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Speaker 1: Check it out. Join Today by US Fish and Wildlife
Speaker 1: undercover agent retired. Right when you came in, I told
Speaker 1: you don't look retired.
Speaker 2: Yes, retired, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't call myself an
Speaker 2: undercover agent.
Speaker 1: Well that's what Krin called you.
Speaker 3: Oh all right, okay, straight up space.
Speaker 1: Fish and wildlife special agent. Yeah, ed newcomer retired because
Speaker 1: tell everybody why, I had no idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I've been retired for two years, and that's
Speaker 2: only because all federal agents have to retire when they
Speaker 2: turned fifty seven, so I hit mandatory retirement.
Speaker 1: Now there's no old federal agent.
Speaker 2: There are some exceptions occasionally, like if somebody's working on
Speaker 2: a particular case or something, they may extend their retirement
Speaker 2: so they can finish up that case.
Speaker 3: I see, but it's rare.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you got to come in before thirty seven,
Speaker 4: you said.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, you have to enter the academy honor before
Speaker 2: your thirty seven.
Speaker 4: So it's not like you can do it. It's like
Speaker 4: a second, like you have a career and then have
Speaker 4: another career doing what you did.
Speaker 3: I guess you did.
Speaker 2: That's what I did. But it was close. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: became a federal agent.
Speaker 3: I went.
Speaker 2: I arrived at the Federal Law Enforcement Academy literally about
Speaker 2: three weeks before I turned thirty seven, So I just
Speaker 2: made it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and I retired. Yeah, it's kind of nice.
Speaker 1: Except so jealous. Man.
Speaker 3: The problem is, you know, you got a pretty good gig, not.
Speaker 1: As good as you got well, unless you're broke.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2: Being a special agent, most agents I know go right
Speaker 2: to mandatory retirement because they love it. They love their job.
Speaker 2: Being a federal agent is awesome, but being a special
Speaker 2: agent for US Fish and Wildlife Service, it's ten times awesome.
Speaker 2: I was so my identity was so tied up in
Speaker 2: my badge. Oh it was hard to retire.
Speaker 3: Is it hurt?
Speaker 2: And I still I'm very jealous of the of the
Speaker 2: people I know who are still agents because I talk to.
Speaker 3: Them and I'm like, oh, that sounds like fun. I
Speaker 3: want to do that.
Speaker 1: Really? You miss it?
Speaker 2: Oh totally, yeah, every day every day. That's why it's
Speaker 2: fun to come talk about it with people like you,
Speaker 2: because it's just fun for me to reminisce. And I
Speaker 2: like making sure people know that, you know, these agents
Speaker 2: are out there and they're they're doing a really good job,
Speaker 2: and they're working their asses off for people.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: It sounds like, look, just reading from the notes, that
Speaker 5: a lot of people are interested in that job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we get.
Speaker 2: You know, I was never involved in the hiring process
Speaker 2: when we would hire the national agents, but I was
Speaker 2: always told by people at headquarters we'd get you know, normally,
Speaker 2: when we have a class of new agents, it's maybe
Speaker 2: thirty to thirty five agents at a time that go
Speaker 2: through the academy, and for those thirty five seats, easily
Speaker 2: three thousand plus applicants easily more. Sometimes sometimes they just
Speaker 2: cut it off because they get too many, and it's
Speaker 2: not it becomes a burden for the you know, managers
Speaker 2: to go through all the applicants to find the gyms.
Speaker 1: Okay, you work with wildlife, carry a gun?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that I scold badge with a buff bag
Speaker 2: it's got a fish and a duck on them.
Speaker 5: Is that part of the reason that you didn't start
Speaker 5: that job until thirty seven years of age?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so totally you know, this is totally straight up.
Speaker 2: I came out of law school interested in the job.
Speaker 2: I went to law school and I thought, okay, you know.
Speaker 1: Finish law school.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, a law degree, great background to be
Speaker 2: a federal agent law enforcement in general. And I always thought, well,
Speaker 2: if I don't make it into the academy or I
Speaker 2: don't get hired by law enforcement.
Speaker 3: I got a job, right, you'll slum it as a
Speaker 3: slum it as a lawyer.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so I started applying pretty much as soon
Speaker 2: as I came out of law school. And what age
Speaker 2: was that, Well, see twenty six you come out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I graduated from law school twenty six. Yeah, so I
Speaker 2: applied the first time they were opening, so total, I
Speaker 2: applied four times before I got hired.
Speaker 1: Did you do the bar exam?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, yeah, I'm admitted at full on lawyer. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was admitted in two states, Washington and Colorado, and
Speaker 2: I practiced law for ten years, kind of accidentally because
Speaker 2: I was waiting to get hired by It's a wildlife service.
Speaker 1: Are there a lot of agents who are lawyers?
Speaker 3: Not a lot?
Speaker 2: There are some FBI hires a lot, But in the service,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how many of us are eight or lawyers,
Speaker 2: but there's quite a few.
Speaker 1: It probably helps you when you're working a case because
Speaker 1: you're probably able to analyze your evidence and analyze your
Speaker 1: case from a somewhat objective perspective of how things are
Speaker 1: going to look in court and what the arguments are
Speaker 1: going to be. Yeah, making that up No, that's one
Speaker 1: hundred percent right.
Speaker 2: When I did practice law, I was a prosecutor, and
Speaker 2: so what I kept seeing was, you know, I'm limited
Speaker 2: to what the detectives are bringing me. So whatever they
Speaker 2: do in their investigation, they give me their report, and
Speaker 2: that's what I have to go with, right, And every
Speaker 2: time i'd read an investigator's report, I'd be like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: that sounds like a lot of fun, and I'll bet
Speaker 2: I could have done that better than they did it.
Speaker 2: So when I became an agent, I kind of brought
Speaker 2: that prosecutor background with me and I kind of knew,
Speaker 2: all right, as I'm building the case against bad guys,
Speaker 2: this is what the prosecutor's going to want, this is
Speaker 2: what they're going to need, this is what a jury's
Speaker 2: going to need to hear, and this is how we're
Speaker 2: going to avoid losing an appeal. So it's very helpful
Speaker 2: to have a law degree, especially if you come from
Speaker 2: a kind of criminal justice background.
Speaker 3: Like I did.
Speaker 1: Did you have a wildlife background?
Speaker 2: No, And that's why it was hard for me to
Speaker 2: get noticed by the Fish and Wildlife Service. I finally,
Speaker 2: like I reached out to this special agent in charge
Speaker 2: who was in charge of the West Coast, a guy
Speaker 2: named Dave McMullen, who is just an awesome US Fish
Speaker 2: and Wildlife agent. And I said, you know, I'm really
Speaker 2: interested in this job. I can't get an interview. I
Speaker 2: can't even get a call back, right And he was
Speaker 2: very nice and he asked, you know, send me your resume.
Speaker 3: Let me see.
Speaker 2: He called me right back and he said, yeah, I
Speaker 2: can tell you. The reason you're not getting interviewed is
Speaker 2: there's nothing on your resume that indicates that you have
Speaker 2: any interest in wildlife and and yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 2: an eye opening. I don't know why I didn't think
Speaker 2: of it. I just assumed law degree was one of
Speaker 2: the educational qualifiers. I thought, you know, that's going to
Speaker 2: get me in. So he gave me some great advice here.
Speaker 2: I was an assistant Attorney General in the state of Washington,
Speaker 2: but on weekends I was volunteering with the Washington Department
Speaker 2: official Wildlife game Wardens and going out and.
Speaker 3: Doing whatever they wanted.
Speaker 2: A resume, yeah, yeah, to do whatever they wanted me
Speaker 2: they wanted the job I did well, these guys would
Speaker 2: have me out on on the you know, Puget Sound
Speaker 2: middle of winter, pulling shrimp traps so they could check
Speaker 2: shrimp traps. And that's a hard that's hard work to
Speaker 2: pull a shrimp trap by hand.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you were volunteering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I loved it. I couldn't wait. I couldn't wait
Speaker 2: to do it.
Speaker 5: We've all volunteered to pull a few shrimps out of
Speaker 5: the depths.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That sounds funny, don't it, because most people pay to
Speaker 1: go pull shrimp. You've got to buy your license and everything.
Speaker 4: Like what made you want the job in the first place.
Speaker 4: Like as a kid, were you into wildlife and hunting
Speaker 4: and fishing.
Speaker 2: Or I've never I don't hunt. I fished before, but
Speaker 2: I never got into hunting.
Speaker 4: You just like nature and wild life.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I grew up in Denver and so you know, my
Speaker 2: my dad mom took us camping up to the mountains
Speaker 2: all the time, and I love it. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: back in the day, we would the whole family's car
Speaker 2: would pull over if we saw a hawk on a
Speaker 2: fence post by the side of the road. So it's
Speaker 2: kind of ingrained in us not shooting at it, not
Speaker 2: shooting at But that's the first thing I want to
Speaker 2: get into. Yeah, oh sure, because this is the thing
Speaker 2: Krin like thet I gotta tell you.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, the hawk parks. But Krinn, I hope other
Speaker 1: guests aren't listening. Krin doesn't usually get excited about a guest.
Speaker 1: Krinn has a baseline excitement for all guests. Okay, Krinn
Speaker 1: holds a baseline excitement for all guests. But she had
Speaker 1: a like a speak a spike on a spike, a
Speaker 1: high spike for you coming on, inspired in part by
Speaker 1: her her discovery of roller pigeons and the trouble that
Speaker 1: roller pigeon enthusiasts find themselves in. And so I want
Speaker 1: to I want to get into this just as a
Speaker 1: way to lay the ground where what you for what
Speaker 1: exactly you spend your time on?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Sure, hence my joke about shooting hose. Yeah, no, I'm
Speaker 1: getting ahead of us. I got ahead of us.
Speaker 3: I got it.
Speaker 2: But to answer your question, I I was interested in
Speaker 2: law enforcement from a real young age I had, you know,
Speaker 2: I was one of these five year olds that ran
Speaker 2: around thinking they were going to save the family if
Speaker 2: there was a home invasion.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Uh, so you know, growing up in Denver, I'm thinking
Speaker 2: I'll be a Denver cop. You know, someday That's kind
Speaker 2: of what I figured. And then I saw at some
Speaker 2: point in my life, I really there was such a
Speaker 2: thing as a game warden, and I thought, well, cop
Speaker 2: cop for wildlife. That sounds pretty cool. I'll do that.
Speaker 2: That really interested me. And then it wasn't until I
Speaker 2: was in college that I just literally stumbled across a
Speaker 2: job announcement for US Fish and Wildlife special Agent. And
Speaker 2: when I saw that, you know, it's like, Oh, that's
Speaker 2: like the FBI for wildlife.
Speaker 3: That's what I want to do, right.
Speaker 2: You get the most jurisdiction, you have the most authority,
Speaker 2: you have the most opportunity to make a difference and
Speaker 2: do something good, you know.
Speaker 3: So kind of where I led.
Speaker 1: And then did you spend your whole career in La? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: And that's another funny story because it's going back to this.
Speaker 2: A special Agent in charge, David McMullen, when he was
Speaker 2: talking to me about applying and how to get interviewed,
Speaker 2: he said, look at you got to go to LA.
Speaker 2: And I said, LA, I don't want to go to LA.
Speaker 2: I'm a rocky mountain boy. I want to work in
Speaker 2: the Rockies. I'm interested in you know, Rocky Mountain wildlife issues.
Speaker 2: That's where I want to work as a special agent.
Speaker 2: He said, No, you got to go to La. He goes,
Speaker 2: there's this little there's this little, tiny firecracker of a
Speaker 2: agent down there, a woman named Marie Paladini.
Speaker 3: She's a lawyer. You'll get along great. And that's where
Speaker 3: the action is. That's where the wildlife trafficking is. That's
Speaker 3: where all the big cases are.
Speaker 4: You got to go to LA because it's a big
Speaker 4: port city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, big port city and a big you know, urban
Speaker 2: center where there's just every kind of culture you can
Speaker 2: imagine there. So La New York Miami. If you want
Speaker 2: to be a special agent in the Fish and Wildlife
Speaker 2: Service and really learn about international wildlife trafficking and interstate trafficking,
Speaker 2: you got to go to one of these big ports
Speaker 2: La New York and where Miami, Miami is another big one.
Speaker 3: Guy.
Speaker 6: We need, like, you know, a prime time CSI type show.
Speaker 2: I'm all in I'm all in picture that yeah, so
Speaker 2: can I. I've I've pitched it before, you know, like
Speaker 2: n c I S. But Fish and wild if it'd
Speaker 2: be way better?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, superhero saving animals.
Speaker 1: Every episode they'd be making you rescue cats and dogs.
Speaker 1: Well picture cute little kittens and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's actually that's something else we should
Speaker 2: probably talk about because a lot of people who initially
Speaker 2: apply for the service, they sometimes not a lot, but
Speaker 2: some people think that it's going to be about rescuing animals.
Speaker 2: And I got to tell you, in twenty years of
Speaker 2: doing that job, I rescued, literally rescued an animal less
Speaker 2: than half a dozen times. Because most of the time,
Speaker 2: the animals you're dealing with are they're done right, even
Speaker 2: if they're alive in the trade, they're not going back
Speaker 2: to the wild. And so it's what you're trying to
Speaker 2: do is stop the wildlife crime to protect future animals,
Speaker 2: not the ones you're dealing with right there. So you know,
Speaker 2: if you get upset about seeing dead animals or animals
Speaker 2: mistreated and you can't you can't translate that into Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm in law enforcement moment and do something about this,
Speaker 2: and you're going to be emotionally crushed by that. This
Speaker 2: is not the job for you because it's not about
Speaker 2: rescuing animals, about rescuing species, but not animals.
Speaker 1: What's the case you worked it would help people up
Speaker 1: top here that would help people kind of best understand
Speaker 1: the work you were doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'll give you that example. But let me
Speaker 2: just say that we have agents based all over the
Speaker 2: United States, right, and so where you're based is going
Speaker 2: to dictate pretty much what you're doing.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, for example, our agents here in Montana, you know,
Speaker 2: before wolves were delisted, they worked a lot of wolf
Speaker 2: poaching cases. They still work grizzly bear cases to determine
Speaker 2: whether or not it's self defense or not, or whether
Speaker 2: it's a straight up poaching case. Got agents in the
Speaker 2: Southeast work on different things than agents in the Northwest, right,
Speaker 2: because there's different animals there. There's different species listed under
Speaker 2: the Endangered Species Act, or there's different animals trafficked. So
Speaker 2: the experiences between an agent based in Bozeman and an
Speaker 2: agent based in Los Angeles are huge, got it right?
Speaker 2: And I have never done some of the stuff that
Speaker 2: the agents in Bozeman have done. I've always wanted to,
Speaker 2: but you know, I've never done a grizzly bear poaching
Speaker 2: crime scene because that doesn't happen in Los Angeles. So anyway,
Speaker 2: you know, a typical excuse me, a typical case that
Speaker 2: I might have handled in LA involved trafficking of some wildlife,
Speaker 2: whether alive or dead, for commercial purposes. And so you know,
Speaker 2: early in my career I worked on a lot of
Speaker 2: caviar trafficking cases involving Russians. There's a lot of Russians
Speaker 2: in LA and they all trafficked in caviar, not all
Speaker 2: of them, but you know, the cavyr traffickers were Russians.
Speaker 2: And then you know, I had an insect trafficking case,
Speaker 2: I had endangered fish trafficking case. So it's very variable.
Speaker 1: Is the caviar when you're working a caviar case, is
Speaker 1: it caviar coming in or caviar going out? And does
Speaker 1: caviar coming in mad to you because it's someone else's.
Speaker 2: Problem, Yes, so with and that's that's actually a good
Speaker 2: point because sometimes it's animals going out. And and we
Speaker 2: saw a change in that over the years. When I
Speaker 2: first started in the early two thousands, we were dealing
Speaker 2: with mostly wildlife coming into the United States. So things
Speaker 2: like beluga caviar out of the former Russian republics right
Speaker 2: so poached there, yeah, exactly, and listed under the US
Speaker 2: Endangered Species Act, So it makes it illegal to import export.
Speaker 2: I got, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, so that's how
Speaker 2: we would get involved. And and and the United States
Speaker 2: is kind of unique because we do have the Endangered
Speaker 2: Species Act, which lists animals for protection that don't live here,
Speaker 2: and not all countries are like that. We we have
Speaker 2: taken an interest in helping to preserve the world's you know,
Speaker 2: important wildlife. Tigers, for example, we don't have tigers here
Speaker 2: in the wild, but they're listed as endangered under our law,
Speaker 2: so it's illegal just for someone to kill.
Speaker 3: One or move.
Speaker 1: That's that's never curred me. I had no idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of neat, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've never thought about that before. We list.
Speaker 2: Exactly, well, fish in Russia exactly Yeah. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: the idea is, you know, we want the entire world's
Speaker 2: environment to be there for everyone. When when I worked
Speaker 2: in Africa as an agent, a lot of times Africans
Speaker 2: would would push back on me that Americans are too
Speaker 2: pushy about conservation. And I used to tell them, I'd say,
Speaker 2: to the whole room, I'd say, how many people have
Speaker 2: been to the US. Very few people would raise their hand,
Speaker 2: how many people want to come to the US. Everybody
Speaker 2: raised their hand and they'd say, well, if you come
Speaker 2: to the US, would you like to see bison?
Speaker 3: Would you like to see a bald.
Speaker 2: Eagle in the wild? Would you like to see a bear?
Speaker 2: Everybody raises their hand, right, same thing if I ask
Speaker 2: all you guys, hey, you want to go to Africa
Speaker 2: and see some lions? Yeah, we'd all be on plane tomorrow, right.
Speaker 2: So we want other countries in the world to protect
Speaker 2: their wildlife so that weak Americans can go there and
Speaker 2: spend money to see.
Speaker 3: It, hunt it, whatever.
Speaker 2: But you know, we want them to protect that stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, so we can go, but we're going to
Speaker 2: protect it here in the US so people from other
Speaker 2: countries can come spend money in the US and see it.
Speaker 2: And it's just I think you everybody in this room
Speaker 2: probably appreciates that wildlife has an intrinsic value, right. It's
Speaker 2: just something we enjoy seeing, stalking, trapping, hunting, whatever you do. Right,
Speaker 2: But we want it to stay there. We don't want
Speaker 2: to use it up. We want it to be there.
Speaker 2: So fish and wildlife plays a really important role in
Speaker 2: making sure that the species around the world remain wild
Speaker 2: for us, all.
Speaker 1: Of us, excuse me, all going to call from it.
Speaker 1: Tell me about a roller pigeon, which I had never
Speaker 1: heard of before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a roller pigeon is a it's not in
Speaker 2: wild animals, and domestic pigeon looks just like the pigeon
Speaker 2: you'd see at the Donald's parking lot, really, but they
Speaker 2: come from Birmingham, England originally, and all roller pigeons are
Speaker 2: descending some of the original Birmingham rollers. And what what
Speaker 2: they are really is a bird that's bred to have
Speaker 2: a seizure in flight.
Speaker 1: And I've had a lot of conversations I've had pet pigeons.
Speaker 1: I have never I had never this is totally new
Speaker 1: to me, has synchronized synchronized seizures.
Speaker 5: Well, I know that I've told you my story that
Speaker 5: I shared with you before we started recording before, but
Speaker 5: I know we've had the conversation now on that I
Speaker 5: feel like we had it on the podcast about name
Speaker 5: for him.
Speaker 2: There's there's a different type of pigeon called a tumbler,
Speaker 2: but the tumblr really does its tumbling on the ground,
Speaker 2: which is kind of weird. But no, the ones that
Speaker 2: roll in flight, they're rollers.
Speaker 1: What do you mean they have a seizure.
Speaker 2: So that's The only way I can describe it is
Speaker 2: that while they're flying, if you're watching them, and the
Speaker 2: guys and gals who are involved in a roller pigeon
Speaker 2: hobby would would disagree with me. They would say, we
Speaker 2: train them to do that. They don't train them to
Speaker 2: do that. Okay, there's no way they're training these birds. Now,
Speaker 2: they're breeding them to have this behavior. And if you
Speaker 2: watch them, they'll fly. When a roller pigeon hobbyist or
Speaker 2: you know, competitors flying their birds, they fly in a kit,
Speaker 2: and a kit is about fifteen birds, and they'll basically
Speaker 2: they fly in an orbit above your property. You let
Speaker 2: them out, and you let them out when they're hungry,
Speaker 2: so they fly, but they're not going anywhere, so they're
Speaker 2: kin to come back and get fed. And they fly
Speaker 2: in an orbit together. And usually when they make either
Speaker 2: a right or left hand turn, the lead bird there's
Speaker 2: usually a leader out in the front, will be have
Speaker 2: a seizure. That's the only way to describe it. They
Speaker 2: they whip their heads back, their wings lock up up,
Speaker 2: and they arch their backs and they start to flip backwards.
Speaker 2: And what I notice, what I think is going on,
Speaker 2: is I think that you breed the leader to have
Speaker 2: a seizure on a right or a left hand turn.
Speaker 2: The other birds you breed to have seizures when they
Speaker 2: see the leader have a seizure. And that's how complicated
Speaker 2: it can get. And these guys are very sophisticated about
Speaker 2: how they breed and to win a competition, if all
Speaker 2: of us in this room were in a competition, for
Speaker 2: me to win, my birds need to fly together in
Speaker 2: that kit and they need to roll together as a.
Speaker 3: So it looks like a waterfall. Yeah, it looks like
Speaker 3: a waterfall. It's really cool.
Speaker 2: And the trick, of course is you got to make
Speaker 2: sure they'd recover before they hit the ground because.
Speaker 3: They'll kill themselves.
Speaker 2: And so a lot of a lot of birds die
Speaker 2: because they hit the ground or they hood a building
Speaker 2: before they recover from their little seizure.
Speaker 3: So how long is a normal seizure or the second seconds? Okay,
Speaker 3: that's a few seconds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it looks neat right, It kind of looks
Speaker 2: like a waterfall if they're doing it right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it was. It was I don't know
Speaker 5: how to describe it beautiful really, but it's just weird. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, it's you're like, wow, I didn't know that
Speaker 5: could be a thing.
Speaker 3: That's a thing.
Speaker 2: And then they're graded based on how well they roll,
Speaker 2: and then somebody this thing's a world competition. There's something
Speaker 2: called the World Cup, and if you win the World Cup,
Speaker 2: you can sell your pigeons to other they're good breeders, right,
Speaker 2: because you've got high quality rollers, so you can you
Speaker 2: can then start selling the birds that you breed as
Speaker 2: breeders to other people who want to compete and.
Speaker 3: Have this status.
Speaker 6: How much money is in that, Like, they.
Speaker 2: Don't make any money in the competitions, they make money
Speaker 2: selling their birds. Yeah, so this is a status thing.
Speaker 2: You know. You you want to be the World Cup
Speaker 2: champion as a status deal.
Speaker 1: In the US, what is the roller capital?
Speaker 3: You like the city? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Where is it?
Speaker 2: Big? It's big and all over. It's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: It's big and inner city l A. You know, Mike
Speaker 2: Tyson has roller pigeons.
Speaker 1: He's I knew he was a pigeon fancy roller pigeons.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's into rollers.
Speaker 6: We're gonna go down a.
Speaker 2: Deep rabbit hole, you know, downtown New York City on
Speaker 2: the roofs of houses. You'll see your roller pigeon setups, But.
Speaker 1: When you see it, when I see a pigeon keeper,
Speaker 1: what was that movie with Forrest Whitaker, He had pigeons
Speaker 1: Phil Phil Phil. Come on, dude, it's got the word
Speaker 1: ghost in it.
Speaker 4: Ghost ghost dog, the what's his name?
Speaker 6: Famous from the Crying Game, The Way of the Samurai
Speaker 6: Ghost Dog.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if you see a pigeon fancier, I always
Speaker 1: called him pigeon fancier because I didn't know about this
Speaker 1: whole their aspect to it. Yeah, Are they mostly roller
Speaker 1: people or there are other kinds of pigeon fancier.
Speaker 2: Lots of other kind of pigeons. There's there's homing pigeons. Uh,
Speaker 2: there's you know, these decorative pigeons you see maybe at
Speaker 2: the National Western Stock Show on a Denver that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff.
Speaker 1: So let's get into how roller pigeon enthusiasts have gotten
Speaker 1: in trouble.
Speaker 5: I was gonna say, selling their good rollers is legal, yes, correct, Yeah,
Speaker 5: but what part of rollering pigeon fanciers their activity is not?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Where do you get involved?
Speaker 2: How does a fish and wildlife agent get involved? So,
Speaker 2: as you can imagine, when a pigeon has a seizure
Speaker 2: in mid flight, especially a whole flock of them. Every
Speaker 2: raptor within a mile or two is going to make
Speaker 2: a bee line for that little like that flog Oh
Speaker 2: yeah right, yeah, it's like it's like the deer that's
Speaker 2: got the limp right, it's going to draw all the
Speaker 2: predators right to it. So, yeah, hawks and falcons, particularly
Speaker 2: juveniles like juvenile Cooper hawks, juvenile redtails that are you know,
Speaker 2: learning to hunt anyway, they go right for these totally.
Speaker 2: And yeah, they can come in and take out your
Speaker 2: best birds. And yeah, so these guys get really annoyed
Speaker 2: that the hawks come in and kill their roller pigeons,
Speaker 2: so they start killing hawks. And honestly roller uh homer
Speaker 2: homing pigeon fanatics and and there's big money in homing
Speaker 2: pigeon competitions. They kill hawks too. And in fact, that's
Speaker 2: how I got onto this whole roller pigeon dealer.
Speaker 4: Is what about paragrine falcons because you know they're yeah
Speaker 4: in big urban yeah areas.
Speaker 2: Now same because especially since they hunt on the fly,
Speaker 2: they go after roller pigeons real real, real good. So
Speaker 2: it just it just depends on what hawks are in
Speaker 2: the area. Cooper's hawks are also aerial hunters, so they're
Speaker 2: more common than the paragrine. But yeah, peregrines get involved
Speaker 2: in this as well, and that's how US Fish and
Speaker 2: Wildlife Service agent gets involved because of course, all raptors
Speaker 2: are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 2: You kill a raptor and you're you're violating the mbt A.
Speaker 1: So tell me exactly how this would flow to you. Yeah, So, like,
Speaker 1: what what happens that you become aware of? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what what happened with me is I'm working
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles and I you know, I'm doing my
Speaker 2: job as an agent, so I'm pretty well connected, like
Speaker 2: with the wildlife rehab places and I've got sources around.
Speaker 2: Somebody calls me and says, hey, we got an injured
Speaker 2: cooper sock came into our rehabilitation center and it's got
Speaker 2: a gunshot wound. So that piques my interest because that's illegal.
Speaker 2: And normally this would be a fairly low priority case
Speaker 2: for the Fish and Wildlife Service in LA because we're
Speaker 2: working on wildlife trafficking cases, organized criminal activity ongoing, right.
Speaker 3: Involving a lot of money and wildlife.
Speaker 2: But so happens I had nothing going on that day,
Speaker 2: and I felt like taking getting out of the office,
Speaker 2: so I said, hey, I'll come up and take a look.
Speaker 2: So I drive up to the North LA that's part
Speaker 2: of the LA that's burning right now, and I find
Speaker 2: out when I get there there's another hawk showed up
Speaker 2: in the same guy's front yard dead, another bullet wound.
Speaker 2: So I actually treated it like a crime scene, and
Speaker 2: I which, what had they been shot quite?
Speaker 3: Not quite that bad?
Speaker 4: What had they been shot with like a shotgun or so?
Speaker 2: These were twenty two caliber pellets pump action pellets, which
Speaker 2: interestingly can be traced through ballistics.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they come out of a rifled barrel, so they
Speaker 2: leave they leave marks on those twenty two caliber pellets
Speaker 2: if it's a pump action rifled barrel, which you know
Speaker 2: the good ones are, sure so. But they do use
Speaker 2: shotguns and they'll they also will use If they use
Speaker 2: a shotgun, they like to use subsonic rounds. Some of
Speaker 2: them will put these sound dampeners, these huge long barrels
Speaker 2: on the end of it. That gun was called a
Speaker 2: metro gun. I think did you ever hear of a
Speaker 2: metro gun. It's like an extra barrel. You attached to
Speaker 2: an eight seventy and it's it's about four and a
Speaker 2: half feet long, So you end up with this insanely
Speaker 2: long eight seventy.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it quiets it down.
Speaker 4: They're shooting them perched.
Speaker 3: No, they'll get them on the fly with the shotguns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with the with the pellet guns. They'll do it approached. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they'll wait for him. A lot of times, the predicted
Speaker 2: Cooper socks. They'll come sit right on the pigeon fanciers
Speaker 2: lofts and they'll just walk back and forth, and it's
Speaker 2: easy pickings. So I didn't do the chalk around the
Speaker 2: dead bird. But what I did do was I canvased
Speaker 2: the neighborhood. I went and started knocking on doors and
Speaker 2: just asking questions of neighbors who happened to be home,
Speaker 2: and be a question you'd ask, uh, you know, identify,
Speaker 2: You do the classic federal agent flip of your credentials,
Speaker 2: and you identify yourself. You tell them you're investigating a
Speaker 2: possible wildlife crime in their neighborhood. That gets their interests.
Speaker 2: They want to hear more. And you start telling them
Speaker 2: that you know, you're investigating some hawks being killed, and
Speaker 2: you explain the MBTA, because nobody understands, nobody knows has
Speaker 2: heard about the MBTA explained that it's illegal to kill hawks,
Speaker 2: and then you know, if you got the bad guy's
Speaker 2: house there, you're going to get a certain reaction and
Speaker 2: you're going to know. But most of the time, people
Speaker 2: are very shocked, very concerned that somebody's shooting in their
Speaker 2: neighborhood in LA and they love hawks. They don't want
Speaker 2: to see hawks killed. And inevitably, as happened in that investigation,
Speaker 2: some people started to tell me, oh, yeah, every once
Speaker 2: in a while, I hear these loud pops. I don't
Speaker 2: know where they're coming from. One lady told me she
Speaker 2: found a big bird dead in her yard with big
Speaker 2: yellow feet. I'm like, well that was probably that's probably
Speaker 2: a lot so I knew him in an area, right.
Speaker 2: And finally I get to a house and I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: tell me about your neighbors, right, and she points to
Speaker 2: all the houses around. Well, he's a realtor, he's a
Speaker 2: police officer, whatever. She finally comes to this guy's house.
Speaker 2: She points to this house and says, well, that guy,
Speaker 2: he loves birds, he wouldn't do it.
Speaker 3: I said, what do you mean? He loves birds. Oh,
Speaker 3: he's got lots of pigeons. Okay, I had my suspects
Speaker 3: house now, right.
Speaker 2: So it turns out I go interview that guy and
Speaker 2: his name was Marty, and he was a He was
Speaker 2: a racing pigeon. So this guy actually made big money,
Speaker 2: like ten plus thousand dollars a time on a race
Speaker 2: if he won. Sometimes those races can be like fifty
Speaker 2: grand if you win a Is that like.
Speaker 4: Illegal gambling kind of money or where is it?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 3: Not necessarily. Yeah, it's like a plot sort of a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a pot. So uh.
Speaker 2: He vibed real real bad and asked me if I
Speaker 2: was armed, gave me all the you know, red flag
Speaker 2: creepy things. But in the end I actually got him
Speaker 2: to confess that he did kill hawks, so easy conviction
Speaker 2: on that he confessed, he pled guilty. But the more
Speaker 2: I thought about it, the more it nagged at me that, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of there's a lot of pigeon fanciers
Speaker 2: around the country, and if this guy is motivated to
Speaker 2: kill hawks, probably.
Speaker 3: Some other ones are.
Speaker 2: So I just started digging and I realized it'd be
Speaker 2: really difficult to infiltrate the best way to get these
Speaker 2: guys is to do some type of undercover work. And
Speaker 2: you you characterized me as an undercover agent when you
Speaker 2: never introduced me. We don't talk like that really, But
Speaker 2: I did a lot undercover work during my career, middle
Speaker 2: part of my career in particular a lot, and this
Speaker 2: was one of the big cases I ended up doing.
Speaker 2: And I found that there was these group of roller
Speaker 2: pigeon guys operating in la Is, a fairly large group
Speaker 2: associated with the National Birmingham Roller Club the nbr C,
Speaker 2: and then fact the president of the nbr C lived
Speaker 2: in la So I really just started to ingratiate myself
Speaker 2: with these guys online and ask a lot of questions
Speaker 2: that I wanted to get into it. I got invited, Yeah,
Speaker 2: got invited in to learn about the hobby and get involved.
Speaker 1: How long did it take for you were How long
Speaker 1: did it take for you were introduced to the rafter control?
Speaker 2: Shockingly, it is very quick.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean I got invited to go to some pigeon
Speaker 2: shows that they have where they show off their birds,
Speaker 2: they buy and sell the good breeders, they show equipment,
Speaker 2: and you know, funny enough, I had an undercover persona
Speaker 2: all set up. I'd already been doing undercover work by
Speaker 2: that time, but obviously did not use the name ed Newcomer.
Speaker 2: But I ended up on one of their web pages
Speaker 2: with a photo with me with a bunch of these
Speaker 2: guys who ended up I ended up arresting a year
Speaker 2: and a half later, And on the little caption down below,
Speaker 2: it says, you know, the Inner City Roller Club welcomes
Speaker 2: a newcomer to the group, and.
Speaker 3: We put that up on the bulletin board in the
Speaker 3: office there. It's kind of.
Speaker 1: Nice, but at first you're like, shit, they found out
Speaker 1: exactly yeah, yeah, whenever you see yeah, you see your name,
Speaker 1: and parents like, wait, oh, the context is correct, it's
Speaker 1: not capitalized exactly.
Speaker 2: So but at that very first, you know, Meaty that
Speaker 2: I went to I saw this funny looking cage sitting there,
Speaker 2: and I knew immediately it was a Gosshawk trap because
Speaker 2: I'd already I knew what these things looked like. And
Speaker 2: there's this guy selling a gosshawk trap for one hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: So of course I go up and I'm like, what's
Speaker 2: this cage for? You know, to get into this hobby?
Speaker 2: I don't know, what do you use this for, and yeah,
Speaker 2: he didn't miss a beat. He says, Oh, that's for
Speaker 2: catching hawks, but don't tell anybody because it's illegal.
Speaker 1: M hm.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, you know, could you say that into
Speaker 2: my lapel mic, you know, it would be nice.
Speaker 3: So and that went on. Once that kind of opened
Speaker 3: up it.
Speaker 2: Then once one of the guys on the inside has
Speaker 2: made a statement to me about a hawk trap being
Speaker 2: present on the property and what it's for, it gave
Speaker 2: me an excuse to talk to everybody about, Hey, I
Speaker 2: saw that weird cage.
Speaker 3: What's this deal with hawks?
Speaker 6: Do?
Speaker 3: Is this something I need to be worried about? Where
Speaker 3: I live?
Speaker 2: Floodgates just opened immediately, and yeah, everybody was talking about it.
Speaker 1: I went back.
Speaker 2: My boss actually wasn't too excited about me. That that
Speaker 2: little firecracker of a lawyer that I ended up working
Speaker 2: for down in LA that Dave McMullen told me I
Speaker 2: needed to work with. She wasn't excited about this case.
Speaker 2: She's like, these migratory birds, it's a low priority. We
Speaker 2: need to work on trafficking cases. And I said, no,
Speaker 2: just let me go do one of these meat on
Speaker 2: the weekend. Let's see what happens. I came back and
Speaker 2: showed her that undercover video where everybody was talking about
Speaker 2: killing hawks, and I pointed out to her that, look,
Speaker 2: there's two hundred and fifty people in LA who are
Speaker 2: members of the nbr C, the president's here, there are
Speaker 2: people all over the country that are members of the NBRC.
Speaker 2: And I didn't meet a single person at this meet
Speaker 2: who didn't admit they were killing hawks. And she's like, well, shit,
Speaker 2: we got to work this case then, you know, and
Speaker 2: then we were off and running. It was a year
Speaker 2: and a half. I spent every weekend at a pigeon.
Speaker 5: At that point, like, what's the goala like for me?
Speaker 3: Of them for you?
Speaker 5: Because it seems to me like it'd be eas like
Speaker 5: you got the one guy that confess, but that's not
Speaker 5: really helping the bigger picture exactly, And so how do
Speaker 5: you work that into being like, if we do this,
Speaker 5: it's going to make a difference.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, did you need a dead raptor to tie
Speaker 4: to an individual like over and over and over again.
Speaker 2: Or yes, yes, that's ideal. You know, the quintessential body.
Speaker 2: It's a murder case, right, it's a hawk murder case.
Speaker 2: So you want that body. But you don't necessarily need it,
Speaker 2: because attempt to do these things is also a violation.
Speaker 2: But what you got to get past is their ability
Speaker 2: to create reasonable doubt by saying that that trap is
Speaker 2: used for something else, right, it's used to trap raccoons
Speaker 2: or whatever. So you got if you're going to go
Speaker 2: for the attempt, you got to prove that they know
Speaker 2: that they're trying to catch a hawk. And so you
Speaker 2: got to do that undercover work, get those admissions on tape.
Speaker 2: And so the goal here is with that first case
Speaker 2: I did with the guy, the racer, Marty, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a misdemeanor violation. He didn't get arrested. He basically
Speaker 2: paid a ticket, right, and it was a big fine,
Speaker 2: but it didn't get in the paper. I think he
Speaker 2: paid it's about five grand. I think it was pretty
Speaker 2: good fine.
Speaker 4: And the word never spread.
Speaker 2: The word to his friends maybe, but it doesn't get
Speaker 2: out in bigger community that you know. What happens then,
Speaker 2: is every all his buddies say, well, you idiot, you
Speaker 2: shouldn't have admitted you did it. And too bad Marty
Speaker 2: got caught. I'm not going to get caught, right, So
Speaker 2: what you want is deterrence and you got to deter people,
Speaker 2: and the best way to do that is to catch
Speaker 2: a lot of people. And then catching a lot of
Speaker 2: people catches the attention of the media, and that tends to.
Speaker 3: Get the word out. Public shaming, public shaming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't use those terms, but yeah, that's what
Speaker 2: it is, really and that's effective.
Speaker 3: It's really effective.
Speaker 2: So you know, you know, Abraham Lincoln said something that
Speaker 2: I love, and that is that the law without enforcement
Speaker 2: is simply good advice. And if people don't know you're
Speaker 2: out there enforcing the law and you're catching people, they
Speaker 2: just advice.
Speaker 1: Then what prevents the what prevents the cage guy from
Speaker 1: saying in the end, he said, well, what I didn't
Speaker 1: tell you is I just relocate them, so maybe you
Speaker 1: can get me. Maybe it's like a legal possession. But
Speaker 1: I didn't kill it, right, You don't know that I
Speaker 1: killed it, right. I forgot to say, I'll just move
Speaker 1: them away and let them go. So, yeah, I possessed
Speaker 1: it for a minute, but that was it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some of them did try that. But the
Speaker 2: way the MBTA, the Migratory Bird Charity Act is written,
Speaker 2: is it's illegal to catch them.
Speaker 3: It's not. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: If you want to catch one and relocate it, you
Speaker 2: have to have a permit from the US Fish and
Speaker 2: Wildlife Service. So that didn't necessarily get them out of it,
Speaker 2: but it would have been good jury sympathy, right, But
Speaker 2: there were some some of these guys actually told me.
Speaker 2: I'd ask them, I'd say, well, what do you do
Speaker 2: with it after you catch it in this trap?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: And a lot of them told me don't release them
Speaker 2: because hawks will learn to not go in a gosshawk trap.
Speaker 2: And so if you release a hawk, it's just going
Speaker 2: to set your fellow roller pigeon guys up to have
Speaker 2: a nightmare because they're going to have a hawk preying
Speaker 2: on their pigeons that you can't catch. In the business,
Speaker 2: you know what we call that trap shot? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: well that's true, all right. Animals aren't dumb.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So let's see where were we on this?
Speaker 2: So I get into these clubs and basically presented myself
Speaker 2: as somebody who was interested in getting involved. They did,
Speaker 2: They did kind of check me out a little bit.
Speaker 2: They wanted to know where I lived, and we had
Speaker 2: to have the cover was pretty good on that case
Speaker 2: because these guys were dangerous. Some of these guys lived
Speaker 2: in south central LA, you know right there. I mean
Speaker 2: I was the only white guy at some of these meetings,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them we'd run there anytime I could,
Speaker 2: you know, figure out who they were, we'd run them.
Speaker 2: A lot of them had felony convictions for assaults, gun crimes,
Speaker 2: drug crimes. One guy in the middle of the investigation
Speaker 2: comes up with a warrant for gang rape out of
Speaker 2: LA County.
Speaker 4: And that's what I was going to ask you earlier.
Speaker 4: Like we've had game wardens on that have told us,
Speaker 4: like poaching cases will often lead to like larger other
Speaker 4: you know, criminal activity.
Speaker 3: Did you absolutely into that a lot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, especially when you've got more organized, you know,
Speaker 2: criminal activity going on. If you're talking about somebody who
Speaker 2: has two or three extra trout or you know whatever,
Speaker 2: kills a buck when they shouldn't have whatever, that's that's
Speaker 2: kind of a one off. But if you've got somebody
Speaker 2: in systemically and systematically involved in committing crimes, you know,
Speaker 2: there's there's a couple of things that people will kill
Speaker 2: you for or hurt you for.
Speaker 3: Three things.
Speaker 2: I always say, one is to protect their liberty and
Speaker 2: the other is to protect their money right, and to
Speaker 2: prepare their house. And when you are when they are
Speaker 2: involved in an ongoing criminal activity, you're gonna as a
Speaker 2: law enforcement officer, you're endangering all three of those things
Speaker 2: for them. You're going to take their money, potentially their
Speaker 2: revenue source. You're probably going to do a search warrant
Speaker 2: on their house, and they definitely think they're liberty is
Speaker 2: at stake, and those are the things that make people
Speaker 2: really dangerous. Yeah, so yeah, so we didn't take any
Speaker 2: chance is with these guys. In fact, every time, every
Speaker 2: time I'd come in on a Monday morning after meeting
Speaker 2: with them, my boss would kind of shake her head
Speaker 2: and say, this is too dangerous. We need we need
Speaker 2: to take this down. I'm like, no, no, we got
Speaker 2: to go farther. We got to catch more of these guys.
Speaker 3: We need more.
Speaker 2: And then a really crazy thing happened. I happened to
Speaker 2: be up in Oregon for a firearms qualification and defensive
Speaker 2: tactics training because at the time, Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho
Speaker 2: were all part of the same region. So we'd get
Speaker 2: together as agents for training and stuff. And I'm up
Speaker 2: there and I'm literally wrestling around on the ground with
Speaker 2: an agent named Dirk Hoy who was based up in Portland,
Speaker 2: and we're, you know, we're resting in between doing some
Speaker 2: ground fighting and I'm like, what are you working on, Dirk?
Speaker 2: And he goes, oh, I got the weirdest case.
Speaker 3: I'm working on.
Speaker 2: This case involving these pigeons that flip backwards.
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2: I mean literally, here I am in the prone position
Speaker 2: with Dirk between my legs and he's telling me this,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I'm doing the same thing. And from
Speaker 2: that moment forward and I started to collaborate, and we
Speaker 2: realized he was investigating members of the National Birmingham Roller
Speaker 2: Club up in Oregon and Washington and Idaho and Montana.
Speaker 2: And here I was with the investigating the guys in
Speaker 2: southern California, the same thing, same exact thing. They were doing,
Speaker 2: exactly the same network. And because it was getting around
Speaker 2: among the club, here's the best way to kill hawks,
Speaker 2: these guys were sending each other schematics on how to
Speaker 2: build traps. They were talking about the best way to shoot,
Speaker 2: how to poison, how to drown. I mean, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: they were given each other. Once we really got into it,
Speaker 2: the culpability here was just.
Speaker 1: Through the roof. You know, if you would have embedded
Speaker 1: yourself with cottontail rabbit hunters in the.
Speaker 3: Sixties would have made some good cases.
Speaker 1: No, sixties would have.
Speaker 3: Been too early, right, Well MBTA was around then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd had a very similar experience, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's true with uh so people who
Speaker 2: who raise pheasants, you know for hunting clubs, they'll do
Speaker 2: it too because hawkshall, hawxhall hit the pheasants.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's a temptation.
Speaker 5: Sure, there's some chicken chicken people to have hobby farms
Speaker 5: with chickens totally. I mean they're a threat to our chickens, totally.
Speaker 5: My wife's not into that, but she's you know, she
Speaker 5: doesn't like when a hawks flying above.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know who are some of the worst
Speaker 2: offenders are guys who are involved in cock fighting because
Speaker 2: they're killing predators.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, can't hold his own.
Speaker 2: Again, Nope, because they don't have their little you know
Speaker 2: that little.
Speaker 3: Lad.
Speaker 2: So you know, then you got a double whammy because
Speaker 2: that's a state violation to be involved in cockfighting, and
Speaker 2: then you've got them killing hawks.
Speaker 3: But that's a hard case to make.
Speaker 1: So when you tell me how this like like how
Speaker 1: does this wrap up? Like how do you how do
Speaker 1: you bring it to a clothes.
Speaker 2: Well, the cool thing was Dirk and I agreed immediately
Speaker 2: what the strategy was. You know, we got to get
Speaker 2: as many people as possible. He was having peregrines get
Speaker 2: killed up in Portland, so it's a little little higher priority.
Speaker 2: So what we decided was, yeah, there's too many people
Speaker 2: to get all of them. So what we did is
Speaker 2: we focused on club leaders, people who were who were
Speaker 2: you know, setting the example, anybody who was a president
Speaker 2: of a local club. We targeted the president of the
Speaker 2: National Birmingham Roller Club, who is one of the worst
Speaker 2: killers of them all. And we decided, all right, once
Speaker 2: we have good evidence on all this, this t our
Speaker 2: target group.
Speaker 3: Each of us have a target group.
Speaker 2: We'll do our takedowns at exactly the same time, will
Speaker 2: coordinate everything, we'll do our search warrants, we're going to
Speaker 2: arrest everybody, and we'll do it all on the same day,
Speaker 2: and then the word doesn't get out, evidence doesn't disappear,
Speaker 2: and then we can try to get the media's attention
Speaker 2: to in order to deter people. Neither Dirk or I
Speaker 2: were interested in having our names in the paper. We
Speaker 2: wanted we wanted the roller pigeon community to know that
Speaker 2: they had been infiltrated and that everything they had said
Speaker 2: and done had been recorded, and that they were going
Speaker 2: to look real bad, so they needed to clean up
Speaker 2: their act.
Speaker 3: So that's how I played out.
Speaker 2: About fourteen months after I started, we did our takedown.
Speaker 2: We even Dirk even there was a Montana game Morden
Speaker 2: that got implicated in the whole damn thing, which was
Speaker 2: very depressing for both Dirk and I. But also we
Speaker 2: really wanted to get that person because you know, that's
Speaker 2: a bad image to have sure wildlife law enforcement officer involved.
Speaker 2: He didn't end up getting charged because Dirk couldn't prove
Speaker 2: that he actually killed a hawk, but we had an
Speaker 2: agent here. I think it was Bozeman, might have been Missouli,
Speaker 2: I can't remember, but we had one of our agents
Speaker 2: here go interview him. The minute the agent came in
Speaker 2: and rolled the gold and said, Hey, I'm here to
Speaker 2: talk to you about hawks, the guy said, he literally
Speaker 2: said I want my union rep. And the very next
Speaker 2: day he retired. Oh yeah, so that's pretty damning right there,
Speaker 2: right But He didn't end up getting charged because Dirk
Speaker 2: just couldn't couldn't prove that he'd actually killed a hawk,
Speaker 2: but it was just obvious he was involved. In fact,
Speaker 2: one of the guys I arrested in LA we had
Speaker 2: him in handcuffs in the back the car and the
Speaker 2: first thing he said was do you know? And he
Speaker 2: named the Montana State game Morton, Yeah, hoping that, hoping
Speaker 2: that would get him out of it. And let me
Speaker 2: just say the Montana It's Montana game and fish right,
Speaker 2: isn't it?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: They've changed their name since I okay, it's like I
Speaker 2: can never remember.
Speaker 1: It's been an f w P for long.
Speaker 3: I can a few years. Colorado changes. It always confuses me.
Speaker 2: So I can never remember. But to their credit, they
Speaker 2: were awesome. They were not interested in having an officer
Speaker 2: in their ranks who had, you know, violated the law.
Speaker 2: So they were very cooperative and they were very.
Speaker 3: Glad to see him go. So you know, that's that's
Speaker 3: good news.
Speaker 1: How many rest did you guys make?
Speaker 2: I ended up arresting seven people in l A. I
Speaker 2: can't remember how many dirt got up here in Oregon
Speaker 2: in Washington, but it was a it was a good
Speaker 2: case and made a lot of made a lot of attention.
Speaker 2: And the the thing I really really was proud of
Speaker 2: is that it empowered the people in the roller pigeon
Speaker 2: community who were opposed to hawk killing, who often had
Speaker 2: been kind of shouted down and bullied.
Speaker 3: It gave them a voice to come out and say,
Speaker 3: you know, we told you guys, you know we got
Speaker 3: to stop this, and it was good.
Speaker 2: And the best part is even today, if you go
Speaker 2: on the roller pigeon chat rooms and email groups or whatever,
Speaker 2: you'll see somebody's like, well, I'm pretty sure there was
Speaker 2: an undercover agent at.
Speaker 3: That last fly. Yeah, and there very well could have been.
Speaker 2: But that's the ideal situation, right You always want them
Speaker 2: looking over their shoulder, like, oh crap, those I used.
Speaker 2: I arrested this guy early in my career who was
Speaker 2: Japanese national, and he used to refer to us as
Speaker 2: the fish and wild guys, and I always because he
Speaker 2: couldn't for some reason, he couldn't pronounce fish and wildlife.
Speaker 3: So they say, oh, those fish and wild guys, they're
Speaker 3: always out there.
Speaker 2: And I just want people to know that that, you know,
Speaker 2: if you if you end up committing a federal wildlife
Speaker 2: law and a fish and wildlife agent gets on you,
Speaker 2: you're cooked. I mean, every agent I know is so
Speaker 2: tenacious and so committed to their job.
Speaker 6: It is.
Speaker 3: It is true.
Speaker 2: It's what they say about federal agents. Once they're on
Speaker 2: you and they have evidence that you did something, they're
Speaker 2: not giving up.
Speaker 3: They'll get you. It's just a matter of time.
Speaker 1: How do you create the distinction between when does someone
Speaker 1: violating a state's law become federal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: If it because it does, if it becomes a lazy act,
Speaker 1: does that involve you, then yes, a lazy act.
Speaker 3: Violation, Yes it can.
Speaker 2: So the best way to explain that is the if
Speaker 2: you think about the FBI's relationship to say, to the
Speaker 2: Montana Bozeman Police, Right, if a car gets stolen here
Speaker 2: in town, that's a state issue, Right, local police are
Speaker 2: going to handle that. If that car crosses the state
Speaker 2: line into Wyoming, now that's a federal offense. The FBI
Speaker 2: can get involved. And the reason for that is the
Speaker 2: jurisdiction of the Montana law enforcement ends at the border,
Speaker 2: so it becomes difficult for them to conduct investigations outside
Speaker 2: the state. For the Feds that's not an issue. I
Speaker 2: never cared about a state line. That never never crossed
Speaker 2: my mind. Right, So if I you know, if something
Speaker 2: crosses state lines, it often triggers a federal law that
Speaker 2: makes that a federal offense, allowing the FBI, Orficial Wildlife
Speaker 2: or Secret Service or whomever to get involved. And a
Speaker 2: lot of times it's done at the request of the state.
Speaker 2: So we in LA often got calls from Montana, Colorado,
Speaker 2: Wyoming from game wardens that said, hey, you know this
Speaker 2: LA guy came in and killed a big elk out
Speaker 2: here illegally, and can you help.
Speaker 3: Yeah, heck, yeah we can.
Speaker 2: If he killed an elk illegally in Montana and he
Speaker 2: drove the meat, any part of it, antler meat, hide, whatever,
Speaker 2: back to LA, that's a Lacy Act violation, which makes
Speaker 2: it a federal effection.
Speaker 1: And you can assist in the investigations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we bring the resources of the federal government
Speaker 2: to help the state. That's really what the Laciac's all about,
Speaker 2: even though it you know, it's not like we're stealing
Speaker 2: the case from the state. A lot of times, what
Speaker 2: I would do as an age, that's how it happens.
Speaker 3: In the movies.
Speaker 1: And taking one over Perkins.
Speaker 2: And that makes my skin crawl. That makes my skin crawl,
Speaker 2: because it's really not the way it works out in
Speaker 2: the field. Honestly, what I would normally do if I
Speaker 2: had that situation is I would get with the Montana
Speaker 2: warden and I'd say, all right, we got him on
Speaker 2: the Lacey. What do you need, here's my report, here's
Speaker 2: all the evidence. What do you need to make your
Speaker 2: state case? And then we together we would say who's
Speaker 2: going to get the best punch out of this? Right,
Speaker 2: who's going to get the best penalty? And sometimes it's
Speaker 2: the state, sometimes the state. In many cases the states
Speaker 2: are have much harsher penalties for wildlife crimes than the
Speaker 2: Feds do.
Speaker 5: Well, it's interesting to hear you say that, because we
Speaker 5: often cover this sort of stuff and like it never
Speaker 5: fails nine out of ten times. At the end of
Speaker 5: the discussion, we go some beachulin got three hundred dollars
Speaker 5: and losses license for like a year. R Like that's
Speaker 5: barely a slap on the wrist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, are you guys automatically taking over if it's federally
Speaker 4: managed like waterfowl for instance.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, it we can, right if it's a federally
Speaker 2: managed animal, we can take take it over, as you say,
Speaker 2: but especially with waterfowl, we generally, even though we have
Speaker 2: primary jurisdiction over waterfowl, all migratory birds dove doves too,
Speaker 2: we don't, you know, bust in on that, because the
Speaker 2: US Fish and Wilife Service we're all special agents. We're
Speaker 2: playing clothes investigators. We don't have a patrol function, right,
Speaker 2: you know, I drive a unmarked car. I don't have
Speaker 2: a dispatcher telling me where to go. So uniformed game
Speaker 2: wardens are ideally suited to enforce waterfowl hunting, dove hunting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was you're talking about just like someone going
Speaker 4: over the limit or but if it's like a large.
Speaker 3: Scale thing, Yeah, again we would.
Speaker 2: If a state's got an investigation going, we would join
Speaker 2: them versus taking it over on them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, we don't do that, did you not cool?
Speaker 1: Did you ever work any cases that involved people in
Speaker 1: the restaurant trade serving poached wildlife or serving illegally captured
Speaker 1: wildlife that was making its way into the restaurant trade.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't in particular, but there are some cases
Speaker 2: that that that's come up, even in LA a lot
Speaker 2: of the Asian restaurants will serve wildlife that's taken turtles
Speaker 2: in particular, reptiles, sometimes fish. So we, yeah, we got
Speaker 2: involved in some of that. But you know that reminds
Speaker 2: me I told you earlier that you know, early in
Speaker 2: my career what we dealt with was a lot of
Speaker 2: wildlife coming into the United States right about halfway through,
Speaker 2: maybe around two thousand. Between two thousand and five and
Speaker 2: twenty ten, we started to see more and more native
Speaker 2: wildlife leaving the United States, and that as China and
Speaker 2: Vietnam became richer emerging economies. You had all these people
Speaker 2: there who had money to spend, and so they started
Speaker 2: to spend it on exotic stuff and wanting it a live,
Speaker 2: alive and dead both yeah, for the food trade and
Speaker 2: for the pet trade. So we started to see a
Speaker 2: lot of native animals leaving the United States, in particular reptiles.
Speaker 2: The turtle population in the southeastern United States has been
Speaker 2: absolutely decimated by the demand for turtle meat and pets
Speaker 2: in China and Vietnam, and it's become a big part
Speaker 2: of what the US Fishing and Wilife Service does is
Speaker 2: combating the trafficking of animals that are native to the US,
Speaker 2: or at least North America.
Speaker 4: Are black bear gallbladders, still think, because that's something like
Speaker 4: as a hunter, we always like you always always heard
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you know you used to not be able
Speaker 1: to in some states, maybe all states, you could possess
Speaker 1: You couldn't possess even a bear's goalbler, right, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you were. They changed it to be that you're allowed
Speaker 1: to have like one or something, but it would be
Speaker 1: that you like, you couldn't remove it from the field.
Speaker 2: Of even to your own I did know that, okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and even now it's not legal to sell it, right,
Speaker 2: you could, you could.
Speaker 1: Keep it, but I think I think some I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's even state or federal, but
Speaker 1: I remember reading somewhere that was like if if if
Speaker 1: you legally harvest a bear and you legally tag your bear,
Speaker 1: you are allowed to for whatever there there's no prohibition
Speaker 1: on you having it, right, you can't sell it. But
Speaker 1: at a time it was you couldn't have it, you know, ossession.
Speaker 1: So ostensibly, if you had a whole, ungutted bear in
Speaker 1: your possession in a truck, you were like technically in
Speaker 1: possession of a gallblad exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, it's kind of like having a loaded firearm. Right,
Speaker 2: It's like you're dead if you find out the game
Speaker 2: war's going to get you for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it was like a per se violation.
Speaker 1: So how does stuff something like that, or take like
Speaker 1: spotted cats, I don't know whatever jaguar hides gallbladder whatever
Speaker 1: the hell you know about? How does it flow from?
Speaker 1: You know, people that are in the you know, in
Speaker 1: some rural area. You got some kid who's collecting turtles, right, Like,
Speaker 1: how does it flow and eventually wind up on a
Speaker 1: container ship? You know what I mean? Like like who's
Speaker 1: the sort of who winds up being the kingpin or
Speaker 1: the the sort of export agent on domestic wildlife? Like
Speaker 1: what does it bottleneck through?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it varies, of course, depending on the wildlife
Speaker 2: and who's interested in buying it. Right, So let me
Speaker 2: give you a classic example of this absolutely phenomenal case
Speaker 2: that our agents did on the East Coast. It was
Speaker 2: called Operation Broken Glass Oh Elvers, Yes, yeah, good for you, Yeah,
Speaker 2: glass Eels. Right, that was an example where you know,
Speaker 2: for years, decades, generations even maybe there's been a glass
Speaker 2: eel fishery on the East Coast, and it's isn't it.
Speaker 4: There's only a couple states where it's legal to harvest them,
Speaker 4: like Maine and somewhere else, I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm not familiar with.
Speaker 1: So there's a limited legal harvest just for listener's sake.
Speaker 6: What like.
Speaker 1: If you go to a sushi restaurant and you get unagi,
Speaker 1: okay of like smoked eel, that eel they're raising and
Speaker 1: finishing those eels in Asia.
Speaker 4: They're sending the juveniles zone, but.
Speaker 1: They can't propagate them. Yeah, so basically they're buying us
Speaker 1: bay like baby eels or glass eels or elvers. They're
Speaker 1: buying the babies in order to raise them and make
Speaker 1: a processed food item exactly. But it's so complicated to
Speaker 1: propagate them because they propagate out in the middle of
Speaker 1: the like yeah, like off the off of Bahamas, off yeah,
Speaker 1: off of Bermuda and sargas Le.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 1: So and there's some legal trade, but it's augmented greatly
Speaker 1: with illegal harvest, correct hugely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like salmon, right, they go from freshwater saltwater,
Speaker 2: and but yeah, and glass eel just for your listeners,
Speaker 2: you know the reason it's called glass eel because it's
Speaker 2: they're almost see through that I think when they're young,
Speaker 2: they're just these little slippery things. So anyway, there it's
Speaker 2: been a there's been a legal harvest of those allowed.
Speaker 2: But what happened was this increased demand, as you described
Speaker 2: in Asia for the eels that are used in sushi restaurants.
Speaker 2: What happened was it's the local guys who are skilled
Speaker 2: at catching, you know, elvers, And what happens is these
Speaker 2: Chinese guys were showing up in those communities and they
Speaker 2: were going out to the different fish shops asking to
Speaker 2: buy eels and offering absurdly high prices for local fish shops.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're we're in the process of writing a book
Speaker 4: right now and I did some we're doing a thing
Speaker 4: about that cool and it was something like two thousand
Speaker 4: dollars a pound.
Speaker 3: Yeah for elvers. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 6: Cucumbers I think, Yeah, well, you.
Speaker 2: Know, c cucumbers is another good example we could talk about.
Speaker 2: But basically basically the you know didn't answer to your question.
Speaker 2: What happens is uh the word Yeah, somebody from the
Speaker 2: from the end consumer seller shows up in that community
Speaker 2: and offers that high price and then corrupts the local
Speaker 2: guys who know how to do it. And that's true
Speaker 2: around the world. That's how it works with rhino horn
Speaker 2: in Africa, That's how it works with c cucumbers in Mexico.
Speaker 2: It's always the end consumer seller. And I don't want
Speaker 2: to just say Chinese because I don't want to, you know,
Speaker 2: disparage Chinese. But right now, China is a huge consumer
Speaker 2: of wildlife, so we'll use China as the example. Somebody
Speaker 2: from China shows up, the speaks English and starts offering
Speaker 2: a lot of money for whatever they're after, and it
Speaker 2: just snowballs and gets out of control and the local
Speaker 2: people are corrupted.
Speaker 3: Uh this this guy.
Speaker 2: There's kind of various levels of kingpins. You might have
Speaker 2: the local East Coast guy who's the kingpin organizing five
Speaker 2: fishermen who are then giving him all the elvers. He
Speaker 2: sells them to the Chinese guy who's kind of a kingpin,
Speaker 2: but he's moving it on to the next guy, and
Speaker 2: eventually it gets on that container and it ends up
Speaker 2: over in China.
Speaker 1: But it's on a container with air raiders and sophisticated
Speaker 1: I It's like, it's not like you're you know, it's
Speaker 1: not like you're sending batteries. Are you guys to keep
Speaker 1: them alive?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, that's hard.
Speaker 4: Are you guys involved with a lot of like inspections
Speaker 4: in port cities, like going on to ships and or
Speaker 4: do you have to have a reason to go look
Speaker 4: for stuff?
Speaker 2: No, Fish and Wildlife agents and inspectors. We have a
Speaker 2: uniformed division called the Inspection Division, and those those are
Speaker 2: basically customs officers. Their authority is at the ports of entry.
Speaker 2: They look and act just like customs officers. They just
Speaker 2: wear a brown uniform. But we have full customs authority.
Speaker 2: And sometimes even the US Customs doesn't remember that Fish
Speaker 2: and Wildlife Service has full customs authority. So when I
Speaker 2: was an agent, I could show up at the airport
Speaker 2: and I could crack open any package I wanted. I
Speaker 2: could search any passenger I wanted. I could go through
Speaker 2: their luggage because the Lasiact gives US customs authority.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go back to the elvers thing for a minute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you are working a case like that, do you
Speaker 1: have sympathy on the locals who you use the word
Speaker 1: like corrupted? Is there ever an element of entrapment's not
Speaker 1: the right word. But like if you're going to someone
Speaker 1: you know who's hard on their you know, hard up,
Speaker 1: and you make this offer to them, you know, two
Speaker 1: thousand what is two thousand bucks a pound? Right? Is
Speaker 1: that guy of interest to you? Are you mostly interested
Speaker 1: in the person who is recruiting or would you naturally
Speaker 1: try to work that case to who is exporting?
Speaker 2: I think every fish and while er special agent who
Speaker 2: knew what they were doing would focus more on the drivers. Right,
Speaker 2: So they're going to try to get up as high
Speaker 2: in this chain of bad guys as you can. But
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean you ignore the other bad guys, right.
Speaker 2: I always you know there's this obsession sometimes with only
Speaker 2: getting the kingpin. Well, i'll tell you what. It can
Speaker 2: take years to get a kingpin, and while you're working
Speaker 2: on it, a lot of crimes occurring, right, And so
Speaker 2: there's absolutely no excuse for not getting the lower level
Speaker 2: people too, in part because they can often become great informants.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You catch those people at the lower level, they don't
Speaker 2: want to go to jail, and they want to minimize
Speaker 2: their penalty. They'll often cooperate in exchange for a lower sentence.
Speaker 2: So you focus on the whole picture, right, But of course,
Speaker 2: if you were to only catch the local guys who
Speaker 2: are fishing for the elvers, you're not doing your job
Speaker 2: because the bad guys are that are buying them are
Speaker 2: just going to find other people to do it. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: you want to focus as high as you can because
Speaker 2: you want to kill it. You want to kill the
Speaker 2: trade or you want to kill the illegal trade. That's
Speaker 2: the goal, and you're not going to do that by
Speaker 2: focusing on just the kingpin or just the catchers.
Speaker 3: You got to get them all. Yeah, yeah, as many
Speaker 3: as you can.
Speaker 1: Anyway, did your work a case? I think Krim was saying,
Speaker 1: did you work a butterfly case?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the first kind of case I did
Speaker 2: that was kind of bigger on my own, and it's
Speaker 2: just coincidence that I got assigned to it. But there
Speaker 2: was this Japanese national named Yoshi ko Jima who was
Speaker 2: kind of notorious for trafficking in endangered butterflies for what purpose?
Speaker 1: Decoration decorations?
Speaker 5: Why everybody left the whole the drama of you know,
Speaker 5: you're just writing the script in your head.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm just picturing every episode of this like New Undercover.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just it's.
Speaker 4: Butterfly Collectors, actually the head of the triad.
Speaker 6: It's not, it's not it's not about drugs. It's about
Speaker 6: all this other stuff and the weird, you know, interesting
Speaker 6: kind of interests of decoration or food or whatever.
Speaker 1: I haven't really watched any serial shows since Dukes of Hazards.
Speaker 1: But the way it works in Dukes of Hazard is
Speaker 1: every episode, a new bad guy comes to town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like right, so every episode is like a
Speaker 1: new critter. There was always tension, always tension between Roscoe Peak,
Speaker 1: Old Train and uh, who is the Kleatus? Right? And
Speaker 1: then you know Bowl and Luke and who drove the
Speaker 1: toe truck cooter where boss Hog fall in. He's always
Speaker 1: there's always there and boss Hog every episode and new
Speaker 1: new bad guys use your pair of bad guys comes
Speaker 1: into town and they like aligned with Boss Hog, often
Speaker 1: double crossing him. They're vanquished in the end by bowling
Speaker 1: Luke something. You will get blown up by dynamite on
Speaker 1: an arrow and then like a week later, like a
Speaker 1: new bad guy emerges. And for this show, like every
Speaker 1: episode is I hate to the butterfly episode.
Speaker 3: I hate to tell you this, but Cooter was probably
Speaker 3: a bad elver poacher. I'm pretty sure he was either
Speaker 3: that or hawks. He was killing hawks one and the other.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he was.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Bowl and Luke were convicted moonshiners. There
Speaker 2: you go, so they were they were troublemakers. Anyways, one
Speaker 2: crime leads to another. Yeah, probably poachers too.
Speaker 1: So uh, off that subject and off subject. How good
Speaker 1: of a TV show? This is going to wind up
Speaker 1: in butterfly decorations. Yeah, they're they're displayed what in the
Speaker 1: glass case?
Speaker 3: Sometimes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of You'll see them a lot in
Speaker 2: frames on people's walls. Start paying attention. Even in TV shows,
Speaker 2: you'll see them in the background in frames on walls
Speaker 2: with their wings.
Speaker 6: Spread like needle.
Speaker 1: You ever watching the show and be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to have that one.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I haven't seen that. I haven't seen that.
Speaker 3: There's there's tons that are.
Speaker 1: Legal, right, mistake, Well the monarch might get listed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, exactly. And a lot of times butterflies that
Speaker 2: are not a problem here or not. When I say problem,
Speaker 2: I mean they're not valuable, they're not traded, are super
Speaker 2: valuable in other countries.
Speaker 4: Does it because there's like species that are classified as
Speaker 4: endangered here and then there's like the International Union or
Speaker 4: something or other. Yeah, you see end So like the
Speaker 4: eels are listed by I think that, I see you.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you brought this up.
Speaker 4: And then they're not here.
Speaker 1: Because International Union of the i U c N.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I forget what the C stands for it, but
Speaker 2: it's concert anyway. So but I so in terms of
Speaker 2: the law and law enforcement and crimes, the i U
Speaker 2: c N means nothing.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, the International Union, we think the exactly And.
Speaker 2: It's not to say that their science isn't legit and
Speaker 2: that it should be. But from a special agent's perspective,
Speaker 2: we care about two things. One is is it listed
Speaker 2: as endangered or threatened under the US Endangered Species Act,
Speaker 2: because that's the only that's the law that has criminal penalties.
Speaker 2: The second thing we care about is whether or not
Speaker 2: it is listed under either Appendix one or two of
Speaker 2: the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species.
Speaker 3: That's SITIS.
Speaker 2: And the reason we care about that is because SITIS
Speaker 2: is it is incorporated into the e s A. So
Speaker 2: the Endangered Species Act allows us to enforce the site's provisions,
Speaker 2: so it becomes a violation of the Endangered Species Act
Speaker 2: to import or export an animal in violation ast siiteise.
Speaker 2: So sites and the EESA are what special agents are
Speaker 2: looking at. And a lot of butterflies. There are a
Speaker 2: number of butterflies listed as endangered under the US Endangered
Speaker 2: Species Act, so obviously we.
Speaker 3: Care about that.
Speaker 2: But then there's a whole ton of butterflies that are
Speaker 2: listed is either Appendix one or two under SITESE, and
Speaker 2: so we also care about that.
Speaker 1: So you can be yeah, you can, you can be
Speaker 1: on site these but not be endangered.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: For instance, bobcats, IUCN has them as a species of
Speaker 1: Least Concern there in some states they are a non
Speaker 1: game animal and some states they're listed as a fur bear.
Speaker 1: But they still are site these right right because they
Speaker 1: resemble Yes, I guess the logic of it, which probably
Speaker 1: doesn't matter to you guys, but the logic of it
Speaker 1: is it's a spotted cat, right And so in trying
Speaker 1: to track all these endangered spotted cats around the world,
Speaker 1: you need to pay attention to bobcats so that you
Speaker 1: don't don't have spotted cats that aren't bobcats moving as Bobcats, right,
Speaker 1: or so I could be screwing that up, but something like.
Speaker 3: That, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And with siteismember, it's an international agreement.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So say, if Canada wants to put Bobcats on as
Speaker 2: sitey's Appendix two, and they get enough support among the
Speaker 2: site's membership and it's voted, that's Bobcats become a sights too.
Speaker 2: The US is obligated to enforce.
Speaker 3: That law, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So even though we wouldn't have put them on site's,
Speaker 2: if Canada wants to or Mexico wants to put them
Speaker 2: on and they get the votes, then we're obligated to
Speaker 2: enforce that, and.
Speaker 1: That becomes your responsibility in the field exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're always looking anytime anytime we realize an
Speaker 2: animal involved in something as a site's animal or listed
Speaker 2: as threatened or endangered at peaks our interest because there's
Speaker 2: probably some illegal activity afoot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to I want you to tell the
Speaker 1: full butterfly story, but I want to tell you for sure. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: how much have you like to share? A funny anecdote
Speaker 1: is one years ago we were in doing some work
Speaker 1: in Guyana and had these two ri river turtles and
Speaker 1: they have their native words for him. But I remember
Speaker 1: they would there's one turtle that even the tribe we
Speaker 1: were with, and explaining the turtle, they would be like,
Speaker 1: there's the meat turtle and there's the Sitis turtle. And
Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out to be days to figure out
Speaker 1: what they were saying. I'm like, oh my god, he's
Speaker 1: talking about the Sitis tree. Because they used to traffic
Speaker 1: in those turtles, you know, they would sell those turtles,
Speaker 1: and they knew him, like, you know, the damn Sitis turtle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the one you touch, the one you don't touch. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In most countries don't have anything like the Endangered Species Act,
Speaker 2: so they they rely only on what's listed in SITIS.
Speaker 2: Great Britain, for example, you know, they have their own
Speaker 2: Wildlife Act, but when it comes to the International Species there,
Speaker 2: they're only enforcing Sitis you know. So yeah, but if butterflies.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this I was a pretty new agent, and we
Speaker 2: got a tip that this guy, Yoshiko Jimo is coming
Speaker 2: to the International Bug Fair at the LA Museum of
Speaker 2: Natural History, which go ahead and laugh, but there is
Speaker 2: such a thing as the Bug Pare. It's actually the
Speaker 2: largest event that the Museum of Natural History hosts every
Speaker 2: year in LA. They get about ten thousand visitors a day,
Speaker 2: and it's everything. It's kids running around who are interested
Speaker 2: in scorpions, and then there are these serious collectors that
Speaker 2: go and they sell high end butterflies to each other basically,
Speaker 2: but some of these things, you know, the most endangered
Speaker 2: bird wing butterfly could go for ten thousand dollars for
Speaker 2: a male female pair. Easy alive, no dead, Yeah, they're
Speaker 2: not really valuable alive. People want them displayed, pinned in
Speaker 2: a frame or in a display box. So again, it's
Speaker 2: a status thing. A friend of mine describes it as
Speaker 2: kind of like the obsessive baseball card collector, like somebody
Speaker 2: who would spend ten thousand dollars for obscure baseball player
Speaker 2: art or.
Speaker 3: Something, yeah, or art. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I have another friend who talks about it like it's
Speaker 2: you know, if you if you steal a van, go,
Speaker 2: what do you do with it? You know, let's you know,
Speaker 2: where do you display your stole?
Speaker 1: Saying your buddies see that?
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, he always buddies. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He described it as you have a secret room in
Speaker 2: your house with a secret door and when certain people
Speaker 2: come over, you open the door and you're like, my
Speaker 2: van go right, I mean, what's the point. But that's
Speaker 2: that's kind of the driver for these things. And they're beautiful,
Speaker 2: they're they're cool. But anyway, Yoshi Kojima was had already
Speaker 2: been on our radar screen. This agent named John Mendoza
Speaker 2: in California had tracked him for years and believed he
Speaker 2: was going into Death Valley National Park and the Grand
Speaker 2: Canyon National Park and poaching butterflies and then selling them
Speaker 2: overseas himself himself. Yeah, so John had been doing a
Speaker 2: lot of surveillance trying to catch Kojima in the act.
Speaker 2: But as you can imagine, doing surveillance in Death Valley
Speaker 2: or just not easy because you're gonna get seen, right,
Speaker 2: And eventually, to John's chagrin, you know, justified chagrin, he
Speaker 2: was ordered by his commands chain of command to close
Speaker 2: the investigation. And I loved it when I picked up
Speaker 2: the Kojimaccase, first thing I did is I looked up
Speaker 2: John's old reports, and his closing line on that last
Speaker 2: report was awesome. You know, It's just like, you know,
Speaker 2: he just dimed out his supervisor. He's like my supervisor
Speaker 2: ordered me to close this case. Closed, just pretty sharp
Speaker 2: for what reason.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I didn't think it was a good enough priority. Didn't
Speaker 2: think it was going to succeed whatever. Okay, you know,
Speaker 2: twenty years ago and farther there, there were still some
Speaker 2: agents around who didn't really understand why it was important
Speaker 2: to work on international trafficking cases. Didn't think it was important.
Speaker 2: Disagreed that it was important. So, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: know if that was the case there. Sure, it just happened.
Speaker 2: So the story was Kojima is coming into LA. We
Speaker 2: had an informant who we were working with, and we
Speaker 2: and my boss said, this is a great opportunity for
Speaker 2: you to work with an informant. You're going to go
Speaker 2: to the fair. The informant's going to make the contact.
Speaker 2: We're going to see if Kojima will admit to anything
Speaker 2: kind of see right, So I thought, my job is
Speaker 2: just to get the guy wired up and supervise make
Speaker 2: sure nothing bad happens. So I meet with the informant
Speaker 2: the night before, we show him out of work the equipment.
Speaker 2: He goes to the fair the next day and for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, Yoshi Kojima, can.
Speaker 1: You can you real quick, who hells the informant?
Speaker 2: Informant is somebody else involved in the insect trade.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not gonna name him.
Speaker 1: But who's already been caught or they're like uh uh no.
Speaker 2: He was kind of irritated that Kojima was undercutting all
Speaker 2: his prices.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that happens a lot.
Speaker 6: So you keep you keep certain informants involved.
Speaker 3: In yeah, in your orbit. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean to be a good age and you
Speaker 2: really have to. You have to make contact with people
Speaker 2: in the trade, right, and you have to develop trust
Speaker 2: with them and try to get them to help you.
Speaker 2: Because animals can't tell you what's going on.
Speaker 3: They can't call you.
Speaker 2: No wolf or grizzly bear California condor is going to
Speaker 2: call you and say, guys are shooting me. So yeah,
Speaker 2: you get to know a lot of different people, and
Speaker 2: the motivations are varied. Sometimes you'll arrest somebody and then
Speaker 2: they're like, well, I'm not going to go down for
Speaker 2: this by myself. I'm going to be an informant for
Speaker 2: you and get a better sentence. Other Times it's people
Speaker 2: who are trying to do things legit and they're getting
Speaker 2: undercut by people like Kojima. They're pissed off, so they're
Speaker 2: going to turn Sometimes the best people to go to
Speaker 2: are ex wives, ex girlfriends, ex.
Speaker 1: Boyfriends, ex husbress.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you, you're investigating somebody and you find out.
Speaker 3: They're divorced, the first person you talk to is their ex.
Speaker 2: Definitely, Definitely, they will give you fantastic information about what's
Speaker 2: going on. Oh yeah, I've had so many wives invite me,
Speaker 2: give me permission to search their husband's garage or whatever
Speaker 2: because they're just tired of the reptile smell out in
Speaker 2: the garage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's happened more than once.
Speaker 1: So think own wife. I mean, she's like, please go
Speaker 1: look at the garage that's out there.
Speaker 3: That literally happened.
Speaker 2: We showed up at a house in San Diego and
Speaker 2: knocked on the door and the wife answered, and we
Speaker 2: identified ourselves and she said, what's he done? Now, we
Speaker 2: explained it and she goes, oh, he is garage. Our
Speaker 2: garage is full of reptiles. And my partner said, can
Speaker 2: we take a look. She's like, yeah, walk out, and
Speaker 2: there's there's endangered monitors out there, and.
Speaker 3: Uh, yeah he was. He was in trouble in more
Speaker 3: ways than one.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so I go to the fair thinking I'm
Speaker 2: just going to be kind of overseeing our informant, right,
Speaker 2: But Kojima is very cagey. He's the member, he's the
Speaker 2: guy that invented the phrase fish and Wild guys, and
Speaker 2: he he was very paranoid. He John Mendoza had actually
Speaker 2: gone out and interviewed him at one point, kind of
Speaker 2: frustrated because he knew his case was getting shut down,
Speaker 2: so he just thought, what the heck, I'll go interview
Speaker 2: Kojima and Kojima. Later, when I was working Kojima undercover,
Speaker 2: Kojima bragged to me about how he had outsmarted the
Speaker 2: Fish and Wild Guys and this agent, which is a
Speaker 2: dumb thing to say to an undercover. And the Kojima
Speaker 2: case really kickstarted a long few years of me doing
Speaker 2: pretty complicated undercover work. I actually ended up starting undercover
Speaker 2: businesses and working the roller Pigeon guys, and I made
Speaker 2: some great undercover cases. And it was all because I
Speaker 2: learned how to do undercover work getting Kojima. It took
Speaker 2: me three years to get that guy, and my boss
Speaker 2: was absolutely fantastic mentor. She's one of the greatest undercover
Speaker 2: fish and wildlife agents. Ever, as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 2: Marie Palladini and she really tutored me on how to
Speaker 2: do this work, because what happened at the fair was
Speaker 2: Kojima would not talk to our informant. He talked to him,
Speaker 2: but he just wouldn't. He wouldn't get tripped up and
Speaker 2: say anything even remotely incriminating. So by the end of
Speaker 2: the day, I was kind of frustrated that our informant
Speaker 2: wasn't getting anywhere, and it wasn't his fault. So I
Speaker 2: just you know, it's a public insect fair, So I
Speaker 2: just walked Kojima at a booth. He was selling stuff.
Speaker 2: So I just walked up and I was like, what's this?
Speaker 3: What's that?
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about this, And for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: we hit it off. He just loved telling me about
Speaker 2: all these butterflies, and nothing he had for sale on
Speaker 2: the table was illegal. It was all legal stuff. He
Speaker 2: wasn't that stupid, right, But one thing he did that
Speaker 2: was really weird. He I think he was trying to
Speaker 2: impress me. He pulled out from underneath the table, which
Speaker 2: is usually where the illegal stuff is, this live beetle
Speaker 2: and a little tupperware container. And this beetle is called
Speaker 2: a dynasty's beetle, and you'd know him if you saw him,
Speaker 2: because you probab probably only see him in a museum.
Speaker 2: They're huge, six inches long maybe, and they have a
Speaker 2: giant horn. Yeah, sometimes it called rhinoceros speedles, but they're just.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wasn't it, wasn't it? Doug Emlin, Yes, we interviewed
Speaker 1: a guy that works on those horn beetles.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, cool.
Speaker 2: The horn actually looks like a job that worked in
Speaker 2: your way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I understand worked he works in a university way. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they looked like they'd be really ferocious, right,
Speaker 2: But anyway, it's alive. And I was like, oh, where'd
Speaker 2: that come from? And he goes, oh, I brought it
Speaker 2: up from South America. And the reason he shushed me
Speaker 2: is because generally it's a violation of USDA regulations to
Speaker 2: bring a live insect into the US, so that's not
Speaker 2: the crime of the century. But here he was admitting
Speaker 2: he'd done something illegal. So I thought that's good. But
Speaker 2: I didn't know where to take it next because I
Speaker 2: didn't really done undercover work.
Speaker 3: So the weird weird you're undercover. I'm just kind of impromptu.
Speaker 2: I'm just talking to him, making sure I identify him
Speaker 2: as Yoshi Kojima, just trying to do whatever I can, right.
Speaker 2: But the weirdest thing was at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: I'm just loitering in a group and I feel that
Speaker 2: somebody tapped my shoulder and I turned around and Seyoshi's
Speaker 2: standing there, and I actually kind of, you know, I
Speaker 2: kind of panicked a little bit because I'm like, we know,
Speaker 2: why are you here? And he had this box in
Speaker 2: his hand, and he said, here for your collection, to
Speaker 2: start your collection. And he gave me this cardboard box.
Speaker 2: I open it up, and it's full of just crappy,
Speaker 2: you know, butterflies, dinged up wings, moths, nothing, and uh.
Speaker 2: On the top he wrote his email address. And I
Speaker 2: went back and told my boss this, and she goes,
Speaker 2: this is the perfect situation right now.
Speaker 5: I don't want to spoil what I already know because
Speaker 5: I listened to the interview.
Speaker 3: She recorded that she didn't tell me she was recording
Speaker 3: that interview.
Speaker 5: With Lee Ane for NPR story Well, yeah, years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 5: because like now, looking back at that, you know, the
Speaker 5: reason that maybe you got a little preferential treatment.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if it existed then or not.
Speaker 2: I didn't get weird vibes from him then. But what
Speaker 2: you're getting to is later Kojima definitely had a crush
Speaker 2: on me.
Speaker 3: Later. I don't know if he did then. Maybe. You
Speaker 3: know what I was.
Speaker 1: I have a friend whose sister worked undercover narcotics, and
Speaker 1: she's was at the time in her late twenties, and
Speaker 1: I was asking her a million questions about her. She's
Speaker 1: she's out of it now. She did it for a
Speaker 1: long time, and she said, they always think there's going
Speaker 1: to be a relationship always interesting. Interesting if it's in
Speaker 1: the role she played. Yeah, the role she played, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and it's a young woman.
Speaker 3: It's hard.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I was telling you about my
Speaker 2: boss Marie. She did a lot of undercover work when
Speaker 2: she was younger. And it's it's a problem because the
Speaker 2: bad guys will hit on you. You know, you know
Speaker 2: you got to be obviously, you can't get in a
Speaker 2: relationship with an informant or a bad guy.
Speaker 3: That's just not cool.
Speaker 1: But I want to tell you something funny that she
Speaker 1: told me about it. I said her, she was like
Speaker 1: out of state drug buyer, right okay, So she would
Speaker 1: periodically show up in a town to buy right well,
Speaker 1: she lived in the town, her cover was that she
Speaker 1: lived elsewhere. It would travel to buy okay. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: how do you avoid Like, if some drug dealer wants
Speaker 1: you to go in this creepy ass house and you're undercover,
Speaker 1: how do you not go? She said, I would say,
Speaker 1: I'm not going into your creepy ass house.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly, and I'm sure she would.
Speaker 2: She would tell you that there's a temptation to go in, right,
Speaker 2: Because as a law enforcement officer, how often do you
Speaker 2: get invited into the bad guy's house?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Normally you got to have a warrant, right, But if
Speaker 2: you're undercover and they invite you in, you don't need
Speaker 2: a warrant.
Speaker 1: You come out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get this free opportunity to look around. But
Speaker 2: it's super dangerous to do that, super dangerous. And then
Speaker 2: you know, it happened to me with Kojima invited me
Speaker 2: into his place and I had to make a call,
Speaker 2: And at the time it was a different story, but
Speaker 2: you know, I had a cover team behind me and
Speaker 2: they lost me in LA traffic and we pulled into
Speaker 2: Kojima's underground apartment, and in there I was like, well,
Speaker 2: my cover team's definitely not going to reacquire me now, right,
Speaker 2: And so I thought, well, I'll make a fake phone
Speaker 2: call to my cover team. I'll say, hey, Yoshi, yeah,
Speaker 2: we can go check out your place. But I got
Speaker 2: to make a call because I got to change disappointment
Speaker 2: and Murphy's law. I stepped out of the car and
Speaker 2: my undercover cell phone actually fell landed right on the
Speaker 2: antenna and broke into like three pieces. So now I
Speaker 2: have no way to contact anybody, and I got to
Speaker 2: make a call. Am I going to go into this
Speaker 2: apartment when nobody knows I'm there? Or am I gonna,
Speaker 2: you know, get out of this?
Speaker 5: Did you feel like this guy was could be physically damed?
Speaker 2: I was, you know, physically. I was never afraid of Kojima,
Speaker 2: Like he wasn't going to beat me up. But you know,
Speaker 2: I can't defeat a gun. If Kojima's got a gun,
Speaker 2: and I don't know who else is in his apartment
Speaker 2: and he's so paranoid about the fish and wild guys,
Speaker 2: you know, if he's got a friend or two friends
Speaker 2: in that apartment, They're going to beat the crap out
Speaker 2: of me till I tell him who I am.
Speaker 3: I can't.
Speaker 2: Once I'm in there, it's hard to extricate, right, So
Speaker 2: you'd never want to assume that this little guy is
Speaker 2: not going to hurt you, because anybody can hurt you
Speaker 2: with the right weapon, right. So anyway, I did it
Speaker 2: because I'm like, I got to see in this apartment.
Speaker 2: But I knew I had limited time because what my
Speaker 2: cover team is going to do, they're going to follow
Speaker 2: certain protocols to reacquire me, right and if they can't
Speaker 2: find me pretty soon, they're going to notify the LAPD
Speaker 2: that we have a missing undercover agent and that's going
Speaker 2: to cause helicopters and black and whites to be in
Speaker 2: the neighborhood. So I knew I had a limited amount
Speaker 2: of time to get in and out of that apartment,
Speaker 2: and it was fine. It worked out fine. I made
Speaker 2: sure I stayed closer to his front door than he did.
Speaker 2: But getting into that apartment was amazing because his whole
Speaker 2: apartment was filled with butterflies and these illegal beadles that
Speaker 2: he'd been bringing up from South America that he was
Speaker 2: selling claiming selling in Japan for ten thousand dollars apiece.
Speaker 2: I don't know whether that's true or not, but anyway
Speaker 2: it was. I got in and out of there in
Speaker 2: about ten minutes. And by the time this is I
Speaker 2: had no cell phone, so I raced to the local
Speaker 2: like seven to eleven, find one of the last remaining
Speaker 2: pay phones in the city of Los Angeles. Call the
Speaker 2: office and yeah, the covered team was getting ready to
Speaker 2: call the LAPD.
Speaker 3: We just just got checked back and just checked back in.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was fun other than like seeing some evidence
Speaker 5: of what's going on there, Like I mean, did you
Speaker 5: have expectations of what his apartment is like? Like it
Speaker 5: was it like a super nice apartment. You're like, oh
Speaker 5: my god, this guy's crushing it in his field because
Speaker 5: look at this apartment or was it dingy and dirty and.
Speaker 2: Dingy and dirty? I mean this nice, nice place, right,
Speaker 2: nice building, but dark kept his curtains closed, just gross,
Speaker 2: like you know, they got a big wrap around couch,
Speaker 2: but there was only one place to sit and everything
Speaker 2: else was just stacked with butterflies or butterfly containers. The
Speaker 2: grossest thing was two gross things. Actually, one is I
Speaker 2: look down the hallway of the apartment from the living
Speaker 2: room and there was like a tea I assume it
Speaker 2: went to a bedroom on the right and a bedroom
Speaker 2: on the left, and then there was a bathroom and
Speaker 2: the door was open and I could actually see into
Speaker 2: the bathtub and there was this disgusting black ring all
Speaker 2: around the tub.
Speaker 3: It was like a silence of the lambs. Maybe or
Speaker 3: he didn't, I don't know.
Speaker 2: But the second gross thing was he very proudly goes
Speaker 2: to the kitchen and opens the cupboards to the above
Speaker 2: the sink. There's no food in the cupboards. It's all
Speaker 2: tupperware bins filled with these beetles.
Speaker 5: So it's more of a warehouse.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he lived in Kyoto, but he had this apartment
Speaker 2: in la and it was just kind of his bass.
Speaker 2: He did ultimately admit to me that he did poach
Speaker 2: butterflies out of Grand Canyon and Death Valley, but what
Speaker 2: he was doing now, he didn't do as much poaching himself.
Speaker 2: He hired people to go and he eventually tried to
Speaker 2: recruit me to go out to Death Valley and collect
Speaker 2: collect butterflies for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, was he You take a guy like this, is
Speaker 1: he like, does he imagine himself as mostly legitimate but
Speaker 1: now and then I'll fudge the line or is he
Speaker 1: a career criminal?
Speaker 3: He was committed.
Speaker 2: He described himself to me as the world's most wanted
Speaker 2: butterfly smuggler. He took pride in the fact that fish
Speaker 2: and wildlife was after him, and he took pride in
Speaker 2: bragging that he outsmarted us, which as soon as I
Speaker 2: heard him say, you know, he outsmarted John Mendoza, I
Speaker 2: was like, no, you didn't. Number one, no you didn't.
Speaker 2: And number two, I'm gonna catch you. I'm putting you
Speaker 2: in jail.
Speaker 3: Dude.
Speaker 2: As that went through my mind when he said that,
Speaker 2: I was like, nope, I'm never quitting until I put
Speaker 2: Yoshiko gi men jail.
Speaker 1: How did you How does it go about the event?
Speaker 1: I mean, at some point you got to make an arrest.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: There were a few ups and downs with him. He
Speaker 2: was real touchy, and you know, it would take a
Speaker 2: long time to explain how that whole case transpired over
Speaker 2: three years, but suffice it to say there were two
Speaker 2: times during my relationship with him in an undercover capacity
Speaker 2: where he cut me off. He got mad at me,
Speaker 2: so he would stop talking to me. At one point
Speaker 2: what he wanted to do was he wanted to go
Speaker 2: into business with me and have me sell butterflies for
Speaker 2: him online that he would send me from Japan. And
Speaker 2: very clearly, obviously it doesn't take a rocket scientist to
Speaker 2: figure out what he wanted was a fall guy, right,
Speaker 2: So when the fish and wild guys came coming, he
Speaker 2: would feed them Ted Nelson, which was my undercover name.
Speaker 2: He feed him Ted, and he'd slink away and he'd
Speaker 2: hope fish and while iff would be happy because they
Speaker 2: caught Ted.
Speaker 3: Right. So I knew that was his plan going in.
Speaker 2: But at one point he wasn't sending me enough butterflies,
Speaker 2: like he wasn't sending me the endangered stuff. So I
Speaker 2: created this undercover eBay account where I looked like I
Speaker 2: was selling some stuff on this side, and what I
Speaker 2: hoped he would ask me. My plan was he would
Speaker 2: come back and say, hey, Ted, where are you getting these?
Speaker 2: And I'd say some baloney line like oh, I got
Speaker 2: a dealer, a supplier out of Germany and he's terrible.
Speaker 2: He sends me horrible material. And I hope that Kojima
Speaker 2: would then say, well, I can give you that, right,
Speaker 2: But instead he turned me into the local tip line
Speaker 2: for the California Department A fish you No, I got it.
Speaker 2: His game warden called me. His game warden called me
Speaker 2: one day and he goes, hey, Ed, I know you're
Speaker 2: doing a butterfly case. We got this weird tip on
Speaker 2: our tip line and some Japanese guy turning in some
Speaker 2: guy And I'm like, well to me, and I listened
Speaker 2: to it and it's like, yeah, turning in Ted Nelson
Speaker 2: for selling sidese material that he doesn't have permits for.
Speaker 1: You are kidding?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So at that point the case is done, right
Speaker 2: because because Kojima, I'm thinking I can't get him now
Speaker 2: because if I stay in the business, Kojima thinks he
Speaker 2: turned me in. If I if I stay in the business,
Speaker 2: he's gonna think I'm an informant. Yeah, I was gonna
Speaker 2: think I turned So I let it go and my
Speaker 2: boss Marie was like, oh, case it's done. You're never
Speaker 2: going to get this dude. So I really literally put
Speaker 2: it aside and I started working on high Roller. Yeah
Speaker 2: that's what a high roller came up. Like I said,
Speaker 2: I had nothing to do that day, right, So I
Speaker 2: went out and did that Hawk case.
Speaker 3: But about a.
Speaker 2: Year later, right in the middle of high roller. So
Speaker 2: I'm all right, Now I'm doing a different undercover case
Speaker 2: with a different persona where I play a much rougher
Speaker 2: guy than I was portraying with Kojima. I get a
Speaker 2: tip that Kojima is coming back to the fair. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take one more shot.
Speaker 1: So by this time I have just a striped suit,
Speaker 1: so you're just out of jail.
Speaker 3: No, but I did have a.
Speaker 2: Giant handlebar mustache because I grew a big mustache to
Speaker 2: kind of fit in with the pigeon people better. And
Speaker 2: I go to the fair and my plan is I'm
Speaker 2: gonna find him, and I'm gonna accidentally in quotes air quotes,
Speaker 2: run into him, and I'm gonna see what happens.
Speaker 3: So I go to the fair.
Speaker 2: I find him. He's in this big hall doing his
Speaker 2: usual thing. He's got his fanny pack in the front
Speaker 2: where he usually carried about ten thousand dollars cash in
Speaker 2: his fanny pack. I don't know how this guy never
Speaker 2: got robbed walking around La, but whatever. So I wait
Speaker 2: till he's moving from one hall to the other where
Speaker 2: you got to go through like this narrow walkway and
Speaker 2: I come the other direction, and he looked like he
Speaker 2: looked scared out of his wits.
Speaker 3: When he saw me.
Speaker 2: But I immediately went out and said, hey, Yo, she's
Speaker 2: so good to see you. And in the conversation, I
Speaker 2: very quickly let out that I owe him a huge debt,
Speaker 2: and that caught his interest. And I said, because of
Speaker 2: the advice you gave me about how you handled the
Speaker 2: fish and wild guys, I didn't get arrested. I said,
Speaker 2: I said, some asshole turned me in to fish and
Speaker 2: game and they came to my house. They did a
Speaker 2: search warrant, but because of the advice you gave me,
Speaker 2: I had everything hidden somewhere else. They never found a thing.
Speaker 2: They couldn't prove anything. And thanks to you, Yoshi, I'm
Speaker 2: not in jail.
Speaker 5: Is this what they call a double cross in parentsiaw.
Speaker 3: He bought the whole thing, man, he bought it hook.
Speaker 6: Line and center, excellent material.
Speaker 3: So he takes me to lunch and at that.
Speaker 1: And at that moment, he liked that handlebar mustard that
Speaker 1: he did.
Speaker 2: It turned out to people. I think he did like
Speaker 2: the handlebar mustache.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he.
Speaker 2: He takes me to lunch, at this awful Korean restaurant
Speaker 2: in you know, Koreatown in LA I'm not sure we
Speaker 2: had beef. I'm not sure what the meat was in
Speaker 2: that year.
Speaker 4: You're like, man, I might need to investigate this place.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you it was not good. But he was
Speaker 2: so convinced at that point that I was also a
Speaker 2: bad guy. And now I gave him the line I
Speaker 2: initially planned to. He said, are you where are you
Speaker 2: getting your material? And I said, I got a German supplier,
Speaker 2: but he gives me crap and boom. He immediately said, oh,
Speaker 2: I can give you the material perfect condition, And right
Speaker 2: then I knew I had him, because he said, look,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go back to Japan. Get on Skype.
Speaker 2: We'll start talking my Skype in early two thousands, right,
Speaker 2: and I'll show you. Yeah, what happened to Skype. I
Speaker 2: was just thinking about that as I was coming here
Speaker 2: to Zoom Zoom Zoom killed Skype. So he says, we'll
Speaker 2: talk by Skype. I'll show you what I've got. You
Speaker 2: tell me what you want, pay me, I'll send it
Speaker 2: to you. And I was like, this is perfect, right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to I'm going to record him on camera
Speaker 2: making incriminals statements. And that's exactly how it played out.
Speaker 2: The only thing that was weird is after we were
Speaker 2: at lunch, he wanted me to drive him to a
Speaker 2: like a I don't know what you call it, asauna
Speaker 2: in Koreatown.
Speaker 1: Sure, and the whole Yeah, Chris is gonna do this
Speaker 1: this scene sight crin for a TV show.
Speaker 3: This is that I can't remember.
Speaker 2: He did take me later, like later that weekend, he
Speaker 2: took me to dinner at Lowry Steakhouse, which is pretty
Speaker 2: nice because he bought the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Because she's already picturing the network standers not enough sex.
Speaker 1: Krin's like, but wait, but wait, we got a scene.
Speaker 6: There's spice it up a little bit.
Speaker 2: So the whole way to this bathhouse, I'm driving him
Speaker 2: there and he, you know, he's asking me. He starts
Speaker 2: asking me, who, what actors do you like? And I
Speaker 2: didn't know, so I just said, I just started saying,
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: A big time man. I'm not hitting it either.
Speaker 5: Wait till I get my mustache.
Speaker 3: I'll grow my mustache back. I'll be irresistible to you.
Speaker 2: Uh So, Anyway, on the way there, he starts he
Speaker 2: asked what actors do you like, and I just named somebody,
Speaker 2: right whatever, Brad Pitt, and he goes, oh, he's gay.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, Brad Pitt's gay, okay, And I'd say
Speaker 2: who else He'd say who else? Oh, Tom Cruise, Oh
Speaker 2: so gay? Everybody I named was gay? It was And
Speaker 2: I was like, I didn't really understand what was going on,
Speaker 2: and You're like, jeez, I must be gay. Well, I
Speaker 2: think he was trying to hint this is now He's
Speaker 2: like trying to hint that he's either by or gay.
Speaker 2: And it kind of played out after that when we
Speaker 2: when we started to talk on Skype, we started to
Speaker 2: do a lot of deals with butterflies. He starts sending
Speaker 2: endangered stuff, like he would send stuff to me that
Speaker 2: I would then let take to the University of California
Speaker 2: or Riverside to make sure.
Speaker 3: I had it ideed right.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so they have a big entomology department, so
Speaker 2: I'd get it and I'd immediately drive out there and
Speaker 2: have them look at it, and they'd.
Speaker 3: Be like, where did you get this?
Speaker 2: We can long story, Yeah, I mean this is a
Speaker 2: you know, internationally known entomology university, and they're like, we
Speaker 2: cannot get this for research. We can't even these don't exist,
Speaker 2: and you're you're getting them in the mail. So Kojima
Speaker 2: had a very very sophisticated network round shit, he had
Speaker 2: the good shob Where.
Speaker 1: Are you getting the.
Speaker 3: The money?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Like how do they how do they as you're
Speaker 1: getting the money? How are they sort of confident enough
Speaker 1: that they're gonna wind up getting the money back?
Speaker 2: Sometimes you you don't know really, Sometimes you do spend
Speaker 2: money in an undercover situation and you do get ripped off,
Speaker 2: and that just happened.
Speaker 1: But you have to live under a sort of price cap, right,
Speaker 1: Like you couldn't go and say I need ten million
Speaker 1: dollars to buy a butterfly, right.
Speaker 2: They're gonna be like no, no, no, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So you usually ask for more than what you need.
Speaker 2: So I can't remember how much I had to start with.
Speaker 2: Is like maybe thirty grand or something like a little
Speaker 2: con Man budget, yeah exactly. So what you're doing is
Speaker 2: you're to avoid and trap I think people you don't
Speaker 2: want it. You can't trap people, right, so you got
Speaker 2: to offer reasonable rates for these things. You can't, and
Speaker 2: so you take the risks that they might walk away
Speaker 2: from you, or they might steal your money. That's just
Speaker 2: part of the part of the risk, got it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but he didn't. He wanted the money and he provided
Speaker 2: the stuff. But as we were talking, it became clear
Speaker 2: that he had a thing for me, and yeah, that's
Speaker 2: fine whatever. It just became really awkward when you're on
Speaker 2: a skype call with somebody and they want you to
Speaker 2: take your shirt off and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: It was very uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I'd have had butterfly tattoos over.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's the real entrapment there.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: What was the worst part is at the time I
Speaker 2: was married, and you know, we would have a lot
Speaker 2: of these calls at when it was convenient for him,
Speaker 2: because one of the things that really made him mad
Speaker 2: is if you were not available when he wanted to talk.
Speaker 2: So he's in Japan, you know whatever, twelve hours ahead,
Speaker 2: thirteen hours. Yeah, he's winding down for the night. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I'm winding down for the night. He wants to talk,
Speaker 2: Like what time zone is wrong? Yeah, twelve one o'clock
Speaker 2: in the morning. I'm on skype and my wife has
Speaker 2: to be extremely quiet. She cannot come into that room,
Speaker 2: she cannot make any noise because he'd be very alert
Speaker 2: to I thought you lived alone. I thought you were
Speaker 2: singing right now. Yeah, So that was that was stressful
Speaker 2: because he wanted to talk almost every night for a
Speaker 2: couple of months. It was pretty rough, but I ended up.
Speaker 2: You know, back then, we didn't you couldn't. I didn't
Speaker 2: have a fast enough computer to record screen on the screen,
Speaker 2: so I just had a video camera set up to
Speaker 2: the side that he couldn't see, and I'd just record
Speaker 2: him and me on the call. And man, I got
Speaker 2: some incredible, incriminating statements just about how much material he had,
Speaker 2: how much, how he would get his species, which species
Speaker 2: he could get. I remember once I expressed some interest
Speaker 2: in an endangered butterfly out of the Caribbean, and he said, well,
Speaker 2: it'll take me a couple of weeks, but I can
Speaker 2: get you.
Speaker 1: One name one of these butterflies for me.
Speaker 2: Well, the big one that the final one that I got,
Speaker 2: was the Queen Alexandria butterfly. It's the largest butterfly in
Speaker 2: the world. And you're pull one up and let's see
Speaker 2: what it looks. They're about the females about the size
Speaker 2: of a small dinner plate, maybe ten ten eleven inches across,
Speaker 2: and the male. The males are generally colorful, but they're smaller.
Speaker 6: You can click around there someone's head next to it
Speaker 6: for comparison.
Speaker 1: It's like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're big.
Speaker 6: Yeah with these with.
Speaker 4: These cases like the butterfly one, I'm sure a lot
Speaker 4: of other ones. Were you in a position where you
Speaker 4: were having to work with another country's law enforcement?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I worked a little.
Speaker 4: Did Japan get involved with the butterfly thing at all?
Speaker 1: Or?
Speaker 3: Interesting? Interesting question because.
Speaker 2: Later we tried to get some help out of Japan
Speaker 2: and I went through the Homeland Security law enforcement attes
Speaker 2: based in Tokyo, and we did not get We got
Speaker 2: minimal cooperation for him.
Speaker 4: That's what like, does cha like when you're dealing with
Speaker 4: something like that's ending up in China coming out of China?
Speaker 4: Like is there any kind of cooperation.
Speaker 3: Or it depends?
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's great, Yeah, sometimes China is actually really good.
Speaker 2: Just kind of depends on the species who's involved. The
Speaker 2: interesting thing with the Japanese government is, and the Homeland
Speaker 2: Security at told me this, they consider undercover work to
Speaker 2: be dishonorable. So when they heard that it was an
Speaker 2: undercover agent who had, you know, basically built a case
Speaker 2: against a Japanese citizen. They weren't that interested. No kidding, no,
Speaker 2: which is it didn't matter. We had everything we needed
Speaker 2: on Kojima. But yeah, eventually he I owed him some
Speaker 2: money and he made some flirtatious statements to him, and
Speaker 2: I basically kind of hinted that things might heat up
Speaker 2: if he came back to LA because he was I
Speaker 2: had an arrest warrant for him.
Speaker 3: We just needed to get him. And then he came
Speaker 3: and he hooked him up at the airport.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fun were you present?
Speaker 2: I was there, but we wanted to kind of see
Speaker 2: what he said after he was arrested, so I wasn't
Speaker 2: part of that. I didn't see him till the next day.
Speaker 1: But you interacted with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because when you arrest somebody in the federal system,
Speaker 2: you move him. You take him into the jail for
Speaker 2: the evening, and then the next day you're responsible for
Speaker 2: moving him to the court. So I had to go
Speaker 2: pick him up at the jail and move him.
Speaker 3: Over to the district court.
Speaker 1: How's that conversation go?
Speaker 6: It was?
Speaker 3: It was funny.
Speaker 2: He looked he's excited to see me when I first
Speaker 2: walked in. Then he saw my belt, badge, and he
Speaker 2: saw I was wearing a holster and I had handcuffs.
Speaker 1: He's excited to see, like he thought you were in
Speaker 1: trouble too.
Speaker 2: No, I think he thought I was there to bail
Speaker 2: him out. Pretty sure he thought I was there to.
Speaker 3: Get him out.
Speaker 4: Was he an American citizen?
Speaker 3: No Japanese citizen?
Speaker 1: But he.
Speaker 2: He claimed he was very good at weaving lives, So
Speaker 2: he made up a whole American life where he claimed
Speaker 2: to have a wife and a half Japanese half you know,
Speaker 2: Anglo kid. And so he claimed he had a passport,
Speaker 2: an American passport, but he would never tell me what
Speaker 2: name the American passport was in. So I didn't think
Speaker 2: he was telling the truth. But we didn't know for
Speaker 2: sure if he had an American passport, and he was
Speaker 2: pretty tricky. He would he would tell people. He would
Speaker 2: tell if he knew all of us. He might tell you, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm in Grand Canyon, but he really was in Japan, right,
Speaker 2: He might tell you I'm in Utah next week.
Speaker 3: And so what you would hear. The buzz you would.
Speaker 2: Hear among the insect trading community was very confusing and
Speaker 2: conflicting about where he was.
Speaker 1: He's tricky. How's I always tell sons of bitches right
Speaker 1: where I'm at? How's that doing that? Man?
Speaker 4: How does that work in cases where you're dealing with
Speaker 4: like your target is not an American citizen as far
Speaker 4: as like sentencing and getting them in jail, and like
Speaker 4: what ends up happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I actually did a lot of cases against foreign nationals
Speaker 2: and I was involved in extra diditing a number of
Speaker 2: those people. And it's a long, very complicated process, but
Speaker 2: it is possible to you know, extradite people back here
Speaker 2: to the United States, whether they're Americans or foreign nationals,
Speaker 2: and I did that in a number of cases. The
Speaker 2: way it should work out is a foreign national should
Speaker 2: not get bail, right. Unfortunately, sometimes they do, and I've
Speaker 2: seen foreign nationals flee. Yeah, and that's really frustrating when
Speaker 2: you're the case agent because now, thanks to a judge
Speaker 2: who stupidly gave this guy bail, and now you've got
Speaker 2: to spend possibly years trying to hunt this guy down
Speaker 2: and then get him back.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But generally, a foreign national who commits a crime in
Speaker 2: the US or where there's US jurisdiction can be sentenced here,
Speaker 2: no problem. You get him back here they go through
Speaker 2: their trial if they want one, or they plead guilty
Speaker 2: and they're sentenced. The thing that's most interesting about foreign
Speaker 2: national though, is if you're convicted of a felony in
Speaker 2: the US and you don't have US legal residents, you're
Speaker 2: immediately deported after you finish your sentence and you cannot return.
Speaker 1: To the US.
Speaker 2: So that's actually a big deal. A lot of people
Speaker 2: want to come to the US. They want to, you know,
Speaker 2: take advantage of our banking, our business. They want to
Speaker 2: go on vacation here, they want their kids to go
Speaker 2: college here. And once you're convicted of a felony and
Speaker 2: you get out of jail, you know. Kojima got out
Speaker 2: of jail and was immediately turned over to Immigration and
Speaker 2: Customs enforcement. They drove him to lax They watched him
Speaker 2: get on a plane and boop. He went back to
Speaker 2: Japan and is not allowed to return to the US.
Speaker 1: Ever. Was he then arrested in Japan?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I doubt it.
Speaker 1: I doubt it. But would you send a file case
Speaker 1: like that to them to say, hey, heads.
Speaker 2: Up, yeah, I've done that before, I've shared information with
Speaker 2: South Africa.
Speaker 1: They just might not give a shit I might not
Speaker 1: have time.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Yeah, it's their business,
Speaker 2: you know, if they do or don't. I've worked real
Speaker 2: closely with Germany on some cases. Actually a case involving
Speaker 2: remember when Justin Bieber got drusted for the monkey. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Germany needed to serve Justin Bieber with some papers because
Speaker 2: Justin left the country before they were able to give
Speaker 2: him his fine, so in German law they had to
Speaker 2: serve him personally.
Speaker 3: So they were like, how are we going to do this?
Speaker 2: They called me, I having to know some German cops
Speaker 2: who are working the case, and they said, hey, we
Speaker 2: got to serve Justin Bieber.
Speaker 3: Can you do it? And I was like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 3: I can serve Justin Bieber. That was one of the
Speaker 3: best days of my life.
Speaker 2: I've tracked down Justin Bieber, gave him German paporwork pay
Speaker 2: a fine. So how much time did what's his name, Kojima?
Speaker 2: He got just under two years, so I think it's
Speaker 2: about twenty one.
Speaker 1: He had a lot of restitution and fines and stuff
Speaker 1: he did.
Speaker 2: He never paid him, but nothing you can do about that.
Speaker 2: We confiscated whatever property we could and did a US
Speaker 2: Marshall sale on it. I think it the property had
Speaker 2: in LA. We only got about sixteen thousand out of him,
Speaker 2: but you know two years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine that conversation. Yeah, exactly when you're like what
Speaker 1: are you in here for? You know, like Norm McDonald,
Speaker 1: the comedian Norm mc donald used to have a joke
Speaker 1: where he's talking about the hierarchy, you know, in prison,
Speaker 1: like the worst you did, you know, the higher he is.
Speaker 1: He's talking about oj going to prison and when he
Speaker 1: finally went to prison for stealing memorabilia, that he would
Speaker 1: sit so low on the hierarchy. But he would say like, no, man,
Speaker 1: I killed my wife and a waiter with a knife,
Speaker 1: and all the guy's like, no, you didn't. We saw
Speaker 1: that trial. So it's like when you're in there a
Speaker 1: butterfly theft, it's gotta be a weird position.
Speaker 4: You occupy international smugglers.
Speaker 1: What you tell every good You're right, Yeah, I'd leave
Speaker 1: the butterflies. They'd be like, well, what were you smuggling? Nothing?
Speaker 3: You find out this contraband.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: Did you have any or or possibly many instances where
Speaker 5: you really felt scared for your life, Like in situations
Speaker 5: where maybe you got into that apartment and al a
Speaker 5: sudden you thought, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I was lucky in the service has
Speaker 2: been lucky in general. We haven't had an agent shot
Speaker 2: in the line of duty since nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: Was shocking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of all things, that agent was ambushed by
Speaker 2: duck hunters, fully ambushed, fully ambushed.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: They set him up.
Speaker 2: They set him up. Yeah, they set him up. They
Speaker 2: knew he was coming down a dike. He's working with
Speaker 2: the state game warden.
Speaker 3: They knew he was. I think it was Illinois. I
Speaker 3: think it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, coming down a dike. They set him up, they hid,
Speaker 2: They popped up right in front of him, shot him
Speaker 2: point blank.
Speaker 3: What Yeah, he lived, he was.
Speaker 2: He had a shold, he had a shoulder holster on
Speaker 2: at the time, and they they were loaded with bird
Speaker 2: shot because they were duck poachers.
Speaker 4: But that was their first miss.
Speaker 3: That was their first mistake.
Speaker 2: So he but it was close, you know, his close
Speaker 2: range is like ten yards is close. And he he
Speaker 2: was drawing his pistol, he had his shoulder holster, he
Speaker 2: was drawing this revolver and most of the shot hit
Speaker 2: the revolver and he I had to fire back.
Speaker 1: But for whatever it.
Speaker 3: Somehow disabled his pistol and he was hit.
Speaker 2: He got hit in the eye and the head, and yeah,
Speaker 2: he lived though he stayed an agent till he retires.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But anyway to answer your question, you know, I always
Speaker 2: considered LA to be like a higher risk place to work.
Speaker 3: But I was lucky.
Speaker 2: I you know, I think in my whole career, I
Speaker 2: had to chase one guy on foot, I wrestled one
Speaker 2: guy to the ground. I pulled my gun often, but
Speaker 2: I only ever came close to shooting one person, and
Speaker 2: you know it didn't have to. But I never felt
Speaker 2: like I was ever in immediate I never felt super scared.
Speaker 2: There were moments when people said creepy things to me
Speaker 2: where I realized I need to get out of this situation.
Speaker 2: But it never got to the point where, you know,
Speaker 2: anybody ever physically assaulted me or drew a gun on me.
Speaker 2: There there have been agents that have had guns pulled
Speaker 2: on him, which is pretty scary.
Speaker 1: When you pull your gun, you mean just like to
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, get down, you're underrest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to stay up, to be ahead of them on
Speaker 2: the UDA loop, right, Yeah, always going to be ahead
Speaker 2: of the bad guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you know, an agent who retired a long time ago,
Speaker 2: who's deceased now, a guy named Samjola. When he retired,
Speaker 2: he said something very profound at his retirement party. He said,
Speaker 2: you cannot be in law enforcement for twenty plus years
Speaker 2: and not have had a few close calls, including the
Speaker 2: ones you don't know about. And that last part that
Speaker 2: really hit me. I had been on maybe ten years
Speaker 2: when he retired, and that I had never thought of
Speaker 2: that before. And you know, if somebody's going to assault you,
Speaker 2: it's not your choice, it's their choice, right, So you
Speaker 2: don't know, you don't know if somebody's thinking about killing you,
Speaker 2: looking at you to see if they could get the
Speaker 2: upper hand on you, and you know.
Speaker 5: We're hiding in the bushes like that. Yeah, one story
Speaker 5: we heard of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had a game warden. We did this couple
Speaker 1: volumes of a series called Close Calls Near death Experiences
Speaker 1: with people. Yeah, and we interviewed a game warden who
Speaker 1: he had a close call that he didn't know about,
Speaker 1: but then later happened to interview, later happened to interview
Speaker 1: a serial poacher. And in the interview the serial poacher
Speaker 1: who he's been arrested on other charges, he's been arrested
Speaker 1: on drug charges or domestic violence commever a handful of charges,
Speaker 1: and he's interviewing him because of potential connection to a
Speaker 1: poaching case. But he's in trouble now, so now he
Speaker 1: just wants to talk. He tells the story about a
Speaker 1: night in Colorado, and the warden interviewing him realizes he's
Speaker 1: telling him a story about himself. Oh, man, about his
Speaker 1: plan to kill the guy. Wow, but the guy didn't
Speaker 1: follow him down the right road. Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he's sitting there being like he's talking about me.
Speaker 1: I remember that night. Yeah, he's like, he turned down
Speaker 1: my road. I was going to give it to him
Speaker 1: right through his window.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how many times?
Speaker 2: You know, you never know if it ever happened in
Speaker 2: his life, no idea, And so I always kept that
Speaker 2: in mind what Sam had said at his retirement party,
Speaker 2: that you know, you just can't predict what people are
Speaker 2: gonna do.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All the undercover thing's gotta be scary, man, it.
Speaker 3: Is, but it's also so fun.
Speaker 2: It's so it's so rewarding to know that you're in
Speaker 2: there and they're they're believing, they're believing what you're saying,
Speaker 2: and they're saying these incredibly incriminating statements in front of you.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it is just so fun to leave the undercover
Speaker 2: contact and just be like, I got them, I got
Speaker 2: these guys.
Speaker 1: But how often do you wind up liking the guys?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: It's weird.
Speaker 2: I there were times when I got to like the
Speaker 2: people I was working undercover, especially like in High Roller.
Speaker 3: I respected some of those guys.
Speaker 2: They reminded me I went to an inner city high school,
Speaker 2: and they reminded me people I knew in high school,
Speaker 2: and I liked them. But you know, they're just blatant killers,
Speaker 2: and they're blatant lawbreakers, and I just have no respect
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 1: So it always, yeah, what I affects the affection? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does, It really does.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess it's I like you, but you
Speaker 2: need to have consequences, and I'm going to see what
Speaker 2: you do when those consequences are delivered. Right, So what
Speaker 2: I'm more interested in is what happens after these guys
Speaker 2: are caught. Do they accept responsibility? Do they change their ways?
Speaker 2: If that's the case, I can like those people, right,
Speaker 2: But if they snub their nose and they call me
Speaker 2: a jack booted thug and I made up everything, and
Speaker 2: I fabricated everything and they don't take responsibility.
Speaker 3: I don't have any respect for that person. So you
Speaker 3: can't really like a person like that.
Speaker 1: So if you do, if you do undercover, take the
Speaker 1: Japanese individual, you do undercover. But then because of the
Speaker 1: way your agency works, you don't vanish, right, right, you
Speaker 1: gotta He's not like whatever happened to that guy? Right,
Speaker 1: It's like there you are, right, You're like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I'm me, I'm special agent blank. Anyone can find out
Speaker 1: what my family history is, where I live. Does that
Speaker 1: not wind up stressing you out that all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're a known thing. And if they ever had
Speaker 1: some kind of vengeful impulse, it's like they know exactly
Speaker 1: who betrayed them.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And this is where I think sometimes our
Speaker 2: agents get too paranoid. They act like they're secret agents,
Speaker 2: not special agents. And the bottom line is we're not
Speaker 2: secret agents. We are special agents. And at the end
Speaker 2: of your undercover you are going to have to sign
Speaker 2: affidavits and you may have to go to court and testify,
Speaker 2: and you're not going to do all of that with
Speaker 2: your undercover name.
Speaker 3: You're gonna be known. And the way.
Speaker 2: You know, I had so many situations where after I
Speaker 2: had worked somebody undercover for a year or more, I
Speaker 2: would run into them in court and now I'm in
Speaker 2: a suit and tie, I'm clean shaven. They now I'm
Speaker 2: referred to as special agent, newcomer. They know me as
Speaker 2: Ted Nelson or whatever. It's like this weird disconnect in
Speaker 2: their brain. I had people way smile at me in court.
Speaker 2: Yoshi Kojima waved and smiled at me while he was
Speaker 2: in belly chains with his hands chained in front of him.
Speaker 2: I had high roller guys smiling and waving at me
Speaker 2: in court, and I could never figure it out. And
Speaker 2: I think it's just there's like this disconnect. They don't
Speaker 2: associate me with Ted Nelson. I'm I'm now the agent
Speaker 2: who's treated them decently since the case has gone down,
Speaker 2: you know. But more to your point, I did have
Speaker 2: a case once where I arrested a guy. He became
Speaker 2: a fugitive because he jumped bail, and I spent years
Speaker 2: trying to get him back. Eventually caught him in Mexico.
Speaker 2: We extradited him. His two sons absolutely hated me, I
Speaker 2: mean hated. And these guys had guns. They were former
Speaker 2: Israeli army. They knew how to use guns. And I
Speaker 2: was worried about those guys because they knew who I was.
Speaker 2: Because now I'd signed all these affidavits, I'd testified in
Speaker 2: court against their dad and their adults. You know, So
Speaker 2: when I drove home, I did counter surveillance. Whenever I
Speaker 2: drove home, I took different routes home every day. I
Speaker 2: never drove directly from the office to my driveway. You know,
Speaker 2: I keep gun in my bedroom. And you just have
Speaker 2: to be careful. You have to be aware that there
Speaker 2: are people may be planning things you don't know. But
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean you don't do your job. I mean
Speaker 2: these guys. Sometimes you hear game wardens or federal agents saying, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to get killed over a deer. Well,
Speaker 2: it's not if you're doing your job. It's not your choice.
Speaker 2: If some deer poacher decides to ambush you, take a
Speaker 2: shot at you just for doing your job. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: darn wright might get killed for, you know, over a deer.
Speaker 5: Well you said, though, you're possibly going to take away
Speaker 5: their money, yeah, or liberty, right exactly, So it's not
Speaker 5: just a deer.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you know you were talking about the low penalties, right.
Speaker 2: Bad guys don't know what the that they might get
Speaker 2: off with just probation. They think they think they sell
Speaker 2: an illegal butterfly, they're going to go to jail for
Speaker 2: ten years. So their ignorance of the law may cause
Speaker 2: them to react in a way that's not right. But
Speaker 2: bottom line is my belief on this is, you become
Speaker 2: a federal agent in any whatever agency but Fish and Wildlife,
Speaker 2: Secret Service, FBI, whatever, you're making a commitment that you're
Speaker 2: going to carry a gun, You're going to physically arrest people.
Speaker 2: You're going to threaten their liberty, their money, their house right,
Speaker 2: and with that comes certain risks. And if you are
Speaker 2: not willing to accept those risks, then you better not
Speaker 2: be a federal agent. You better not do undercover work.
Speaker 2: It's not mandatory you do undercover work. It's they ask you,
Speaker 2: do you want to do this undercover case? And if
Speaker 2: you say no, you don't have to do it.
Speaker 5: Did you have a conversation with your wife or spouse
Speaker 5: before you started doing undercover work?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Is that why they're not your wife anymore?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know why my wife's not my wife anymore.
Speaker 2: But you know, there were times when it was very
Speaker 2: stressful on the relationship because she did not like sometimes
Speaker 2: when I carried my gun off duty. I always carried
Speaker 2: my gun off duty. And there were times in La.
Speaker 2: Ten million people live in La. Right, I was working
Speaker 2: on a case involving Russian caviar traffickers, and these are
Speaker 2: probably mobbed up people, and I'm talking about I'm taking
Speaker 2: a million dollars worth of caviar from them at a time.
Speaker 2: Right when I sees it at the airport, million dollars.
Speaker 2: Definitely get killed over a million dollars. One time, my
Speaker 2: wife and I are at a restaurant in Santa Monica.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm off, We're just having dinner. We happened
Speaker 2: to be seated at the window, and these two Russian
Speaker 2: dudes walk by who were connected to the guy I
Speaker 2: just seized a million dollars with a caviar from and
Speaker 2: they do the double take. They recognize me because we
Speaker 2: had just done a big chearch warrant at this caviar
Speaker 2: processing place.
Speaker 3: They saw me.
Speaker 2: I interviewed them and I just looked at my wife.
Speaker 2: I was like, we gotta go, we gotta leave.
Speaker 3: You know, that's not.
Speaker 2: She was planning on a nice dinner out and that
Speaker 2: all changed.
Speaker 5: So can't say my heart rates going up and listen
Speaker 5: to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was Cavard order.
Speaker 3: That was kind of a no crap moment, you know,
Speaker 3: another time to.
Speaker 1: Take that Cavyard to go exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know one one time I went I just went
Speaker 2: into a McDonald's during high Roller. I still have my
Speaker 2: big mustache, but I had to go down to the
Speaker 2: US Attorney's office and now I got my mustache. But
Speaker 2: I'm in my federal agent suit, you know, my uniform,
Speaker 2: my black suit, white shirt, plane tie. And I thought, oh,
Speaker 2: just go to McDonald's, get a coke. I walk in
Speaker 2: and two people in front of me. I'm like, how
Speaker 2: do I know this guy?
Speaker 3: Right? I hear his voice. I'm like, I know this dude.
Speaker 2: And I realized he's one of the guys in Operation
Speaker 2: high Roller. He's one of the bad guys. And I
Speaker 2: just put my sunglasses on and I turned around and
Speaker 2: I walked out and he never saw me, or if
Speaker 2: he did see me, he never made the connection guy
Speaker 2: in a suit versus who he was seeing on the weekends.
Speaker 2: But you know, I'm in a city of ten million people.
Speaker 2: What are the odds I'm going to run into this
Speaker 2: guy I just was working undercovered six days ago.
Speaker 3: You know, that's freaky.
Speaker 1: And what if they see you also have developed probably
Speaker 1: very heightened spatial awareness, and you're probably more likely to
Speaker 1: well recognize and you know who's going on.
Speaker 2: One thing we talked about is I worked five years
Speaker 2: of my career. I worked in Africa as an agent
Speaker 2: based at the embassy overseas, and I did not realize
Speaker 2: how how stressful it was to constantly.
Speaker 3: Be on like that deep yellow alert.
Speaker 2: I was more on yellow hot you know, deep yellow
Speaker 2: or light red alert in Africa than I ever was
Speaker 2: in LA. And when I came back, I just had
Speaker 2: this huge release of tension that I didn't realize I had.
Speaker 2: And I've talked to other federal agents who are based
Speaker 2: overseas when I was HSI and FBI, and they said
Speaker 2: they said they had exact same reaction. They came back
Speaker 2: from Southern Africa and they just like like they just
Speaker 2: had their their muscles relaxed.
Speaker 5: And that's because it's just a more hostile place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's there's so much gun crime right, it
Speaker 2: just related just being a person there you are constantly
Speaker 2: you know, you don't even stop. When when I lived
Speaker 2: in Africa, if you're driving at night, you don't stop
Speaker 2: at red lights. You're insane. If you stop at a
Speaker 2: red light, yeah, you slow down, you look, but if
Speaker 2: nobody's coming, you go. Because that's where car hijackings happen,
Speaker 2: is a stop lights at night in Pretoria.
Speaker 3: So you just don't do it. And you know, I.
Speaker 2: I won't get the gun stuff in Africa, but yeah,
Speaker 2: people get killed all the time over stupid stuff in Africa.
Speaker 2: And so not only now, are you a federal agent
Speaker 2: working overseas on rhino horn traffick.
Speaker 3: Aga people year all the time?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah life is cheap in Africa, right, they'll
Speaker 2: kill you for anything. And if you're talking about one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars rhino horn, they'll definitely kill you. So
Speaker 2: you've got the law enforcement aspect, but then you also
Speaker 2: have just going to the grocery store. It's super dangerous,
Speaker 2: you know, and I don't want to scare people. I
Speaker 2: never got in trouble in Africa. I never had anybody
Speaker 2: try to do anything to me. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: I never went from a store and directly got into
Speaker 2: my car, I'd walk to another car. I'd look behind
Speaker 2: me before I got in the car. I'd sometimes walk
Speaker 2: around the car, just do something unusual so that i'd
Speaker 2: see somebody change their behavior around me.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, you do get in this mode of being
Speaker 3: on yellow alert all the time.
Speaker 2: And back to your question, if somebody's going to do
Speaker 2: undercover work, they don't automatically become a secret agent. They
Speaker 2: just have to be careful. Right, They're still a special agent.
Speaker 2: They have to do their job and they're gonna have
Speaker 2: to just suck it up.
Speaker 1: Are you going to go now and launch a whole
Speaker 1: second career?
Speaker 2: So since I retired, I've been doing some adjunct teaching
Speaker 2: at cal State, which I really enjoy. Law enforcement, Yeah,
Speaker 2: criminal justice. I teach criminal justice, administrative law. I do
Speaker 2: some consulting here and there. But if you don't mind
Speaker 2: me plug in please, I'm in conjunction with cal State.
Speaker 2: I'm starting a podcast called Nature's Secret Service, where we're
Speaker 2: going to focus on wildlife crime, interviewing people involved in it,
Speaker 2: and try to talk about what drives it, some of
Speaker 2: the things that happen, some of the interesting stories should
Speaker 2: be fun to should the first episode should launch in
Speaker 2: like early March. Oh great, so Nature's secret service. Anybody
Speaker 2: wants to look for it, they can find it.
Speaker 1: And that's in conjunction with who Cal State University graduation.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Thanks, should be fun. I don't know if I'll
Speaker 3: be a good host, but we'll see how it goes, right.
Speaker 1: I think you'll probably do all right.
Speaker 3: I get some tips from you if I need them.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's where I go for him. I think you got
Speaker 2: it figured out well. I think it'll be fun. Mostly
Speaker 2: it's going to be talking to, you know, law enforcement professionals.
Speaker 2: And when you get to law enforcement people talking, the
Speaker 2: good stories come out pretty quick.
Speaker 3: So I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure we'll get to
Speaker 3: some good stuff.
Speaker 1: That's great man.
Speaker 3: Congratulations.
Speaker 1: Thanks, yeah, thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: It's been a pleasure. I appreciate it. But you're very welcome.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Thanks, thanks said yeah, nice to meet you guys.