WEBVTT - Ep. 655: A Wildlife Agent Goes Undercover 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:13.280 This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:18.319 bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.919 can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:24.759 you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:28.240 deer stands, or scouting for ELK. First Light has performance 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:31.440 apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.320 out at first light dot com, f I R S 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:40.400 T L I t e dot com. If you listen 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:43.240 to last week's show, you heard me and Moe Fallon 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:47.080 discussing my new History Channel show, which is called Hunting History, 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:50.640 and that show premiere is January twenty eighth at ten pm. 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:52.519 So you heard us talk about a handful of the 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:56.000 episodes on that podcast episode. But now I can go 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.400 watch the actual damn things by tuning into the History Channel. 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.720 Any Ray twenty eight, ten pm Eastern, nine Central. Do 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:06.840 your own math as you work westward. Hope you enjoy it. 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:10.479 You'll learn a lot, you'll have some laughs, you'll be entertained. 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:21.440 Check it out. Join Today by US Fish and Wildlife 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:27.240 undercover agent retired. Right when you came in, I told 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:28.120 you don't look retired. 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:32.200 Yes, retired, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't call myself an 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:32.920 undercover agent. 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:33.880 Well that's what Krin called you. 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:37.120 Oh all right, okay, straight up space. 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:44.520 Fish and wildlife special agent. Yeah, ed newcomer retired because 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:46.759 tell everybody why, I had no idea. 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:49.240 Yeah, well, I've been retired for two years, and that's 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:52.600 only because all federal agents have to retire when they 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:55.280 turned fifty seven, so I hit mandatory retirement. 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:57.080 Now there's no old federal agent. 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:02.320 There are some exceptions occasionally, like if somebody's working on 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:05.400 a particular case or something, they may extend their retirement 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:06.680 so they can finish up that case. 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:07.800 I see, but it's rare. 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:11.320 Yeah, and you got to come in before thirty seven, 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:11.919 you said. 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:14.120 Right, Yeah, you have to enter the academy honor before 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:14.760 your thirty seven. 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:16.200 So it's not like you can do it. It's like 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:19.640 a second, like you have a career and then have 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:21.200 another career doing what you did. 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:22.560 I guess you did. 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:24.480 That's what I did. But it was close. Yeah, I 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:26.320 became a federal agent. 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:26.799 I went. 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.840 I arrived at the Federal Law Enforcement Academy literally about 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:32.840 three weeks before I turned thirty seven, So I just 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:33.240 made it. 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:37.040 Yeah, yeah, and I retired. Yeah, it's kind of nice. 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:38.200 Except so jealous. Man. 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:44.000 The problem is, you know, you got a pretty good gig, not. 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:47.400 As good as you got well, unless you're broke. 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:48.240 I'll tell you what. 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:52.200 Being a special agent, most agents I know go right 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:55.160 to mandatory retirement because they love it. They love their job. 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:58.520 Being a federal agent is awesome, but being a special 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:02.080 agent for US Fish and Wildlife Service, it's ten times awesome. 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:04.640 I was so my identity was so tied up in 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:07.160 my badge. Oh it was hard to retire. 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:08.720 Is it hurt? 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:11.360 And I still I'm very jealous of the of the 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:14.280 people I know who are still agents because I talk to. 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:15.920 Them and I'm like, oh, that sounds like fun. I 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:16.400 want to do that. 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:17.920 Really? You miss it? 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:20.639 Oh totally, yeah, every day every day. That's why it's 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.040 fun to come talk about it with people like you, 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:26.920 because it's just fun for me to reminisce. And I 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:31.200 like making sure people know that, you know, these agents 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:33.679 are out there and they're they're doing a really good job, 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:35.760 and they're working their asses off for people. 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:36.040 You know. 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:38.360 It sounds like, look, just reading from the notes, that 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:41.280 a lot of people are interested in that job. 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:42.720 Yeah, we get. 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:46.600 You know, I was never involved in the hiring process 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:48.960 when we would hire the national agents, but I was 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:52.280 always told by people at headquarters we'd get you know, normally, 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:54.400 when we have a class of new agents, it's maybe 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:57.040 thirty to thirty five agents at a time that go 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:01.000 through the academy, and for those thirty five seats, easily 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:05.080 three thousand plus applicants easily more. Sometimes sometimes they just 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:07.200 cut it off because they get too many, and it's 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:11.280 not it becomes a burden for the you know, managers 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:13.960 to go through all the applicants to find the gyms. 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:16.440 Okay, you work with wildlife, carry a gun? 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:19.839 Yeah, and that I scold badge with a buff bag 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:21.520 it's got a fish and a duck on them. 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:25.760 Is that part of the reason that you didn't start 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:28.520 that job until thirty seven years of age? 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:31.520 Yeah, so totally you know, this is totally straight up. 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:33.840 I came out of law school interested in the job. 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:36.280 I went to law school and I thought, okay, you know. 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:37.320 Finish law school. 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:39.719 Oh yeah, yeah, a law degree, great background to be 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:43.000 a federal agent law enforcement in general. And I always thought, well, 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:44.720 if I don't make it into the academy or I 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:46.120 don't get hired by law enforcement. 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:47.880 I got a job, right, you'll slum it as a 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:49.279 slum it as a lawyer. 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.840 But yeah, so I started applying pretty much as soon 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:55.039 as I came out of law school. And what age 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:58.080 was that, Well, see twenty six you come out. Yeah, 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:01.800 I graduated from law school twenty six. Yeah, so I 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:04.479 applied the first time they were opening, so total, I 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:06.679 applied four times before I got hired. 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:08.040 Did you do the bar exam? 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:10.360 Oh? Yeah, yeah, I'm admitted at full on lawyer. Yeah. 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.080 I was admitted in two states, Washington and Colorado, and 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:15.560 I practiced law for ten years, kind of accidentally because 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:18.000 I was waiting to get hired by It's a wildlife service. 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:20.440 Are there a lot of agents who are lawyers? 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:21.279 Not a lot? 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:25.960 There are some FBI hires a lot, But in the service, 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:29.279 I'm not sure how many of us are eight or lawyers, 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:30.800 but there's quite a few. 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:35.080 It probably helps you when you're working a case because 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:38.320 you're probably able to analyze your evidence and analyze your 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:42.560 case from a somewhat objective perspective of how things are 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:44.760 going to look in court and what the arguments are 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:46.599 going to be. Yeah, making that up No, that's one 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:47.520 hundred percent right. 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:51.120 When I did practice law, I was a prosecutor, and 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:55.679 so what I kept seeing was, you know, I'm limited 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:58.840 to what the detectives are bringing me. So whatever they 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:02.080 do in their investigation, they give me their report, and 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:05.400 that's what I have to go with, right, And every 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:08.360 time i'd read an investigator's report, I'd be like, oh, man, 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:10.680 that sounds like a lot of fun, and I'll bet 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:12.159 I could have done that better than they did it. 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:18.080 So when I became an agent, I kind of brought 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:21.080 that prosecutor background with me and I kind of knew, 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:23.840 all right, as I'm building the case against bad guys, 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:26.719 this is what the prosecutor's going to want, this is 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:28.520 what they're going to need, this is what a jury's 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:30.360 going to need to hear, and this is how we're 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:33.440 going to avoid losing an appeal. So it's very helpful 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:36.799 to have a law degree, especially if you come from 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:39.240 a kind of criminal justice background. 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:39.240 Like I did. 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:41.040 Did you have a wildlife background? 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:43.880 No, And that's why it was hard for me to 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:46.360 get noticed by the Fish and Wildlife Service. I finally, 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:48.840 like I reached out to this special agent in charge 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:50.480 who was in charge of the West Coast, a guy 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:54.279 named Dave McMullen, who is just an awesome US Fish 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:57.400 and Wildlife agent. And I said, you know, I'm really 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.800 interested in this job. I can't get an interview. I 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:03.800 can't even get a call back, right And he was 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:06.800 very nice and he asked, you know, send me your resume. 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:07.400 Let me see. 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:09.640 He called me right back and he said, yeah, I 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:11.920 can tell you. The reason you're not getting interviewed is 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:14.840 there's nothing on your resume that indicates that you have 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:18.320 any interest in wildlife and and yeah, it's kind of 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:19.920 an eye opening. I don't know why I didn't think 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:22.760 of it. I just assumed law degree was one of 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:26.520 the educational qualifiers. I thought, you know, that's going to 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:29.920 get me in. So he gave me some great advice here. 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.480 I was an assistant Attorney General in the state of Washington, 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:35.520 but on weekends I was volunteering with the Washington Department 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:38.679 official Wildlife game Wardens and going out and. 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:40.000 Doing whatever they wanted. 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:42.120 A resume, yeah, yeah, to do whatever they wanted me 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:44.760 they wanted the job I did well, these guys would 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:47.440 have me out on on the you know, Puget Sound 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.280 middle of winter, pulling shrimp traps so they could check 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:52.280 shrimp traps. And that's a hard that's hard work to 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:53.600 pull a shrimp trap by hand. 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:54.800 I don't know if you were volunteering. 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:58.280 Yeah, I loved it. I couldn't wait. I couldn't wait 0:07:58.360 --> 0:07:58.880 to do it. 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:02.600 We've all volunteered to pull a few shrimps out of 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:03.040 the depths. 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:03.400 Yeah. 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:06.080 That sounds funny, don't it, because most people pay to 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:09.200 go pull shrimp. You've got to buy your license and everything. 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:12.679 Like what made you want the job in the first place. 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:15.600 Like as a kid, were you into wildlife and hunting 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:16.560 and fishing. 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:20.560 Or I've never I don't hunt. I fished before, but 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:21.800 I never got into hunting. 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:23.800 You just like nature and wild life. 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:24.080 Yeah. 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:26.400 I grew up in Denver and so you know, my 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:28.720 my dad mom took us camping up to the mountains 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:31.560 all the time, and I love it. I mean, you know, 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:34.000 back in the day, we would the whole family's car 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:36.040 would pull over if we saw a hawk on a 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:38.079 fence post by the side of the road. So it's 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:40.520 kind of ingrained in us not shooting at it, not 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:45.040 shooting at But that's the first thing I want to 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:47.040 get into. Yeah, oh sure, because this is the thing 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:49.200 Krin like thet I gotta tell you. 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:55.000 No, yeah, the hawk parks. But Krinn, I hope other 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:59.840 guests aren't listening. Krin doesn't usually get excited about a guest. 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:05.120 Krinn has a baseline excitement for all guests. Okay, Krinn 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:09.240 holds a baseline excitement for all guests. But she had 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:13.440 a like a speak a spike on a spike, a 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:17.760 high spike for you coming on, inspired in part by 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:23.880 her her discovery of roller pigeons and the trouble that 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:27.480 roller pigeon enthusiasts find themselves in. And so I want 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:28.960 to I want to get into this just as a 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:31.360 way to lay the ground where what you for what 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:32.960 exactly you spend your time on? 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:33.280 You know? 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.280 Sure, hence my joke about shooting hose. Yeah, no, I'm 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:37.920 getting ahead of us. I got ahead of us. 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:38.440 I got it. 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:42.480 But to answer your question, I I was interested in 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:44.800 law enforcement from a real young age I had, you know, 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:46.719 I was one of these five year olds that ran 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:48.520 around thinking they were going to save the family if 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:49.480 there was a home invasion. 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:49.800 You know. 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:54.439 Uh, so you know, growing up in Denver, I'm thinking 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:56.640 I'll be a Denver cop. You know, someday That's kind 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:58.800 of what I figured. And then I saw at some 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:00.679 point in my life, I really there was such a 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:02.520 thing as a game warden, and I thought, well, cop 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:05.400 cop for wildlife. That sounds pretty cool. I'll do that. 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:08.360 That really interested me. And then it wasn't until I 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:10.880 was in college that I just literally stumbled across a 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.240 job announcement for US Fish and Wildlife special Agent. And 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:17.520 when I saw that, you know, it's like, Oh, that's 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:19.079 like the FBI for wildlife. 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:20.319 That's what I want to do, right. 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:23.319 You get the most jurisdiction, you have the most authority, 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:25.520 you have the most opportunity to make a difference and 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:26.440 do something good, you know. 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:28.440 So kind of where I led. 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:31.760 And then did you spend your whole career in La? Yeah? 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:32.040 I did. 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:35.600 And that's another funny story because it's going back to this. 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:39.200 A special Agent in charge, David McMullen, when he was 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:42.920 talking to me about applying and how to get interviewed, 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:44.840 he said, look at you got to go to LA. 0:10:45.080 --> 0:10:47.439 And I said, LA, I don't want to go to LA. 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:49.240 I'm a rocky mountain boy. I want to work in 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:53.080 the Rockies. I'm interested in you know, Rocky Mountain wildlife issues. 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:55.160 That's where I want to work as a special agent. 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:57.120 He said, No, you got to go to La. He goes, 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:00.120 there's this little there's this little, tiny firecracker of a 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:03.080 agent down there, a woman named Marie Paladini. 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:05.760 She's a lawyer. You'll get along great. And that's where 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.439 the action is. That's where the wildlife trafficking is. That's 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:09.800 where all the big cases are. 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:11.880 You got to go to LA because it's a big 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:12.920 port city. 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:16.360 Yeah, big port city and a big you know, urban 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:19.880 center where there's just every kind of culture you can 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:23.240 imagine there. So La New York Miami. If you want 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:25.880 to be a special agent in the Fish and Wildlife 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:30.840 Service and really learn about international wildlife trafficking and interstate trafficking, 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:32.800 you got to go to one of these big ports 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:35.880 La New York and where Miami, Miami is another big one. 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:36.520 Guy. 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:41.240 We need, like, you know, a prime time CSI type show. 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:45.760 I'm all in I'm all in picture that yeah, so 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.240 can I. I've I've pitched it before, you know, like 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:51.920 n c I S. But Fish and wild if it'd 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:52.480 be way better? 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:55.760 Oh yeah, superhero saving animals. 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:00.000 Every episode they'd be making you rescue cats and dogs. 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:03.840 Well picture cute little kittens and stuff. 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:06.280 Yeah, you know, that's actually that's something else we should 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:09.760 probably talk about because a lot of people who initially 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:12.520 apply for the service, they sometimes not a lot, but 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:15.960 some people think that it's going to be about rescuing animals. 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:17.920 And I got to tell you, in twenty years of 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:24.080 doing that job, I rescued, literally rescued an animal less 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:26.520 than half a dozen times. Because most of the time, 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:29.800 the animals you're dealing with are they're done right, even 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:31.920 if they're alive in the trade, they're not going back 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:35.640 to the wild. And so it's what you're trying to 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:39.880 do is stop the wildlife crime to protect future animals, 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:42.400 not the ones you're dealing with right there. So you know, 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:45.280 if you get upset about seeing dead animals or animals 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:50.720 mistreated and you can't you can't translate that into Okay, 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:52.959 I'm in law enforcement moment and do something about this, 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:56.240 and you're going to be emotionally crushed by that. This 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.320 is not the job for you because it's not about 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:03.000 rescuing animals, about rescuing species, but not animals. 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:06.320 What's the case you worked it would help people up 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:09.280 top here that would help people kind of best understand 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:11.920 the work you were doing. 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:15.640 Yeah, and I'll give you that example. But let me 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:19.080 just say that we have agents based all over the 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:22.160 United States, right, and so where you're based is going 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:24.480 to dictate pretty much what you're doing. 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:25.160 Right. 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:28.800 So, for example, our agents here in Montana, you know, 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:31.680 before wolves were delisted, they worked a lot of wolf 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:35.760 poaching cases. They still work grizzly bear cases to determine 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:37.720 whether or not it's self defense or not, or whether 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:42.200 it's a straight up poaching case. Got agents in the 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:45.640 Southeast work on different things than agents in the Northwest, right, 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:48.960 because there's different animals there. There's different species listed under 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:52.600 the Endangered Species Act, or there's different animals trafficked. So 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:57.320 the experiences between an agent based in Bozeman and an 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:00.000 agent based in Los Angeles are huge, got it right? 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:04.800 And I have never done some of the stuff that 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:07.200 the agents in Bozeman have done. I've always wanted to, 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:09.120 but you know, I've never done a grizzly bear poaching 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:13.199 crime scene because that doesn't happen in Los Angeles. So anyway, 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:17.280 you know, a typical excuse me, a typical case that 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:22.840 I might have handled in LA involved trafficking of some wildlife, 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:27.840 whether alive or dead, for commercial purposes. And so you know, 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:29.920 early in my career I worked on a lot of 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:33.360 caviar trafficking cases involving Russians. There's a lot of Russians 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:37.760 in LA and they all trafficked in caviar, not all 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:41.080 of them, but you know, the cavyr traffickers were Russians. 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:44.400 And then you know, I had an insect trafficking case, 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:51.560 I had endangered fish trafficking case. So it's very variable. 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.640 Is the caviar when you're working a caviar case, is 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:58.240 it caviar coming in or caviar going out? And does 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:02.320 caviar coming in mad to you because it's someone else's. 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:06.200 Problem, Yes, so with and that's that's actually a good 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.400 point because sometimes it's animals going out. And and we 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:13.320 saw a change in that over the years. When I 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:16.440 first started in the early two thousands, we were dealing 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:20.400 with mostly wildlife coming into the United States. So things 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:24.760 like beluga caviar out of the former Russian republics right 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:28.560 so poached there, yeah, exactly, and listed under the US 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:31.800 Endangered Species Act, So it makes it illegal to import export. 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:35.880 I got, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, so that's how 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:39.400 we would get involved. And and and the United States 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:41.560 is kind of unique because we do have the Endangered 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:45.840 Species Act, which lists animals for protection that don't live here, 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:49.080 and not all countries are like that. We we have 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:53.640 taken an interest in helping to preserve the world's you know, 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.000 important wildlife. Tigers, for example, we don't have tigers here 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:01.040 in the wild, but they're listed as endangered under our law, 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:03.440 so it's illegal just for someone to kill. 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:03.800 One or move. 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:05.600 That's that's never curred me. I had no idea. 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:06.720 Yeah, it's kind of neat, isn't it. 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:10.080 Yeah, I've never thought about that before. We list. 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:15.800 Exactly, well, fish in Russia exactly Yeah. And so yeah, 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:18.480 the idea is, you know, we want the entire world's 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:22.440 environment to be there for everyone. When when I worked 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:25.680 in Africa as an agent, a lot of times Africans 0:16:25.720 --> 0:16:29.040 would would push back on me that Americans are too 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:32.440 pushy about conservation. And I used to tell them, I'd say, 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:34.000 to the whole room, I'd say, how many people have 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:36.640 been to the US. Very few people would raise their hand, 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:39.160 how many people want to come to the US. Everybody 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:42.120 raised their hand and they'd say, well, if you come 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:44.200 to the US, would you like to see bison? 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.239 Would you like to see a bald. 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:49.760 Eagle in the wild? Would you like to see a bear? 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:53.360 Everybody raises their hand, right, same thing if I ask 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:55.480 all you guys, hey, you want to go to Africa 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.600 and see some lions? Yeah, we'd all be on plane tomorrow, right. 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.760 So we want other countries in the world to protect 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:05.760 their wildlife so that weak Americans can go there and 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:06.800 spend money to see. 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:07.520 It, hunt it, whatever. 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:13.359 But you know, we want them to protect that stuff, 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:15.240 you know, so we can go, but we're going to 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:17.239 protect it here in the US so people from other 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:19.760 countries can come spend money in the US and see it. 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:23.040 And it's just I think you everybody in this room 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:27.240 probably appreciates that wildlife has an intrinsic value, right. It's 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:33.000 just something we enjoy seeing, stalking, trapping, hunting, whatever you do. Right, 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:35.600 But we want it to stay there. We don't want 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:37.160 to use it up. We want it to be there. 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:39.720 So fish and wildlife plays a really important role in 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:43.800 making sure that the species around the world remain wild 0:17:43.920 --> 0:17:44.760 for us, all. 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:48.280 Of us, excuse me, all going to call from it. 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:51.760 Tell me about a roller pigeon, which I had never 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:52.400 heard of before. 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:56.040 Yeah, so a roller pigeon is a it's not in 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.320 wild animals, and domestic pigeon looks just like the pigeon 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:02.919 you'd see at the Donald's parking lot, really, but they 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:07.679 come from Birmingham, England originally, and all roller pigeons are 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:12.800 descending some of the original Birmingham rollers. And what what 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:15.399 they are really is a bird that's bred to have 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:16.440 a seizure in flight. 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:22.960 And I've had a lot of conversations I've had pet pigeons. 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:27.760 I have never I had never this is totally new 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:34.960 to me, has synchronized synchronized seizures. 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:38.040 Well, I know that I've told you my story that 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:41.280 I shared with you before we started recording before, but 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:43.480 I know we've had the conversation now on that I 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:47.640 feel like we had it on the podcast about name 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:48.080 for him. 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:53.160 There's there's a different type of pigeon called a tumbler, 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:55.560 but the tumblr really does its tumbling on the ground, 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:57.520 which is kind of weird. But no, the ones that 0:18:57.800 --> 0:18:59.080 roll in flight, they're rollers. 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:00.640 What do you mean they have a seizure. 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.440 So that's The only way I can describe it is 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:06.320 that while they're flying, if you're watching them, and the 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:09.000 guys and gals who are involved in a roller pigeon 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:11.280 hobby would would disagree with me. They would say, we 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:13.359 train them to do that. They don't train them to 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:18.800 do that. Okay, there's no way they're training these birds. Now, 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:21.680 they're breeding them to have this behavior. And if you 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:26.440 watch them, they'll fly. When a roller pigeon hobbyist or 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:30.800 you know, competitors flying their birds, they fly in a kit, 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:34.520 and a kit is about fifteen birds, and they'll basically 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.239 they fly in an orbit above your property. You let 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:38.960 them out, and you let them out when they're hungry, 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:40.880 so they fly, but they're not going anywhere, so they're 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:42.719 kin to come back and get fed. And they fly 0:19:42.880 --> 0:19:48.160 in an orbit together. And usually when they make either 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:51.240 a right or left hand turn, the lead bird there's 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:54.840 usually a leader out in the front, will be have 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:56.960 a seizure. That's the only way to describe it. They 0:19:57.440 --> 0:20:00.159 they whip their heads back, their wings lock up up, 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:03.680 and they arch their backs and they start to flip backwards. 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:07.720 And what I notice, what I think is going on, 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:10.879 is I think that you breed the leader to have 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:13.120 a seizure on a right or a left hand turn. 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:16.199 The other birds you breed to have seizures when they 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:19.280 see the leader have a seizure. And that's how complicated 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:21.920 it can get. And these guys are very sophisticated about 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:26.679 how they breed and to win a competition, if all 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:29.760 of us in this room were in a competition, for 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:33.080 me to win, my birds need to fly together in 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:35.919 that kit and they need to roll together as a. 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:40.119 So it looks like a waterfall. Yeah, it looks like 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:41.520 a waterfall. It's really cool. 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:43.959 And the trick, of course is you got to make 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:46.800 sure they'd recover before they hit the ground because. 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:47.480 They'll kill themselves. 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:49.639 And so a lot of a lot of birds die 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:51.359 because they hit the ground or they hood a building 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:53.320 before they recover from their little seizure. 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:57.200 So how long is a normal seizure or the second seconds? Okay, 0:20:57.280 --> 0:20:59.120 that's a few seconds. 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:01.480 Yeah, but it looks neat right, It kind of looks 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:03.000 like a waterfall if they're doing it right. 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:06.520 Yeah, I mean it was. It was I don't know 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:09.480 how to describe it beautiful really, but it's just weird. Yeah, 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:11.800 I mean, it's you're like, wow, I didn't know that 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:13.280 could be a thing. 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:14.120 That's a thing. 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:16.480 And then they're graded based on how well they roll, 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:19.960 and then somebody this thing's a world competition. There's something 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:22.840 called the World Cup, and if you win the World Cup, 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:26.879 you can sell your pigeons to other they're good breeders, right, 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:30.159 because you've got high quality rollers, so you can you 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:33.399 can then start selling the birds that you breed as 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:35.399 breeders to other people who want to compete and. 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:36.280 Have this status. 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:38.840 How much money is in that, Like, they. 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:42.000 Don't make any money in the competitions, they make money 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:44.880 selling their birds. Yeah, so this is a status thing. 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:47.000 You know. You you want to be the World Cup 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:48.760 champion as a status deal. 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:51.160 In the US, what is the roller capital? 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:53.840 You like the city? Yeah? 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:54.399 Where is it? 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:58.040 Big? It's big and all over. It's kind of interesting. 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:02.760 It's big and inner city l A. You know, Mike 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:04.199 Tyson has roller pigeons. 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:07.199 He's I knew he was a pigeon fancy roller pigeons. 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:08.320 Yeah, he's into rollers. 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:09.879 We're gonna go down a. 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:15.280 Deep rabbit hole, you know, downtown New York City on 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:18.800 the roofs of houses. You'll see your roller pigeon setups, But. 0:22:18.840 --> 0:22:21.160 When you see it, when I see a pigeon keeper, 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:23.840 what was that movie with Forrest Whitaker, He had pigeons 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:29.560 Phil Phil Phil. Come on, dude, it's got the word 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:30.119 ghost in it. 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:35.800 Ghost ghost dog, the what's his name? 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:40.800 Famous from the Crying Game, The Way of the Samurai 0:22:41.280 --> 0:22:41.800 Ghost Dog. 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:42.200 Yeah. 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:45.760 Yeah, So if you see a pigeon fancier, I always 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:47.600 called him pigeon fancier because I didn't know about this 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:50.359 whole their aspect to it. Yeah, Are they mostly roller 0:22:50.440 --> 0:22:52.800 people or there are other kinds of pigeon fancier. 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:55.520 Lots of other kind of pigeons. There's there's homing pigeons. Uh, 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:58.439 there's you know, these decorative pigeons you see maybe at 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:01.520 the National Western Stock Show on a Denver that kind 0:23:01.520 --> 0:23:01.919 of stuff. 0:23:04.280 --> 0:23:06.880 So let's get into how roller pigeon enthusiasts have gotten 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:07.320 in trouble. 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:12.680 I was gonna say, selling their good rollers is legal, yes, correct, Yeah, 0:23:12.960 --> 0:23:18.600 but what part of rollering pigeon fanciers their activity is not? 0:23:19.520 --> 0:23:19.720 Yeah? 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:20.879 Where do you get involved? 0:23:20.960 --> 0:23:24.359 How does a fish and wildlife agent get involved? So, 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:27.719 as you can imagine, when a pigeon has a seizure 0:23:27.760 --> 0:23:30.320 in mid flight, especially a whole flock of them. Every 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:33.719 raptor within a mile or two is going to make 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:36.359 a bee line for that little like that flog Oh 0:23:36.440 --> 0:23:39.280 yeah right, yeah, it's like it's like the deer that's 0:23:39.320 --> 0:23:41.240 got the limp right, it's going to draw all the 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:45.320 predators right to it. So, yeah, hawks and falcons, particularly 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:49.639 juveniles like juvenile Cooper hawks, juvenile redtails that are you know, 0:23:49.800 --> 0:23:53.359 learning to hunt anyway, they go right for these totally. 0:23:53.920 --> 0:23:56.560 And yeah, they can come in and take out your 0:23:56.680 --> 0:24:00.560 best birds. And yeah, so these guys get really annoyed 0:24:00.640 --> 0:24:02.600 that the hawks come in and kill their roller pigeons, 0:24:02.640 --> 0:24:07.119 so they start killing hawks. And honestly roller uh homer 0:24:07.480 --> 0:24:12.119 homing pigeon fanatics and and there's big money in homing 0:24:12.200 --> 0:24:15.120 pigeon competitions. They kill hawks too. And in fact, that's 0:24:15.160 --> 0:24:17.320 how I got onto this whole roller pigeon dealer. 0:24:17.359 --> 0:24:21.040 Is what about paragrine falcons because you know they're yeah 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:23.960 in big urban yeah areas. 0:24:23.680 --> 0:24:26.199 Now same because especially since they hunt on the fly, 0:24:26.720 --> 0:24:29.960 they go after roller pigeons real real, real good. So 0:24:30.119 --> 0:24:32.280 it just it just depends on what hawks are in 0:24:32.359 --> 0:24:36.240 the area. Cooper's hawks are also aerial hunters, so they're 0:24:36.359 --> 0:24:39.280 more common than the paragrine. But yeah, peregrines get involved 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:42.000 in this as well, and that's how US Fish and 0:24:42.040 --> 0:24:44.600 Wildlife Service agent gets involved because of course, all raptors 0:24:44.640 --> 0:24:49.000 are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It's pretty straightforward. 0:24:49.040 --> 0:24:52.040 You kill a raptor and you're you're violating the mbt A. 0:24:52.280 --> 0:24:56.040 So tell me exactly how this would flow to you. Yeah, So, like, 0:24:56.119 --> 0:24:58.399 what what happens that you become aware of? Right? 0:24:58.600 --> 0:25:01.840 Yeah, So what what happened with me is I'm working 0:25:01.880 --> 0:25:05.000 in Los Angeles and I you know, I'm doing my 0:25:05.160 --> 0:25:07.159 job as an agent, so I'm pretty well connected, like 0:25:07.280 --> 0:25:10.440 with the wildlife rehab places and I've got sources around. 0:25:11.080 --> 0:25:14.480 Somebody calls me and says, hey, we got an injured 0:25:14.760 --> 0:25:18.000 cooper sock came into our rehabilitation center and it's got 0:25:18.000 --> 0:25:21.640 a gunshot wound. So that piques my interest because that's illegal. 0:25:22.400 --> 0:25:25.560 And normally this would be a fairly low priority case 0:25:25.640 --> 0:25:27.679 for the Fish and Wildlife Service in LA because we're 0:25:27.720 --> 0:25:32.240 working on wildlife trafficking cases, organized criminal activity ongoing, right. 0:25:32.200 --> 0:25:34.040 Involving a lot of money and wildlife. 0:25:34.560 --> 0:25:37.200 But so happens I had nothing going on that day, 0:25:37.840 --> 0:25:39.639 and I felt like taking getting out of the office, 0:25:39.960 --> 0:25:41.880 so I said, hey, I'll come up and take a look. 0:25:42.560 --> 0:25:45.320 So I drive up to the North LA that's part 0:25:45.359 --> 0:25:48.600 of the LA that's burning right now, and I find 0:25:48.640 --> 0:25:50.720 out when I get there there's another hawk showed up 0:25:50.720 --> 0:25:55.920 in the same guy's front yard dead, another bullet wound. 0:25:56.560 --> 0:25:59.359 So I actually treated it like a crime scene, and 0:25:59.600 --> 0:26:05.800 I which, what had they been shot quite? 0:26:06.000 --> 0:26:06.760 Not quite that bad? 0:26:07.000 --> 0:26:09.960 What had they been shot with like a shotgun or so? 0:26:10.320 --> 0:26:15.640 These were twenty two caliber pellets pump action pellets, which 0:26:15.800 --> 0:26:19.080 interestingly can be traced through ballistics. 0:26:19.160 --> 0:26:19.320 Yeah. 0:26:19.960 --> 0:26:21.679 Yeah, they come out of a rifled barrel, so they 0:26:21.760 --> 0:26:24.400 leave they leave marks on those twenty two caliber pellets 0:26:24.640 --> 0:26:27.840 if it's a pump action rifled barrel, which you know 0:26:27.920 --> 0:26:32.040 the good ones are, sure so. But they do use 0:26:32.080 --> 0:26:35.600 shotguns and they'll they also will use If they use 0:26:35.600 --> 0:26:38.520 a shotgun, they like to use subsonic rounds. Some of 0:26:38.560 --> 0:26:41.399 them will put these sound dampeners, these huge long barrels 0:26:41.440 --> 0:26:44.480 on the end of it. That gun was called a 0:26:44.560 --> 0:26:46.240 metro gun. I think did you ever hear of a 0:26:46.320 --> 0:26:49.480 metro gun. It's like an extra barrel. You attached to 0:26:49.600 --> 0:26:52.000 an eight seventy and it's it's about four and a 0:26:52.040 --> 0:26:55.120 half feet long, So you end up with this insanely 0:26:55.240 --> 0:26:56.719 long eight seventy. 0:26:56.880 --> 0:26:58.080 But yeah, it quiets it down. 0:26:58.440 --> 0:26:59.680 They're shooting them perched. 0:27:00.840 --> 0:27:02.880 No, they'll get them on the fly with the shotguns. 0:27:03.000 --> 0:27:06.840 Yeah, with the with the pellet guns. They'll do it approached. Yeah, 0:27:06.880 --> 0:27:09.399 they'll wait for him. A lot of times, the predicted 0:27:09.440 --> 0:27:13.000 Cooper socks. They'll come sit right on the pigeon fanciers 0:27:13.560 --> 0:27:16.760 lofts and they'll just walk back and forth, and it's 0:27:16.800 --> 0:27:20.879 easy pickings. So I didn't do the chalk around the 0:27:20.960 --> 0:27:23.520 dead bird. But what I did do was I canvased 0:27:23.520 --> 0:27:25.760 the neighborhood. I went and started knocking on doors and 0:27:26.000 --> 0:27:28.440 just asking questions of neighbors who happened to be home, 0:27:29.240 --> 0:27:32.320 and be a question you'd ask, uh, you know, identify, 0:27:32.359 --> 0:27:35.439 You do the classic federal agent flip of your credentials, 0:27:35.480 --> 0:27:38.119 and you identify yourself. You tell them you're investigating a 0:27:38.280 --> 0:27:41.600 possible wildlife crime in their neighborhood. That gets their interests. 0:27:41.600 --> 0:27:44.439 They want to hear more. And you start telling them 0:27:44.480 --> 0:27:47.480 that you know, you're investigating some hawks being killed, and 0:27:47.560 --> 0:27:50.880 you explain the MBTA, because nobody understands, nobody knows has 0:27:50.920 --> 0:27:54.439 heard about the MBTA explained that it's illegal to kill hawks, 0:27:54.560 --> 0:27:57.200 and then you know, if you got the bad guy's 0:27:57.240 --> 0:27:59.200 house there, you're going to get a certain reaction and 0:27:59.240 --> 0:28:01.600 you're going to know. But most of the time, people 0:28:01.640 --> 0:28:04.320 are very shocked, very concerned that somebody's shooting in their 0:28:04.359 --> 0:28:07.639 neighborhood in LA and they love hawks. They don't want 0:28:07.640 --> 0:28:11.600 to see hawks killed. And inevitably, as happened in that investigation, 0:28:11.800 --> 0:28:13.560 some people started to tell me, oh, yeah, every once 0:28:13.560 --> 0:28:15.120 in a while, I hear these loud pops. I don't 0:28:15.119 --> 0:28:17.560 know where they're coming from. One lady told me she 0:28:17.640 --> 0:28:19.640 found a big bird dead in her yard with big 0:28:19.760 --> 0:28:22.679 yellow feet. I'm like, well that was probably that's probably 0:28:22.720 --> 0:28:26.439 a lot so I knew him in an area, right. 0:28:26.680 --> 0:28:28.760 And finally I get to a house and I'm like, well, 0:28:28.800 --> 0:28:32.560 tell me about your neighbors, right, and she points to 0:28:32.840 --> 0:28:35.200 all the houses around. Well, he's a realtor, he's a 0:28:35.440 --> 0:28:38.920 police officer, whatever. She finally comes to this guy's house. 0:28:39.000 --> 0:28:41.280 She points to this house and says, well, that guy, 0:28:41.480 --> 0:28:43.000 he loves birds, he wouldn't do it. 0:28:43.160 --> 0:28:45.480 I said, what do you mean? He loves birds. Oh, 0:28:45.520 --> 0:28:50.520 he's got lots of pigeons. Okay, I had my suspects 0:28:50.560 --> 0:28:51.440 house now, right. 0:28:52.640 --> 0:28:55.160 So it turns out I go interview that guy and 0:28:56.440 --> 0:28:58.640 his name was Marty, and he was a He was 0:28:58.720 --> 0:29:02.200 a racing pigeon. So this guy actually made big money, 0:29:02.440 --> 0:29:05.440 like ten plus thousand dollars a time on a race 0:29:05.720 --> 0:29:08.480 if he won. Sometimes those races can be like fifty 0:29:08.520 --> 0:29:10.080 grand if you win a Is that like. 0:29:10.240 --> 0:29:12.640 Illegal gambling kind of money or where is it? 0:29:12.880 --> 0:29:12.920 No? 0:29:13.160 --> 0:29:16.080 Not necessarily. Yeah, it's like a plot sort of a thing. Yeah, 0:29:16.120 --> 0:29:18.400 there's a pot. So uh. 0:29:19.280 --> 0:29:22.760 He vibed real real bad and asked me if I 0:29:22.880 --> 0:29:25.040 was armed, gave me all the you know, red flag 0:29:25.120 --> 0:29:27.560 creepy things. But in the end I actually got him 0:29:27.600 --> 0:29:31.320 to confess that he did kill hawks, so easy conviction 0:29:31.480 --> 0:29:33.920 on that he confessed, he pled guilty. But the more 0:29:33.960 --> 0:29:36.680 I thought about it, the more it nagged at me that, Okay, 0:29:36.880 --> 0:29:39.080 there's a lot of there's a lot of pigeon fanciers 0:29:39.120 --> 0:29:42.000 around the country, and if this guy is motivated to 0:29:42.080 --> 0:29:43.200 kill hawks, probably. 0:29:42.960 --> 0:29:43.640 Some other ones are. 0:29:44.160 --> 0:29:47.280 So I just started digging and I realized it'd be 0:29:47.360 --> 0:29:50.000 really difficult to infiltrate the best way to get these 0:29:50.040 --> 0:29:52.240 guys is to do some type of undercover work. And 0:29:52.480 --> 0:29:54.880 you you characterized me as an undercover agent when you 0:29:55.000 --> 0:29:58.960 never introduced me. We don't talk like that really, But 0:29:59.640 --> 0:30:03.040 I did a lot undercover work during my career, middle 0:30:03.080 --> 0:30:06.400 part of my career in particular a lot, and this 0:30:06.600 --> 0:30:08.240 was one of the big cases I ended up doing. 0:30:08.920 --> 0:30:11.760 And I found that there was these group of roller 0:30:11.800 --> 0:30:15.240 pigeon guys operating in la Is, a fairly large group 0:30:15.320 --> 0:30:18.960 associated with the National Birmingham Roller Club the nbr C, 0:30:20.000 --> 0:30:22.760 and then fact the president of the nbr C lived 0:30:22.800 --> 0:30:26.560 in la So I really just started to ingratiate myself 0:30:26.600 --> 0:30:29.760 with these guys online and ask a lot of questions 0:30:29.840 --> 0:30:33.760 that I wanted to get into it. I got invited, Yeah, 0:30:34.360 --> 0:30:38.760 got invited in to learn about the hobby and get involved. 0:30:39.040 --> 0:30:41.640 How long did it take for you were How long 0:30:41.640 --> 0:30:44.320 did it take for you were introduced to the rafter control? 0:30:45.760 --> 0:30:48.640 Shockingly, it is very quick. 0:30:48.880 --> 0:30:49.080 Yeah. 0:30:49.160 --> 0:30:52.719 I mean I got invited to go to some pigeon 0:30:52.800 --> 0:30:55.600 shows that they have where they show off their birds, 0:30:55.640 --> 0:30:58.520 they buy and sell the good breeders, they show equipment, 0:30:59.200 --> 0:31:03.400 and you know, funny enough, I had an undercover persona 0:31:03.480 --> 0:31:05.760 all set up. I'd already been doing undercover work by 0:31:05.800 --> 0:31:09.240 that time, but obviously did not use the name ed Newcomer. 0:31:09.320 --> 0:31:11.360 But I ended up on one of their web pages 0:31:11.760 --> 0:31:13.640 with a photo with me with a bunch of these 0:31:13.760 --> 0:31:16.200 guys who ended up I ended up arresting a year 0:31:16.240 --> 0:31:19.320 and a half later, And on the little caption down below, 0:31:19.360 --> 0:31:22.040 it says, you know, the Inner City Roller Club welcomes 0:31:22.080 --> 0:31:23.360 a newcomer to the group, and. 0:31:25.560 --> 0:31:27.200 We put that up on the bulletin board in the 0:31:27.280 --> 0:31:30.120 office there. It's kind of. 0:31:30.160 --> 0:31:32.400 Nice, but at first you're like, shit, they found out 0:31:32.520 --> 0:31:35.840 exactly yeah, yeah, whenever you see yeah, you see your name, 0:31:35.920 --> 0:31:38.840 and parents like, wait, oh, the context is correct, it's 0:31:38.920 --> 0:31:40.920 not capitalized exactly. 0:31:41.640 --> 0:31:45.440 So but at that very first, you know, Meaty that 0:31:45.560 --> 0:31:48.800 I went to I saw this funny looking cage sitting there, 0:31:49.040 --> 0:31:51.520 and I knew immediately it was a Gosshawk trap because 0:31:51.560 --> 0:31:54.200 I'd already I knew what these things looked like. And 0:31:54.320 --> 0:31:56.760 there's this guy selling a gosshawk trap for one hundred bucks. 0:31:57.280 --> 0:31:58.920 So of course I go up and I'm like, what's 0:31:58.960 --> 0:32:01.040 this cage for? You know, to get into this hobby? 0:32:01.080 --> 0:32:04.480 I don't know, what do you use this for, and yeah, 0:32:04.480 --> 0:32:05.960 he didn't miss a beat. He says, Oh, that's for 0:32:06.080 --> 0:32:08.320 catching hawks, but don't tell anybody because it's illegal. 0:32:08.560 --> 0:32:08.880 M hm. 0:32:09.000 --> 0:32:10.760 And I'm like, you know, could you say that into 0:32:10.800 --> 0:32:13.120 my lapel mic, you know, it would be nice. 0:32:15.040 --> 0:32:18.360 So and that went on. Once that kind of opened 0:32:18.440 --> 0:32:18.880 up it. 0:32:19.240 --> 0:32:21.600 Then once one of the guys on the inside has 0:32:21.640 --> 0:32:24.000 made a statement to me about a hawk trap being 0:32:24.080 --> 0:32:28.320 present on the property and what it's for, it gave 0:32:28.360 --> 0:32:30.280 me an excuse to talk to everybody about, Hey, I 0:32:30.360 --> 0:32:31.400 saw that weird cage. 0:32:31.920 --> 0:32:33.120 What's this deal with hawks? 0:32:33.160 --> 0:32:33.200 Do? 0:32:33.360 --> 0:32:34.800 Is this something I need to be worried about? Where 0:32:34.840 --> 0:32:35.160 I live? 0:32:36.120 --> 0:32:39.920 Floodgates just opened immediately, and yeah, everybody was talking about it. 0:32:40.520 --> 0:32:41.120 I went back. 0:32:41.840 --> 0:32:44.600 My boss actually wasn't too excited about me. That that 0:32:44.720 --> 0:32:47.080 little firecracker of a lawyer that I ended up working 0:32:47.120 --> 0:32:49.440 for down in LA that Dave McMullen told me I 0:32:49.520 --> 0:32:52.640 needed to work with. She wasn't excited about this case. 0:32:52.680 --> 0:32:55.320 She's like, these migratory birds, it's a low priority. We 0:32:55.400 --> 0:32:57.400 need to work on trafficking cases. And I said, no, 0:32:57.600 --> 0:33:00.240 just let me go do one of these meat on 0:33:00.320 --> 0:33:03.520 the weekend. Let's see what happens. I came back and 0:33:03.600 --> 0:33:06.800 showed her that undercover video where everybody was talking about 0:33:06.880 --> 0:33:09.160 killing hawks, and I pointed out to her that, look, 0:33:09.200 --> 0:33:11.800 there's two hundred and fifty people in LA who are 0:33:11.840 --> 0:33:15.040 members of the nbr C, the president's here, there are 0:33:15.080 --> 0:33:17.880 people all over the country that are members of the NBRC. 0:33:18.880 --> 0:33:21.920 And I didn't meet a single person at this meet 0:33:21.960 --> 0:33:25.480 who didn't admit they were killing hawks. And she's like, well, shit, 0:33:25.520 --> 0:33:27.320 we got to work this case then, you know, and 0:33:27.400 --> 0:33:30.080 then we were off and running. It was a year 0:33:30.120 --> 0:33:33.640 and a half. I spent every weekend at a pigeon. 0:33:33.400 --> 0:33:37.440 At that point, like, what's the goala like for me? 0:33:37.600 --> 0:33:38.720 Of them for you? 0:33:39.000 --> 0:33:41.360 Because it seems to me like it'd be eas like 0:33:41.400 --> 0:33:43.240 you got the one guy that confess, but that's not 0:33:43.360 --> 0:33:47.200 really helping the bigger picture exactly, And so how do 0:33:47.240 --> 0:33:49.080 you work that into being like, if we do this, 0:33:49.280 --> 0:33:50.320 it's going to make a difference. 0:33:50.400 --> 0:33:53.280 Yeah, Like, did you need a dead raptor to tie 0:33:53.400 --> 0:33:56.520 to an individual like over and over and over again. 0:33:56.400 --> 0:34:02.000 Or yes, yes, that's ideal. You know, the quintessential body. 0:34:02.360 --> 0:34:04.640 It's a murder case, right, it's a hawk murder case. 0:34:04.920 --> 0:34:08.040 So you want that body. But you don't necessarily need it, 0:34:08.040 --> 0:34:11.280 because attempt to do these things is also a violation. 0:34:12.200 --> 0:34:15.360 But what you got to get past is their ability 0:34:15.520 --> 0:34:19.160 to create reasonable doubt by saying that that trap is 0:34:19.280 --> 0:34:22.719 used for something else, right, it's used to trap raccoons 0:34:23.160 --> 0:34:26.719 or whatever. So you got if you're going to go 0:34:26.840 --> 0:34:28.640 for the attempt, you got to prove that they know 0:34:29.000 --> 0:34:30.680 that they're trying to catch a hawk. And so you 0:34:30.800 --> 0:34:34.040 got to do that undercover work, get those admissions on tape. 0:34:34.600 --> 0:34:37.279 And so the goal here is with that first case 0:34:37.320 --> 0:34:42.040 I did with the guy, the racer, Marty, you know, 0:34:42.120 --> 0:34:44.800 it's a misdemeanor violation. He didn't get arrested. He basically 0:34:44.880 --> 0:34:46.839 paid a ticket, right, and it was a big fine, 0:34:47.200 --> 0:34:50.120 but it didn't get in the paper. I think he 0:34:50.239 --> 0:34:52.840 paid it's about five grand. I think it was pretty 0:34:52.880 --> 0:34:53.360 good fine. 0:34:54.040 --> 0:34:55.160 And the word never spread. 0:34:55.200 --> 0:34:59.560 The word to his friends maybe, but it doesn't get 0:34:59.600 --> 0:35:03.319 out in bigger community that you know. What happens then, 0:35:03.480 --> 0:35:06.279 is every all his buddies say, well, you idiot, you 0:35:06.320 --> 0:35:09.440 shouldn't have admitted you did it. And too bad Marty 0:35:09.480 --> 0:35:11.600 got caught. I'm not going to get caught, right, So 0:35:11.760 --> 0:35:14.640 what you want is deterrence and you got to deter people, 0:35:14.800 --> 0:35:16.560 and the best way to do that is to catch 0:35:16.640 --> 0:35:21.759 a lot of people. And then catching a lot of 0:35:21.800 --> 0:35:26.120 people catches the attention of the media, and that tends to. 0:35:26.120 --> 0:35:28.680 Get the word out. Public shaming, public shaming. 0:35:29.480 --> 0:35:32.239 Yeah, we didn't use those terms, but yeah, that's what 0:35:32.400 --> 0:35:34.840 it is, really and that's effective. 0:35:35.040 --> 0:35:36.000 It's really effective. 0:35:36.480 --> 0:35:40.960 So you know, you know, Abraham Lincoln said something that 0:35:41.239 --> 0:35:45.120 I love, and that is that the law without enforcement 0:35:45.400 --> 0:35:49.200 is simply good advice. And if people don't know you're 0:35:49.239 --> 0:35:51.480 out there enforcing the law and you're catching people, they 0:35:51.600 --> 0:35:52.760 just advice. 0:35:52.840 --> 0:35:57.879 Then what prevents the what prevents the cage guy from 0:35:58.000 --> 0:36:01.799 saying in the end, he said, well, what I didn't 0:36:01.840 --> 0:36:04.960 tell you is I just relocate them, so maybe you 0:36:05.040 --> 0:36:07.680 can get me. Maybe it's like a legal possession. But 0:36:07.760 --> 0:36:09.680 I didn't kill it, right, You don't know that I 0:36:09.800 --> 0:36:11.719 killed it, right. I forgot to say, I'll just move 0:36:11.800 --> 0:36:13.800 them away and let them go. So, yeah, I possessed 0:36:13.840 --> 0:36:14.840 it for a minute, but that was it. 0:36:15.239 --> 0:36:17.520 Yeah, and some of them did try that. But the 0:36:17.600 --> 0:36:20.520 way the MBTA, the Migratory Bird Charity Act is written, 0:36:20.880 --> 0:36:22.440 is it's illegal to catch them. 0:36:23.280 --> 0:36:24.480 It's not. It doesn't matter. 0:36:24.800 --> 0:36:26.440 If you want to catch one and relocate it, you 0:36:26.480 --> 0:36:27.920 have to have a permit from the US Fish and 0:36:27.960 --> 0:36:30.880 Wildlife Service. So that didn't necessarily get them out of it, 0:36:31.400 --> 0:36:34.440 but it would have been good jury sympathy, right, But 0:36:34.800 --> 0:36:37.320 there were some some of these guys actually told me. 0:36:37.480 --> 0:36:38.880 I'd ask them, I'd say, well, what do you do 0:36:38.960 --> 0:36:40.479 with it after you catch it in this trap? 0:36:40.560 --> 0:36:40.680 Oh? 0:36:41.160 --> 0:36:43.160 And a lot of them told me don't release them 0:36:43.480 --> 0:36:46.560 because hawks will learn to not go in a gosshawk trap. 0:36:46.960 --> 0:36:48.920 And so if you release a hawk, it's just going 0:36:49.000 --> 0:36:52.200 to set your fellow roller pigeon guys up to have 0:36:52.480 --> 0:36:55.040 a nightmare because they're going to have a hawk preying 0:36:55.120 --> 0:36:56.960 on their pigeons that you can't catch. In the business, 0:36:56.960 --> 0:37:00.480 you know what we call that trap shot? Yeah, yeah, 0:37:00.840 --> 0:37:03.080 well that's true, all right. Animals aren't dumb. 0:37:03.560 --> 0:37:07.320 Yeah. So let's see where were we on this? 0:37:07.480 --> 0:37:12.320 So I get into these clubs and basically presented myself 0:37:12.360 --> 0:37:15.520 as somebody who was interested in getting involved. They did, 0:37:16.719 --> 0:37:18.520 They did kind of check me out a little bit. 0:37:18.560 --> 0:37:20.200 They wanted to know where I lived, and we had 0:37:20.239 --> 0:37:22.520 to have the cover was pretty good on that case 0:37:22.640 --> 0:37:24.839 because these guys were dangerous. Some of these guys lived 0:37:24.880 --> 0:37:28.000 in south central LA, you know right there. I mean 0:37:28.160 --> 0:37:30.120 I was the only white guy at some of these meetings, 0:37:30.800 --> 0:37:33.279 and a lot of them we'd run there anytime I could, 0:37:33.640 --> 0:37:35.520 you know, figure out who they were, we'd run them. 0:37:36.000 --> 0:37:40.440 A lot of them had felony convictions for assaults, gun crimes, 0:37:40.560 --> 0:37:43.279 drug crimes. One guy in the middle of the investigation 0:37:43.920 --> 0:37:45.960 comes up with a warrant for gang rape out of 0:37:46.080 --> 0:37:46.640 LA County. 0:37:47.360 --> 0:37:49.040 And that's what I was going to ask you earlier. 0:37:49.120 --> 0:37:51.680 Like we've had game wardens on that have told us, 0:37:51.760 --> 0:37:56.799 like poaching cases will often lead to like larger other 0:37:57.280 --> 0:37:58.680 you know, criminal activity. 0:37:58.880 --> 0:38:00.839 Did you absolutely into that a lot? 0:38:01.120 --> 0:38:04.400 Yeah, absolutely, especially when you've got more organized, you know, 0:38:04.760 --> 0:38:07.359 criminal activity going on. If you're talking about somebody who 0:38:08.360 --> 0:38:11.360 has two or three extra trout or you know whatever, 0:38:11.880 --> 0:38:16.359 kills a buck when they shouldn't have whatever, that's that's 0:38:16.400 --> 0:38:18.120 kind of a one off. But if you've got somebody 0:38:18.239 --> 0:38:22.719 in systemically and systematically involved in committing crimes, you know, 0:38:22.760 --> 0:38:25.080 there's there's a couple of things that people will kill 0:38:25.160 --> 0:38:26.080 you for or hurt you for. 0:38:26.680 --> 0:38:27.160 Three things. 0:38:27.200 --> 0:38:30.880 I always say, one is to protect their liberty and 0:38:30.960 --> 0:38:33.520 the other is to protect their money right, and to 0:38:33.560 --> 0:38:37.480 prepare their house. And when you are when they are 0:38:37.560 --> 0:38:42.400 involved in an ongoing criminal activity, you're gonna as a 0:38:42.480 --> 0:38:44.960 law enforcement officer, you're endangering all three of those things 0:38:45.040 --> 0:38:47.239 for them. You're going to take their money, potentially their 0:38:47.280 --> 0:38:49.919 revenue source. You're probably going to do a search warrant 0:38:49.960 --> 0:38:52.400 on their house, and they definitely think they're liberty is 0:38:52.400 --> 0:38:54.759 at stake, and those are the things that make people 0:38:54.880 --> 0:38:59.719 really dangerous. Yeah, so yeah, so we didn't take any 0:38:59.760 --> 0:39:02.759 chance is with these guys. In fact, every time, every 0:39:02.800 --> 0:39:04.879 time I'd come in on a Monday morning after meeting 0:39:04.960 --> 0:39:07.040 with them, my boss would kind of shake her head 0:39:07.080 --> 0:39:10.440 and say, this is too dangerous. We need we need 0:39:10.520 --> 0:39:11.920 to take this down. I'm like, no, no, we got 0:39:12.000 --> 0:39:13.759 to go farther. We got to catch more of these guys. 0:39:13.880 --> 0:39:14.480 We need more. 0:39:15.280 --> 0:39:18.000 And then a really crazy thing happened. I happened to 0:39:18.239 --> 0:39:22.360 be up in Oregon for a firearms qualification and defensive 0:39:22.440 --> 0:39:27.840 tactics training because at the time, Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho 0:39:28.280 --> 0:39:30.759 were all part of the same region. So we'd get 0:39:30.760 --> 0:39:33.080 together as agents for training and stuff. And I'm up 0:39:33.080 --> 0:39:36.120 there and I'm literally wrestling around on the ground with 0:39:36.239 --> 0:39:38.840 an agent named Dirk Hoy who was based up in Portland, 0:39:39.560 --> 0:39:41.640 and we're, you know, we're resting in between doing some 0:39:41.719 --> 0:39:44.279 ground fighting and I'm like, what are you working on, Dirk? 0:39:44.520 --> 0:39:45.879 And he goes, oh, I got the weirdest case. 0:39:45.880 --> 0:39:46.320 I'm working on. 0:39:46.400 --> 0:39:48.680 This case involving these pigeons that flip backwards. 0:39:49.640 --> 0:39:50.600 I couldn't believe it. 0:39:50.680 --> 0:39:53.480 I mean literally, here I am in the prone position 0:39:53.600 --> 0:39:55.600 with Dirk between my legs and he's telling me this, 0:39:55.719 --> 0:39:58.879 and I'm like, I'm doing the same thing. And from 0:39:58.960 --> 0:40:01.880 that moment forward and I started to collaborate, and we 0:40:02.000 --> 0:40:05.959 realized he was investigating members of the National Birmingham Roller 0:40:06.000 --> 0:40:09.800 Club up in Oregon and Washington and Idaho and Montana. 0:40:10.480 --> 0:40:12.719 And here I was with the investigating the guys in 0:40:12.760 --> 0:40:16.080 southern California, the same thing, same exact thing. They were doing, 0:40:16.239 --> 0:40:19.760 exactly the same network. And because it was getting around 0:40:19.800 --> 0:40:21.920 among the club, here's the best way to kill hawks, 0:40:22.400 --> 0:40:25.360 these guys were sending each other schematics on how to 0:40:25.440 --> 0:40:27.920 build traps. They were talking about the best way to shoot, 0:40:28.560 --> 0:40:32.160 how to poison, how to drown. I mean, oh yeah, 0:40:32.320 --> 0:40:34.600 they were given each other. Once we really got into it, 0:40:34.840 --> 0:40:36.200 the culpability here was just. 0:40:36.400 --> 0:40:38.520 Through the roof. You know, if you would have embedded 0:40:38.600 --> 0:40:40.680 yourself with cottontail rabbit hunters in the. 0:40:40.719 --> 0:40:43.240 Sixties would have made some good cases. 0:40:44.160 --> 0:40:45.040 No, sixties would have. 0:40:45.040 --> 0:40:47.640 Been too early, right, Well MBTA was around then. 0:40:48.160 --> 0:40:51.080 Yeah, you'd had a very similar experience, I think. 0:40:51.200 --> 0:40:54.960 Yeah, yeah, it's it's true with uh so people who 0:40:55.239 --> 0:40:58.160 who raise pheasants, you know for hunting clubs, they'll do 0:40:58.280 --> 0:41:00.640 it too because hawkshall, hawxhall hit the pheasants. 0:41:01.320 --> 0:41:02.880 So yeah, it's a temptation. 0:41:03.120 --> 0:41:06.720 Sure, there's some chicken chicken people to have hobby farms 0:41:06.719 --> 0:41:10.000 with chickens totally. I mean they're a threat to our chickens, totally. 0:41:10.520 --> 0:41:12.680 My wife's not into that, but she's you know, she 0:41:12.760 --> 0:41:14.720 doesn't like when a hawks flying above. 0:41:14.880 --> 0:41:16.839 Of course, you know who are some of the worst 0:41:16.840 --> 0:41:20.720 offenders are guys who are involved in cock fighting because 0:41:21.080 --> 0:41:22.080 they're killing predators. 0:41:22.200 --> 0:41:23.840 Oh yeah, can't hold his own. 0:41:23.719 --> 0:41:26.440 Again, Nope, because they don't have their little you know 0:41:26.520 --> 0:41:27.040 that little. 0:41:29.719 --> 0:41:29.919 Lad. 0:41:30.680 --> 0:41:32.959 So you know, then you got a double whammy because 0:41:32.960 --> 0:41:35.440 that's a state violation to be involved in cockfighting, and 0:41:35.520 --> 0:41:36.840 then you've got them killing hawks. 0:41:37.000 --> 0:41:38.239 But that's a hard case to make. 0:41:38.640 --> 0:41:41.640 So when you tell me how this like like how 0:41:41.640 --> 0:41:44.279 does this wrap up? Like how do you how do 0:41:44.320 --> 0:41:45.640 you bring it to a clothes. 0:41:45.520 --> 0:41:48.800 Well, the cool thing was Dirk and I agreed immediately 0:41:48.880 --> 0:41:50.560 what the strategy was. You know, we got to get 0:41:50.560 --> 0:41:53.440 as many people as possible. He was having peregrines get 0:41:53.560 --> 0:41:57.239 killed up in Portland, so it's a little little higher priority. 0:41:58.000 --> 0:42:00.719 So what we decided was, yeah, there's too many people 0:42:00.800 --> 0:42:02.320 to get all of them. So what we did is 0:42:02.360 --> 0:42:05.600 we focused on club leaders, people who were who were 0:42:06.560 --> 0:42:10.440 you know, setting the example, anybody who was a president 0:42:10.520 --> 0:42:13.320 of a local club. We targeted the president of the 0:42:13.400 --> 0:42:15.520 National Birmingham Roller Club, who is one of the worst 0:42:15.560 --> 0:42:20.439 killers of them all. And we decided, all right, once 0:42:20.520 --> 0:42:23.080 we have good evidence on all this, this t our 0:42:23.160 --> 0:42:23.799 target group. 0:42:24.000 --> 0:42:25.319 Each of us have a target group. 0:42:25.880 --> 0:42:28.480 We'll do our takedowns at exactly the same time, will 0:42:28.520 --> 0:42:31.440 coordinate everything, we'll do our search warrants, we're going to 0:42:31.560 --> 0:42:34.640 arrest everybody, and we'll do it all on the same day, 0:42:35.120 --> 0:42:38.200 and then the word doesn't get out, evidence doesn't disappear, 0:42:38.680 --> 0:42:41.240 and then we can try to get the media's attention 0:42:41.360 --> 0:42:43.719 to in order to deter people. Neither Dirk or I 0:42:43.880 --> 0:42:45.680 were interested in having our names in the paper. We 0:42:45.760 --> 0:42:49.560 wanted we wanted the roller pigeon community to know that 0:42:49.680 --> 0:42:53.239 they had been infiltrated and that everything they had said 0:42:53.360 --> 0:42:56.480 and done had been recorded, and that they were going 0:42:56.520 --> 0:42:58.400 to look real bad, so they needed to clean up 0:42:58.440 --> 0:42:58.839 their act. 0:42:59.320 --> 0:43:00.480 So that's how I played out. 0:43:00.520 --> 0:43:03.760 About fourteen months after I started, we did our takedown. 0:43:04.360 --> 0:43:08.280 We even Dirk even there was a Montana game Morden 0:43:08.400 --> 0:43:10.840 that got implicated in the whole damn thing, which was 0:43:11.200 --> 0:43:15.160 very depressing for both Dirk and I. But also we 0:43:15.320 --> 0:43:18.160 really wanted to get that person because you know, that's 0:43:18.200 --> 0:43:21.720 a bad image to have sure wildlife law enforcement officer involved. 0:43:22.200 --> 0:43:24.480 He didn't end up getting charged because Dirk couldn't prove 0:43:24.560 --> 0:43:27.960 that he actually killed a hawk, but we had an 0:43:28.000 --> 0:43:30.600 agent here. I think it was Bozeman, might have been Missouli, 0:43:30.600 --> 0:43:32.640 I can't remember, but we had one of our agents 0:43:32.719 --> 0:43:36.320 here go interview him. The minute the agent came in 0:43:36.440 --> 0:43:38.080 and rolled the gold and said, Hey, I'm here to 0:43:38.160 --> 0:43:41.720 talk to you about hawks, the guy said, he literally 0:43:41.800 --> 0:43:43.920 said I want my union rep. And the very next 0:43:44.000 --> 0:43:48.160 day he retired. Oh yeah, so that's pretty damning right there, 0:43:48.239 --> 0:43:51.040 right But He didn't end up getting charged because Dirk 0:43:51.120 --> 0:43:53.600 just couldn't couldn't prove that he'd actually killed a hawk, 0:43:53.680 --> 0:43:56.399 but it was just obvious he was involved. In fact, 0:43:56.480 --> 0:43:58.920 one of the guys I arrested in LA we had 0:43:59.000 --> 0:44:00.600 him in handcuffs in the back the car and the 0:44:00.640 --> 0:44:03.239 first thing he said was do you know? And he 0:44:03.360 --> 0:44:09.040 named the Montana State game Morton, Yeah, hoping that, hoping 0:44:09.120 --> 0:44:11.400 that would get him out of it. And let me 0:44:11.520 --> 0:44:14.880 just say the Montana It's Montana game and fish right, 0:44:15.080 --> 0:44:15.320 isn't it? 0:44:16.760 --> 0:44:17.000 Okay? 0:44:17.080 --> 0:44:20.200 They've changed their name since I okay, it's like I 0:44:20.239 --> 0:44:20.880 can never remember. 0:44:20.960 --> 0:44:22.319 It's been an f w P for long. 0:44:22.800 --> 0:44:27.440 I can a few years. Colorado changes. It always confuses me. 0:44:27.520 --> 0:44:29.520 So I can never remember. But to their credit, they 0:44:29.560 --> 0:44:32.480 were awesome. They were not interested in having an officer 0:44:32.560 --> 0:44:34.719 in their ranks who had, you know, violated the law. 0:44:35.239 --> 0:44:37.239 So they were very cooperative and they were very. 0:44:37.120 --> 0:44:39.920 Glad to see him go. So you know, that's that's 0:44:39.960 --> 0:44:40.399 good news. 0:44:40.520 --> 0:44:41.719 How many rest did you guys make? 0:44:42.440 --> 0:44:44.759 I ended up arresting seven people in l A. I 0:44:44.880 --> 0:44:46.960 can't remember how many dirt got up here in Oregon 0:44:47.040 --> 0:44:49.359 in Washington, but it was a it was a good 0:44:49.440 --> 0:44:53.080 case and made a lot of made a lot of attention. 0:44:53.800 --> 0:44:57.279 And the the thing I really really was proud of 0:44:57.480 --> 0:45:00.680 is that it empowered the people in the roller pigeon 0:45:00.719 --> 0:45:03.640 community who were opposed to hawk killing, who often had 0:45:03.680 --> 0:45:05.880 been kind of shouted down and bullied. 0:45:06.719 --> 0:45:08.960 It gave them a voice to come out and say, 0:45:09.080 --> 0:45:11.080 you know, we told you guys, you know we got 0:45:11.200 --> 0:45:13.239 to stop this, and it was good. 0:45:13.360 --> 0:45:15.600 And the best part is even today, if you go 0:45:15.719 --> 0:45:19.640 on the roller pigeon chat rooms and email groups or whatever, 0:45:19.760 --> 0:45:22.320 you'll see somebody's like, well, I'm pretty sure there was 0:45:22.360 --> 0:45:23.439 an undercover agent at. 0:45:23.360 --> 0:45:27.600 That last fly. Yeah, and there very well could have been. 0:45:27.840 --> 0:45:31.000 But that's the ideal situation, right You always want them 0:45:31.040 --> 0:45:34.719 looking over their shoulder, like, oh crap, those I used. 0:45:34.840 --> 0:45:37.160 I arrested this guy early in my career who was 0:45:37.640 --> 0:45:40.239 Japanese national, and he used to refer to us as 0:45:40.320 --> 0:45:43.200 the fish and wild guys, and I always because he 0:45:43.239 --> 0:45:45.840 couldn't for some reason, he couldn't pronounce fish and wildlife. 0:45:45.840 --> 0:45:47.919 So they say, oh, those fish and wild guys, they're 0:45:47.960 --> 0:45:48.680 always out there. 0:45:48.880 --> 0:45:51.560 And I just want people to know that that, you know, 0:45:51.719 --> 0:45:54.560 if you if you end up committing a federal wildlife 0:45:54.640 --> 0:45:56.680 law and a fish and wildlife agent gets on you, 0:45:58.000 --> 0:46:00.840 you're cooked. I mean, every agent I know is so 0:46:01.080 --> 0:46:03.160 tenacious and so committed to their job. 0:46:04.120 --> 0:46:04.400 It is. 0:46:04.719 --> 0:46:05.440 It is true. 0:46:05.840 --> 0:46:08.560 It's what they say about federal agents. Once they're on 0:46:08.760 --> 0:46:11.919 you and they have evidence that you did something, they're 0:46:11.960 --> 0:46:12.520 not giving up. 0:46:12.680 --> 0:46:14.719 They'll get you. It's just a matter of time. 0:46:17.400 --> 0:46:23.120 How do you create the distinction between when does someone 0:46:23.239 --> 0:46:25.560 violating a state's law become federal. 0:46:26.080 --> 0:46:27.319 Yeah, that's a great question. 0:46:27.520 --> 0:46:29.879 If it because it does, if it becomes a lazy act, 0:46:30.320 --> 0:46:32.800 does that involve you, then yes, a lazy act. 0:46:32.719 --> 0:46:33.920 Violation, Yes it can. 0:46:34.400 --> 0:46:39.000 So the best way to explain that is the if 0:46:39.040 --> 0:46:42.400 you think about the FBI's relationship to say, to the 0:46:42.719 --> 0:46:48.920 Montana Bozeman Police, Right, if a car gets stolen here 0:46:49.120 --> 0:46:53.440 in town, that's a state issue, Right, local police are 0:46:53.480 --> 0:46:56.520 going to handle that. If that car crosses the state 0:46:56.600 --> 0:47:00.400 line into Wyoming, now that's a federal offense. The FBI 0:47:00.520 --> 0:47:02.640 can get involved. And the reason for that is the 0:47:02.760 --> 0:47:05.680 jurisdiction of the Montana law enforcement ends at the border, 0:47:06.160 --> 0:47:09.640 so it becomes difficult for them to conduct investigations outside 0:47:09.680 --> 0:47:12.400 the state. For the Feds that's not an issue. I 0:47:12.560 --> 0:47:15.400 never cared about a state line. That never never crossed 0:47:15.480 --> 0:47:21.040 my mind. Right, So if I you know, if something 0:47:21.120 --> 0:47:23.800 crosses state lines, it often triggers a federal law that 0:47:23.920 --> 0:47:27.720 makes that a federal offense, allowing the FBI, Orficial Wildlife 0:47:27.760 --> 0:47:30.880 or Secret Service or whomever to get involved. And a 0:47:30.920 --> 0:47:32.839 lot of times it's done at the request of the state. 0:47:33.520 --> 0:47:38.239 So we in LA often got calls from Montana, Colorado, 0:47:38.440 --> 0:47:41.759 Wyoming from game wardens that said, hey, you know this 0:47:42.120 --> 0:47:44.640 LA guy came in and killed a big elk out 0:47:44.680 --> 0:47:47.000 here illegally, and can you help. 0:47:47.640 --> 0:47:49.239 Yeah, heck, yeah we can. 0:47:49.360 --> 0:47:52.160 If he killed an elk illegally in Montana and he 0:47:52.400 --> 0:47:56.320 drove the meat, any part of it, antler meat, hide, whatever, 0:47:57.080 --> 0:47:59.759 back to LA, that's a Lacy Act violation, which makes 0:47:59.760 --> 0:48:00.879 it a federal effection. 0:48:00.600 --> 0:48:02.000 And you can assist in the investigations. 0:48:02.080 --> 0:48:04.960 Yeah, so we bring the resources of the federal government 0:48:05.120 --> 0:48:07.720 to help the state. That's really what the Laciac's all about, 0:48:07.800 --> 0:48:10.560 even though it you know, it's not like we're stealing 0:48:10.640 --> 0:48:12.960 the case from the state. A lot of times, what 0:48:13.080 --> 0:48:15.840 I would do as an age, that's how it happens. 0:48:15.560 --> 0:48:16.080 In the movies. 0:48:16.120 --> 0:48:17.880 And taking one over Perkins. 0:48:18.160 --> 0:48:22.680 And that makes my skin crawl. That makes my skin crawl, 0:48:22.719 --> 0:48:24.920 because it's really not the way it works out in 0:48:24.960 --> 0:48:29.000 the field. Honestly, what I would normally do if I 0:48:29.080 --> 0:48:32.440 had that situation is I would get with the Montana 0:48:32.520 --> 0:48:35.239 warden and I'd say, all right, we got him on 0:48:35.320 --> 0:48:38.520 the Lacey. What do you need, here's my report, here's 0:48:38.560 --> 0:48:41.200 all the evidence. What do you need to make your 0:48:41.239 --> 0:48:44.560 state case? And then we together we would say who's 0:48:44.600 --> 0:48:46.239 going to get the best punch out of this? Right, 0:48:46.360 --> 0:48:49.239 who's going to get the best penalty? And sometimes it's 0:48:49.320 --> 0:48:52.280 the state, sometimes the state. In many cases the states 0:48:52.320 --> 0:48:55.239 are have much harsher penalties for wildlife crimes than the 0:48:55.280 --> 0:48:55.719 Feds do. 0:48:56.080 --> 0:48:57.840 Well, it's interesting to hear you say that, because we 0:48:58.000 --> 0:49:01.239 often cover this sort of stuff and like it never 0:49:01.360 --> 0:49:03.800 fails nine out of ten times. At the end of 0:49:03.880 --> 0:49:07.240 the discussion, we go some beachulin got three hundred dollars 0:49:07.320 --> 0:49:11.040 and losses license for like a year. R Like that's 0:49:11.200 --> 0:49:12.480 barely a slap on the wrist. 0:49:12.800 --> 0:49:16.400 Yeah, are you guys automatically taking over if it's federally 0:49:16.520 --> 0:49:19.120 managed like waterfowl for instance. 0:49:18.840 --> 0:49:22.360 Or yeah, it we can, right if it's a federally 0:49:22.440 --> 0:49:25.480 managed animal, we can take take it over, as you say, 0:49:25.600 --> 0:49:30.160 but especially with waterfowl, we generally, even though we have 0:49:30.280 --> 0:49:34.239 primary jurisdiction over waterfowl, all migratory birds dove doves too, 0:49:35.120 --> 0:49:38.800 we don't, you know, bust in on that, because the 0:49:38.920 --> 0:49:41.279 US Fish and Wilife Service we're all special agents. We're 0:49:41.320 --> 0:49:44.640 playing clothes investigators. We don't have a patrol function, right, 0:49:44.719 --> 0:49:46.800 you know, I drive a unmarked car. I don't have 0:49:46.880 --> 0:49:51.040 a dispatcher telling me where to go. So uniformed game 0:49:51.080 --> 0:49:54.680 wardens are ideally suited to enforce waterfowl hunting, dove hunting. 0:49:54.920 --> 0:49:57.839 Yeah, I was you're talking about just like someone going 0:49:57.920 --> 0:50:00.279 over the limit or but if it's like a large. 0:50:00.320 --> 0:50:03.279 Scale thing, Yeah, again we would. 0:50:03.360 --> 0:50:06.879 If a state's got an investigation going, we would join 0:50:07.000 --> 0:50:09.400 them versus taking it over on them. 0:50:09.480 --> 0:50:11.839 Yeah. Yeah, we don't do that, did you not cool? 0:50:12.040 --> 0:50:18.160 Did you ever work any cases that involved people in 0:50:18.280 --> 0:50:25.960 the restaurant trade serving poached wildlife or serving illegally captured 0:50:25.960 --> 0:50:28.279 wildlife that was making its way into the restaurant trade. 0:50:28.960 --> 0:50:32.680 Yeah, I didn't in particular, but there are some cases 0:50:34.239 --> 0:50:37.200 that that that's come up, even in LA a lot 0:50:37.239 --> 0:50:41.600 of the Asian restaurants will serve wildlife that's taken turtles 0:50:41.640 --> 0:50:45.680 in particular, reptiles, sometimes fish. So we, yeah, we got 0:50:45.719 --> 0:50:49.360 involved in some of that. But you know that reminds 0:50:49.440 --> 0:50:52.279 me I told you earlier that you know, early in 0:50:52.360 --> 0:50:54.600 my career what we dealt with was a lot of 0:50:54.640 --> 0:50:58.439 wildlife coming into the United States right about halfway through, 0:50:58.560 --> 0:51:01.920 maybe around two thousand. Between two thousand and five and 0:51:02.000 --> 0:51:05.560 twenty ten, we started to see more and more native 0:51:05.640 --> 0:51:09.640 wildlife leaving the United States, and that as China and 0:51:10.120 --> 0:51:16.240 Vietnam became richer emerging economies. You had all these people 0:51:16.320 --> 0:51:21.080 there who had money to spend, and so they started 0:51:21.080 --> 0:51:24.839 to spend it on exotic stuff and wanting it a live, 0:51:25.280 --> 0:51:28.759 alive and dead both yeah, for the food trade and 0:51:28.880 --> 0:51:31.400 for the pet trade. So we started to see a 0:51:31.480 --> 0:51:34.920 lot of native animals leaving the United States, in particular reptiles. 0:51:35.800 --> 0:51:38.759 The turtle population in the southeastern United States has been 0:51:38.800 --> 0:51:43.840 absolutely decimated by the demand for turtle meat and pets 0:51:44.160 --> 0:51:48.040 in China and Vietnam, and it's become a big part 0:51:48.080 --> 0:51:49.960 of what the US Fishing and Wilife Service does is 0:51:50.040 --> 0:51:53.959 combating the trafficking of animals that are native to the US, 0:51:54.120 --> 0:51:55.840 or at least North America. 0:51:55.960 --> 0:51:59.840 Are black bear gallbladders, still think, because that's something like 0:52:00.040 --> 0:52:02.960 as a hunter, we always like you always always heard 0:52:03.000 --> 0:52:03.360 about it. 0:52:03.560 --> 0:52:05.600 Yeah, did you know you used to not be able 0:52:05.680 --> 0:52:10.400 to in some states, maybe all states, you could possess 0:52:10.600 --> 0:52:14.640 You couldn't possess even a bear's goalbler, right, Yeah, like 0:52:14.760 --> 0:52:17.440 you were. They changed it to be that you're allowed 0:52:17.440 --> 0:52:19.880 to have like one or something, but it would be 0:52:19.960 --> 0:52:23.160 that you like, you couldn't remove it from the field. 0:52:23.280 --> 0:52:25.719 Of even to your own I did know that, okay, Yeah, 0:52:25.920 --> 0:52:28.279 and even now it's not legal to sell it, right, 0:52:28.400 --> 0:52:29.400 you could, you could. 0:52:29.320 --> 0:52:31.040 Keep it, but I think I think some I don't. 0:52:31.040 --> 0:52:32.480 I don't know if it's even state or federal, but 0:52:32.520 --> 0:52:36.000 I remember reading somewhere that was like if if if 0:52:36.040 --> 0:52:38.560 you legally harvest a bear and you legally tag your bear, 0:52:39.200 --> 0:52:42.719 you are allowed to for whatever there there's no prohibition 0:52:42.840 --> 0:52:45.600 on you having it, right, you can't sell it. But 0:52:45.880 --> 0:52:48.320 at a time it was you couldn't have it, you know, ossession. 0:52:48.800 --> 0:52:51.800 So ostensibly, if you had a whole, ungutted bear in 0:52:51.920 --> 0:52:56.080 your possession in a truck, you were like technically in 0:52:56.160 --> 0:52:57.600 possession of a gallblad exactly. 0:52:57.719 --> 0:53:00.359 Okay, Yeah, it's kind of like having a loaded firearm. Right, 0:53:00.440 --> 0:53:02.440 It's like you're dead if you find out the game 0:53:02.480 --> 0:53:03.759 war's going to get you for it. 0:53:04.400 --> 0:53:06.840 Yeah. Yeah, it was like a per se violation. 0:53:07.000 --> 0:53:09.600 So how does stuff something like that, or take like 0:53:09.719 --> 0:53:15.720 spotted cats, I don't know whatever jaguar hides gallbladder whatever 0:53:15.760 --> 0:53:18.640 the hell you know about? How does it flow from? 0:53:19.239 --> 0:53:22.440 You know, people that are in the you know, in 0:53:22.560 --> 0:53:27.360 some rural area. You got some kid who's collecting turtles, right, Like, 0:53:27.840 --> 0:53:29.960 how does it flow and eventually wind up on a 0:53:30.040 --> 0:53:32.120 container ship? You know what I mean? Like like who's 0:53:32.160 --> 0:53:37.560 the sort of who winds up being the kingpin or 0:53:37.880 --> 0:53:42.000 the the sort of export agent on domestic wildlife? Like 0:53:42.239 --> 0:53:43.719 what does it bottleneck through? 0:53:44.680 --> 0:53:47.600 Yeah, so it varies, of course, depending on the wildlife 0:53:47.600 --> 0:53:50.120 and who's interested in buying it. Right, So let me 0:53:50.239 --> 0:53:54.120 give you a classic example of this absolutely phenomenal case 0:53:54.160 --> 0:53:55.880 that our agents did on the East Coast. It was 0:53:55.920 --> 0:54:02.040 called Operation Broken Glass Oh Elvers, Yes, yeah, good for you, Yeah, 0:54:02.239 --> 0:54:07.400 glass Eels. Right, that was an example where you know, 0:54:07.600 --> 0:54:11.399 for years, decades, generations even maybe there's been a glass 0:54:11.520 --> 0:54:14.440 eel fishery on the East Coast, and it's isn't it. 0:54:14.520 --> 0:54:18.000 There's only a couple states where it's legal to harvest them, 0:54:18.160 --> 0:54:20.320 like Maine and somewhere else, I think. 0:54:20.719 --> 0:54:21.840 Yeah, and I'm not familiar with. 0:54:22.120 --> 0:54:25.120 So there's a limited legal harvest just for listener's sake. 0:54:25.160 --> 0:54:25.560 What like. 0:54:27.080 --> 0:54:29.480 If you go to a sushi restaurant and you get unagi, 0:54:29.960 --> 0:54:35.080 okay of like smoked eel, that eel they're raising and 0:54:35.200 --> 0:54:38.280 finishing those eels in Asia. 0:54:38.360 --> 0:54:39.960 They're sending the juveniles zone, but. 0:54:40.000 --> 0:54:43.800 They can't propagate them. Yeah, so basically they're buying us 0:54:45.239 --> 0:54:48.719 bay like baby eels or glass eels or elvers. They're 0:54:48.800 --> 0:54:52.960 buying the babies in order to raise them and make 0:54:53.000 --> 0:54:56.600 a processed food item exactly. But it's so complicated to 0:54:56.680 --> 0:54:58.440 propagate them because they propagate out in the middle of 0:54:58.480 --> 0:55:02.919 the like yeah, like off the off of Bahamas, off yeah, 0:55:02.960 --> 0:55:04.480 off of Bermuda and sargas Le. 0:55:04.560 --> 0:55:04.719 See. 0:55:05.520 --> 0:55:09.800 So and there's some legal trade, but it's augmented greatly 0:55:09.920 --> 0:55:11.720 with illegal harvest, correct hugely. 0:55:12.000 --> 0:55:15.760 Yeah, they're like salmon, right, they go from freshwater saltwater, 0:55:15.880 --> 0:55:19.320 and but yeah, and glass eel just for your listeners, 0:55:19.440 --> 0:55:21.480 you know the reason it's called glass eel because it's 0:55:21.560 --> 0:55:23.480 they're almost see through that I think when they're young, 0:55:23.520 --> 0:55:26.680 they're just these little slippery things. So anyway, there it's 0:55:26.719 --> 0:55:29.760 been a there's been a legal harvest of those allowed. 0:55:29.800 --> 0:55:32.760 But what happened was this increased demand, as you described 0:55:32.800 --> 0:55:36.640 in Asia for the eels that are used in sushi restaurants. 0:55:38.200 --> 0:55:42.320 What happened was it's the local guys who are skilled 0:55:42.480 --> 0:55:47.759 at catching, you know, elvers, And what happens is these 0:55:48.120 --> 0:55:50.960 Chinese guys were showing up in those communities and they 0:55:51.000 --> 0:55:55.040 were going out to the different fish shops asking to 0:55:55.160 --> 0:55:59.320 buy eels and offering absurdly high prices for local fish shops. 0:55:59.440 --> 0:55:59.640 Yeah. 0:56:00.080 --> 0:56:02.719 Yeah, we're we're in the process of writing a book 0:56:02.840 --> 0:56:05.719 right now and I did some we're doing a thing 0:56:05.880 --> 0:56:08.840 about that cool and it was something like two thousand 0:56:08.880 --> 0:56:09.800 dollars a pound. 0:56:09.880 --> 0:56:12.280 Yeah for elvers. Yeah, it's crazy. 0:56:14.080 --> 0:56:16.840 Cucumbers I think, Yeah, well, you. 0:56:16.880 --> 0:56:19.520 Know, c cucumbers is another good example we could talk about. 0:56:19.840 --> 0:56:23.040 But basically basically the you know didn't answer to your question. 0:56:23.160 --> 0:56:27.800 What happens is uh the word Yeah, somebody from the 0:56:28.080 --> 0:56:32.040 from the end consumer seller shows up in that community 0:56:32.440 --> 0:56:35.120 and offers that high price and then corrupts the local 0:56:35.160 --> 0:56:36.919 guys who know how to do it. And that's true 0:56:36.960 --> 0:56:39.439 around the world. That's how it works with rhino horn 0:56:39.520 --> 0:56:42.600 in Africa, That's how it works with c cucumbers in Mexico. 0:56:43.400 --> 0:56:48.359 It's always the end consumer seller. And I don't want 0:56:48.360 --> 0:56:50.200 to just say Chinese because I don't want to, you know, 0:56:50.960 --> 0:56:54.600 disparage Chinese. But right now, China is a huge consumer 0:56:54.640 --> 0:56:58.320 of wildlife, so we'll use China as the example. Somebody 0:56:58.360 --> 0:57:01.640 from China shows up, the speaks English and starts offering 0:57:01.680 --> 0:57:04.520 a lot of money for whatever they're after, and it 0:57:04.680 --> 0:57:07.840 just snowballs and gets out of control and the local 0:57:07.920 --> 0:57:08.840 people are corrupted. 0:57:09.680 --> 0:57:10.680 Uh this this guy. 0:57:10.840 --> 0:57:13.160 There's kind of various levels of kingpins. You might have 0:57:13.239 --> 0:57:17.280 the local East Coast guy who's the kingpin organizing five 0:57:17.400 --> 0:57:20.880 fishermen who are then giving him all the elvers. He 0:57:21.000 --> 0:57:23.360 sells them to the Chinese guy who's kind of a kingpin, 0:57:23.440 --> 0:57:25.640 but he's moving it on to the next guy, and 0:57:25.760 --> 0:57:28.360 eventually it gets on that container and it ends up 0:57:28.400 --> 0:57:29.480 over in China. 0:57:29.680 --> 0:57:33.400 But it's on a container with air raiders and sophisticated 0:57:33.400 --> 0:57:37.280 I It's like, it's not like you're you know, it's 0:57:37.320 --> 0:57:39.920 not like you're sending batteries. Are you guys to keep 0:57:39.960 --> 0:57:40.440 them alive? 0:57:40.600 --> 0:57:41.560 Yeah? Yeah, that's hard. 0:57:41.720 --> 0:57:45.080 Are you guys involved with a lot of like inspections 0:57:45.200 --> 0:57:48.440 in port cities, like going on to ships and or 0:57:48.440 --> 0:57:51.080 do you have to have a reason to go look 0:57:51.160 --> 0:57:51.680 for stuff? 0:57:52.480 --> 0:57:55.600 No, Fish and Wildlife agents and inspectors. We have a 0:57:55.720 --> 0:57:59.400 uniformed division called the Inspection Division, and those those are 0:57:59.440 --> 0:58:02.680 basically customs officers. Their authority is at the ports of entry. 0:58:03.440 --> 0:58:06.320 They look and act just like customs officers. They just 0:58:06.360 --> 0:58:09.800 wear a brown uniform. But we have full customs authority. 0:58:10.200 --> 0:58:12.880 And sometimes even the US Customs doesn't remember that Fish 0:58:12.920 --> 0:58:15.640 and Wildlife Service has full customs authority. So when I 0:58:15.760 --> 0:58:17.320 was an agent, I could show up at the airport 0:58:17.360 --> 0:58:19.800 and I could crack open any package I wanted. I 0:58:19.880 --> 0:58:22.200 could search any passenger I wanted. I could go through 0:58:22.240 --> 0:58:25.760 their luggage because the Lasiact gives US customs authority. 0:58:26.120 --> 0:58:27.160 Yeah, it's kind of nice. 0:58:27.480 --> 0:58:29.760 Yeah, let's go back to the elvers thing for a minute. Yeah, 0:58:30.640 --> 0:58:33.200 if you are working a case like that, do you 0:58:33.400 --> 0:58:41.720 have sympathy on the locals who you use the word 0:58:41.840 --> 0:58:46.520 like corrupted? Is there ever an element of entrapment's not 0:58:46.600 --> 0:58:50.720 the right word. But like if you're going to someone 0:58:51.560 --> 0:58:55.240 you know who's hard on their you know, hard up, 0:58:56.280 --> 0:58:59.560 and you make this offer to them, you know, two 0:58:59.560 --> 0:59:02.760 thousand what is two thousand bucks a pound? Right? Is 0:59:03.200 --> 0:59:06.640 that guy of interest to you? Are you mostly interested 0:59:06.720 --> 0:59:11.560 in the person who is recruiting or would you naturally 0:59:11.720 --> 0:59:14.040 try to work that case to who is exporting? 0:59:15.000 --> 0:59:18.080 I think every fish and while er special agent who 0:59:18.440 --> 0:59:23.000 knew what they were doing would focus more on the drivers. Right, 0:59:23.440 --> 0:59:24.919 So they're going to try to get up as high 0:59:25.120 --> 0:59:27.960 in this chain of bad guys as you can. But 0:59:28.040 --> 0:59:30.480 it doesn't mean you ignore the other bad guys, right. 0:59:31.040 --> 0:59:34.520 I always you know there's this obsession sometimes with only 0:59:34.640 --> 0:59:37.080 getting the kingpin. Well, i'll tell you what. It can 0:59:37.160 --> 0:59:39.560 take years to get a kingpin, and while you're working 0:59:39.640 --> 0:59:42.440 on it, a lot of crimes occurring, right, And so 0:59:42.760 --> 0:59:46.600 there's absolutely no excuse for not getting the lower level 0:59:46.680 --> 0:59:51.280 people too, in part because they can often become great informants. 0:59:51.520 --> 0:59:51.640 Right. 0:59:52.160 --> 0:59:54.439 You catch those people at the lower level, they don't 0:59:54.440 --> 0:59:56.520 want to go to jail, and they want to minimize 0:59:56.520 --> 1:00:01.040 their penalty. They'll often cooperate in exchange for a lower sentence. 1:00:01.120 --> 1:00:04.920 So you focus on the whole picture, right, But of course, 1:00:05.440 --> 1:00:07.880 if you were to only catch the local guys who 1:00:07.960 --> 1:00:10.320 are fishing for the elvers, you're not doing your job 1:00:10.520 --> 1:00:13.840 because the bad guys are that are buying them are 1:00:13.880 --> 1:00:16.840 just going to find other people to do it. So, yeah, 1:00:16.960 --> 1:00:18.880 you want to focus as high as you can because 1:00:18.880 --> 1:00:20.240 you want to kill it. You want to kill the 1:00:20.320 --> 1:00:23.240 trade or you want to kill the illegal trade. That's 1:00:23.320 --> 1:00:25.040 the goal, and you're not going to do that by 1:00:25.120 --> 1:00:28.480 focusing on just the kingpin or just the catchers. 1:00:28.560 --> 1:00:30.400 You got to get them all. Yeah, yeah, as many 1:00:30.400 --> 1:00:30.760 as you can. 1:00:30.880 --> 1:00:33.960 Anyway, did your work a case? I think Krim was saying, 1:00:34.080 --> 1:00:35.680 did you work a butterfly case? 1:00:35.800 --> 1:00:36.000 Yeah? 1:00:36.680 --> 1:00:40.720 Yeah, it's like the first kind of case I did 1:00:41.160 --> 1:00:43.640 that was kind of bigger on my own, and it's 1:00:43.680 --> 1:00:47.120 just coincidence that I got assigned to it. But there 1:00:47.240 --> 1:00:50.760 was this Japanese national named Yoshi ko Jima who was 1:00:50.880 --> 1:00:55.600 kind of notorious for trafficking in endangered butterflies for what purpose? 1:00:55.680 --> 1:00:56.560 Decoration decorations? 1:00:56.600 --> 1:01:03.040 Why everybody left the whole the drama of you know, 1:01:03.240 --> 1:01:04.960 you're just writing the script in your head. 1:01:05.280 --> 1:01:12.840 Yeah, I'm just picturing every episode of this like New Undercover. 1:01:13.560 --> 1:01:14.600 You know, it's just it's. 1:01:14.840 --> 1:01:18.440 Butterfly Collectors, actually the head of the triad. 1:01:18.760 --> 1:01:21.760 It's not, it's not it's not about drugs. It's about 1:01:21.800 --> 1:01:25.200 all this other stuff and the weird, you know, interesting 1:01:26.160 --> 1:01:30.880 kind of interests of decoration or food or whatever. 1:01:31.400 --> 1:01:35.040 I haven't really watched any serial shows since Dukes of Hazards. 1:01:35.080 --> 1:01:38.000 But the way it works in Dukes of Hazard is 1:01:38.040 --> 1:01:42.160 every episode, a new bad guy comes to town. Yeah, 1:01:42.240 --> 1:01:44.960 I mean like right, so every episode is like a 1:01:45.120 --> 1:01:54.080 new critter. There was always tension, always tension between Roscoe Peak, 1:01:54.080 --> 1:01:59.720 Old Train and uh, who is the Kleatus? Right? And 1:01:59.760 --> 1:02:03.000 then you know Bowl and Luke and who drove the 1:02:03.440 --> 1:02:08.440 toe truck cooter where boss Hog fall in. He's always 1:02:08.440 --> 1:02:12.040 there's always there and boss Hog every episode and new 1:02:12.200 --> 1:02:15.240 new bad guys use your pair of bad guys comes 1:02:15.320 --> 1:02:18.800 into town and they like aligned with Boss Hog, often 1:02:18.880 --> 1:02:22.880 double crossing him. They're vanquished in the end by bowling 1:02:22.960 --> 1:02:26.240 Luke something. You will get blown up by dynamite on 1:02:26.280 --> 1:02:31.600 an arrow and then like a week later, like a 1:02:31.760 --> 1:02:34.880 new bad guy emerges. And for this show, like every 1:02:34.960 --> 1:02:38.280 episode is I hate to the butterfly episode. 1:02:38.360 --> 1:02:40.240 I hate to tell you this, but Cooter was probably 1:02:40.360 --> 1:02:45.320 a bad elver poacher. I'm pretty sure he was either 1:02:45.400 --> 1:02:47.400 that or hawks. He was killing hawks one and the other. 1:02:47.920 --> 1:02:48.680 I'm sure he was. 1:02:49.080 --> 1:02:53.120 Well, you know, Bowl and Luke were convicted moonshiners. There 1:02:53.160 --> 1:02:55.760 you go, so they were they were troublemakers. Anyways, one 1:02:55.800 --> 1:02:58.360 crime leads to another. Yeah, probably poachers too. 1:02:58.800 --> 1:03:02.320 So uh, off that subject and off subject. How good 1:03:02.320 --> 1:03:03.760 of a TV show? This is going to wind up 1:03:03.760 --> 1:03:08.160 in butterfly decorations. Yeah, they're they're displayed what in the 1:03:08.200 --> 1:03:08.800 glass case? 1:03:09.080 --> 1:03:09.560 Sometimes? 1:03:09.640 --> 1:03:12.120 Yeah, a lot of You'll see them a lot in 1:03:12.600 --> 1:03:16.040 frames on people's walls. Start paying attention. Even in TV shows, 1:03:16.080 --> 1:03:18.480 you'll see them in the background in frames on walls 1:03:18.520 --> 1:03:19.240 with their wings. 1:03:19.000 --> 1:03:20.000 Spread like needle. 1:03:20.400 --> 1:03:22.080 You ever watching the show and be like, oh, yeah, 1:03:22.120 --> 1:03:23.120 you're not supposed to have that one. 1:03:23.240 --> 1:03:25.360 Well, no, I haven't seen that. I haven't seen that. 1:03:25.520 --> 1:03:26.720 There's there's tons that are. 1:03:26.680 --> 1:03:31.040 Legal, right, mistake, Well the monarch might get listed. 1:03:31.360 --> 1:03:34.920 Yeah, right, exactly. And a lot of times butterflies that 1:03:35.000 --> 1:03:38.120 are not a problem here or not. When I say problem, 1:03:38.160 --> 1:03:41.240 I mean they're not valuable, they're not traded, are super 1:03:41.360 --> 1:03:42.440 valuable in other countries. 1:03:42.960 --> 1:03:47.520 Does it because there's like species that are classified as 1:03:47.640 --> 1:03:51.360 endangered here and then there's like the International Union or 1:03:51.520 --> 1:03:54.360 something or other. Yeah, you see end So like the 1:03:54.520 --> 1:03:57.560 eels are listed by I think that, I see you. 1:03:58.000 --> 1:03:59.160 I'm glad you brought this up. 1:03:59.200 --> 1:04:00.400 And then they're not here. 1:04:00.760 --> 1:04:04.560 Because International Union of the i U c N. 1:04:04.800 --> 1:04:06.440 Yeah, I forget what the C stands for it, but 1:04:06.520 --> 1:04:11.320 it's concert anyway. So but I so in terms of 1:04:12.080 --> 1:04:15.440 the law and law enforcement and crimes, the i U 1:04:15.560 --> 1:04:16.720 c N means nothing. 1:04:16.840 --> 1:04:22.240 Okay, Yeah, the International Union, we think the exactly And. 1:04:22.320 --> 1:04:24.600 It's not to say that their science isn't legit and 1:04:24.720 --> 1:04:28.280 that it should be. But from a special agent's perspective, 1:04:28.320 --> 1:04:31.240 we care about two things. One is is it listed 1:04:31.760 --> 1:04:35.360 as endangered or threatened under the US Endangered Species Act, 1:04:35.400 --> 1:04:37.760 because that's the only that's the law that has criminal penalties. 1:04:38.480 --> 1:04:40.400 The second thing we care about is whether or not 1:04:40.640 --> 1:04:43.600 it is listed under either Appendix one or two of 1:04:43.720 --> 1:04:46.960 the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species. 1:04:46.640 --> 1:04:47.240 That's SITIS. 1:04:47.920 --> 1:04:50.120 And the reason we care about that is because SITIS 1:04:50.760 --> 1:04:54.520 is it is incorporated into the e s A. So 1:04:54.640 --> 1:04:59.240 the Endangered Species Act allows us to enforce the site's provisions, 1:04:59.280 --> 1:05:02.160 so it becomes a violation of the Endangered Species Act 1:05:02.720 --> 1:05:06.040 to import or export an animal in violation ast siiteise. 1:05:06.680 --> 1:05:09.520 So sites and the EESA are what special agents are 1:05:09.600 --> 1:05:13.360 looking at. And a lot of butterflies. There are a 1:05:13.440 --> 1:05:16.600 number of butterflies listed as endangered under the US Endangered 1:05:16.600 --> 1:05:17.800 Species Act, so obviously we. 1:05:17.880 --> 1:05:18.320 Care about that. 1:05:19.080 --> 1:05:21.880 But then there's a whole ton of butterflies that are 1:05:21.920 --> 1:05:25.600 listed is either Appendix one or two under SITESE, and 1:05:25.760 --> 1:05:26.960 so we also care about that. 1:05:27.200 --> 1:05:29.440 So you can be yeah, you can, you can be 1:05:29.560 --> 1:05:31.480 on site these but not be endangered. 1:05:31.880 --> 1:05:32.080 Yes. 1:05:32.440 --> 1:05:36.600 For instance, bobcats, IUCN has them as a species of 1:05:36.680 --> 1:05:39.960 Least Concern there in some states they are a non 1:05:40.040 --> 1:05:42.680 game animal and some states they're listed as a fur bear. 1:05:43.000 --> 1:05:46.840 But they still are site these right right because they 1:05:46.960 --> 1:05:49.800 resemble Yes, I guess the logic of it, which probably 1:05:49.840 --> 1:05:51.720 doesn't matter to you guys, but the logic of it 1:05:51.840 --> 1:05:55.280 is it's a spotted cat, right And so in trying 1:05:55.320 --> 1:05:58.040 to track all these endangered spotted cats around the world, 1:05:58.120 --> 1:05:59.760 you need to pay attention to bobcats so that you 1:05:59.800 --> 1:06:05.120 don't don't have spotted cats that aren't bobcats moving as Bobcats, right, 1:06:05.400 --> 1:06:07.120 or so I could be screwing that up, but something like. 1:06:07.120 --> 1:06:07.960 That, right. Yeah. 1:06:08.040 --> 1:06:10.560 And with siteismember, it's an international agreement. 1:06:10.720 --> 1:06:10.840 Right. 1:06:11.040 --> 1:06:15.160 So say, if Canada wants to put Bobcats on as 1:06:15.240 --> 1:06:19.680 sitey's Appendix two, and they get enough support among the 1:06:19.720 --> 1:06:24.000 site's membership and it's voted, that's Bobcats become a sights too. 1:06:24.440 --> 1:06:26.680 The US is obligated to enforce. 1:06:26.600 --> 1:06:27.439 That law, I think. 1:06:27.520 --> 1:06:30.440 Yeah, So even though we wouldn't have put them on site's, 1:06:30.920 --> 1:06:33.640 if Canada wants to or Mexico wants to put them 1:06:33.680 --> 1:06:36.040 on and they get the votes, then we're obligated to 1:06:36.200 --> 1:06:36.880 enforce that, and. 1:06:36.960 --> 1:06:39.480 That becomes your responsibility in the field exactly. 1:06:39.760 --> 1:06:44.200 Yeah, So we're always looking anytime anytime we realize an 1:06:44.240 --> 1:06:47.480 animal involved in something as a site's animal or listed 1:06:47.520 --> 1:06:51.000 as threatened or endangered at peaks our interest because there's 1:06:51.080 --> 1:06:53.040 probably some illegal activity afoot. 1:06:53.440 --> 1:06:56.720 Yeah, I want to I want you to tell the 1:06:56.760 --> 1:07:00.200 full butterfly story, but I want to tell you for sure. Yeah, Well, 1:07:00.800 --> 1:07:02.800 how much have you like to share? A funny anecdote 1:07:02.880 --> 1:07:06.560 is one years ago we were in doing some work 1:07:06.640 --> 1:07:09.880 in Guyana and had these two ri river turtles and 1:07:09.920 --> 1:07:12.240 they have their native words for him. But I remember 1:07:12.360 --> 1:07:16.800 they would there's one turtle that even the tribe we 1:07:16.840 --> 1:07:20.480 were with, and explaining the turtle, they would be like, 1:07:20.560 --> 1:07:25.760 there's the meat turtle and there's the Sitis turtle. And 1:07:25.840 --> 1:07:27.720 I couldn't figure out to be days to figure out 1:07:27.760 --> 1:07:30.040 what they were saying. I'm like, oh my god, he's 1:07:30.040 --> 1:07:33.280 talking about the Sitis tree. Because they used to traffic 1:07:33.360 --> 1:07:35.400 in those turtles, you know, they would sell those turtles, 1:07:35.400 --> 1:07:39.439 and they knew him, like, you know, the damn Sitis turtle. Yeah, 1:07:39.600 --> 1:07:42.919 the one you touch, the one you don't touch. Yeah. Yeah. 1:07:42.960 --> 1:07:46.560 In most countries don't have anything like the Endangered Species Act, 1:07:46.680 --> 1:07:49.880 so they they rely only on what's listed in SITIS. 1:07:51.240 --> 1:07:53.000 Great Britain, for example, you know, they have their own 1:07:53.040 --> 1:07:56.280 Wildlife Act, but when it comes to the International Species there, 1:07:56.280 --> 1:08:00.880 they're only enforcing Sitis you know. So yeah, but if butterflies. 1:08:00.920 --> 1:08:01.120 Yeah. 1:08:01.200 --> 1:08:04.120 So this I was a pretty new agent, and we 1:08:04.240 --> 1:08:06.919 got a tip that this guy, Yoshiko Jimo is coming 1:08:07.000 --> 1:08:09.600 to the International Bug Fair at the LA Museum of 1:08:09.680 --> 1:08:12.680 Natural History, which go ahead and laugh, but there is 1:08:12.800 --> 1:08:16.479 such a thing as the Bug Pare. It's actually the 1:08:16.720 --> 1:08:20.200 largest event that the Museum of Natural History hosts every 1:08:20.280 --> 1:08:23.040 year in LA. They get about ten thousand visitors a day, 1:08:23.800 --> 1:08:27.759 and it's everything. It's kids running around who are interested 1:08:27.840 --> 1:08:31.600 in scorpions, and then there are these serious collectors that 1:08:31.800 --> 1:08:35.759 go and they sell high end butterflies to each other basically, 1:08:36.400 --> 1:08:39.480 but some of these things, you know, the most endangered 1:08:39.680 --> 1:08:42.360 bird wing butterfly could go for ten thousand dollars for 1:08:42.439 --> 1:08:47.000 a male female pair. Easy alive, no dead, Yeah, they're 1:08:47.040 --> 1:08:51.000 not really valuable alive. People want them displayed, pinned in 1:08:51.080 --> 1:08:53.680 a frame or in a display box. So again, it's 1:08:53.720 --> 1:08:56.760 a status thing. A friend of mine describes it as 1:08:56.960 --> 1:09:01.840 kind of like the obsessive baseball card collector, like somebody 1:09:01.880 --> 1:09:05.439 who would spend ten thousand dollars for obscure baseball player 1:09:05.600 --> 1:09:05.920 art or. 1:09:05.960 --> 1:09:07.559 Something, yeah, or art. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1:09:07.560 --> 1:09:09.280 I have another friend who talks about it like it's 1:09:09.800 --> 1:09:12.519 you know, if you if you steal a van, go, 1:09:12.720 --> 1:09:15.479 what do you do with it? You know, let's you know, 1:09:16.080 --> 1:09:17.439 where do you display your stole? 1:09:18.439 --> 1:09:19.439 Saying your buddies see that? 1:09:20.000 --> 1:09:24.479 Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, he always buddies. Yeah. 1:09:24.680 --> 1:09:26.600 He described it as you have a secret room in 1:09:26.640 --> 1:09:28.840 your house with a secret door and when certain people 1:09:28.880 --> 1:09:30.360 come over, you open the door and you're like, my 1:09:30.479 --> 1:09:33.160 van go right, I mean, what's the point. But that's 1:09:33.439 --> 1:09:35.679 that's kind of the driver for these things. And they're beautiful, 1:09:35.720 --> 1:09:39.880 they're they're cool. But anyway, Yoshi Kojima was had already 1:09:39.920 --> 1:09:43.719 been on our radar screen. This agent named John Mendoza 1:09:43.800 --> 1:09:46.880 in California had tracked him for years and believed he 1:09:47.040 --> 1:09:49.559 was going into Death Valley National Park and the Grand 1:09:49.640 --> 1:09:53.000 Canyon National Park and poaching butterflies and then selling them 1:09:53.040 --> 1:09:56.680 overseas himself himself. Yeah, so John had been doing a 1:09:56.720 --> 1:09:59.240 lot of surveillance trying to catch Kojima in the act. 1:09:59.400 --> 1:10:02.200 But as you can imagine, doing surveillance in Death Valley 1:10:02.320 --> 1:10:04.640 or just not easy because you're gonna get seen, right, 1:10:05.360 --> 1:10:11.720 And eventually, to John's chagrin, you know, justified chagrin, he 1:10:11.840 --> 1:10:15.760 was ordered by his commands chain of command to close 1:10:15.800 --> 1:10:19.680 the investigation. And I loved it when I picked up 1:10:19.680 --> 1:10:21.840 the Kojimaccase, first thing I did is I looked up 1:10:21.920 --> 1:10:24.679 John's old reports, and his closing line on that last 1:10:24.760 --> 1:10:27.640 report was awesome. You know, It's just like, you know, 1:10:27.680 --> 1:10:30.320 he just dimed out his supervisor. He's like my supervisor 1:10:30.400 --> 1:10:33.479 ordered me to close this case. Closed, just pretty sharp 1:10:33.760 --> 1:10:34.479 for what reason. 1:10:35.320 --> 1:10:35.479 You know. 1:10:36.040 --> 1:10:38.479 I didn't think it was a good enough priority. Didn't 1:10:38.479 --> 1:10:40.880 think it was going to succeed whatever. Okay, you know, 1:10:41.880 --> 1:10:44.560 twenty years ago and farther there, there were still some 1:10:44.680 --> 1:10:48.360 agents around who didn't really understand why it was important 1:10:48.360 --> 1:10:51.959 to work on international trafficking cases. Didn't think it was important. 1:10:52.560 --> 1:10:56.040 Disagreed that it was important. So, you know, I don't 1:10:56.040 --> 1:10:58.080 know if that was the case there. Sure, it just happened. 1:10:59.400 --> 1:11:03.240 So the story was Kojima is coming into LA. We 1:11:03.320 --> 1:11:05.800 had an informant who we were working with, and we 1:11:06.040 --> 1:11:08.040 and my boss said, this is a great opportunity for 1:11:08.120 --> 1:11:10.880 you to work with an informant. You're going to go 1:11:10.920 --> 1:11:13.080 to the fair. The informant's going to make the contact. 1:11:13.160 --> 1:11:15.839 We're going to see if Kojima will admit to anything 1:11:16.400 --> 1:11:20.320 kind of see right, So I thought, my job is 1:11:20.400 --> 1:11:23.200 just to get the guy wired up and supervise make 1:11:23.240 --> 1:11:26.200 sure nothing bad happens. So I meet with the informant 1:11:26.240 --> 1:11:28.719 the night before, we show him out of work the equipment. 1:11:28.840 --> 1:11:31.000 He goes to the fair the next day and for 1:11:31.120 --> 1:11:33.719 whatever reason, Yoshi Kojima, can. 1:11:33.640 --> 1:11:35.799 You can you real quick, who hells the informant? 1:11:36.120 --> 1:11:40.360 Informant is somebody else involved in the insect trade. 1:11:40.600 --> 1:11:41.760 Yeah, I'm not gonna name him. 1:11:41.680 --> 1:11:44.760 But who's already been caught or they're like uh uh no. 1:11:45.080 --> 1:11:47.920 He was kind of irritated that Kojima was undercutting all 1:11:47.960 --> 1:11:48.479 his prices. 1:11:49.439 --> 1:11:51.040 Yeah, and that happens a lot. 1:11:51.439 --> 1:11:56.320 So you keep you keep certain informants involved. 1:11:55.880 --> 1:11:58.040 In yeah, in your orbit. Yeah. 1:11:58.320 --> 1:12:00.200 Yeah, I mean to be a good age and you 1:12:00.320 --> 1:12:02.920 really have to. You have to make contact with people 1:12:03.040 --> 1:12:05.200 in the trade, right, and you have to develop trust 1:12:05.280 --> 1:12:07.120 with them and try to get them to help you. 1:12:07.840 --> 1:12:09.880 Because animals can't tell you what's going on. 1:12:10.040 --> 1:12:10.760 They can't call you. 1:12:11.080 --> 1:12:14.320 No wolf or grizzly bear California condor is going to 1:12:14.360 --> 1:12:18.880 call you and say, guys are shooting me. So yeah, 1:12:18.920 --> 1:12:20.800 you get to know a lot of different people, and 1:12:21.160 --> 1:12:24.320 the motivations are varied. Sometimes you'll arrest somebody and then 1:12:24.360 --> 1:12:25.760 they're like, well, I'm not going to go down for 1:12:25.840 --> 1:12:28.680 this by myself. I'm going to be an informant for 1:12:28.760 --> 1:12:32.400 you and get a better sentence. Other Times it's people 1:12:32.439 --> 1:12:34.559 who are trying to do things legit and they're getting 1:12:34.600 --> 1:12:37.559 undercut by people like Kojima. They're pissed off, so they're 1:12:37.640 --> 1:12:41.120 going to turn Sometimes the best people to go to 1:12:41.240 --> 1:12:43.479 are ex wives, ex girlfriends, ex. 1:12:43.400 --> 1:12:44.839 Boyfriends, ex husbress. 1:12:45.400 --> 1:12:48.599 I'm telling you, you're investigating somebody and you find out. 1:12:48.439 --> 1:12:51.320 They're divorced, the first person you talk to is their ex. 1:12:52.000 --> 1:12:57.040 Definitely, Definitely, they will give you fantastic information about what's 1:12:57.120 --> 1:13:00.840 going on. Oh yeah, I've had so many wives invite me, 1:13:01.200 --> 1:13:04.280 give me permission to search their husband's garage or whatever 1:13:04.400 --> 1:13:07.760 because they're just tired of the reptile smell out in 1:13:07.800 --> 1:13:08.320 the garage. 1:13:08.400 --> 1:13:09.720 Yeah, it's happened more than once. 1:13:10.960 --> 1:13:17.040 So think own wife. I mean, she's like, please go 1:13:17.120 --> 1:13:20.280 look at the garage that's out there. 1:13:20.520 --> 1:13:21.559 That literally happened. 1:13:21.640 --> 1:13:23.840 We showed up at a house in San Diego and 1:13:23.920 --> 1:13:26.800 knocked on the door and the wife answered, and we 1:13:26.960 --> 1:13:32.640 identified ourselves and she said, what's he done? Now, we 1:13:32.760 --> 1:13:35.599 explained it and she goes, oh, he is garage. Our 1:13:35.680 --> 1:13:39.120 garage is full of reptiles. And my partner said, can 1:13:39.160 --> 1:13:41.880 we take a look. She's like, yeah, walk out, and 1:13:41.880 --> 1:13:44.400 there's there's endangered monitors out there, and. 1:13:44.560 --> 1:13:47.080 Uh, yeah he was. He was in trouble in more 1:13:47.120 --> 1:13:47.760 ways than one. 1:13:48.479 --> 1:13:52.639 But anyway, so I go to the fair thinking I'm 1:13:52.720 --> 1:13:55.160 just going to be kind of overseeing our informant, right, 1:13:55.520 --> 1:13:58.160 But Kojima is very cagey. He's the member, he's the 1:13:58.200 --> 1:14:01.000 guy that invented the phrase fish and Wild guys, and 1:14:01.240 --> 1:14:05.960 he he was very paranoid. He John Mendoza had actually 1:14:05.960 --> 1:14:08.000 gone out and interviewed him at one point, kind of 1:14:08.040 --> 1:14:10.479 frustrated because he knew his case was getting shut down, 1:14:10.600 --> 1:14:12.679 so he just thought, what the heck, I'll go interview 1:14:12.760 --> 1:14:17.000 Kojima and Kojima. Later, when I was working Kojima undercover, 1:14:17.160 --> 1:14:20.040 Kojima bragged to me about how he had outsmarted the 1:14:20.080 --> 1:14:24.680 Fish and Wild Guys and this agent, which is a 1:14:24.760 --> 1:14:31.799 dumb thing to say to an undercover. And the Kojima 1:14:31.880 --> 1:14:35.519 case really kickstarted a long few years of me doing 1:14:35.840 --> 1:14:39.679 pretty complicated undercover work. I actually ended up starting undercover 1:14:39.840 --> 1:14:43.080 businesses and working the roller Pigeon guys, and I made 1:14:43.120 --> 1:14:46.200 some great undercover cases. And it was all because I 1:14:46.320 --> 1:14:49.960 learned how to do undercover work getting Kojima. It took 1:14:50.000 --> 1:14:52.400 me three years to get that guy, and my boss 1:14:52.680 --> 1:14:55.839 was absolutely fantastic mentor. She's one of the greatest undercover 1:14:56.439 --> 1:14:58.679 fish and wildlife agents. Ever, as far as I'm concerned, 1:14:58.720 --> 1:15:02.120 Marie Palladini and she really tutored me on how to 1:15:02.280 --> 1:15:06.000 do this work, because what happened at the fair was 1:15:06.120 --> 1:15:08.800 Kojima would not talk to our informant. He talked to him, 1:15:08.840 --> 1:15:11.320 but he just wouldn't. He wouldn't get tripped up and 1:15:11.439 --> 1:15:15.160 say anything even remotely incriminating. So by the end of 1:15:15.200 --> 1:15:17.519 the day, I was kind of frustrated that our informant 1:15:17.560 --> 1:15:20.160 wasn't getting anywhere, and it wasn't his fault. So I 1:15:20.320 --> 1:15:23.000 just you know, it's a public insect fair, So I 1:15:23.120 --> 1:15:25.559 just walked Kojima at a booth. He was selling stuff. 1:15:25.640 --> 1:15:28.080 So I just walked up and I was like, what's this? 1:15:28.240 --> 1:15:28.479 What's that? 1:15:28.680 --> 1:15:31.759 I don't know anything about this, And for whatever reason, 1:15:32.000 --> 1:15:36.160 we hit it off. He just loved telling me about 1:15:36.200 --> 1:15:38.360 all these butterflies, and nothing he had for sale on 1:15:38.439 --> 1:15:41.080 the table was illegal. It was all legal stuff. He 1:15:41.200 --> 1:15:44.280 wasn't that stupid, right, But one thing he did that 1:15:44.400 --> 1:15:46.680 was really weird. He I think he was trying to 1:15:46.720 --> 1:15:49.400 impress me. He pulled out from underneath the table, which 1:15:49.439 --> 1:15:53.639 is usually where the illegal stuff is, this live beetle 1:15:53.960 --> 1:15:57.080 and a little tupperware container. And this beetle is called 1:15:57.080 --> 1:15:59.519 a dynasty's beetle, and you'd know him if you saw him, 1:15:59.520 --> 1:16:01.320 because you probab probably only see him in a museum. 1:16:01.520 --> 1:16:04.320 They're huge, six inches long maybe, and they have a 1:16:04.479 --> 1:16:09.240 giant horn. Yeah, sometimes it called rhinoceros speedles, but they're just. 1:16:09.439 --> 1:16:13.599 Yeah, wasn't it, wasn't it? Doug Emlin, Yes, we interviewed 1:16:13.640 --> 1:16:15.200 a guy that works on those horn beetles. 1:16:15.200 --> 1:16:15.880 Oh yeah, cool. 1:16:16.720 --> 1:16:18.680 The horn actually looks like a job that worked in 1:16:18.720 --> 1:16:19.080 your way. 1:16:19.160 --> 1:16:23.280 Yeah, and I understand worked he works in a university way. Yeah. 1:16:23.800 --> 1:16:26.120 Yeah, And they looked like they'd be really ferocious, right, 1:16:26.439 --> 1:16:29.479 But anyway, it's alive. And I was like, oh, where'd 1:16:29.520 --> 1:16:30.880 that come from? And he goes, oh, I brought it 1:16:31.040 --> 1:16:35.080 up from South America. And the reason he shushed me 1:16:35.240 --> 1:16:39.479 is because generally it's a violation of USDA regulations to 1:16:39.520 --> 1:16:42.320 bring a live insect into the US, so that's not 1:16:42.439 --> 1:16:45.519 the crime of the century. But here he was admitting 1:16:45.560 --> 1:16:49.080 he'd done something illegal. So I thought that's good. But 1:16:49.240 --> 1:16:50.960 I didn't know where to take it next because I 1:16:51.400 --> 1:16:52.880 didn't really done undercover work. 1:16:53.000 --> 1:16:56.680 So the weird weird you're undercover. I'm just kind of impromptu. 1:16:56.760 --> 1:16:59.960 I'm just talking to him, making sure I identify him 1:17:00.120 --> 1:17:02.680 as Yoshi Kojima, just trying to do whatever I can, right. 1:17:03.720 --> 1:17:05.519 But the weirdest thing was at the end of the day, 1:17:06.600 --> 1:17:09.920 I'm just loitering in a group and I feel that 1:17:09.960 --> 1:17:12.839 somebody tapped my shoulder and I turned around and Seyoshi's 1:17:12.840 --> 1:17:15.120 standing there, and I actually kind of, you know, I 1:17:15.240 --> 1:17:17.240 kind of panicked a little bit because I'm like, we know, 1:17:18.360 --> 1:17:21.519 why are you here? And he had this box in 1:17:21.600 --> 1:17:23.800 his hand, and he said, here for your collection, to 1:17:23.880 --> 1:17:26.599 start your collection. And he gave me this cardboard box. 1:17:26.680 --> 1:17:29.000 I open it up, and it's full of just crappy, 1:17:29.880 --> 1:17:34.559 you know, butterflies, dinged up wings, moths, nothing, and uh. 1:17:34.880 --> 1:17:38.519 On the top he wrote his email address. And I 1:17:38.600 --> 1:17:40.719 went back and told my boss this, and she goes, 1:17:41.120 --> 1:17:44.200 this is the perfect situation right now. 1:17:44.240 --> 1:17:46.880 I don't want to spoil what I already know because 1:17:46.880 --> 1:17:49.160 I listened to the interview. 1:17:50.160 --> 1:17:52.519 She recorded that she didn't tell me she was recording 1:17:52.560 --> 1:17:53.400 that interview. 1:17:54.360 --> 1:17:59.160 With Lee Ane for NPR story Well, yeah, years ago. Yeah, 1:17:59.479 --> 1:18:02.840 because like now, looking back at that, you know, the 1:18:02.960 --> 1:18:05.519 reason that maybe you got a little preferential treatment. 1:18:05.720 --> 1:18:06.720 Maybe maybe now. 1:18:07.040 --> 1:18:08.680 Yeah, I don't know if it existed then or not. 1:18:09.479 --> 1:18:11.680 I didn't get weird vibes from him then. But what 1:18:11.800 --> 1:18:15.439 you're getting to is later Kojima definitely had a crush 1:18:15.479 --> 1:18:15.680 on me. 1:18:15.800 --> 1:18:18.360 Later. I don't know if he did then. Maybe. You 1:18:18.439 --> 1:18:19.040 know what I was. 1:18:20.040 --> 1:18:26.120 I have a friend whose sister worked undercover narcotics, and 1:18:26.240 --> 1:18:29.320 she's was at the time in her late twenties, and 1:18:29.479 --> 1:18:32.519 I was asking her a million questions about her. She's 1:18:32.640 --> 1:18:34.120 she's out of it now. She did it for a 1:18:34.160 --> 1:18:42.000 long time, and she said, they always think there's going 1:18:42.080 --> 1:18:46.760 to be a relationship always interesting. Interesting if it's in 1:18:46.880 --> 1:18:49.960 the role she played. Yeah, the role she played, Yeah, 1:18:50.400 --> 1:18:51.679 it's and it's a young woman. 1:18:52.479 --> 1:18:52.960 It's hard. 1:18:53.200 --> 1:18:54.640 I mean, you know, I was telling you about my 1:18:54.760 --> 1:18:57.760 boss Marie. She did a lot of undercover work when 1:18:57.800 --> 1:19:00.720 she was younger. And it's it's a problem because the 1:19:00.760 --> 1:19:03.840 bad guys will hit on you. You know, you know 1:19:04.000 --> 1:19:06.479 you got to be obviously, you can't get in a 1:19:06.560 --> 1:19:09.160 relationship with an informant or a bad guy. 1:19:09.280 --> 1:19:10.920 That's just not cool. 1:19:12.200 --> 1:19:13.840 But I want to tell you something funny that she 1:19:13.960 --> 1:19:17.920 told me about it. I said her, she was like 1:19:18.000 --> 1:19:20.479 out of state drug buyer, right okay, So she would 1:19:20.479 --> 1:19:23.479 periodically show up in a town to buy right well, 1:19:23.520 --> 1:19:25.519 she lived in the town, her cover was that she 1:19:25.600 --> 1:19:29.600 lived elsewhere. It would travel to buy okay. And I said, well, 1:19:29.600 --> 1:19:33.439 how do you avoid Like, if some drug dealer wants 1:19:33.560 --> 1:19:35.960 you to go in this creepy ass house and you're undercover, 1:19:36.080 --> 1:19:38.000 how do you not go? She said, I would say, 1:19:38.240 --> 1:19:40.120 I'm not going into your creepy ass house. 1:19:40.760 --> 1:19:44.719 Exactly exactly, and I'm sure she would. 1:19:45.000 --> 1:19:48.360 She would tell you that there's a temptation to go in, right, 1:19:48.880 --> 1:19:51.960 Because as a law enforcement officer, how often do you 1:19:52.000 --> 1:19:53.680 get invited into the bad guy's house? 1:19:53.760 --> 1:19:53.880 Right? 1:19:53.920 --> 1:19:56.200 Normally you got to have a warrant, right, But if 1:19:56.200 --> 1:19:57.960 you're undercover and they invite you in, you don't need 1:19:57.960 --> 1:19:58.360 a warrant. 1:19:59.120 --> 1:19:59.639 You come out. 1:19:59.800 --> 1:20:02.680 Yeah, you get this free opportunity to look around. But 1:20:02.840 --> 1:20:05.479 it's super dangerous to do that, super dangerous. And then 1:20:05.520 --> 1:20:08.320 you know, it happened to me with Kojima invited me 1:20:08.400 --> 1:20:10.120 into his place and I had to make a call, 1:20:10.880 --> 1:20:13.439 And at the time it was a different story, but 1:20:13.640 --> 1:20:15.840 you know, I had a cover team behind me and 1:20:15.880 --> 1:20:19.519 they lost me in LA traffic and we pulled into 1:20:19.600 --> 1:20:22.479 Kojima's underground apartment, and in there I was like, well, 1:20:22.840 --> 1:20:25.720 my cover team's definitely not going to reacquire me now, right, 1:20:27.120 --> 1:20:28.760 And so I thought, well, I'll make a fake phone 1:20:28.800 --> 1:20:31.000 call to my cover team. I'll say, hey, Yoshi, yeah, 1:20:31.040 --> 1:20:32.880 we can go check out your place. But I got 1:20:33.040 --> 1:20:35.440 to make a call because I got to change disappointment 1:20:36.120 --> 1:20:39.080 and Murphy's law. I stepped out of the car and 1:20:39.240 --> 1:20:42.920 my undercover cell phone actually fell landed right on the 1:20:42.960 --> 1:20:47.040 antenna and broke into like three pieces. So now I 1:20:47.080 --> 1:20:50.760 have no way to contact anybody, and I got to 1:20:50.760 --> 1:20:51.960 make a call. Am I going to go into this 1:20:52.040 --> 1:20:55.040 apartment when nobody knows I'm there? Or am I gonna, 1:20:55.520 --> 1:20:56.240 you know, get out of this? 1:20:56.840 --> 1:21:00.000 Did you feel like this guy was could be physically damed? 1:21:00.479 --> 1:21:02.960 I was, you know, physically. I was never afraid of Kojima, 1:21:03.320 --> 1:21:07.479 Like he wasn't going to beat me up. But you know, 1:21:08.240 --> 1:21:10.880 I can't defeat a gun. If Kojima's got a gun, 1:21:11.479 --> 1:21:13.200 and I don't know who else is in his apartment 1:21:14.040 --> 1:21:16.360 and he's so paranoid about the fish and wild guys, 1:21:16.520 --> 1:21:18.719 you know, if he's got a friend or two friends 1:21:18.760 --> 1:21:20.720 in that apartment, They're going to beat the crap out 1:21:20.760 --> 1:21:22.080 of me till I tell him who I am. 1:21:22.680 --> 1:21:23.120 I can't. 1:21:23.640 --> 1:21:26.439 Once I'm in there, it's hard to extricate, right, So 1:21:27.439 --> 1:21:29.840 you'd never want to assume that this little guy is 1:21:29.920 --> 1:21:32.240 not going to hurt you, because anybody can hurt you 1:21:32.360 --> 1:21:38.040 with the right weapon, right. So anyway, I did it 1:21:38.360 --> 1:21:40.360 because I'm like, I got to see in this apartment. 1:21:41.960 --> 1:21:43.640 But I knew I had limited time because what my 1:21:43.680 --> 1:21:45.280 cover team is going to do, they're going to follow 1:21:45.360 --> 1:21:48.519 certain protocols to reacquire me, right and if they can't 1:21:48.560 --> 1:21:51.200 find me pretty soon, they're going to notify the LAPD 1:21:51.360 --> 1:21:54.240 that we have a missing undercover agent and that's going 1:21:54.280 --> 1:21:56.479 to cause helicopters and black and whites to be in 1:21:56.560 --> 1:21:59.080 the neighborhood. So I knew I had a limited amount 1:21:59.080 --> 1:22:00.719 of time to get in and out of that apartment, 1:22:01.240 --> 1:22:04.000 and it was fine. It worked out fine. I made 1:22:04.040 --> 1:22:06.960 sure I stayed closer to his front door than he did. 1:22:07.080 --> 1:22:11.559 But getting into that apartment was amazing because his whole 1:22:11.600 --> 1:22:15.519 apartment was filled with butterflies and these illegal beadles that 1:22:15.600 --> 1:22:17.840 he'd been bringing up from South America that he was 1:22:17.960 --> 1:22:21.559 selling claiming selling in Japan for ten thousand dollars apiece. 1:22:22.479 --> 1:22:25.120 I don't know whether that's true or not, but anyway 1:22:25.439 --> 1:22:28.160 it was. I got in and out of there in 1:22:28.200 --> 1:22:30.680 about ten minutes. And by the time this is I 1:22:30.760 --> 1:22:32.639 had no cell phone, so I raced to the local 1:22:33.880 --> 1:22:36.320 like seven to eleven, find one of the last remaining 1:22:36.360 --> 1:22:39.479 pay phones in the city of Los Angeles. Call the 1:22:39.600 --> 1:22:42.400 office and yeah, the covered team was getting ready to 1:22:42.439 --> 1:22:43.240 call the LAPD. 1:22:43.400 --> 1:22:46.000 We just just got checked back and just checked back in. 1:22:46.160 --> 1:22:49.720 Yeah, that was fun other than like seeing some evidence 1:22:50.640 --> 1:22:54.519 of what's going on there, Like I mean, did you 1:22:54.640 --> 1:22:57.400 have expectations of what his apartment is like? Like it 1:22:57.479 --> 1:23:00.120 was it like a super nice apartment. You're like, oh 1:23:00.160 --> 1:23:02.519 my god, this guy's crushing it in his field because 1:23:02.880 --> 1:23:06.519 look at this apartment or was it dingy and dirty and. 1:23:07.080 --> 1:23:09.720 Dingy and dirty? I mean this nice, nice place, right, 1:23:09.920 --> 1:23:15.120 nice building, but dark kept his curtains closed, just gross, 1:23:15.400 --> 1:23:17.280 like you know, they got a big wrap around couch, 1:23:17.320 --> 1:23:19.799 but there was only one place to sit and everything 1:23:19.840 --> 1:23:24.000 else was just stacked with butterflies or butterfly containers. The 1:23:24.160 --> 1:23:27.560 grossest thing was two gross things. Actually, one is I 1:23:28.280 --> 1:23:31.120 look down the hallway of the apartment from the living 1:23:31.160 --> 1:23:33.600 room and there was like a tea I assume it 1:23:33.640 --> 1:23:35.280 went to a bedroom on the right and a bedroom 1:23:35.320 --> 1:23:36.920 on the left, and then there was a bathroom and 1:23:36.960 --> 1:23:39.200 the door was open and I could actually see into 1:23:39.280 --> 1:23:42.760 the bathtub and there was this disgusting black ring all 1:23:42.840 --> 1:23:43.519 around the tub. 1:23:43.640 --> 1:23:47.760 It was like a silence of the lambs. Maybe or 1:23:47.880 --> 1:23:49.600 he didn't, I don't know. 1:23:49.880 --> 1:23:53.240 But the second gross thing was he very proudly goes 1:23:53.280 --> 1:23:56.679 to the kitchen and opens the cupboards to the above 1:23:56.720 --> 1:23:59.400 the sink. There's no food in the cupboards. It's all 1:24:00.240 --> 1:24:03.160 tupperware bins filled with these beetles. 1:24:03.000 --> 1:24:04.240 So it's more of a warehouse. 1:24:04.400 --> 1:24:04.599 Yeah. 1:24:04.920 --> 1:24:07.200 Yeah, he lived in Kyoto, but he had this apartment 1:24:07.280 --> 1:24:09.400 in la and it was just kind of his bass. 1:24:09.880 --> 1:24:13.080 He did ultimately admit to me that he did poach 1:24:13.240 --> 1:24:16.200 butterflies out of Grand Canyon and Death Valley, but what 1:24:16.320 --> 1:24:18.960 he was doing now, he didn't do as much poaching himself. 1:24:19.040 --> 1:24:21.720 He hired people to go and he eventually tried to 1:24:21.800 --> 1:24:24.000 recruit me to go out to Death Valley and collect 1:24:24.600 --> 1:24:25.960 collect butterflies for him. 1:24:26.080 --> 1:24:26.280 Yeah. 1:24:26.640 --> 1:24:31.280 Yeah, was he You take a guy like this, is 1:24:31.360 --> 1:24:36.800 he like, does he imagine himself as mostly legitimate but 1:24:37.000 --> 1:24:41.280 now and then I'll fudge the line or is he 1:24:41.400 --> 1:24:42.400 a career criminal? 1:24:42.600 --> 1:24:43.320 He was committed. 1:24:43.720 --> 1:24:46.519 He described himself to me as the world's most wanted 1:24:46.560 --> 1:24:49.479 butterfly smuggler. He took pride in the fact that fish 1:24:49.520 --> 1:24:51.880 and wildlife was after him, and he took pride in 1:24:52.439 --> 1:24:55.439 bragging that he outsmarted us, which as soon as I 1:24:55.520 --> 1:24:58.360 heard him say, you know, he outsmarted John Mendoza, I 1:24:58.479 --> 1:25:01.840 was like, no, you didn't. Number one, no you didn't. 1:25:01.880 --> 1:25:04.640 And number two, I'm gonna catch you. I'm putting you 1:25:04.720 --> 1:25:05.080 in jail. 1:25:05.160 --> 1:25:05.400 Dude. 1:25:05.840 --> 1:25:08.519 As that went through my mind when he said that, 1:25:08.840 --> 1:25:10.960 I was like, nope, I'm never quitting until I put 1:25:11.040 --> 1:25:12.200 Yoshiko gi men jail. 1:25:12.560 --> 1:25:14.719 How did you How does it go about the event? 1:25:14.760 --> 1:25:16.760 I mean, at some point you got to make an arrest. 1:25:16.600 --> 1:25:17.040 Right, Yeah. 1:25:17.439 --> 1:25:20.519 There were a few ups and downs with him. He 1:25:21.160 --> 1:25:23.960 was real touchy, and you know, it would take a 1:25:24.040 --> 1:25:26.599 long time to explain how that whole case transpired over 1:25:26.680 --> 1:25:29.760 three years, but suffice it to say there were two 1:25:29.840 --> 1:25:32.719 times during my relationship with him in an undercover capacity 1:25:32.760 --> 1:25:35.760 where he cut me off. He got mad at me, 1:25:35.880 --> 1:25:38.639 so he would stop talking to me. At one point 1:25:40.080 --> 1:25:41.640 what he wanted to do was he wanted to go 1:25:41.720 --> 1:25:45.000 into business with me and have me sell butterflies for 1:25:45.120 --> 1:25:48.280 him online that he would send me from Japan. And 1:25:48.560 --> 1:25:52.160 very clearly, obviously it doesn't take a rocket scientist to 1:25:52.200 --> 1:25:54.360 figure out what he wanted was a fall guy, right, 1:25:54.800 --> 1:25:56.800 So when the fish and wild guys came coming, he 1:25:56.800 --> 1:25:59.840 would feed them Ted Nelson, which was my undercover name. 1:25:59.880 --> 1:26:04.439 He feed him Ted, and he'd slink away and he'd 1:26:04.520 --> 1:26:06.200 hope fish and while iff would be happy because they 1:26:06.280 --> 1:26:06.720 caught Ted. 1:26:06.960 --> 1:26:09.439 Right. So I knew that was his plan going in. 1:26:10.280 --> 1:26:14.040 But at one point he wasn't sending me enough butterflies, 1:26:14.640 --> 1:26:16.880 like he wasn't sending me the endangered stuff. So I 1:26:17.000 --> 1:26:20.200 created this undercover eBay account where I looked like I 1:26:20.400 --> 1:26:23.320 was selling some stuff on this side, and what I 1:26:23.439 --> 1:26:26.519 hoped he would ask me. My plan was he would 1:26:26.520 --> 1:26:29.200 come back and say, hey, Ted, where are you getting these? 1:26:29.479 --> 1:26:31.960 And I'd say some baloney line like oh, I got 1:26:32.000 --> 1:26:35.160 a dealer, a supplier out of Germany and he's terrible. 1:26:35.200 --> 1:26:38.559 He sends me horrible material. And I hope that Kojima 1:26:38.560 --> 1:26:40.760 would then say, well, I can give you that, right, 1:26:41.800 --> 1:26:44.240 But instead he turned me into the local tip line 1:26:44.240 --> 1:26:48.400 for the California Department A fish you No, I got it. 1:26:48.640 --> 1:26:51.560 His game warden called me. His game warden called me 1:26:51.640 --> 1:26:53.040 one day and he goes, hey, Ed, I know you're 1:26:53.040 --> 1:26:54.960 doing a butterfly case. We got this weird tip on 1:26:55.040 --> 1:26:58.680 our tip line and some Japanese guy turning in some 1:26:58.880 --> 1:27:01.559 guy And I'm like, well to me, and I listened 1:27:01.600 --> 1:27:03.880 to it and it's like, yeah, turning in Ted Nelson 1:27:03.920 --> 1:27:06.439 for selling sidese material that he doesn't have permits for. 1:27:06.840 --> 1:27:07.799 You are kidding? 1:27:08.040 --> 1:27:11.160 Yeah, So at that point the case is done, right 1:27:11.400 --> 1:27:14.559 because because Kojima, I'm thinking I can't get him now 1:27:14.640 --> 1:27:17.880 because if I stay in the business, Kojima thinks he 1:27:17.960 --> 1:27:21.599 turned me in. If I if I stay in the business, 1:27:21.880 --> 1:27:24.040 he's gonna think I'm an informant. Yeah, I was gonna 1:27:24.080 --> 1:27:27.439 think I turned So I let it go and my 1:27:27.560 --> 1:27:29.800 boss Marie was like, oh, case it's done. You're never 1:27:29.880 --> 1:27:32.479 going to get this dude. So I really literally put 1:27:32.520 --> 1:27:35.800 it aside and I started working on high Roller. Yeah 1:27:36.120 --> 1:27:38.080 that's what a high roller came up. Like I said, 1:27:38.080 --> 1:27:39.680 I had nothing to do that day, right, So I 1:27:39.760 --> 1:27:41.040 went out and did that Hawk case. 1:27:41.760 --> 1:27:44.080 But about a. 1:27:44.200 --> 1:27:46.920 Year later, right in the middle of high roller. So 1:27:47.000 --> 1:27:49.320 I'm all right, Now I'm doing a different undercover case 1:27:49.360 --> 1:27:52.519 with a different persona where I play a much rougher 1:27:53.000 --> 1:27:57.439 guy than I was portraying with Kojima. I get a 1:27:57.520 --> 1:28:00.320 tip that Kojima is coming back to the fair. I'm like, oh, 1:28:00.320 --> 1:28:01.439 I'm gonna take one more shot. 1:28:03.040 --> 1:28:04.880 So by this time I have just a striped suit, 1:28:05.000 --> 1:28:06.280 so you're just out of jail. 1:28:06.600 --> 1:28:07.519 No, but I did have a. 1:28:07.680 --> 1:28:11.080 Giant handlebar mustache because I grew a big mustache to 1:28:11.160 --> 1:28:14.080 kind of fit in with the pigeon people better. And 1:28:15.320 --> 1:28:17.639 I go to the fair and my plan is I'm 1:28:17.640 --> 1:28:21.799 gonna find him, and I'm gonna accidentally in quotes air quotes, 1:28:21.880 --> 1:28:24.280 run into him, and I'm gonna see what happens. 1:28:25.120 --> 1:28:26.439 So I go to the fair. 1:28:26.720 --> 1:28:29.040 I find him. He's in this big hall doing his 1:28:29.200 --> 1:28:31.080 usual thing. He's got his fanny pack in the front 1:28:31.120 --> 1:28:33.720 where he usually carried about ten thousand dollars cash in 1:28:33.800 --> 1:28:35.519 his fanny pack. I don't know how this guy never 1:28:35.560 --> 1:28:40.000 got robbed walking around La, but whatever. So I wait 1:28:40.120 --> 1:28:42.280 till he's moving from one hall to the other where 1:28:42.280 --> 1:28:44.800 you got to go through like this narrow walkway and 1:28:44.920 --> 1:28:47.760 I come the other direction, and he looked like he 1:28:48.160 --> 1:28:50.080 looked scared out of his wits. 1:28:49.840 --> 1:28:50.400 When he saw me. 1:28:51.320 --> 1:28:53.719 But I immediately went out and said, hey, Yo, she's 1:28:53.760 --> 1:28:57.080 so good to see you. And in the conversation, I 1:28:57.600 --> 1:29:01.160 very quickly let out that I owe him a huge debt, 1:29:01.960 --> 1:29:04.120 and that caught his interest. And I said, because of 1:29:04.160 --> 1:29:06.479 the advice you gave me about how you handled the 1:29:06.520 --> 1:29:10.559 fish and wild guys, I didn't get arrested. I said, 1:29:10.720 --> 1:29:13.479 I said, some asshole turned me in to fish and 1:29:13.560 --> 1:29:16.840 game and they came to my house. They did a 1:29:16.880 --> 1:29:19.280 search warrant, but because of the advice you gave me, 1:29:19.520 --> 1:29:23.080 I had everything hidden somewhere else. They never found a thing. 1:29:23.280 --> 1:29:26.639 They couldn't prove anything. And thanks to you, Yoshi, I'm 1:29:26.680 --> 1:29:27.240 not in jail. 1:29:28.000 --> 1:29:32.000 Is this what they call a double cross in parentsiaw. 1:29:31.920 --> 1:29:34.639 He bought the whole thing, man, he bought it hook. 1:29:34.479 --> 1:29:36.400 Line and center, excellent material. 1:29:37.840 --> 1:29:40.760 So he takes me to lunch and at that. 1:29:43.160 --> 1:29:46.160 And at that moment, he liked that handlebar mustard that 1:29:46.640 --> 1:29:46.960 he did. 1:29:47.040 --> 1:29:49.080 It turned out to people. I think he did like 1:29:49.120 --> 1:29:50.320 the handlebar mustache. 1:29:50.439 --> 1:29:51.960 Yeah, but he. 1:29:53.439 --> 1:29:56.639 He takes me to lunch, at this awful Korean restaurant 1:29:56.800 --> 1:30:00.120 in you know, Koreatown in LA I'm not sure we 1:30:00.240 --> 1:30:02.760 had beef. I'm not sure what the meat was in 1:30:02.840 --> 1:30:03.160 that year. 1:30:03.160 --> 1:30:05.280 You're like, man, I might need to investigate this place. 1:30:06.840 --> 1:30:11.120 I'm telling you it was not good. But he was 1:30:11.280 --> 1:30:13.320 so convinced at that point that I was also a 1:30:13.400 --> 1:30:15.680 bad guy. And now I gave him the line I 1:30:16.080 --> 1:30:18.519 initially planned to. He said, are you where are you 1:30:18.560 --> 1:30:21.679 getting your material? And I said, I got a German supplier, 1:30:21.720 --> 1:30:25.640 but he gives me crap and boom. He immediately said, oh, 1:30:25.800 --> 1:30:29.720 I can give you the material perfect condition, And right 1:30:29.800 --> 1:30:32.800 then I knew I had him, because he said, look, 1:30:32.800 --> 1:30:35.599 I'm going to go back to Japan. Get on Skype. 1:30:35.680 --> 1:30:39.360 We'll start talking my Skype in early two thousands, right, 1:30:40.040 --> 1:30:42.720 and I'll show you. Yeah, what happened to Skype. I 1:30:42.800 --> 1:30:44.479 was just thinking about that as I was coming here 1:30:44.560 --> 1:30:48.840 to Zoom Zoom Zoom killed Skype. So he says, we'll 1:30:48.840 --> 1:30:51.040 talk by Skype. I'll show you what I've got. You 1:30:51.200 --> 1:30:53.400 tell me what you want, pay me, I'll send it 1:30:53.479 --> 1:30:55.160 to you. And I was like, this is perfect, right, 1:30:55.200 --> 1:30:58.040 I'm going to I'm going to record him on camera 1:30:58.760 --> 1:31:02.720 making incriminals statements. And that's exactly how it played out. 1:31:02.880 --> 1:31:05.320 The only thing that was weird is after we were 1:31:05.320 --> 1:31:07.680 at lunch, he wanted me to drive him to a 1:31:09.520 --> 1:31:12.160 like a I don't know what you call it, asauna 1:31:12.439 --> 1:31:13.200 in Koreatown. 1:31:13.320 --> 1:31:17.200 Sure, and the whole Yeah, Chris is gonna do this 1:31:17.400 --> 1:31:20.679 this scene sight crin for a TV show. 1:31:20.880 --> 1:31:24.000 This is that I can't remember. 1:31:24.439 --> 1:31:27.519 He did take me later, like later that weekend, he 1:31:27.600 --> 1:31:30.240 took me to dinner at Lowry Steakhouse, which is pretty 1:31:30.320 --> 1:31:31.519 nice because he bought the whole thing. 1:31:31.720 --> 1:31:33.960 Because she's already picturing the network standers not enough sex. 1:31:34.080 --> 1:31:37.519 Krin's like, but wait, but wait, we got a scene. 1:31:37.600 --> 1:31:39.320 There's spice it up a little bit. 1:31:40.200 --> 1:31:42.640 So the whole way to this bathhouse, I'm driving him 1:31:42.680 --> 1:31:48.000 there and he, you know, he's asking me. He starts 1:31:48.040 --> 1:31:50.920 asking me, who, what actors do you like? And I 1:31:51.000 --> 1:31:53.040 didn't know, so I just said, I just started saying, 1:31:54.400 --> 1:31:54.680 I do. 1:31:55.400 --> 1:31:58.280 A big time man. I'm not hitting it either. 1:32:01.080 --> 1:32:02.320 Wait till I get my mustache. 1:32:02.360 --> 1:32:04.840 I'll grow my mustache back. I'll be irresistible to you. 1:32:05.920 --> 1:32:08.600 Uh So, Anyway, on the way there, he starts he 1:32:08.680 --> 1:32:11.240 asked what actors do you like, and I just named somebody, 1:32:11.320 --> 1:32:13.320 right whatever, Brad Pitt, and he goes, oh, he's gay. 1:32:14.240 --> 1:32:17.040 I'm like, oh, Brad Pitt's gay, okay, And I'd say 1:32:17.160 --> 1:32:19.559 who else He'd say who else? Oh, Tom Cruise, Oh 1:32:19.720 --> 1:32:24.280 so gay? Everybody I named was gay? It was And 1:32:24.400 --> 1:32:26.600 I was like, I didn't really understand what was going on, 1:32:26.720 --> 1:32:29.240 and You're like, jeez, I must be gay. Well, I 1:32:29.560 --> 1:32:32.280 think he was trying to hint this is now He's 1:32:32.360 --> 1:32:35.240 like trying to hint that he's either by or gay. 1:32:35.840 --> 1:32:37.840 And it kind of played out after that when we 1:32:38.280 --> 1:32:40.720 when we started to talk on Skype, we started to 1:32:40.840 --> 1:32:43.120 do a lot of deals with butterflies. He starts sending 1:32:43.240 --> 1:32:46.560 endangered stuff, like he would send stuff to me that 1:32:46.880 --> 1:32:49.320 I would then let take to the University of California 1:32:49.479 --> 1:32:51.240 or Riverside to make sure. 1:32:51.280 --> 1:32:52.360 I had it ideed right. 1:32:52.560 --> 1:32:55.000 Oh yeah, so they have a big entomology department, so 1:32:55.040 --> 1:32:56.920 I'd get it and I'd immediately drive out there and 1:32:57.000 --> 1:32:58.559 have them look at it, and they'd. 1:32:58.360 --> 1:32:59.800 Be like, where did you get this? 1:33:00.840 --> 1:33:04.439 We can long story, Yeah, I mean this is a 1:33:05.560 --> 1:33:10.320 you know, internationally known entomology university, and they're like, we 1:33:10.439 --> 1:33:13.759 cannot get this for research. We can't even these don't exist, 1:33:14.240 --> 1:33:18.120 and you're you're getting them in the mail. So Kojima 1:33:18.240 --> 1:33:21.680 had a very very sophisticated network round shit, he had 1:33:21.720 --> 1:33:22.519 the good shob Where. 1:33:22.320 --> 1:33:22.880 Are you getting the. 1:33:24.520 --> 1:33:24.880 The money? 1:33:25.120 --> 1:33:26.880 Yeah? Like how do they how do they as you're 1:33:26.880 --> 1:33:29.200 getting the money? How are they sort of confident enough 1:33:29.200 --> 1:33:30.720 that they're gonna wind up getting the money back? 1:33:31.080 --> 1:33:34.400 Sometimes you you don't know really, Sometimes you do spend 1:33:34.520 --> 1:33:37.200 money in an undercover situation and you do get ripped off, 1:33:37.400 --> 1:33:38.439 and that just happened. 1:33:38.479 --> 1:33:40.640 But you have to live under a sort of price cap, right, 1:33:40.720 --> 1:33:42.719 Like you couldn't go and say I need ten million 1:33:42.720 --> 1:33:44.120 dollars to buy a butterfly, right. 1:33:44.160 --> 1:33:46.160 They're gonna be like no, no, no, you know. Yeah, 1:33:46.240 --> 1:33:48.639 So you usually ask for more than what you need. 1:33:49.439 --> 1:33:51.519 So I can't remember how much I had to start with. 1:33:51.800 --> 1:33:53.880 Is like maybe thirty grand or something like a little 1:33:53.920 --> 1:33:57.040 con Man budget, yeah exactly. So what you're doing is 1:33:57.320 --> 1:34:01.240 you're to avoid and trap I think people you don't 1:34:01.320 --> 1:34:04.519 want it. You can't trap people, right, so you got 1:34:04.600 --> 1:34:07.720 to offer reasonable rates for these things. You can't, and 1:34:08.080 --> 1:34:10.679 so you take the risks that they might walk away 1:34:10.680 --> 1:34:12.240 from you, or they might steal your money. That's just 1:34:12.320 --> 1:34:14.200 part of the part of the risk, got it. Yeah, 1:34:14.880 --> 1:34:17.360 but he didn't. He wanted the money and he provided 1:34:17.400 --> 1:34:20.280 the stuff. But as we were talking, it became clear 1:34:20.360 --> 1:34:24.400 that he had a thing for me, and yeah, that's 1:34:24.439 --> 1:34:27.519 fine whatever. It just became really awkward when you're on 1:34:27.600 --> 1:34:29.560 a skype call with somebody and they want you to 1:34:29.600 --> 1:34:30.920 take your shirt off and stuff like that. 1:34:31.000 --> 1:34:31.960 It was very uncomfortable. 1:34:32.000 --> 1:34:33.639 I'd have had butterfly tattoos over. 1:34:33.840 --> 1:34:37.000 Yeah, that's the real entrapment there. 1:34:37.800 --> 1:34:37.920 You know. 1:34:38.000 --> 1:34:39.840 What was the worst part is at the time I 1:34:40.000 --> 1:34:43.120 was married, and you know, we would have a lot 1:34:43.160 --> 1:34:46.280 of these calls at when it was convenient for him, 1:34:46.640 --> 1:34:48.559 because one of the things that really made him mad 1:34:48.760 --> 1:34:50.800 is if you were not available when he wanted to talk. 1:34:51.400 --> 1:34:54.679 So he's in Japan, you know whatever, twelve hours ahead, 1:34:54.720 --> 1:34:57.760 thirteen hours. Yeah, he's winding down for the night. Yeah, 1:34:57.840 --> 1:35:00.280 and I'm winding down for the night. He wants to talk, 1:35:00.439 --> 1:35:03.040 Like what time zone is wrong? Yeah, twelve one o'clock 1:35:03.040 --> 1:35:05.720 in the morning. I'm on skype and my wife has 1:35:05.760 --> 1:35:08.880 to be extremely quiet. She cannot come into that room, 1:35:09.240 --> 1:35:11.840 she cannot make any noise because he'd be very alert 1:35:11.920 --> 1:35:14.000 to I thought you lived alone. I thought you were 1:35:14.040 --> 1:35:17.240 singing right now. Yeah, So that was that was stressful 1:35:17.240 --> 1:35:19.240 because he wanted to talk almost every night for a 1:35:19.320 --> 1:35:22.200 couple of months. It was pretty rough, but I ended up. 1:35:22.320 --> 1:35:24.960 You know, back then, we didn't you couldn't. I didn't 1:35:24.960 --> 1:35:28.280 have a fast enough computer to record screen on the screen, 1:35:28.439 --> 1:35:30.280 so I just had a video camera set up to 1:35:30.360 --> 1:35:33.240 the side that he couldn't see, and I'd just record 1:35:34.080 --> 1:35:36.280 him and me on the call. And man, I got 1:35:36.320 --> 1:35:40.519 some incredible, incriminating statements just about how much material he had, 1:35:40.640 --> 1:35:44.679 how much, how he would get his species, which species 1:35:44.720 --> 1:35:48.800 he could get. I remember once I expressed some interest 1:35:48.840 --> 1:35:52.120 in an endangered butterfly out of the Caribbean, and he said, well, 1:35:52.160 --> 1:35:53.640 it'll take me a couple of weeks, but I can 1:35:53.720 --> 1:35:53.960 get you. 1:35:54.040 --> 1:35:56.080 One name one of these butterflies for me. 1:35:56.400 --> 1:35:59.080 Well, the big one that the final one that I got, 1:35:59.400 --> 1:36:02.840 was the Queen Alexandria butterfly. It's the largest butterfly in 1:36:02.880 --> 1:36:04.840 the world. And you're pull one up and let's see 1:36:04.920 --> 1:36:07.679 what it looks. They're about the females about the size 1:36:07.720 --> 1:36:11.439 of a small dinner plate, maybe ten ten eleven inches across, 1:36:12.280 --> 1:36:15.120 and the male. The males are generally colorful, but they're smaller. 1:36:15.520 --> 1:36:20.280 You can click around there someone's head next to it 1:36:20.520 --> 1:36:21.400 for comparison. 1:36:21.520 --> 1:36:21.920 It's like that. 1:36:23.160 --> 1:36:23.720 Yeah, they're big. 1:36:24.040 --> 1:36:28.760 Yeah with these with. 1:36:28.840 --> 1:36:31.519 These cases like the butterfly one, I'm sure a lot 1:36:31.600 --> 1:36:35.360 of other ones. Were you in a position where you 1:36:35.439 --> 1:36:39.280 were having to work with another country's law enforcement? 1:36:40.439 --> 1:36:40.559 Uh? 1:36:41.360 --> 1:36:43.080 Yeah, I worked a little. 1:36:43.160 --> 1:36:46.080 Did Japan get involved with the butterfly thing at all? 1:36:46.320 --> 1:36:46.360 Or? 1:36:47.080 --> 1:36:49.320 Interesting? Interesting question because. 1:36:50.760 --> 1:36:52.759 Later we tried to get some help out of Japan 1:36:53.160 --> 1:36:56.679 and I went through the Homeland Security law enforcement attes 1:36:57.000 --> 1:37:00.479 based in Tokyo, and we did not get We got 1:37:00.640 --> 1:37:01.920 minimal cooperation for him. 1:37:01.920 --> 1:37:05.240 That's what like, does cha like when you're dealing with 1:37:05.320 --> 1:37:08.559 something like that's ending up in China coming out of China? 1:37:08.840 --> 1:37:11.400 Like is there any kind of cooperation. 1:37:11.040 --> 1:37:11.839 Or it depends? 1:37:12.040 --> 1:37:15.360 Sometimes it's great, Yeah, sometimes China is actually really good. 1:37:16.000 --> 1:37:19.000 Just kind of depends on the species who's involved. The 1:37:19.160 --> 1:37:23.759 interesting thing with the Japanese government is, and the Homeland 1:37:23.760 --> 1:37:27.840 Security at told me this, they consider undercover work to 1:37:27.880 --> 1:37:31.280 be dishonorable. So when they heard that it was an 1:37:31.400 --> 1:37:34.479 undercover agent who had, you know, basically built a case 1:37:34.520 --> 1:37:39.040 against a Japanese citizen. They weren't that interested. No kidding, no, 1:37:39.880 --> 1:37:42.080 which is it didn't matter. We had everything we needed 1:37:42.640 --> 1:37:47.240 on Kojima. But yeah, eventually he I owed him some 1:37:47.360 --> 1:37:50.439 money and he made some flirtatious statements to him, and 1:37:50.520 --> 1:37:53.920 I basically kind of hinted that things might heat up 1:37:53.960 --> 1:37:55.800 if he came back to LA because he was I 1:37:55.880 --> 1:37:57.080 had an arrest warrant for him. 1:37:57.080 --> 1:37:59.439 We just needed to get him. And then he came 1:37:59.560 --> 1:38:01.200 and he hooked him up at the airport. 1:38:01.960 --> 1:38:03.719 Yeah, it's fun were you present? 1:38:04.040 --> 1:38:06.639 I was there, but we wanted to kind of see 1:38:06.640 --> 1:38:09.280 what he said after he was arrested, so I wasn't 1:38:09.320 --> 1:38:11.120 part of that. I didn't see him till the next day. 1:38:11.400 --> 1:38:12.599 But you interacted with him. 1:38:12.840 --> 1:38:15.360 Yeah, because when you arrest somebody in the federal system, 1:38:15.439 --> 1:38:17.800 you move him. You take him into the jail for 1:38:17.920 --> 1:38:20.160 the evening, and then the next day you're responsible for 1:38:20.280 --> 1:38:22.280 moving him to the court. So I had to go 1:38:22.360 --> 1:38:24.240 pick him up at the jail and move him. 1:38:24.080 --> 1:38:25.360 Over to the district court. 1:38:25.479 --> 1:38:26.519 How's that conversation go? 1:38:26.800 --> 1:38:27.040 It was? 1:38:27.200 --> 1:38:27.759 It was funny. 1:38:27.880 --> 1:38:30.439 He looked he's excited to see me when I first 1:38:30.520 --> 1:38:32.880 walked in. Then he saw my belt, badge, and he 1:38:32.960 --> 1:38:35.160 saw I was wearing a holster and I had handcuffs. 1:38:35.400 --> 1:38:36.920 He's excited to see, like he thought you were in 1:38:37.000 --> 1:38:37.439 trouble too. 1:38:37.720 --> 1:38:39.080 No, I think he thought I was there to bail 1:38:39.160 --> 1:38:41.200 him out. Pretty sure he thought I was there to. 1:38:41.160 --> 1:38:41.640 Get him out. 1:38:42.400 --> 1:38:43.679 Was he an American citizen? 1:38:44.320 --> 1:38:46.400 No Japanese citizen? 1:38:46.520 --> 1:38:47.280 But he. 1:38:49.640 --> 1:38:52.920 He claimed he was very good at weaving lives, So 1:38:53.120 --> 1:38:56.759 he made up a whole American life where he claimed 1:38:56.800 --> 1:39:00.240 to have a wife and a half Japanese half you know, 1:39:00.320 --> 1:39:03.960 Anglo kid. And so he claimed he had a passport, 1:39:04.160 --> 1:39:06.320 an American passport, but he would never tell me what 1:39:06.520 --> 1:39:09.760 name the American passport was in. So I didn't think 1:39:09.840 --> 1:39:12.320 he was telling the truth. But we didn't know for 1:39:12.439 --> 1:39:16.160 sure if he had an American passport, and he was 1:39:16.240 --> 1:39:19.599 pretty tricky. He would he would tell people. He would 1:39:19.640 --> 1:39:23.200 tell if he knew all of us. He might tell you, hey, 1:39:23.280 --> 1:39:26.160 I'm in Grand Canyon, but he really was in Japan, right, 1:39:26.840 --> 1:39:29.040 He might tell you I'm in Utah next week. 1:39:29.600 --> 1:39:32.799 And so what you would hear. The buzz you would. 1:39:32.640 --> 1:39:35.600 Hear among the insect trading community was very confusing and 1:39:35.680 --> 1:39:37.040 conflicting about where he was. 1:39:37.320 --> 1:39:40.080 He's tricky. How's I always tell sons of bitches right 1:39:40.120 --> 1:39:43.080 where I'm at? How's that doing that? Man? 1:39:43.360 --> 1:39:45.600 How does that work in cases where you're dealing with 1:39:47.400 --> 1:39:50.360 like your target is not an American citizen as far 1:39:50.439 --> 1:39:53.560 as like sentencing and getting them in jail, and like 1:39:53.880 --> 1:39:55.080 what ends up happening. 1:39:55.600 --> 1:39:55.760 Yeah. 1:39:55.800 --> 1:39:58.240 I actually did a lot of cases against foreign nationals 1:39:58.360 --> 1:40:00.880 and I was involved in extra diditing a number of 1:40:00.920 --> 1:40:05.280 those people. And it's a long, very complicated process, but 1:40:05.360 --> 1:40:07.960 it is possible to you know, extradite people back here 1:40:08.000 --> 1:40:11.160 to the United States, whether they're Americans or foreign nationals, 1:40:11.680 --> 1:40:14.479 and I did that in a number of cases. The 1:40:15.680 --> 1:40:19.360 way it should work out is a foreign national should 1:40:19.439 --> 1:40:24.200 not get bail, right. Unfortunately, sometimes they do, and I've 1:40:24.280 --> 1:40:30.160 seen foreign nationals flee. Yeah, and that's really frustrating when 1:40:30.200 --> 1:40:32.479 you're the case agent because now, thanks to a judge 1:40:32.479 --> 1:40:34.599 who stupidly gave this guy bail, and now you've got 1:40:34.680 --> 1:40:37.679 to spend possibly years trying to hunt this guy down 1:40:38.080 --> 1:40:39.080 and then get him back. 1:40:39.240 --> 1:40:39.360 Right. 1:40:40.880 --> 1:40:44.479 But generally, a foreign national who commits a crime in 1:40:44.560 --> 1:40:47.880 the US or where there's US jurisdiction can be sentenced here, 1:40:47.960 --> 1:40:51.360 no problem. You get him back here they go through 1:40:51.400 --> 1:40:53.360 their trial if they want one, or they plead guilty 1:40:53.400 --> 1:40:56.519 and they're sentenced. The thing that's most interesting about foreign 1:40:56.600 --> 1:40:59.200 national though, is if you're convicted of a felony in 1:40:59.280 --> 1:41:04.439 the US and you don't have US legal residents, you're 1:41:04.479 --> 1:41:08.680 immediately deported after you finish your sentence and you cannot return. 1:41:08.439 --> 1:41:08.920 To the US. 1:41:09.560 --> 1:41:11.880 So that's actually a big deal. A lot of people 1:41:12.000 --> 1:41:14.720 want to come to the US. They want to, you know, 1:41:15.439 --> 1:41:17.840 take advantage of our banking, our business. They want to 1:41:17.840 --> 1:41:19.560 go on vacation here, they want their kids to go 1:41:19.880 --> 1:41:23.360 college here. And once you're convicted of a felony and 1:41:23.400 --> 1:41:25.639 you get out of jail, you know. Kojima got out 1:41:25.680 --> 1:41:28.760 of jail and was immediately turned over to Immigration and 1:41:28.800 --> 1:41:31.519 Customs enforcement. They drove him to lax They watched him 1:41:31.600 --> 1:41:33.960 get on a plane and boop. He went back to 1:41:34.120 --> 1:41:36.360 Japan and is not allowed to return to the US. 1:41:36.439 --> 1:41:37.960 Ever. Was he then arrested in Japan? 1:41:38.439 --> 1:41:39.600 I don't know. I doubt it. 1:41:39.960 --> 1:41:43.439 I doubt it. But would you send a file case 1:41:43.520 --> 1:41:45.280 like that to them to say, hey, heads. 1:41:45.080 --> 1:41:48.160 Up, yeah, I've done that before, I've shared information with 1:41:48.720 --> 1:41:49.320 South Africa. 1:41:49.439 --> 1:41:50.840 They just might not give a shit I might not 1:41:50.960 --> 1:41:51.360 have time. 1:41:51.600 --> 1:41:54.439 Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Yeah, it's their business, 1:41:54.600 --> 1:41:57.280 you know, if they do or don't. I've worked real 1:41:57.320 --> 1:42:00.400 closely with Germany on some cases. Actually a case involving 1:42:00.560 --> 1:42:03.400 remember when Justin Bieber got drusted for the monkey. Yeah, 1:42:04.800 --> 1:42:07.880 Germany needed to serve Justin Bieber with some papers because 1:42:08.040 --> 1:42:10.800 Justin left the country before they were able to give 1:42:10.880 --> 1:42:14.280 him his fine, so in German law they had to 1:42:14.320 --> 1:42:15.160 serve him personally. 1:42:15.320 --> 1:42:16.640 So they were like, how are we going to do this? 1:42:16.800 --> 1:42:19.400 They called me, I having to know some German cops 1:42:20.360 --> 1:42:22.040 who are working the case, and they said, hey, we 1:42:22.120 --> 1:42:23.120 got to serve Justin Bieber. 1:42:23.200 --> 1:42:24.360 Can you do it? And I was like, hell, yeah, 1:42:24.360 --> 1:42:28.920 I can serve Justin Bieber. That was one of the 1:42:29.000 --> 1:42:29.960 best days of my life. 1:42:30.200 --> 1:42:33.760 I've tracked down Justin Bieber, gave him German paporwork pay 1:42:33.800 --> 1:42:40.599 a fine. So how much time did what's his name, Kojima? 1:42:40.720 --> 1:42:43.479 He got just under two years, so I think it's 1:42:43.479 --> 1:42:44.080 about twenty one. 1:42:44.120 --> 1:42:46.120 He had a lot of restitution and fines and stuff 1:42:46.640 --> 1:42:47.000 he did. 1:42:47.080 --> 1:42:50.000 He never paid him, but nothing you can do about that. 1:42:50.120 --> 1:42:52.960 We confiscated whatever property we could and did a US 1:42:53.040 --> 1:42:55.680 Marshall sale on it. I think it the property had 1:42:55.720 --> 1:42:58.360 in LA. We only got about sixteen thousand out of him, 1:42:58.880 --> 1:43:00.800 but you know two years. 1:43:00.880 --> 1:43:03.600 Yeah, imagine that conversation. Yeah, exactly when you're like what 1:43:03.680 --> 1:43:06.920 are you in here for? You know, like Norm McDonald, 1:43:06.960 --> 1:43:08.680 the comedian Norm mc donald used to have a joke 1:43:08.680 --> 1:43:11.599 where he's talking about the hierarchy, you know, in prison, 1:43:11.760 --> 1:43:13.960 like the worst you did, you know, the higher he is. 1:43:14.080 --> 1:43:17.920 He's talking about oj going to prison and when he 1:43:18.240 --> 1:43:21.160 finally went to prison for stealing memorabilia, that he would 1:43:21.200 --> 1:43:23.760 sit so low on the hierarchy. But he would say like, no, man, 1:43:23.800 --> 1:43:25.559 I killed my wife and a waiter with a knife, 1:43:26.240 --> 1:43:28.800 and all the guy's like, no, you didn't. We saw 1:43:28.880 --> 1:43:32.439 that trial. So it's like when you're in there a 1:43:32.560 --> 1:43:34.839 butterfly theft, it's gotta be a weird position. 1:43:34.960 --> 1:43:37.200 You occupy international smugglers. 1:43:37.240 --> 1:43:39.760 What you tell every good You're right, Yeah, I'd leave 1:43:39.800 --> 1:43:43.200 the butterflies. They'd be like, well, what were you smuggling? Nothing? 1:43:45.200 --> 1:43:47.599 You find out this contraband. 1:43:48.600 --> 1:43:49.240 Yeah, exactly. 1:43:49.360 --> 1:43:53.240 Did you have any or or possibly many instances where 1:43:53.240 --> 1:43:56.560 you really felt scared for your life, Like in situations 1:43:56.640 --> 1:43:58.880 where maybe you got into that apartment and al a 1:43:58.920 --> 1:43:59.880 sudden you thought, oh. 1:44:00.280 --> 1:44:03.439 Yeah, you know, I was lucky in the service has 1:44:03.479 --> 1:44:05.679 been lucky in general. We haven't had an agent shot 1:44:05.720 --> 1:44:07.639 in the line of duty since nineteen sixty eight. 1:44:07.960 --> 1:44:08.679 Was shocking. 1:44:08.960 --> 1:44:12.040 Yeah, and of all things, that agent was ambushed by 1:44:12.080 --> 1:44:15.560 duck hunters, fully ambushed, fully ambushed. 1:44:15.720 --> 1:44:15.880 Yeah. 1:44:15.960 --> 1:44:17.040 They set him up. 1:44:17.040 --> 1:44:18.880 They set him up. Yeah, they set him up. They 1:44:18.920 --> 1:44:21.439 knew he was coming down a dike. He's working with 1:44:21.479 --> 1:44:22.240 the state game warden. 1:44:22.240 --> 1:44:24.640 They knew he was. I think it was Illinois. I 1:44:24.760 --> 1:44:25.120 think it was. 1:44:26.120 --> 1:44:31.200 Yeah, coming down a dike. They set him up, they hid, 1:44:31.560 --> 1:44:33.439 They popped up right in front of him, shot him 1:44:33.720 --> 1:44:34.280 point blank. 1:44:34.439 --> 1:44:37.519 What Yeah, he lived, he was. 1:44:37.600 --> 1:44:39.360 He had a shold, he had a shoulder holster on 1:44:39.400 --> 1:44:41.519 at the time, and they they were loaded with bird 1:44:41.560 --> 1:44:43.240 shot because they were duck poachers. 1:44:43.320 --> 1:44:44.559 But that was their first miss. 1:44:44.680 --> 1:44:45.639 That was their first mistake. 1:44:46.360 --> 1:44:48.719 So he but it was close, you know, his close 1:44:48.840 --> 1:44:52.760 range is like ten yards is close. And he he 1:44:52.880 --> 1:44:54.880 was drawing his pistol, he had his shoulder holster, he 1:44:55.000 --> 1:44:58.000 was drawing this revolver and most of the shot hit 1:44:58.040 --> 1:45:00.720 the revolver and he I had to fire back. 1:45:00.760 --> 1:45:01.519 But for whatever it. 1:45:02.000 --> 1:45:04.120 Somehow disabled his pistol and he was hit. 1:45:04.240 --> 1:45:06.720 He got hit in the eye and the head, and yeah, 1:45:07.479 --> 1:45:10.040 he lived though he stayed an agent till he retires. 1:45:10.520 --> 1:45:10.720 Yeah. 1:45:11.400 --> 1:45:14.679 But anyway to answer your question, you know, I always 1:45:14.720 --> 1:45:17.200 considered LA to be like a higher risk place to work. 1:45:17.280 --> 1:45:17.960 But I was lucky. 1:45:18.120 --> 1:45:19.960 I you know, I think in my whole career, I 1:45:20.000 --> 1:45:23.240 had to chase one guy on foot, I wrestled one 1:45:23.320 --> 1:45:26.560 guy to the ground. I pulled my gun often, but 1:45:26.720 --> 1:45:28.840 I only ever came close to shooting one person, and 1:45:29.080 --> 1:45:31.679 you know it didn't have to. But I never felt 1:45:31.760 --> 1:45:35.559 like I was ever in immediate I never felt super scared. 1:45:35.680 --> 1:45:37.960 There were moments when people said creepy things to me 1:45:38.000 --> 1:45:40.759 where I realized I need to get out of this situation. 1:45:41.760 --> 1:45:44.320 But it never got to the point where, you know, 1:45:45.200 --> 1:45:47.720 anybody ever physically assaulted me or drew a gun on me. 1:45:47.840 --> 1:45:50.400 There there have been agents that have had guns pulled 1:45:50.400 --> 1:45:51.519 on him, which is pretty scary. 1:45:51.760 --> 1:45:53.560 When you pull your gun, you mean just like to 1:45:53.640 --> 1:45:55.799 be like, yeah, get down, you're underrest. 1:45:56.040 --> 1:45:57.960 Yeah, to stay up, to be ahead of them on 1:45:58.000 --> 1:46:01.040 the UDA loop, right, Yeah, always going to be ahead 1:46:01.040 --> 1:46:01.639 of the bad guys. 1:46:02.360 --> 1:46:02.599 Yeah. 1:46:02.760 --> 1:46:09.040 So you know, an agent who retired a long time ago, 1:46:09.800 --> 1:46:12.759 who's deceased now, a guy named Samjola. When he retired, 1:46:12.800 --> 1:46:16.599 he said something very profound at his retirement party. He said, 1:46:16.920 --> 1:46:19.519 you cannot be in law enforcement for twenty plus years 1:46:19.640 --> 1:46:22.720 and not have had a few close calls, including the 1:46:22.800 --> 1:46:26.680 ones you don't know about. And that last part that 1:46:27.000 --> 1:46:29.639 really hit me. I had been on maybe ten years 1:46:29.680 --> 1:46:31.640 when he retired, and that I had never thought of 1:46:31.720 --> 1:46:35.240 that before. And you know, if somebody's going to assault you, 1:46:35.560 --> 1:46:38.519 it's not your choice, it's their choice, right, So you 1:46:38.600 --> 1:46:42.040 don't know, you don't know if somebody's thinking about killing you, 1:46:42.720 --> 1:46:44.720 looking at you to see if they could get the 1:46:44.840 --> 1:46:46.680 upper hand on you, and you know. 1:46:46.960 --> 1:46:49.639 We're hiding in the bushes like that. Yeah, one story 1:46:49.720 --> 1:46:50.200 we heard of. 1:46:50.240 --> 1:46:54.400 Yeah, we had a game warden. We did this couple 1:46:55.479 --> 1:46:58.720 volumes of a series called Close Calls Near death Experiences 1:46:58.760 --> 1:47:02.040 with people. Yeah, and we interviewed a game warden who 1:47:05.920 --> 1:47:07.519 he had a close call that he didn't know about, 1:47:08.120 --> 1:47:13.000 but then later happened to interview, later happened to interview 1:47:13.040 --> 1:47:17.320 a serial poacher. And in the interview the serial poacher 1:47:17.360 --> 1:47:19.519 who he's been arrested on other charges, he's been arrested 1:47:19.560 --> 1:47:23.320 on drug charges or domestic violence commever a handful of charges, 1:47:24.439 --> 1:47:26.800 and he's interviewing him because of potential connection to a 1:47:26.880 --> 1:47:29.479 poaching case. But he's in trouble now, so now he 1:47:29.560 --> 1:47:33.880 just wants to talk. He tells the story about a 1:47:33.960 --> 1:47:37.519 night in Colorado, and the warden interviewing him realizes he's 1:47:37.520 --> 1:47:40.720 telling him a story about himself. Oh, man, about his 1:47:40.880 --> 1:47:43.960 plan to kill the guy. Wow, but the guy didn't 1:47:43.960 --> 1:47:45.639 follow him down the right road. Wow. 1:47:46.720 --> 1:47:46.920 Yeah. 1:47:46.960 --> 1:47:48.600 And he's sitting there being like he's talking about me. 1:47:49.040 --> 1:47:52.599 I remember that night. Yeah, he's like, he turned down 1:47:52.640 --> 1:47:53.920 my road. I was going to give it to him 1:47:53.960 --> 1:47:54.639 right through his window. 1:47:55.960 --> 1:47:57.120 Yeah, how many times? 1:47:57.240 --> 1:48:00.120 You know, you never know if it ever happened in 1:48:00.200 --> 1:48:03.040 his life, no idea, And so I always kept that 1:48:03.120 --> 1:48:05.360 in mind what Sam had said at his retirement party, 1:48:05.520 --> 1:48:07.760 that you know, you just can't predict what people are 1:48:07.800 --> 1:48:08.160 gonna do. 1:48:09.040 --> 1:48:09.240 Yeah. 1:48:09.400 --> 1:48:11.559 All the undercover thing's gotta be scary, man, it. 1:48:11.720 --> 1:48:13.040 Is, but it's also so fun. 1:48:13.320 --> 1:48:17.280 It's so it's so rewarding to know that you're in 1:48:17.439 --> 1:48:21.840 there and they're they're believing, they're believing what you're saying, 1:48:21.880 --> 1:48:25.000 and they're saying these incredibly incriminating statements in front of you. 1:48:25.439 --> 1:48:28.599 Sometimes it is just so fun to leave the undercover 1:48:28.720 --> 1:48:31.040 contact and just be like, I got them, I got 1:48:31.120 --> 1:48:31.519 these guys. 1:48:31.560 --> 1:48:33.120 But how often do you wind up liking the guys? 1:48:35.080 --> 1:48:35.280 You know? 1:48:35.479 --> 1:48:36.000 It's weird. 1:48:36.320 --> 1:48:39.360 I there were times when I got to like the 1:48:39.400 --> 1:48:42.040 people I was working undercover, especially like in High Roller. 1:48:42.160 --> 1:48:43.559 I respected some of those guys. 1:48:44.520 --> 1:48:46.719 They reminded me I went to an inner city high school, 1:48:46.720 --> 1:48:48.800 and they reminded me people I knew in high school, 1:48:48.840 --> 1:48:54.479 and I liked them. But you know, they're just blatant killers, 1:48:54.760 --> 1:48:57.679 and they're blatant lawbreakers, and I just have no respect 1:48:57.760 --> 1:48:57.920 for that. 1:48:58.479 --> 1:49:02.479 So it always, yeah, what I affects the affection? Yeah, 1:49:02.520 --> 1:49:03.439 it does, It really does. 1:49:03.600 --> 1:49:06.120 I mean, I guess it's I like you, but you 1:49:06.320 --> 1:49:08.840 need to have consequences, and I'm going to see what 1:49:08.960 --> 1:49:12.320 you do when those consequences are delivered. Right, So what 1:49:12.400 --> 1:49:14.679 I'm more interested in is what happens after these guys 1:49:14.720 --> 1:49:18.280 are caught. Do they accept responsibility? Do they change their ways? 1:49:18.640 --> 1:49:21.559 If that's the case, I can like those people, right, 1:49:22.160 --> 1:49:24.240 But if they snub their nose and they call me 1:49:24.280 --> 1:49:26.240 a jack booted thug and I made up everything, and 1:49:26.320 --> 1:49:29.320 I fabricated everything and they don't take responsibility. 1:49:29.760 --> 1:49:32.280 I don't have any respect for that person. So you 1:49:32.320 --> 1:49:33.560 can't really like a person like that. 1:49:33.800 --> 1:49:36.800 So if you do, if you do undercover, take the 1:49:36.880 --> 1:49:40.200 Japanese individual, you do undercover. But then because of the 1:49:40.240 --> 1:49:46.240 way your agency works, you don't vanish, right, right, you 1:49:46.360 --> 1:49:49.200 gotta He's not like whatever happened to that guy? Right, 1:49:49.560 --> 1:49:51.720 It's like there you are, right, You're like, oh, no, 1:49:51.840 --> 1:49:56.040 I'm me, I'm special agent blank. Anyone can find out 1:49:56.680 --> 1:50:00.200 what my family history is, where I live. Does that 1:50:00.320 --> 1:50:01.920 not wind up stressing you out that all of a 1:50:01.960 --> 1:50:05.720 sudden you're a known thing. And if they ever had 1:50:05.800 --> 1:50:09.879 some kind of vengeful impulse, it's like they know exactly 1:50:09.920 --> 1:50:10.840 who betrayed them. 1:50:10.920 --> 1:50:15.760 Right, Yeah, And this is where I think sometimes our 1:50:15.800 --> 1:50:20.000 agents get too paranoid. They act like they're secret agents, 1:50:20.040 --> 1:50:22.280 not special agents. And the bottom line is we're not 1:50:22.439 --> 1:50:24.600 secret agents. We are special agents. And at the end 1:50:24.640 --> 1:50:26.519 of your undercover you are going to have to sign 1:50:26.520 --> 1:50:29.400 affidavits and you may have to go to court and testify, 1:50:29.760 --> 1:50:31.800 and you're not going to do all of that with 1:50:31.920 --> 1:50:32.800 your undercover name. 1:50:33.000 --> 1:50:37.799 You're gonna be known. And the way. 1:50:39.160 --> 1:50:42.840 You know, I had so many situations where after I 1:50:42.960 --> 1:50:45.479 had worked somebody undercover for a year or more, I 1:50:45.520 --> 1:50:47.560 would run into them in court and now I'm in 1:50:47.640 --> 1:50:51.559 a suit and tie, I'm clean shaven. They now I'm 1:50:51.600 --> 1:50:54.240 referred to as special agent, newcomer. They know me as 1:50:54.360 --> 1:50:58.400 Ted Nelson or whatever. It's like this weird disconnect in 1:50:58.439 --> 1:51:01.479 their brain. I had people way smile at me in court. 1:51:02.080 --> 1:51:04.360 Yoshi Kojima waved and smiled at me while he was 1:51:04.439 --> 1:51:07.160 in belly chains with his hands chained in front of him. 1:51:07.560 --> 1:51:10.160 I had high roller guys smiling and waving at me 1:51:10.280 --> 1:51:12.560 in court, and I could never figure it out. And 1:51:12.680 --> 1:51:15.320 I think it's just there's like this disconnect. They don't 1:51:15.320 --> 1:51:19.160 associate me with Ted Nelson. I'm I'm now the agent 1:51:19.200 --> 1:51:22.519 who's treated them decently since the case has gone down, 1:51:22.600 --> 1:51:26.000 you know. But more to your point, I did have 1:51:26.120 --> 1:51:30.120 a case once where I arrested a guy. He became 1:51:30.160 --> 1:51:32.559 a fugitive because he jumped bail, and I spent years 1:51:32.600 --> 1:51:34.799 trying to get him back. Eventually caught him in Mexico. 1:51:35.360 --> 1:51:40.280 We extradited him. His two sons absolutely hated me, I 1:51:40.400 --> 1:51:44.320 mean hated. And these guys had guns. They were former 1:51:44.439 --> 1:51:47.720 Israeli army. They knew how to use guns. And I 1:51:47.960 --> 1:51:50.439 was worried about those guys because they knew who I was. 1:51:50.520 --> 1:51:53.120 Because now I'd signed all these affidavits, I'd testified in 1:51:53.200 --> 1:51:57.280 court against their dad and their adults. You know, So 1:51:58.680 --> 1:52:02.479 when I drove home, I did counter surveillance. Whenever I 1:52:02.600 --> 1:52:04.960 drove home, I took different routes home every day. I 1:52:05.080 --> 1:52:09.920 never drove directly from the office to my driveway. You know, 1:52:10.200 --> 1:52:15.120 I keep gun in my bedroom. And you just have 1:52:15.240 --> 1:52:17.840 to be careful. You have to be aware that there 1:52:17.920 --> 1:52:21.280 are people may be planning things you don't know. But 1:52:21.560 --> 1:52:23.360 it doesn't mean you don't do your job. I mean 1:52:24.680 --> 1:52:28.559 these guys. Sometimes you hear game wardens or federal agents saying, well, 1:52:28.600 --> 1:52:31.320 I'm not going to get killed over a deer. Well, 1:52:31.600 --> 1:52:34.679 it's not if you're doing your job. It's not your choice. 1:52:35.479 --> 1:52:38.920 If some deer poacher decides to ambush you, take a 1:52:38.960 --> 1:52:41.560 shot at you just for doing your job. Yeah, you 1:52:41.840 --> 1:52:44.639 darn wright might get killed for, you know, over a deer. 1:52:44.800 --> 1:52:48.719 Well you said, though, you're possibly going to take away 1:52:48.800 --> 1:52:52.200 their money, yeah, or liberty, right exactly, So it's not 1:52:52.360 --> 1:52:52.800 just a deer. 1:52:53.000 --> 1:52:53.200 Yeah. 1:52:53.280 --> 1:52:56.000 And sometimes you know you were talking about the low penalties, right. 1:52:56.520 --> 1:52:58.680 Bad guys don't know what the that they might get 1:52:58.720 --> 1:53:02.360 off with just probation. They think they think they sell 1:53:02.400 --> 1:53:04.120 an illegal butterfly, they're going to go to jail for 1:53:04.200 --> 1:53:07.080 ten years. So their ignorance of the law may cause 1:53:07.120 --> 1:53:09.280 them to react in a way that's not right. But 1:53:09.680 --> 1:53:12.439 bottom line is my belief on this is, you become 1:53:12.520 --> 1:53:16.280 a federal agent in any whatever agency but Fish and Wildlife, 1:53:16.400 --> 1:53:20.120 Secret Service, FBI, whatever, you're making a commitment that you're 1:53:20.160 --> 1:53:23.320 going to carry a gun, You're going to physically arrest people. 1:53:23.640 --> 1:53:28.439 You're going to threaten their liberty, their money, their house right, 1:53:29.240 --> 1:53:32.000 and with that comes certain risks. And if you are 1:53:32.080 --> 1:53:34.000 not willing to accept those risks, then you better not 1:53:34.120 --> 1:53:36.400 be a federal agent. You better not do undercover work. 1:53:36.600 --> 1:53:39.960 It's not mandatory you do undercover work. It's they ask you, 1:53:40.080 --> 1:53:41.880 do you want to do this undercover case? And if 1:53:41.920 --> 1:53:43.640 you say no, you don't have to do it. 1:53:43.720 --> 1:53:47.799 Did you have a conversation with your wife or spouse 1:53:47.920 --> 1:53:50.120 before you started doing undercover work? 1:53:51.560 --> 1:53:51.600 No? 1:53:52.479 --> 1:53:53.799 Is that why they're not your wife anymore? 1:53:54.880 --> 1:53:57.920 Well, I don't know why my wife's not my wife anymore. 1:53:58.000 --> 1:54:01.800 But you know, there were times when it was very 1:54:01.840 --> 1:54:05.360 stressful on the relationship because she did not like sometimes 1:54:05.439 --> 1:54:07.559 when I carried my gun off duty. I always carried 1:54:07.600 --> 1:54:10.040 my gun off duty. And there were times in La. 1:54:10.360 --> 1:54:13.760 Ten million people live in La. Right, I was working 1:54:13.800 --> 1:54:17.160 on a case involving Russian caviar traffickers, and these are 1:54:17.400 --> 1:54:21.519 probably mobbed up people, and I'm talking about I'm taking 1:54:21.560 --> 1:54:23.920 a million dollars worth of caviar from them at a time. 1:54:24.280 --> 1:54:26.760 Right when I sees it at the airport, million dollars. 1:54:26.880 --> 1:54:29.680 Definitely get killed over a million dollars. One time, my 1:54:29.760 --> 1:54:31.960 wife and I are at a restaurant in Santa Monica. 1:54:32.840 --> 1:54:35.960 You know, I'm off, We're just having dinner. We happened 1:54:36.000 --> 1:54:40.000 to be seated at the window, and these two Russian 1:54:40.120 --> 1:54:42.800 dudes walk by who were connected to the guy I 1:54:42.960 --> 1:54:45.520 just seized a million dollars with a caviar from and 1:54:45.640 --> 1:54:49.240 they do the double take. They recognize me because we 1:54:49.320 --> 1:54:52.280 had just done a big chearch warrant at this caviar 1:54:52.360 --> 1:54:53.200 processing place. 1:54:53.280 --> 1:54:53.800 They saw me. 1:54:54.160 --> 1:54:57.280 I interviewed them and I just looked at my wife. 1:54:57.320 --> 1:54:59.080 I was like, we gotta go, we gotta leave. 1:55:00.000 --> 1:55:00.600 You know, that's not. 1:55:01.120 --> 1:55:03.120 She was planning on a nice dinner out and that 1:55:03.320 --> 1:55:04.120 all changed. 1:55:04.840 --> 1:55:08.320 So can't say my heart rates going up and listen 1:55:08.400 --> 1:55:08.560 to that. 1:55:08.840 --> 1:55:10.640 Yeah, that was Cavard order. 1:55:10.800 --> 1:55:12.640 That was kind of a no crap moment, you know, 1:55:12.920 --> 1:55:13.640 another time to. 1:55:13.640 --> 1:55:15.440 Take that Cavyard to go exactly. 1:55:16.120 --> 1:55:16.360 Yeah. 1:55:17.440 --> 1:55:17.560 Uh. 1:55:18.080 --> 1:55:20.120 You know one one time I went I just went 1:55:20.200 --> 1:55:23.200 into a McDonald's during high Roller. I still have my 1:55:23.280 --> 1:55:25.480 big mustache, but I had to go down to the 1:55:25.560 --> 1:55:28.040 US Attorney's office and now I got my mustache. But 1:55:28.120 --> 1:55:31.080 I'm in my federal agent suit, you know, my uniform, 1:55:31.200 --> 1:55:34.240 my black suit, white shirt, plane tie. And I thought, oh, 1:55:34.320 --> 1:55:36.560 just go to McDonald's, get a coke. I walk in 1:55:36.880 --> 1:55:38.760 and two people in front of me. I'm like, how 1:55:38.840 --> 1:55:39.680 do I know this guy? 1:55:40.040 --> 1:55:42.760 Right? I hear his voice. I'm like, I know this dude. 1:55:43.240 --> 1:55:45.520 And I realized he's one of the guys in Operation 1:55:45.720 --> 1:55:49.200 high Roller. He's one of the bad guys. And I 1:55:49.360 --> 1:55:51.560 just put my sunglasses on and I turned around and 1:55:51.600 --> 1:55:53.400 I walked out and he never saw me, or if 1:55:53.400 --> 1:55:55.400 he did see me, he never made the connection guy 1:55:55.440 --> 1:55:57.640 in a suit versus who he was seeing on the weekends. 1:55:58.400 --> 1:56:00.400 But you know, I'm in a city of ten million people. 1:56:00.440 --> 1:56:01.960 What are the odds I'm going to run into this 1:56:02.040 --> 1:56:04.840 guy I just was working undercovered six days ago. 1:56:05.000 --> 1:56:06.680 You know, that's freaky. 1:56:07.720 --> 1:56:11.680 And what if they see you also have developed probably 1:56:11.800 --> 1:56:15.680 very heightened spatial awareness, and you're probably more likely to 1:56:16.800 --> 1:56:19.480 well recognize and you know who's going on. 1:56:20.000 --> 1:56:22.880 One thing we talked about is I worked five years 1:56:22.960 --> 1:56:24.960 of my career. I worked in Africa as an agent 1:56:25.080 --> 1:56:29.640 based at the embassy overseas, and I did not realize 1:56:29.680 --> 1:56:32.800 how how stressful it was to constantly. 1:56:32.440 --> 1:56:34.200 Be on like that deep yellow alert. 1:56:35.040 --> 1:56:37.400 I was more on yellow hot you know, deep yellow 1:56:37.520 --> 1:56:40.080 or light red alert in Africa than I ever was 1:56:40.120 --> 1:56:43.080 in LA. And when I came back, I just had 1:56:43.120 --> 1:56:46.760 this huge release of tension that I didn't realize I had. 1:56:47.440 --> 1:56:49.600 And I've talked to other federal agents who are based 1:56:49.640 --> 1:56:52.680 overseas when I was HSI and FBI, and they said 1:56:52.800 --> 1:56:55.200 they said they had exact same reaction. They came back 1:56:55.240 --> 1:56:59.040 from Southern Africa and they just like like they just 1:56:59.160 --> 1:57:00.880 had their their muscles relaxed. 1:57:01.000 --> 1:57:03.240 And that's because it's just a more hostile place. 1:57:03.400 --> 1:57:06.320 Yeah, and there's there's so much gun crime right, it 1:57:07.000 --> 1:57:10.760 just related just being a person there you are constantly 1:57:11.280 --> 1:57:13.160 you know, you don't even stop. When when I lived 1:57:13.200 --> 1:57:15.640 in Africa, if you're driving at night, you don't stop 1:57:15.720 --> 1:57:17.720 at red lights. You're insane. If you stop at a 1:57:17.760 --> 1:57:20.360 red light, yeah, you slow down, you look, but if 1:57:20.520 --> 1:57:24.680 nobody's coming, you go. Because that's where car hijackings happen, 1:57:24.800 --> 1:57:26.760 is a stop lights at night in Pretoria. 1:57:26.920 --> 1:57:30.320 So you just don't do it. And you know, I. 1:57:32.600 --> 1:57:35.400 I won't get the gun stuff in Africa, but yeah, 1:57:35.480 --> 1:57:38.120 people get killed all the time over stupid stuff in Africa. 1:57:38.520 --> 1:57:41.400 And so not only now, are you a federal agent 1:57:41.480 --> 1:57:44.080 working overseas on rhino horn traffick. 1:57:43.720 --> 1:57:46.600 Aga people year all the time? 1:57:46.720 --> 1:57:49.680 Yeah, and yeah life is cheap in Africa, right, they'll 1:57:49.760 --> 1:57:52.000 kill you for anything. And if you're talking about one 1:57:52.040 --> 1:57:54.760 hundred thousand dollars rhino horn, they'll definitely kill you. So 1:57:54.880 --> 1:57:57.160 you've got the law enforcement aspect, but then you also 1:57:57.240 --> 1:57:59.800 have just going to the grocery store. It's super dangerous, 1:58:00.720 --> 1:58:02.120 you know, and I don't want to scare people. I 1:58:02.400 --> 1:58:05.160 never got in trouble in Africa. I never had anybody 1:58:05.720 --> 1:58:07.560 try to do anything to me. But at the same time, 1:58:08.080 --> 1:58:10.720 I never went from a store and directly got into 1:58:10.760 --> 1:58:14.720 my car, I'd walk to another car. I'd look behind 1:58:14.800 --> 1:58:16.800 me before I got in the car. I'd sometimes walk 1:58:16.840 --> 1:58:20.080 around the car, just do something unusual so that i'd 1:58:20.160 --> 1:58:22.160 see somebody change their behavior around me. 1:58:22.880 --> 1:58:25.400 So, yeah, you do get in this mode of being 1:58:25.440 --> 1:58:26.800 on yellow alert all the time. 1:58:27.560 --> 1:58:30.440 And back to your question, if somebody's going to do 1:58:30.680 --> 1:58:34.160 undercover work, they don't automatically become a secret agent. They 1:58:34.280 --> 1:58:37.640 just have to be careful. Right, They're still a special agent. 1:58:37.680 --> 1:58:40.280 They have to do their job and they're gonna have 1:58:40.400 --> 1:58:41.480 to just suck it up. 1:58:42.840 --> 1:58:45.040 Are you going to go now and launch a whole 1:58:45.760 --> 1:58:46.400 second career? 1:58:47.560 --> 1:58:50.400 So since I retired, I've been doing some adjunct teaching 1:58:50.440 --> 1:58:53.480 at cal State, which I really enjoy. Law enforcement, Yeah, 1:58:53.520 --> 1:58:57.040 criminal justice. I teach criminal justice, administrative law. I do 1:58:57.160 --> 1:58:59.000 some consulting here and there. But if you don't mind 1:58:59.080 --> 1:59:02.920 me plug in please, I'm in conjunction with cal State. 1:59:02.960 --> 1:59:06.280 I'm starting a podcast called Nature's Secret Service, where we're 1:59:06.320 --> 1:59:09.960 going to focus on wildlife crime, interviewing people involved in it, 1:59:10.000 --> 1:59:12.680 and try to talk about what drives it, some of 1:59:12.680 --> 1:59:15.360 the things that happen, some of the interesting stories should 1:59:15.360 --> 1:59:18.800 be fun to should the first episode should launch in 1:59:19.040 --> 1:59:23.280 like early March. Oh great, so Nature's secret service. Anybody 1:59:23.360 --> 1:59:24.560 wants to look for it, they can find it. 1:59:24.640 --> 1:59:27.800 And that's in conjunction with who Cal State University graduation. 1:59:27.920 --> 1:59:29.600 Yeah. Thanks, should be fun. I don't know if I'll 1:59:29.640 --> 1:59:32.440 be a good host, but we'll see how it goes, right. 1:59:32.720 --> 1:59:33.960 I think you'll probably do all right. 1:59:34.920 --> 1:59:36.600 I get some tips from you if I need them. 1:59:37.280 --> 1:59:37.560 I don't know. 1:59:37.640 --> 1:59:39.120 That's where I go for him. I think you got 1:59:39.200 --> 1:59:42.080 it figured out well. I think it'll be fun. Mostly 1:59:42.120 --> 1:59:45.440 it's going to be talking to, you know, law enforcement professionals. 1:59:45.480 --> 1:59:48.520 And when you get to law enforcement people talking, the 1:59:48.600 --> 1:59:50.080 good stories come out pretty quick. 1:59:50.400 --> 1:59:52.440 So I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure we'll get to 1:59:52.520 --> 1:59:53.120 some good stuff. 1:59:53.280 --> 1:59:53.840 That's great man. 1:59:53.880 --> 1:59:54.520 Congratulations. 1:59:54.560 --> 1:59:56.360 Thanks, yeah, thanks for coming on the show. 1:59:56.560 --> 1:59:58.640 It's been a pleasure. I appreciate it. But you're very welcome. 1:59:58.720 --> 1:59:59.560 I appreciate it. Thank you. 2:00:00.080 --> 2:00:02.240 Thanks, thanks said yeah, nice to meet you guys.