packer with American Crime Journal reported in a video breaking news that criminal complaints had been forwarded to the Davis County District Attorney at their office in Farmington, Utah.[24] Packer, an award winning investigative journalist and veteran Utah reporter was later interviewed by American psychologist John Dehlin on his Mormon Stories Podcast. Dehlin, who like Packer is an excommunicated member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) asked why would such a major "development for the state of Utah and the LDS Church" was not released or "being pursued" by mainstream Utah press? Packer asserted that Utah media and LDS Church was complicit in legitimizing Operation Underground Railroad with little to no oversight and fact-checking. Packer alleged that he had spent the last five years investigating Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad.[25]

In October 2020, the Attorney's Office of Davis County, Utah stated that O.U.R. and Tim Ballard were under criminal investigation regarding complaints that O.U.R. had conducted illegal fundraising efforts by fabricating rescues that never took place and laundering donor money into his for profit businesses.[9][10][11] Investigative journalists Anna Merlan and Tim Marchman for Vice News confirmed reports by investigative journalist Lynn Packer and Damion Moore of American Crime Journal of a clandestine meeting held in August, 2019, where Tim Ballard summoned officers and managers of his non-profit and for profit businesses, including several from Operation Underground Railroad.[26][27]