Ep. 655: A Wildlife Agent Goes Undercover

Steven Rinella https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork talks with Ed Newcomer https://www.instagram.com/ed_newcomer/, Brody Henderson https://www.instagram.com/brodyjhenderson/, Janis Putelis https://www.instagram.com/janis_putelis/?hl=en, Phil Taylor https://www.instagram.com/philtaylor25/?hl=en, and Corinne Schneider https://www.instagram.com/corinnesschneider/?hl=en. Topics discussed: Being a USFW Special Agent; trafficking wildlife; LA, NYC, and Miami hot spots; rescuing species, not animals; caviar trafficking; how the US lists globally endangered species; the Birmingham Rollers and roller pigeons; synchronized seizures; the Migratory Bird Treaty Act; the hawk body; public shaming; the "Fish and Wild Guys"; elvers; the IUCN; the World’s Most Wanted Butterfly Smuggler; getting turned in by the criminal; the Queen Alexandra’s Bird Wing; serving Justin Bieber for his monkey; getting ambushed by duck hunters; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. I got in my hand here, it was just clipped to my pocket, but it's in my hand right now. The Montana. It's MKC, Montana Knife Company's first folding knife. Designed, tested, built by actual hunters.

• 0:46Steven Rinella?

  The Montana is the first folder Josh Smith has built at production scale with a team of engineers and machinists who could match what he does on the bench. Head to MKC.com today. That's MKC.com. These things are great. You are gonna love this folding knife. Anywhere worth going this holiday season is better in comfortable boots. You can find the perfect pair for you or them if you're shopping for someone at Tacovus. My Tacovus are so comfortable, it's a problem because my high schooler is always trying to steal them. I love the feel of quality leather boots because then you know you're ready for anything

• 1:27Steven Rinella?

  and Tacovus delivers that feeling with confidence and quality. I love them. And if you go to Tacovus store, prepare to be wowed by the customer service. Tacovus boots are handcrafted with over 200 meticulous steps for broken-in comfort right out of the box for the whole family. It's time to bring on the holiday cheer in classic fits and comfortable styles with a new pair of Tacovus Western Boots. From cowhide and goat to exotic leathers like ostrich and caiman, whether it's your first pair or your 50th pair, Tacovus has your new favorites. Right now, get 10% off at tacovus.com/meateater when you sign up for email and text.

• 2:08Steven Rinella?

  That's 10% off at T E C O V A S dot com slash meat eater. Tacovus.com/meateater. See site for details. Tacovus, point your toes west.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case underwearless.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  We're the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything.

• 2:40Steven Rinella?

  The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. If you listened to last week's show, you heard me and Mo Fallon discussing my new History Channel show, which is called Hunting History. And that show premieres January 28th at 10:00 PM. So you heard us talk about a handful of the episodes on that podcast episode. Now you can go watch the actual damn things by tuning into the History Channel, January 28th, 10:00 PM Eastern, 9:00 Central, do your own math as you work westward.

• 3:25Steven Rinella?

  Hope you enjoy it. You'll learn a lot, you'll have some laughs, you'll be entertained. Check it out. Joined today by U.S. Fish and Wildlife undercover agent retired, right?

• 3:45Speaker 04

  Retired, yes.

• 3:46Steven Rinella?

  When you came in, I told you, don't look retired.

• 3:48Speaker 04

  Yes, retired, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't call myself an undercover agent.

• 3:53Steven Rinella?

  Well, that's what Corinne called you.

• 3:54Speaker 04

  Oh, alright.

• 3:55Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  Straight up special agent.

• 3:57Steven Rinella?

  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Special Agent.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:00Steven Rinella?

  Ed newcomer, retired because, tell everybody why. I had no idea.

• 4:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I've been retired for two years, and that's only because all federal agents have to retire when they turn 57. So I hit mandatory retirement and I was out.

• 4:15Steven Rinella?

  There's no old federal agent.

• 4:18Speaker 04

  There are some exceptions occasionally, like if somebody's working on a particular case or something, they may extend their retirement so they can finish up that case.

• 4:26Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  But it's rare, yeah.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  And you gotta come in before 37, you said, right?

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, you have to enter the Academy Honor before your 37th birthday.

• 4:34Speaker 05

  So it's not like you can do it, it's like... A second like you have a career and then have another career doing what you did.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  I did, that's what I did, but it was close.

• 4:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  I, I, I became a federal agent. I went, I arrived at the federal law enforcement academy, literally about three weeks before I turned 37. So I just made it.

• 4:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:54Steven Rinella?

  And I retired.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's kind of nice, except.

• 4:57Steven Rinella?

  I'm so jealous, man.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  The, the problem is, you know,

• 5:02Speaker 04

  you got a pretty good gig.

• 5:03Steven Rinella?

  Not as good as you got.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  Well.

• 5:06Steven Rinella?

  Unless you're broke.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  I'll tell you what, being a special agent, most agents I know go right to mandatory retirement because they love it. They love their job. Being a federal agent is awesome, but being a special agent for US Fish and Wildlife Service is 10 times awesome. I, I was so, my identity was so tied up in my badge.

• 5:25Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  It, it was hard to retire. It hurt, it hurt. And I still, I'm, I'm very jealous of the, of the people I know who are still agents because I, I talked to them and I'm like, oh, that sounds like fun. I want to do that.

• 5:36Steven Rinella?

  Really? So you miss it?

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Oh, totally. Yeah, every day, every day. That's why it's fun to come talk about it with people like you because I, it's just fun for me to reminisce and I, I like making sure people know that, you know, these agents are out there and they're, they're doing a really good job and they're working their asses off for people, you know?

• 5:56Speaker 05

  But it sounds like, look, just reading from the notes, that a lot of people are interested in that job.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, we get, you know, I was never involved in, in the hiring process when we would hire the national agents, but I was always told by people at headquarters, we'd get, you know, normally when we have a class of new agents, it's maybe 30 to 35 agents at a time that go through the academy. And for those 35 seats, easily 3,000 plus applicants, easily more. Sometimes, sometimes they just cut it off because they, they get too many and it's not, it becomes a burden to, for the, you know, managers to go through all the applicants to find the gems.

• 6:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you work with wildlife, carry a gun.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:37Steven Rinella?

  And is that.

• 6:37Speaker 04

  Nice gold badge with a, with a buff.

• 6:39Steven Rinella?

  It's got a fish and a duck on it. It's very awesome.

• 6:42Speaker 06

  Is that part of the reason that you didn't start that job until thirty seven years of age?

• 6:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, so totally, you know, this is totally straight up. I came out of law school interested in the job. I went to law school and I thought, okay, you know.

• 6:56Steven Rinella?

  Did you finish law school?

• 6:57Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, law degree, great background to be a federal agent, law enforcement in general. And I always thought, well, if I don't make it into the academy or I don't get hired by law enforcement, I got a job, right?

• 7:07Steven Rinella?

  You'll slum it as a lawyer?

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, slum it as a lawyer. But, uh, yeah, so I started applying pretty much as soon as I came out of law school and, uh.

• 7:14Speaker 06

  What age was that?

• 7:15Speaker 04

  Uh, well, let's see, twenty six, you come out, yeah. I graduated from law school at twenty six.

• 7:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I applied the first time there were openings. So total, I, I applied four times before I got hired.

• 7:26Steven Rinella?

  Did you do the bar exam?

• 7:28Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm admitted in.

• 7:29Steven Rinella?

  So you're a full-on lawyer?

• 7:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was admitted in two states, Washington and Colorado. And I practiced law for ten years, kind of accidentally, because I was waiting to get hired by the Wildlife Service.

• 7:38Steven Rinella?

  Are there a lot of agents who are lawyers?

• 7:40Speaker 04

  Not a lot. There are some. Uh, FBI hires a lot, uh, but, uh, in the service, I, I'm not sure how many of us are eight, are lawyers, but, uh, there's, there's quite a few.

• 7:50Steven Rinella?

  It, it probably helps you when you're working a case, because you're probably able to analyze your evidence and analyze your case from a, from a somewhat objective perspective of how things are gonna look in court and what the arguments are gonna be. Am I making that up?

• 8:06Speaker 04

  No, that's a hundred percent right. When, when I did practice law, I was a prosecutor. And so what I kept seeing was, you know, I, I'm limited to what the detectives are bringing me. So I, whatever they do in their investigation, they give me their report and that's what I have to go with, right? And, uh, every time I'd read an investigator's report, I'd be like, oh, man, that sounds like a lot of fun. And I bet I could have done that better than they did it.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  So when I became an agent, uh, I, I kind of brought that prosecutor background with me. And I kind of knew, all right, as I'm building the case against bad guys, um, this is what the prosecutor's gonna want. This is what they're gonna need. This is what a jury's gonna need to hear. And this is how we're gonna avoid losing on appeal. So it's very helpful to, to have a law degree, especially if you come from a kind of criminal justice background like I did.

• 8:59Steven Rinella?

  Did you have a wildlife background?

• 9:01Speaker 04

  No, and that's, that's why it was hard for me to get noticed by the Fish and Wildlife Service. I finally like, I reached out to this special agent in charge, who was in charge of the west coast, a guy named Dave McMullin, who is just an awesome, uh, US Fish and Wildlife agent. And I said, you know, I'm really interested in this job. I can't get an interview. I can't even get a call back, right? And he was very nice and he, he asked, you know, send me your resume, let me see. He called me right back and he said, yeah, Ed, I can tell you, the reason you're not getting interviewed is, there's nothing on your resume that indicates that you have any interest in wildlife. And, and, you know, it's kind of an eye-opener. I don't know why I didn't think of it.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  I just assumed law degree was one of the educational qualifiers. I thought, oh, you know, that's gonna get me in. So he, he gave me some great advice. I, here I was, an assistant attorney general in the state of Washington, but on weekends I was volunteering with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, game wardens, and going out and doing whatever they wanted.

• 9:59Steven Rinella?

  To build your resume?

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. To do whatever they wanted me to do.

• 10:02Steven Rinella?

  You wanted the job.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  I did. These guys would have me out on, uh, on the, you know, Puget Sound, middle of winter, pulling shrimp traps, so they could check shrimp traps. And that's a har- that's hard work to pull a shrimp trap by hand. I don't know if you've ever done that. Yeah. I loved it. I couldn't wait. I couldn't wait to do it.

• 10:18Speaker 05

  Funny, we've all volunteered to pull a few shrimp traps out of the depths for that man.

• 10:23Steven Rinella?

  That sounds funny, don't it? Cause most people pay to go pull shrimp pots. You've gotta buy your license and everything.

• 10:29Speaker 05

  Uh, like, what made you want the, the job in the first place? Like, as a kid, were you into wildlife and hunting and fishing, or?

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Um, I, I've, I've never, I don't hunt. I've fished before, but I never got into hunting.

• 10:41Speaker 05

  You just like nature and wildlife?

• 10:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. Grew up in Denver and so, you know, my, my dad, mom took us camping up to the mountains all the time. And I love it. I mean, you know, back in the day, we would, the whole family's car would pull over if we saw a hawk on a fence post by the side of the road. So it's kind of ingrained in us.

• 10:59Steven Rinella?

  Not shooting at it.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  Not shooting at it. But, uh,

• 11:03Steven Rinella?

  That's the first thing I wanted to get into.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, oh, sure.

• 11:06Steven Rinella?

  Cause this is the thing, Corinne, like, I gotta tell you, no, uh, yeah, hawk, pox, but, Corinne, I hope all their guests aren't listening. Corinne doesn't usually get excited about a guest. That's not true. Corinne has a baseline excitement for all guests.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 11:24Steven Rinella?

  Corinne holds a baseline excitement for all guests, but she had a like a speak, a spike, what was I saying, a speak, a spike, a high spike for you coming on, inspired in part by her, her discovery of roller pigeons and the trouble that roller pigeon enthusiasts find themselves in. And so I want to, I want to get into this just as a way to lay the groundwork for what you, for what exactly you spend your time on, you know?

• 11:53Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 11:54Steven Rinella?

  So hence my joke about shooting hawks.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, no worries.

• 11:56Steven Rinella?

  I'm getting ahead of us.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  I got it. But to answer your question, I, I was interested in law enforcement from a real young age. I had, you know, I was one of these five year olds that ran around thinking they were going to save the family if there was a home invasion, you know? So, you know, growing up in Denver, I'm, I'm thinking I'll be a Denver cop, you know, someday. That's kind of what I figured. And then I saw at some point in my life, I realized there was such a thing as a game warden. And I thought, well, cop, cop for wildlife. That sounds pretty cool. I'll do that. That really interested me. And then it wasn't until I was in college that I just literally stumbled across a job announcement for US Fish and Wildlife Special Agent. And when I saw that, you know, it's like, oh, that's like the FBI for wildlife.

• 12:39Speaker 04

  That's what I want to do. Right? You get the most jurisdiction, you have the most authority, you have the most opportunity to make a difference and do something good, you know? So, kind of where I led.

• 12:48Steven Rinella?

  And then, did you spend your whole career in LA?

• 12:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I did. And that's another funny story because this going back to this special agent in charge, Dave McMullin, when he was talking to me about applying and how to get interviewed, he said, look, Ed, you gotta go to LA. And I said, LA? I don't want to go to LA. I'm a Rocky Mountain boy. I want to work in the Rockies. I'm interested in, you know, Rocky Mountain wildlife issues. That's where I want to work as a special agent. He said, no, you gotta go to LA. He goes, there's this little, he said, there's this little tiny firecracker of an agent down there, a woman named Marie Palladini. She's a lawyer. You'll get along great. And that's where the action is. That's where the wildlife trafficking is. That's where all the big- Cases are you gotta go to LA.

• 13:30Speaker 06

  Because it's a big port city.

• 13:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, big port city and a big, you know, urban center where there's just every kind of culture you can imagine there. So LA, New York, Miami, if you want to be a special agent in the Fish and Wildlife Service and really learn about international wildlife trafficking and interstate trafficking. You gotta go to one of these big.

• 13:52Steven Rinella?

  LA, New York and where?

• 13:54Speaker 04

  Miami, Miami's another big one.

• 13:56Speaker 07

  That's why we need like, you know, a prime time CSI type show.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  Hey, I'm, I'm all in, I'm all in.

• 14:03Steven Rinella?

  I can picture that, yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, so can I. I'm, I'm, I've, I've pitched it before, you know, like a NCIS, but Fish and Wildlife, it'd be way better.

• 14:12Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Superhero saving animals all over the world. I mean, come on.

• 14:17Steven Rinella?

  Every episode, they'd be making you rescue cats and dogs.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  Well.

• 14:21Steven Rinella?

  No, I can picture cute little kittens and stuff, yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  You know, that's actually, that's something else we should probably talk about because a lot of people who initially apply for the service, they sometimes, not a lot, but some people think that it's going to be about rescuing animals. And I, and I gotta tell you, in 20 years of doing that job, I, I rescued, literally rescued an animal less than half a dozen times because most of the time the animals you're dealing with are, they're done, right? Even if they're alive in the trade, they're not going back to the wild.

• 14:52Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 14:53Speaker 04

  And so it's, you, what you're trying to do is stop the wildlife crime to protect future animals, not the ones you're dealing with right there. So, you know, if you get upset about seeing dead animals or animals mistreated, um, and you can't, you can't translate that into, okay, I'm in law enforcement, I'm gonna do something about this. And you're going to be emotionally crushed by that. This is not the job for you because it's not about rescuing animals.

• 15:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 15:19Speaker 04

  It's about rescuing species, but not animals.

• 15:22Steven Rinella?

  What's it, what's a case you worked that would help people up top here that would help people kind of best understand?

• 15:31Steven Rinella?

  The work you were doing.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, and I'll give you that example, but let me just say that um, we have agents based all over the United States, right? And so where you're based is going to dictate pretty much what you're doing, right? So for example, our agents here in Montana, you know, before wolves were delisted, they worked a lot of wolf poaching cases. They still work grizzly bear cases to determine whether or not it's self-defense or not, or whether it's a straight-up poaching case.

• 15:59Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  Um, agents in the southeast work on different things than agents in the northwest, right? Because there's different animals there. There's different species listed under the Endangered Species Act, or there's different animals trafficked. So the experiences between an agent based in Bozeman and an agent based in Los Angeles are huge.

• 16:19Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 16:19Speaker 04

  Right? And the, the, I, I have never done some of the stuff that the agents in Bozeman have done. I've always wanted to, but you know, I've never done a grizzly bear poaching crime scene because that doesn't happen in Los Angeles.

• 16:31Steven Rinella?

  Understood, yeah, yeah.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  So anyway, you know, a typical, excuse me, a typical case that I might have handled in LA involved trafficking of some wildlife, whether alive or dead, for commercial purposes. And so, you know, early in my career, I worked on a lot of caviar trafficking cases involving Russians. There's a lot of Russians in LA, and they all trafficked in caviar. Not all of them, but you know, the caviar traffickers were Russians. And then, um, you know, I had an insect trafficking case. I had endangered fish trafficking case. So it, it, it's very variable.

• 17:11Steven Rinella?

  Is the caviar, when you're working a caviar case, is it caviar coming in or caviar going out? And does caviar coming in matter to you because it's someone else's problem?

• 17:23Speaker 04

  Uh, yes, so with and that's that's actually a good point because sometimes it's animals going out and and we saw a change in that uh over the years. Uh, when I first started in the early 2000s, we were dealing with mostly wildlife coming into the United States. So things like Beluga caviar out of the former Russian uh republics, right?

• 17:44Steven Rinella?

  So poached there.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  Yep, exactly. And listed under the US Endangered Species Act, so it makes it illegal to import or export.

• 17:51Steven Rinella?

  I got you.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:52Steven Rinella?

  That makes sense.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, so um, that's how we would get involved and and and the United States is kinda unique because we do have the Endangered Species Act, which lists animals for protection that don't live here. And not all countries are like that. We we we have taken an interest in helping to preserve the world's, you know, important wildlife. Tigers, for example, right? We don't have tigers here in the wild, but they're listed as endangered uh under our law. So it's illegal just for someone to kill one or move it around.

• 18:24Steven Rinella?

  That's never that's never occurred to me. I had no idea.

• 18:25Speaker 04

  It's kinda neat, isn't it?

• 18:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I never I never thought about that before. The we we list.

• 18:30Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. Exactly.

• 18:31Steven Rinella?

  Of fish in Russia.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yeah. And so, yeah, the idea is, you know, we want the entire world's environment to be there for everyone. When when I worked in Africa as an agent, a lot of times Africans would would uh push back on me that Americans are too pushy about conservation. And I used to tell them, I I'd say to the whole room, I'd say, how many people have been to the US? Very few people would raise their hand. How many people want to come to the US? Everybody raised their hand. And they'd say, well, if you come to the US, would you like to see bison? Would you like to see a bald eagle in the wild? Would you like to see a bear? Everybody raises their hand, right? Same thing. If I ask all you guys, hey, you want

• 19:14Speaker 04

  to go to Africa and see some lions? Yeah, we'd all be on a plane tomorrow, right?

• 19:18Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 19:19Speaker 04

  So we want other countries in the world to protect their wildlife so that we Americans can go there and spend money to see it, hunt it, whatever.

• 19:29Speaker 04

  But you know, we want them to protect that stuff, you know, so we can go, but we're going to protect it here in the US. So people from other countries can come spend money in the US and see it. And it's just, I think you, everybody in this room probably appreciates that wildlife has an intrinsic value, right? It's just something we enjoy seeing, stalking, trapping, hunting, whatever you do, right? But we want it to stay there. We don't want to use it up. We want it to be there. So fish and wildlife plays a really important role in making sure that species around the world remain wild for us, all of us.

• 20:07Steven Rinella?

  Excuse me, I'm going to cough from it. Tell me about a roller pigeon, which I had never heard of before.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, so a roller pigeon is a, it's not a wild animal, it's a domestic pigeon. Looks just like the pigeon you'd see at the McDonald's parking lot, really. But they come from Birmingham, England, originally. And all roller pigeons are descendants of the original Birmingham rollers. And what, what they are really is a bird that's bred to have a seizure in flight. I'm telling you.

• 20:38Steven Rinella?

  Dude, I have, like, I've had a lot of conversations, I've had pet pigeons. I have nev-, I had never, this is totally new to me.

• 20:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 06

  Really?

• 20:49Steven Rinella?

  It was. So there's a bird that has synchronized, synchronized seizures?

• 20:55Speaker 06

  Well, I know that I've told you my story that I shared with you before we started recording before, but I know we've had the conversation, not on the, I feel like we had it on the podcast about these pigeons.

• 21:06Steven Rinella?

  Listen, if someone told me.

• 21:07Speaker 06

  Is there another name for them, other than roller pigeons?

• 21:09Speaker 04

  There's, there's a different type of pigeon called a tumbler, but the tumbler really does its tumbling on the ground, which is kind of weird. But no, the ones that roll in flight, they're rollers.

• 21:19Steven Rinella?

  What do you mean they're having a seizure?

• 21:21Speaker 04

  So that's the only way I can describe it, is that while they're flying, if you're watching them, and, and the guys and gals who are involved in roller pigeon hobby would, would disagree with me. They would say, we train them to do that. They don't train them to do that, okay? Sit, John. There's no way they're training these birds. No, they're breeding them to have this behavior. And if you watch them, they'll fly. When a roller pigeon hobbyist or, you know, competitors fly in their birds, they fly in a kit and a kit is about 15 birds. And they'll, basically, they fly in an orbit above your property. You let them out and they, you let them out when they're hungry, so they fly, but they're not going anywhere because they're going to come back and get fed. And they fly in an orbit together.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  And usually when they make either a right or a left hand turn, the lead bird, there's usually a leader out in the front, will be, have a seizure. That's the only way to describe it. They, they, they whip their heads back, their wings lock up, and they arch their backs and they start to flip backwards. And what I notice, what I think is going on is I think that you breed the leader to have a seizure on a right or a left hand turn. The other birds you breed to have seizures when they see the leader have a seizure. And that's how complicated it can get. And these guys are very sophisticated about how they breed. And to win a competition, if all of us in this room were in a competition,

• 22:49Speaker 04

  for, for me to win, my birds need to fly together in that kit and they need to roll together as a group.

• 22:56Speaker 06

  Like a synchronized seizure.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  So it looks like a waterfall. Yeah, it looks like a waterfall. It's really cool. And the trick, of course, is you got to make sure they recover before they hit the ground because they'll kill themselves. And so a lot of, a lot of birds die because they hit the ground or they hit a building before they recover from their little seizure.

• 23:13Speaker 06

  So how long is a normal seizure or the fall last?

• 23:16Speaker 04

  Seconds, seconds.

• 23:16Speaker 06

  Okay, that's what I, what I remember when I saw it.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  But it looks neat, right? It kind of looks like a waterfall if they're doing it right.

• 23:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, it was, it was beauti-, I, I don't know how to describe it.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  It's not beautiful really, but it's just weird.

• 23:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, it's, you're like, wow, I didn't know that could, as a, as a thing.

• 23:33Speaker 04

  That's a thing. And then they're graded based on how well they roll. And then somebody, this, this thing's a world competition. There's something called the World Cup. And if you win the World Cup, you can sell your pigeons to other, they're good breeders, right? Because you've got high quality rollers. So you can, you can then start selling the birds that you breed as breeders to other people who want to compete and have this status.

• 23:56Speaker 07

  How much money is in that, like?

• 23:58Speaker 04

  They don't make any money in the competitions. They make money selling their birds. Yeah. So this is a status thing. You know, you, you want to be the World Cup champion as a status deal.

• 24:09Steven Rinella?

  In the US, what is the roller capital?

• 24:11Speaker 04

  You like the city?

• 24:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like where is it big?

• 24:14Speaker 04

  Uh, it's big in, in, all over. It's kinda interesting. It, it's big in inner-city LA. Um, you know, Mike Tyson has roller pigeons.

• 24:24Steven Rinella?

  See, I knew he was a pigeon fancier.

• 24:26Speaker 04

  Oh, he's, he's roller pigeons. Yeah, he's into rollers.

• 24:28Speaker 07

  We're gonna go down a

• 24:31Speaker 07

  deep rabbit hole.

• 24:33Speaker 04

  Uh, you know, downtown New York City on the roofs of houses, you'll see a roller pigeon, uh, setups.

• 24:38Steven Rinella?

  But when you see, when I see a pigeon keeper, what was that movie with Forest Whitaker? He had pigeons? Phil? Phil?

• 24:47Speaker 06

  Nope, I don't got that.

• 24:48Steven Rinella?

  Come on, dude. It's got the word ghost in it.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  Ghost?

• 24:51Speaker 05

  Ghost dog. Wouldn't that be the, the, what's his name?

• 24:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, got famous.

• 24:56Speaker 07

  The way of the Samurai?

• 24:57Steven Rinella?

  Got famous from The Crying Game?

• 24:59Speaker 07

  The way of the Samurai? Ghost dog?

• 25:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 25:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:03Steven Rinella?

  So if you see a pigeon fancier, I always called him pigeon fanciers because I didn't know about this whole other aspect to it.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:09Steven Rinella?

  Are they mostly roller people or are there other kinds of pigeon fanciers?

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Lots of other kinds of pigeons. There's, there's homing pigeons. Uh, there's, you know, these decorative pigeons you see maybe at the National Western Stock Show down in Denver.

• 25:20Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 25:21Speaker 04

  That kinda stuff.

• 25:22Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. I'll tell you one thing that binds together all of the vehicles in the Rinella fleet at my house. They all have WeatherTech floor liners. When we get a new car, the first thing we do, out with the junky factory carpet mats, in with WeatherTech. They really are the best.

• 26:08Steven Rinella?

  They're indestructible. You can pull them out, hose them off. It doesn't matter what happens on the floor of your rig. If you got WeatherTech, you're gonna be covered. I love these things. If you're looking to get a great gift for someone, especially if they're a big Time outdoors kind of person, like if you really want to do them a favor, get them some WeatherTech floor liners for their truck or car. They'll have a way easier time keeping their rig nice and clean, and they'll get years and years of use out of a set. Visit weatherTech.com for your holiday shopping today. What if you could save up for that new car or vacation just by buying the stuff you're already buying? With the OnePay banking app,

• 26:51Steven Rinella?

  you earn 3% cash back on up to $150 in monthly spending in categories you choose, so it's easy to save. So what are you saving for? Maybe you got your eyes on a new truck or a new boat, or you're saving up for your first house. Download the OnePay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 27:14Speaker 03

  OnePay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank, or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Cash back is earned as points. Go to onepay.com/rewards/terms for redemption options and additional details.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  So let's get into how roller pigeon enthusiasts have gotten in trouble.

• 27:34Speaker 06

  I was gonna say, selling their good rollers is legal.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:38Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 06

  But what part of rollering pigeon fanciers, their activity is not?

• 27:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 06

  Where do you get involved?

• 27:47Speaker 04

  How does a fish and wildlife agent get involved? So, as you can imagine, when a pigeon has a seizure in mid-flight, especially a whole flock of them, every raptor within a mile or two is gonna make a beeline for that little flock. Oh yeah, right? Yeah, it's like, it's like the deer that's got the limp, right? It's gonna draw all the predators right to it. So, yeah, hawks and falcons, particularly juveniles, like juvenile Cooper hawks, juvenile redtails that are, you know, learning to hunt. Anyway, they go right for these. They just set up shop. Totally. And, yeah, they can come in and take out your best birds. And, uh, yeah, so these guys get really annoyed that the hawks come in and kill their roller pigeons, so they start killing hawks.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  And honestly, roller, uh, Homer, homing pigeon, uh, fanatics, and there's big money in, in homing pigeon competitions. They kill hawks too. And in fact, that's how I got onto this whole roller pigeon deal.

• 28:44Speaker 06

  What about, um, Peregrine Falcons? Cause you know, they're...

• 28:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 05

  In big urban areas now.

• 28:50Speaker 04

  Same, because especially since they hunt on the fly. They go after roller pigeons real, real, real good. So it just, it just depends on what hawks are in the area. Cooper's hawks are also aerial hunters, so they're more common than the peregrines. But yeah, peregrines get involved in this as well. And that's how US Fish and Wildlife Service agent gets involved. Because of course, all raptors are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It's pretty straightforward. You kill a raptor and you're violating the MBTA.

• 29:19Steven Rinella?

  So tell me exactly how this would flow to you.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:22Steven Rinella?

  So like what, what happens that you become aware of, right?

• 29:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, so what, what happens with me is I'm working in Los Angeles and I, you know, I'm doing my job as an agent, so I'm pretty well connected like with the wildlife rehab places. And I've got sources around. Somebody calls me and says, hey, we got an injured Cooper's hawk came into our rehabilitation center and it's got a gunshot wound. So that piques my interest because that's illegal. And normally, this would be a fairly low priority case for the Fish and Wildlife Service in LA because we're working on wildlife trafficking cases, organized criminal activity ongoing, right, involving a lot of money and wildlife. But so happens I had nothing going on that day and I felt like taking, getting out of the office. So I said, hey, I'll come up and take a look.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  So I drive up to the north LA, that's part of the LA that's burning right now. And I find out when I get there, there's another hawk showed up in the same guy's front yard dead.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  Another bullet wound. So I actually treated it like a crime scene and I.

• 30:27Steven Rinella?

  You traced, you traced the hawk with chalk?

• 30:31Speaker 05

  What had they been shot with?

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Not quite that bad.

• 30:33Speaker 05

  What had they been shot with, like a shotgun or?

• 30:36Speaker 04

  So these were 22 caliber pellets, pump action pellets. Which interestingly can be traced through ballistics.

• 30:45Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 30:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, they come out of a rifled barrel. So they leave, they leave marks on those 22 caliber pellets. If it's a pump action rifled barrel, which, you know, the good ones are.

• 30:55Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  So, but they do use shotguns and they'll, they also will use, if they use a shotgun, they like to use subsonic rounds. Some of them will put these sound dampeners, these huge long barrels on the end of it. Uh, that gun was called a Metro gun, I think. Did you ever hear of a Metro gun? It's like a extra barrel you attach to an 870 and it's, it's about four and a half feet long. So you end up with this insanely long 870, but yeah, it quiets it down.

• 31:25Speaker 05

  They're shooting them perched, not when they're...

• 31:27Speaker 04

  No, they'll get them on the fly with the shotguns. Yeah. With the, with the pellet guns, they'll do it perched.

• 31:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:33Speaker 04

  They'll wait for them. A lot of times the, particularly Cooper's Hawks, they'll come sit right on the pigeon, uh, fanciers, uh, lofts and they'll just walk back and forth. And it's easy pickings. So I, I didn't do the chalk around the dead bird, but what I did do was I canvassed the neighborhood. I went and started knocking on doors and just asking questions of neighbors who happened to be home and...

• 31:56Speaker 05

  What would be a question you'd ask?

• 31:57Speaker 04

  Uh, you know, you identify, you do the classic federal agent flip of your credentials and you identify yourself. You tell them you're investigating a possible wildlife crime in their neighborhood. That gets their interest. They want to hear more. And you start telling them that, you know, you're investigating some hawks being killed. And you explain the MBTA because nobody understands, nobody knows, has heard about the MBTA. Explain that it's illegal to kill hawks. And then, you know, if you got the bad guy's house, you're going to get a certain reaction and you're going to know. But, uh, most of the time people are very shocked, very concerned that somebody's shooting in their neighborhood in LA. And they love hawks. They don't want to see hawks killed. And inevitably, as happened in that investigation, some people started to tell me, oh yeah, every once in a while I hear these loud pops. I don't know where they're coming from.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  Uh, one lady told me she found a big bird dead in her yard with big yellow feet. I'm like, well, that was probably, that's probably a hawk.

• 32:51Speaker 04

  So I knew I'm, I knew I'm in an area, right? And finally I get to a house and I'm like, well, tell me about your neighbors, right? And, uh, she points to all the houses around, well, he's a realtor, he's a police officer, whatever. She finally comes to this guy's house. She points to this house and says, well, that guy, he loves birds. He wouldn't do it. And I said, what do you mean he loves birds? Well, he's got lots of pigeons. I was like, okay. I had my suspect's house now, right? So it turns out I go interview that guy and uh his name was Marty and he was a he was a racing pigeon fanatic. So this guy actually made big money, like ten plus thousand dollars a time on a race if he won. Sometimes those races can be like fifty grand if you win a.

• 33:36Steven Rinella?

  Is that like illegal gambling kind of money?

• 33:38Speaker 04

  Uh, no, not necessarily. Yeah, it's like a pot sort of a thing. Yeah, there's a pot. So, uh, he vibed real, real bad and asked me if I was armed, gave me all the, you know, red flag creepy things. But in the end, I actually got him to confess that he did kill hawks. So easy conviction on that. He confessed, he pled guilty. But the more I thought about it, the more it nagged at me that, okay, there's a lot of, there's a lot of pigeon fanciers around the country. And if this guy is motivated to kill hawks, probably some other ones are. So I just started digging and I realized it'd be really difficult to infiltrate. The best way to get these guys is to do some type of undercover work. And you, you characterized me as an undercover agent when you introduced me.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  We don't talk like that really, but I did a lot of undercover work during my career. Uh, middle part of my career in particular, a lot. And uh, this was one of the big cases I ended up doing. And I found that there was this, these group of roller pigeon guys operating in LA. It's a fairly large group associated with the National Birmingham Roller Club, the NBRC. And in fact, the president of the NBRC lived in LA. So I really just started to ingratiate myself with these guys online and, and ask a lot of questions, said I wanted to get into it.

• 34:57Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 34:58Speaker 04

  I got invited.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, got invited in to, to learn about the hobby and, and get involved.

• 35:05Steven Rinella?

  How long did it take for you were, uh, how long did it take before you were introduced to the raptor control?

• 35:12Speaker 04

  Shockingly, uh, it was very quick. Yeah. I mean, I got invited to go to some pigeon shows where that they have where they they show off their birds. They they buy and sell the good breeders. They show equipment. And, uh, you know, funny enough, I I had an undercover persona all set up. I'd already been doing undercover work by that time, but I obviously did not use the name Ed Newcomer. But I ended up on one of their webpages with a photo with me with a bunch of these guys who ended up, I ended up arresting a year and a half later. And on the little caption down below, it says, you know, the inner city roller club welcomes a newcomer to the group.

• 35:49Steven Rinella?

  And

• 35:50Speaker 04

  We put that up on the bulletin board in the office. It was kinda nice, but

• 35:57Steven Rinella?

  At first, you're like, shit, they found out.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Whenever you see

• 36:00Steven Rinella?

  They found my identity.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, you see your name in print. It's like, wait, oh, the context is correct, okay.

• 36:05Steven Rinella?

  It's not capitalized.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  Exactly. So, but at that very first, uh, you know, meet they that I went to, I saw this funny looking cage sitting there. And I knew immediately it was a goshawk trap because I I'd already I knew what these things looked like. And there's this guy selling a goshawk trap for a hundred bucks. So of course I go up and I'm like, what's this cage for? You know, I'm trying to get into this hobby. I don't know what he used this for. And yeah, he didn't miss a beat. He says, oh, that's for catching hawks, but don't tell anybody because it's illegal. And I'm like, you know, could you say that into my lapel mic? You know, it would be nice. So, and and that went on. Once that kind of opened up, it then, once one of the guys on the inside has made a statement to me about a hawk trap

• 36:50Speaker 04

  being present on the property and what it's for, it it gave me an excuse to talk to everybody about, hey, I saw that weird cage. What's what's this deal with hawks? Do is this something I need to be worried about where I live? Floodgates just opened immediately and yeah, everybody was talking about it. I went back. My boss actually wasn't too excited about me, that that little firecracker of a lawyer that I ended up working for down in LA that Dave McMullin told me I needed to work with. She wasn't excited about this case. She's like, these migratory birds, it's a low priority. We need to work on trafficking cases. And I said, no, just let me go. Do one of these meets on the weekend. Let's see what happens. I came back and showed her that undercover video where everybody was talking about killing hawks.

• 37:34Speaker 04

  And I pointed out to her that, look, there's 250 people in LA. Who are members of the N B R C, the president's here. There are people all over the country that are members of the N B R C. And I didn't meet a single person at this meet who didn't admit they were killing hawks. And she's like, well, shit, we got to work this case then, you know? And then we were off and running. It was a year and a half. I spent every weekend at a pigeon.

• 38:00Speaker 06

  At that point, like, what's the goal?

• 38:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 06

  Cause it seemed like.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  For me or them?

• 38:05Speaker 06

  For you, because it seems to me like it'd be, it'd be easy, like you got the one guy to confess, but that's not really helping the bigger picture.

• 38:12Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 38:12Speaker 06

  And so, yeah, how do you work that into being like, if we do this, it's going to make a difference?

• 38:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, did you need a dead raptor to tie to an individual like over and over and over again? Or?

• 38:24Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, that's ideal. Is you know, the quintessential body. It's a murder case, right? It's a hawk murder case. So you want that body. Uh, but you don't necessarily need it because attempt to do these things is also a violation. But what you got to get past is their ability to create reasonable doubt by saying that that trap is used for something else, right? It's used to trap raccoons or whatever. Um, so you, you got, if you're going to go for the attempt, you got to prove that they know that they're trying to catch a hawk. And so you got to do that undercover work. Get those admissions on tape. And so the goal here is with that first case I did with the guy, uh, the racer, Marty.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  You know, it was a misdemeanor violation. He didn't get arrested. He basically paid a ticket, right? And it was a big fine, but it didn't get in the paper.

• 39:15Speaker 07

  Like what kind of?

• 39:15Speaker 04

  Uh, I think he paid, it's about five grand, I think. It was a pretty good fine.

• 39:20Speaker 05

  And the word never spread from him to?

• 39:23Speaker 04

  His friends, maybe, but it doesn't get out in the bigger community that, you know, what happens then is every, all his buddies say, "Well, you idiot, you shouldn't have admitted you did it." And, "Too bad Marty got caught, I'm not gonna get caught," right? So what you want is deterrence, and you gotta deter people. And the best way to do that is to catch a lot of people, and, um, then catching a lot of people catches the attention of the media, and that tends to get the word out.

• 39:53Speaker 06

  Public shaming.

• 39:54Speaker 04

  Public shaming. Yeah, we didn't use those terms, but yeah, that's what it is, really. And that's effective, it's really effective. So, um, you know, Abraham Lincoln said something that I love, and that is that the law without enforcement is simply good advice. And if people don't know you're out there enforcing the law and you're catching people, it's just advice then.

• 40:20Steven Rinella?

  What prevents, what prevents the cage guy from saying, in the end, he says, "Well, what I didn't tell you is I just relocate them. So maybe you can get me, maybe it's like a legal possession, but I didn't kill it."

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 40:36Steven Rinella?

  "You don't know that I killed it."

• 40:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 40:38Steven Rinella?

  "I forgot to say, I just move them away and let them go. So yeah, I possessed it for a minute, but that was it."

• 40:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, and some of them did try that, but the way the MBTA, the Migratory Bird Charity Act, is written is, uh, it's illegal to catch them. It's not, it doesn't matter, if you wanna catch one and relocate it, you have to have a permit from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. So that didn't necessarily get them out of it, but it would've been good jury sympathy, right? But there were some, some of these guys actually told me, I'd ask them, I'd say, "Well, what do you do with it after you catch it in this trap?" And a lot of them told me, "Don't release them, because hawks will learn to not go in a gosse hawk trap." And so if you release a hawk, it's just gonna set your fellow roller pigeon guys up to have a nightmare, because they're gonna have a hawk preying on their pigeons that you can't catch.

• 41:23Steven Rinella?

  In the business, you know what we call that? Trap shy.

• 41:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, well, that's true, right? Animals aren't dumb. Yeah. So, uh, let's see, where were we on this? So I, I get into these clubs, and, um, basically presented myself as somebody who was interested in getting involved. They did- They did kinda check me out a little bit. They wanted to know where I lived and we had to have the cover was pretty good on that case. Cause these guys were dangerous. Some of these guys lived in South Central LA, you know, right there. I mean, and I was the only white guy at some of these meetings. And a lot of them, we'd run there anytime I could, you know, figure out who they were, we'd run them. A lot of them had felony convictions for assaults, gun crimes, drug crimes. One guy in the middle of the investigation comes up with a warrant for

• 42:11Speaker 04

  gang rape out of LA county.

• 42:14Speaker 05

  That's what I was gonna ask you earlier. Like, we've had game wardens on that have told us, like, poaching cases will often lead to, like, larger other, you know, criminal activity. Did you run into that a lot?

• 42:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. Especially when you've got more organized, you know, criminal activity going on. If you're talking about somebody who has two or three extra trout, or, you know, whatever, kills a buck when they shouldn't have, whatever. That's, that's kind of a one-off. But if you got somebody in systemically and systematically involved in committing crimes, that, you know, there's, there's a couple of things that people will kill you for or hurt you for. Three things I always say. One is to protect their liberty. And the other is to protect their money, right? And to protect their house. And when you are, when they are involved in an ongoing criminal activity, you're gonna, as a law enforcement officer,

• 43:10Speaker 04

  you're endangering all three of those things for them. You're gonna take their money potentially, their revenue source. You're probably gonna do a search warrant on their house. And you're, they definitely think their liberty's at stake. And those are the things that make people really dangerous. Yeah. So, uh, yeah. So we didn't take any chances with these guys. In fact, every time, every time I'd come in on a Monday morning after meeting with them, my, my boss would kinda shake her head and say, "This is too dangerous. We need to, we need to take this down." I'm like, "No, no, we gotta go farther. We gotta catch more of these guys. We need more." And then a really crazy thing happened. I happened to be up in Oregon for a firearms qualification and defensive tactics training. Cause at the time, Oregon,

• 43:52Speaker 04

  Washington, California, Idaho, were all part of the same region. So we'd get together as agents for training and stuff. And I'm up there and I'm literally wrestling around on the ground with an agent named Dirk Hoy, who was based up in Portland. And we're, you know, we're resting in between doing some ground fighting. And I'm like, what are you working on Dirk? And he goes, oh, I got the weirdest case. I'm working on this case involving these pigeons that flip backwards. I couldn't believe it. I mean, literally here I am in the prone position with Dirk between my legs and he's telling me this. And I'm like, I'm doing the same thing. And from that moment forward, Dirk and I started to collaborate and we realized he was investigating members of the National Birmingham Roller Club up in Oregon and Washington and Idaho and Montana.

• 44:37Speaker 04

  And here I was with the investigating the guys in Southern California.

• 44:40Steven Rinella?

  For the same thing.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  Same exact thing. They were doing exactly the same thing.

• 44:44Speaker 07

  Wide network.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  And because it was getting around among the club, here's the best way to kill hawks. These guys were, were sending each other schematics on how to build traps. They were talking about the best way to shoot, how to poison, how to drown. I mean, oh yeah, they were giving each other, once we really got into it, the culpability here was just through the roof.

• 45:03Steven Rinella?

  You know, if you would have embedded yourself with cotton tail rabbit hunters in the sixties.

• 45:08Speaker 04

  You would have made some good cases.

• 45:10Steven Rinella?

  No, sixties would have been too early, right?

• 45:12Speaker 04

  Well, MBTA was around then.

• 45:14Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 45:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:15Steven Rinella?

  You'd have, you'd have had a very similar experience, I think.

• 45:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's true with, uh, so people who, who raise pheasants, you know, for hunting clubs, they'll do it too. Cause hawks will, hawks will hit the pheasants. So, yeah, it's a temptation.

• 45:29Speaker 06

  I'm sure there's some, uh, chicken, people that have hobby farms with chickens.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 45:34Speaker 06

  I mean, they're a threat to our chickens.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 45:37Speaker 06

  My wife's not into that, but she's, you know, she doesn't like when a hawk's flying above.

• 45:41Speaker 04

  Of course. You know, who are some of the worst offenders are guys who are involved in cockfighting. Cause, uh,

• 45:47Steven Rinella?

  They're killing predators?

• 45:48Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:49Steven Rinella?

  That cock can't hold his own against a?

• 45:51Speaker 04

  Nope, cause they don't have their little, you know, that little knife.

• 45:53Steven Rinella?

  He doesn't wear his blade around all day long.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  So, you know, then you got a double whammy, cause that's a state violation to be involved in cockfighting. And then you've got them killing hawks, but that's a hard case to make.

• 46:05Steven Rinella?

  So when you, tell, tell me how this like, like, how, how does this wrap up? Like, how, how do you, how do you bring it to a close?

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Well, the cool thing was Dirk and I agreed immediately what the strategy was. You know, we got to get as many people as possible. He was having peregrines get killed up in Portland, so it was a little, little higher priority. So what we decided was, you know, there's too many people to get all of them. So what we did is we focused on club leaders, people who were, who were. You know, setting the example. Anybody who is a president of a local club, we targeted the president of the National Birmingham Roller Club, who is one of the worst killers of them all. And we decided, all right, once we have good evidence on all this, this our target group, each of us have a target group, we'll do our takedowns at exactly the same time. We'll coordinate everything. We'll do our search warrants.

• 46:57Speaker 04

  We're going to arrest everybody and we'll do it all in the same day. And then the word doesn't get out, evidence doesn't disappear. And then we can try to get the media's attention to, in order to deter people. Neither Dirk or I were interested in having our names in the paper. We wanted, we wanted the roller pigeon community to know that they had been infiltrated and that everything they had said and done had been recorded and that they were going to look real bad. So they needed to clean up their act. So that's, that's how it played out about 14 months after I started, we did our takedown. We even Dirk, even there was a Montana game warden that got implicated in the whole damn thing,

• 47:37Speaker 04

  which was very depressing for both Dirk and I, but also we really wanted to get that person because, you know, that's a bad image to have a wildlife law enforcement officer involved. He didn't end up getting charged because Dirk couldn't prove that he actually killed a hawk. But we had an agent here, I think it was Bozeman, might've been Missoula, I can't remember. But we had one of our agents here go interview him. And the minute the agent came in and rolled the gold and said, hey, I'm here to talk to you about hawks. The guy said, he literally said, I want my union rep. And the very next day he retired.

• 48:12Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 48:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, so that's pretty damning right there, right? But he didn't end up getting charged because Dirk just couldn't, couldn't prove that he'd actually killed a hawk. But it was just obvious he was involved. In fact, one of the guys I arrested in LA, we had him in handcuffs in the back of the car. And the first thing he said was, do you know? And he named the Montana State Game Warden. Yeah, hoping that would.

• 48:33Speaker 07

  I wonder if Adam Pankras.

• 48:35Speaker 04

  Hoping that would get him out of it. Yeah, and let me just say, the Montana, it's Montana Game and Fish, right?

• 48:41Steven Rinella?

  Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

• 48:43Speaker 04

  Okay, they've changed their name since I, okay. It's like, I can never remember.

• 48:47Steven Rinella?

  It's been FWP for a long time.

• 48:49Speaker 04

  Has it? Colorado changed their name a few years ago. Colorado changes, it always confuses me, so I can never remember. But to their credit, they were awesome. They were not interested in having an officer in their ranks who had, you know, violated the law. So they were very cooperative and they were very glad to see him go. So, you know, that's, that's good news.

• 49:07Steven Rinella?

  How many arrests did you guys make?

• 49:08Speaker 04

  Uh, I ended up arresting seven people in LA. I can't remember how many Dirk got up here in Oregon and Washington, but it was, it was a good case. And, uh, made a lot of, uh, made a lot of attention. And the, the thing I really, really was proud of is that it empowered the people in the roller pigeon community who were opposed to hawk killing, who often had been kind of shouted down and bullied. It gave them a voice to come out and say, you know, we told you guys, you know, we gotta stop this. And so it was good. And, and the best part is even today, if you go on the roller pigeon chat rooms and email groups or whatever, you'll see somebody's like, well, I'm pretty sure there was an undercover agent at that last fly.

• 49:51Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 49:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. And they're very, they're very well could have been, but that's the ideal situation, right? You always want them looking over their shoulder like, oh crap, those. I used, I arrested this guy early in my career who was a Japanese national. And he used to refer to us as the fishing wild guys. And I always, because he couldn't, for some reason, he couldn't pronounce fish and wildlife. So he'd say, oh, those fishing wild guys, they're always out there. And I, I just want people to know that, that, you know, if you, if you end up committing a federal wildlife law and a fishing wildlife agent gets on you. You're cooked. I mean, every agent I know is so tenacious and so committed to their job. It is. It is true what it's what they say about federal agents. Once they're on you and

• 50:35Speaker 04

  they they have evidence that you did something, they're not giving up. They'll get you. It's just a matter of time.

• 50:42Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. I'll tell you one thing that binds together all of the vehicles in the Rinella fleet at my house. They all have WeatherTech floor liners. When we get a new car, the first thing we do, out with the junky factory carpet mats, in with WeatherTech. They really are the

• 51:27Steven Rinella?

  best. They're indestructible. You can pull them out, hose them off. It doesn't matter what happens on the floor of your rig. If you got WeatherTech, you're going to be covered. I love these things. If you're looking to get a great gift for someone, especially if they're a big time outdoors kind of person, like if you really want to do them a favor, get them some WeatherTech floor liners for their truck or car. They'll have a way easier time keeping their rig nice and clean, and they'll get years and years of use out of a set. Visit weathertech.com for your holiday shopping today. You need credit to buy, well, pretty much any big thing. So how do you get started?

• 52:07Steven Rinella?

  Easy. The One Pay Builder Card. It's simple and smart. One Pay is the banking app trusted by millions of Americans, and the One Pay Builder Card is an easy way to build credit. Just use it to make everyday purchases, build your credit history, and then you can work up to the big milestones, buying a new car or a new house. Or hell, maybe something I'm always thinking about, which is another boat. Those moments start with small, consistent steps with the One Pay Builder Card. Download the One Pay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Builder Card results may vary and aren't guaranteed. Learn more about banking through One Pay at onepay.com/podcast.

• 53:01Steven Rinella?

  How do you create the distinction between like, when does someone violating a state's law become federal?

• 53:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a great question.

• 53:12Steven Rinella?

  If it becomes, if it becomes a LACI Act, does that involve you then?

• 53:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 53:16Steven Rinella?

  A LACI Act violation?

• 53:17Speaker 04

  Yes, it can. So the best way to explain that is the, if you think about the FBI's relationship to, say, to the Montana Bozeman Police, right? If a car gets stolen here in town, that's a state issue, right? Local police are going to handle that. If that car crosses the state line into Wyoming, now that's a federal offense. The FBI can get involved. And the reason for that is the jurisdiction of the Montana law enforcement ends at the border. So it becomes difficult for them to conduct investigations outside the state. For the feds, that's not an issue. I never cared about a state line. That never, never crossed my mind, right?

• 54:01Speaker 04

  So if I, you know, if something crosses state lines, it often triggers a federal law that makes that a federal offense, allowing the FBI or Fish and Wildlife or Secret Service or whomever to get involved. And a lot of times it's done at the request of the state. So we, we in LA often got calls from Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, from game wardens that said, hey, you know, this LA guy came in and killed a big elk out here illegally. And can you help? Yeah, heck, yeah, we can. If he took, if he killed an elk illegally in Montana and he drove the meat, any part of it, antler, meat, hide, whatever, back to LA, that's a LACI Act violation, which makes it a federal offense.

• 54:45Steven Rinella?

  And you can assist in the investigation.

• 54:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. So we bring the resources of the federal government to help the state. That's really what the LACI Act's all about, even though it, you know, it's not like we're stealing the case from the state.

• 54:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 04

  A lot of times what I would do as an agent.

• 54:58Steven Rinella?

  That's how it happens in the movies.

• 54:59Speaker 04

  That's how it happens in the movies.

• 55:00Steven Rinella?

  We're taking this one over, Perkins.

• 55:02Speaker 04

  And I. That makes my skin crawl. That makes my skin crawl because it's really not the way it works out in the field. Honestly, what I would normally do if I had that situation is I would get with the Montana Warden and I'd say, all right, we got him on the Lacy. What do you need? Here's my report. Here's that. Here's all the evidence. Um, what do you need to make your state case? And then we together, we would say, who's going to get the best punch out of this, right? Who's going to get the best penalty? And sometimes it's the state. Sometimes the state, in many cases, the states are have much harsher penalties for wildlife crimes than the feds do.

• 55:40Speaker 06

  Well, it's interesting to hear you say that because we often cover this sort of stuff and like it never fails nine out of 10 times. At the end of the discussion, we go, some bitch only got $300 and lost his license for like a year.

• 55:53Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:55Speaker 06

  That's barely a slap on the wrist.

• 55:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:57Speaker 06

  Are you guys automatically taken over if it's federally managed like waterfowl for instance, or?

• 56:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, it, we can, right? If it's a federally managed animal, we can take, take it over as you say, but um, like especially with waterfowl. We generally, even though we have primary jurisdiction over waterfowl, all migratory birds, doves, doves too. We don't, you know, bust in on that because the US Fish and Wildlife Service, we're all special agents. We're plainclothes investigators. We don't have a patrol function.

• 56:28Speaker 06

  Right.

• 56:29Speaker 04

  You know, I drive a unmarked car. I don't have a dispatcher telling me where to go. So, uniformed game wardens are ideally suited to enforce waterfowl hunting, dove hunting.

• 56:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, I guess I wasn't talking about just like someone going over the limit or something, but if it's like a larger scale thing.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. Again, we would, if a state's got an investigation going, we would join them.

• 56:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 04

  Versus taking it over from them. Yeah. Yeah. We don't do that.

• 56:55Steven Rinella?

  Did you?

• 56:55Speaker 04

  It's not cool.

• 56:56Steven Rinella?

  Did you ever work any cases that involved, um, people?

• 57:02Steven Rinella?

  In the restaurant trade.

• 57:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:05Steven Rinella?

  Serving poached wildlife or serving illegally captured wildlife that was making its way into the restaurant trade?

• 57:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, I didn't in particular, but there are some cases that that's come up. Even in LA, a lot of the Asian restaurants will serve wildlife that's taken turtles in particular reptiles, sometimes fish. So we, yeah, we got involved in some of that. But, you know, that reminds me, I told you earlier that, you know, early in my career, what we dealt with was a lot of wildlife coming into the United States, right? About halfway through, maybe around 2000, between 2005 and 2010, we started to see more and more native wildlife leaving the United States.

• 57:52Speaker 04

  And that, as China and Vietnam, you know, became richer, emerging economies, you had all these people there who had money to spend. And so they started to spend it on exotic stuff.

• 58:07Steven Rinella?

  Wanting it alive?

• 58:09Speaker 04

  Alive and dead, both.

• 58:11Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 58:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, for the food trade and for the pet trade. So we started to see a lot of native animals leaving the United States, in particular reptiles. The turtle population in the southeastern United States has been absolutely decimated by the demand for turtle meat and pets in China and Vietnam. And it's become a big part of what the US Fish and Wildlife Service does is combating the trafficking of animals that are native to the US or at least North America.

• 58:40Speaker 05

  Are black bear gallbladder still a thing? Because that's something like as a hunter, we always like, you always, we always heard about it, you know?

• 58:48Steven Rinella?

  Did you know you used to not be able to in some states? Maybe all states.

• 58:53Speaker 05

  There was rules around.

• 58:53Steven Rinella?

  You couldn't possess, you couldn't possess your own bear's gallbladder.

• 58:58Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 58:59Steven Rinella?

  Like you were, they changed it to be that you're allowed to have like one or something?

• 59:03Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 59:03Steven Rinella?

  But it would be that you, like, you couldn't remove it from the field.

• 59:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 59:07Steven Rinella?

  Of even your own.

• 59:08Speaker 04

  I did know that.

• 59:09Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 59:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, and even now, it's not legal to sell it, right?

• 59:12Steven Rinella?

  That's correct.

• 59:13Speaker 04

  You could keep it, but you can't sell it.

• 59:14Steven Rinella?

  But I think, I think some, I don't, I don't know if it's even state or federal, but I remember reading somewhere that it was like, if, if, if you legally harvest a bear and you legally tag your bear, you are allowed to, for whatever, there's, there's no prohibition on you having it.

• 59:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 59:28Steven Rinella?

  Right? You can't sell it, but at a time it was, you couldn't have it even in your possession.

• 59:32Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 59:33Steven Rinella?

  So ostensibly, if you had a whole ungutted bear in your possession in a truck, you were like technically in possession of a gallbladder.

• 59:41Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 59:42Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 59:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's kind of like having a loaded firearm in a truck, right? It's like you're dead. If you find out, it's a game, or it's gonna give you, get you for it. Yeah, uh, yeah, it was like a per se violation.

• 59:51Steven Rinella?

  So how would, how does stuff, something like that, or take like spotted cats, I don't know, whatever, jaguar, hides, gallbladder, whatever the hell you know about, how does it flow from, you know, people that are in the, you know, in some rural area, you got some kid who's collecting turtles, right? Like, how does it flow and eventually wind up on a container ship? You know, I mean, like, like, who's the sort of, who winds up being the kingpin?

• 1:00:21Steven Rinella?

  Or the, the, the sort of export agent on domestic wildlife? Like, what, what does it bottleneck through?

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it varies, of course, depending on the wildlife and who's interested in buying it, right? So, but let me give you a classic example of this absolutely phenomenal case that our agents did on the East Coast. It was called Operation Broken Glass.

• 1:00:42Steven Rinella?

  Oh, Elvers.

• 1:00:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:00:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, good for you. Yeah, glass eels, right?

• 1:00:49Speaker 04

  That was an example where, you know, for years, decades, generations even maybe, there's been a glass eel fishery on the East Coast. And it's always been.

• 1:00:59Speaker 05

  Isn't it, there's only a couple of states where it's legal to harvest them, like Maine and somewhere else, I think?

• 1:01:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I'm not familiar with which states.

• 1:01:06Steven Rinella?

  There's a limited legal harvest, just for listeners sake, well, like. If you go to a sushi restaurant and you get unagi, okay, like smoked eel, that eel, they're raising and finishing those eels in Asia.

• 1:01:22Speaker 04

  They're sending the juveniles over.

• 1:01:24Steven Rinella?

  But they can't propagate them.

• 1:01:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Steven Rinella?

  So basically, they're buying US ba- like baby eels or glass eels or elvers. They're buying the babies in order to raise them and make a processed food item.

• 1:01:39Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:01:39Steven Rinella?

  But it's so complicated to propagate them because they propagate out in the middle of the like.

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Steven Rinella?

  Down, down like off the, off of Bahamas.

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  Saragossa Sea.

• 1:01:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, off of Bermuda and Saragossa Sea. So, and there's some legal trade, but it's augmented greatly with illegal harvest, correct?

• 1:01:55Speaker 04

  Hugely, yeah. And they're like salmon, right? They, they go from freshwater to saltwater and, but yeah, and glass eel, just for your listeners, you know, the reason it's called glass eel because it's, they're almost see-through, I think. When they're young, they're just these little slippery things. So anyway, there's been a, there's been a legal harvest of those allowed, but what happened was this increased demand, as you described in Asia for the eels that are used in, in sushi restaurants. What happened was it's the local guys who are skilled at catching, you know, elvers. And what happens is these Chinese guys were showing up in those communities and they were going out to the

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  different fish shops, asking to buy eels and offering absurdly high prices.

• 1:02:42Steven Rinella?

  Local fish shops.

• 1:02:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're, we're in the process of writing a book right now and I did some, we're doing a thing about that.

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 1:02:51Speaker 05

  And it was something like $2,000 a pound for, for elvers.

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 1:02:56Speaker 07

  That's like more than sea cucumbers, I think.

• 1:02:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Speaker 07

  Gee.

• 1:03:01Speaker 04

  Well, you know, sea cucumbers is another good example we could talk about, but basically, basically they, you know, in answer to your question, what happens is.

• 1:03:09Steven Rinella?

  They, they put the word out.

• 1:03:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, somebody from the, from the end consumer seller shows up in that community and offers that high price and then corrupts the local guys who know how to do it. And that's true around the world. That's how it works with rhino horn in Africa. That's how it works with sea cucumbers in Mexico. It's always the end consumer.

• 1:03:31Speaker 04

  Seller and I don't want to just say Chinese because I don't want to, you know, disparage Chinese, but right now China is a huge consumer of wildlife. So we'll use China as the example. Somebody from China shows up that speaks English and starts offering a lot of money for whatever they're after. And it just snowballs and gets out of control and the local people are corrupted. Uh, this, this guy, there's kind of various levels of kingpins. You might have the local East Coast guy who's the kingpin organizing five fishermen who are then giving him all the elvers. He sells them to the Chinese guy who's kind of a kingpin, but he's moving it on to the next guy. And eventually it gets on that container and it ends up over in, in China.

• 1:04:14Steven Rinella?

  But it's on a container with air raiders and

• 1:04:17Speaker 04

  Sophisticated.

• 1:04:18Steven Rinella?

  I mean, they're bit, it's like, it's not like you're, uh, you know, it's not like you're sending batteries or something. I mean, you gotta keep them alive.

• 1:04:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's hard.

• 1:04:26Speaker 05

  Are you guys involved with a lot of like inspections in port cities, like going on to ships and, or do you have to have a reason to go look for stuff?

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  Uh, no fishing wildlife agents and inspectors. We have a uniformed division called the inspection division. And those, those are basically customs officers. Their authority is at the ports of entry. They, they look and act just like customs officers. They just wear a brown uniform. But we have full customs authority. And sometimes even US customs doesn't remember that fish and wildlife service has full customs authority. So when I was an agent, I could show up at the airport and I could crack open any package I wanted. I could search any passenger I wanted. I could go through their luggage. Uh, cause the LACI Act gives us customs authority. Yeah. It's kind of nice.

• 1:05:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Steven Rinella?

  Let's go back to the elvers thing for a minute.

• 1:05:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:15Steven Rinella?

  If you are working a case like that, do you have sympathy on the locals who you use the word like corrupted? Is there ever an element of, um, entrapment's not the right word, but. Like if you're going to someone, you know, who's hard on their, you know, hard up, and you make this offer to them, you know, 2,000 bucks, what is 2,000 bucks a pound? Right? Is that guy of interest to you? Or are you mostly interested in the person who is recruiting? Or would you naturally try to work that case to who is exporting?

• 1:05:58Speaker 04

  I think every fish and wilder special agent who knew what they were doing would focus more on the drivers, right?

• 1:06:07Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:06:08Speaker 04

  So they're gonna try to get up as high in this chain of bad guys as you can. But it doesn't mean you ignore the other bad guys, right? I always, you know, there's this obsession sometimes with only getting the kingpin. Well, I'll tell you what, it can take years to get a kingpin. And while you're working on it, a lot of crimes occurring, right?

• 1:06:26Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:06:26Speaker 04

  And so there's absolutely no excuse for not getting the lower level people too. In part because they can often become great informants, right? You catch those people at the lower level, they don't want to go to jail and they want to minimize their penalty. They'll often cooperate in exchange for a lower sentence. So you focus on the whole picture, right? But of course, if you were to only catch the local guys who are fishing for the elevers, you're not doing your job because the bad guys that are buying them are just gonna find other people to do it. So, yeah, you want to focus as high as you can because you want to kill it. You want to kill the trade, or you want to kill the illegal trade. That's the goal.

• 1:07:08Speaker 04

  And you're not going to do that by focusing on just the kingpin or just the catchers. You gotta get them all.

• 1:07:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, as many as you can, anyway.

• 1:07:15Steven Rinella?

  Did you work a case, I think Corinne was saying, did you work a butterfly case?

• 1:07:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, it's like the first kind of case I did that was kind of bigger on my own. And it's just coincidence that I got assigned to it. But there was this Japanese national named Yoshi Kojima who was kind of notorious for trafficking in endangered butterflies.

• 1:07:38Steven Rinella?

  For what purpose? Decorations?

• 1:07:40Speaker 04

  Decorations.

• 1:07:41Speaker 06

  Why is that funny, Corinne?

• 1:07:42Speaker 04

  Everybody laughs.

• 1:07:44Speaker 07

  The whole, the drama of...

• 1:07:47Speaker 07

  You know.

• 1:07:47Speaker 06

  You're just writing the script in your head.

• 1:07:49Speaker 07

  Yes, yeah, I'm, I'm just picturing every episode of this like new undercover, you know, it's just, it's not about drugs.

• 1:07:58Speaker 06

  Like the butterfly collector is, is actually the head of the triad.

• 1:08:03Speaker 07

  It's not, yep, it's not, it's not about drugs, it's about all this other stuff and the weird, you know, interesting kinda interests of decoration or food or whatever.

• 1:08:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I haven't really watched any serial shows since Dukes of Hazzard, but the way it works in Dukes of Hazzard is every episode, a new bad guy comes to town.

• 1:08:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, like.

• 1:08:27Steven Rinella?

  Right, so every episode is like a new critter.

• 1:08:30Speaker 07

  I mean, this is like an NBC primetime CBS primetime show waiting to happen.

• 1:08:36Steven Rinella?

  Always tension between Roscoe, Pico Train, and, uh, who was the Cletus, right? And then, you know, Bull and Luke, and who drove the, the tow truck? Cooter.

• 1:08:50Speaker 06

  Where'd Boss Hogg fall into this?

• 1:08:52Steven Rinella?

  He's always, there's always tension. And Boss Hogg, every episode, a new, new bad guys, usually a pair of bad guys, comes into town, and they like align with Boss Hogg, often double crossing him. They're vanquished in the end by Bull and Luke. Something will get blown up by dynamite on an arrow. And then like, a week later, like, a, a new bad guy emerges, and for this show, like every episode is, there's the butterfly episode.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  I hate to tell you this, but Cooter was probably a bad elver poacher. I'm pretty sure he was. Either that or Hawks, he was killing Hawks one or the other.

• 1:09:32Steven Rinella?

  I'm sure he was. Well, uh, uh, you know, Bull and Luke were, were convicted, uh, moonshiners.

• 1:09:37Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 1:09:37Steven Rinella?

  So they were, they're troublemakers anyways.

• 1:09:40Speaker 04

  One crime leads to another. Yeah, probably poachers too.

• 1:09:43Steven Rinella?

  So, uh, off that subject, and off the subject of how good of a TV show this is gonna wind up being.

• 1:09:48Speaker 07

  So, yeah.

• 1:09:49Steven Rinella?

  Butterfly decorations.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Steven Rinella?

  They're, they're displayed, what, in a glass case?

• 1:09:53Speaker 04

  Sometimes, yeah, a lot of, you'll see them a lot on, in, in frames on people's walls. Start paying attention, even in TV shows, you'll see them in the background in frames on walls with their wings spread.

• 1:10:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, like, needled all out.

• 1:10:04Steven Rinella?

  Are you ever watching a show and be like?

• 1:10:06Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:06Steven Rinella?

  You're not supposed to have that one?

• 1:10:07Speaker 04

  Well, no, I haven't seen that. I haven't seen that. There's, there's tons that are legal, right?

• 1:10:11Speaker 07

  I like the set designer, kind of made a mistake.

• 1:10:14Steven Rinella?

  Well, the monarch might get listed.

• 1:10:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, right, exactly. And a lot of times butterflies that are not a problem here, or not, when I say problem, I mean, they're not valuable, they're not traded, are super valuable in other countries.

• 1:10:27Speaker 05

  Does it, um, cause there's like species that are classified as endangered here, and then there's like the International Union of something or other?

• 1:10:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Steven Rinella?

  IUCN.

• 1:10:38Speaker 05

  So like, the eels are listed by, I think the ICU.

• 1:10:42Speaker 04

  I'm glad you brought this up.

• 1:10:43Speaker 05

  And then they're not here?

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Because.

• 1:10:46Steven Rinella?

  International Union of, the IUCN.

• 1:10:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, I forget what the C stands for, but it's concert, anyway. So, but, I, so, in terms of the law and law enforcement and crimes, the IUCN means nothing.

• 1:11:01Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:11:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:02Speaker 07

  The International Union for Conservation of Nature.

• 1:11:04Speaker 05

  We think these species.

• 1:11:06Speaker 04

  And, and it's not to say that their science isn't legit and that it should be, but for, from a special agent's perspective, we care about two things. One is, is it listed as endangered or threatened under the US Endangered Species Act? Cause that's the only, that's the law that has criminal penalties. The second thing we care about is whether or not it is listed under either Appendix 1 or 2 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. That's CITES.

• 1:11:31Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:11:32Speaker 04

  And the reason we care about that is because CITES is, um, it is incorporated into the ESA. So, the Endangered Species Act allows us to enforce the CITES provision. So, it becomes a violation of the Endangered Species Act to import or export an animal in violation of CITES. So, CITES and the ESA are what special agents are looking at. And a lot of butterflies, there are a number of butterflies listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act. So obviously, we care about that. But then, there's a whole ton of butterflies that are listed, these either appendix one or two, under CITES. And so, we also care about that.

• 1:12:11Steven Rinella?

  So you can be, yeah, you can. You can be on CITES, but not be endangered.

• 1:12:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:12:16Steven Rinella?

  For instance, bobcats, IUCN has them as a species of least concern. They're, in some states, they're a non-game animal. In some states, they're listed as a fur bear, but they still are CITES.

• 1:12:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:12:30Steven Rinella?

  Right? Because they resemble.

• 1:12:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:12:32Steven Rinella?

  I guess the logic of it, which probably doesn't matter to you guys, but the logic of it is, it's a spotted cat.

• 1:12:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:12:38Steven Rinella?

  And so, in trying to track all these endangered spotted cats around the world, you need to pay attention to bobcats, so that you don't have spotted cats that aren't bobcats moving as bobcats.

• 1:12:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:12:49Steven Rinella?

  Or, I could be screwing that up, but something like that, right?

• 1:12:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. And with CITES, remember, it's an international agreement, right? So, say if Canada wants to put bobcats on as a CITES appendix two, and they get enough support among the CITES membership, and it's voted that bobcats become a CITES two, the US is obligated to enforce that law.

• 1:13:11Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 1:13:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. So even though we wouldn't have put them on, CITES, if Canada wants to, or Mexico wants to put them on, and they get the votes, then we're obligated to enforce that.

• 1:13:21Steven Rinella?

  And that becomes your responsibility in the field.

• 1:13:23Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yeah. So we're always looking, anytime, anytime we realize an animal involved in something is a CITES animal, or listed as threatened or endangered, it piques our interest, because there's probably some illegal activity afoot. Yeah.

• 1:13:38Steven Rinella?

  I want to, I want you to tell the full butterfly story, but I want to tell you a

• 1:13:43Speaker 04

  You sure?

• 1:13:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Well, how much ever you'd like to share. Funny anecdote is when, years ago, we were in, doing some work in Guyana, and they had these two river turtles. And they have their native words for them. But I remember, they would, there's one turtle that even the, the tribe we were with. And explaining the turtle, they would be like, there's the, the, the meat turtle.

• 1:14:06Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:07Steven Rinella?

  And there's the Cites turtle.

• 1:14:10Steven Rinella?

  And I couldn't figure out, it took me days to figure out what they were saying. I'm like, oh my God, he's talking about the Cites tree.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Steven Rinella?

  The Cites tree, because they used to traffic in those turtles, you know, they would sell those turtles and they knew them like, you know, the damn Cites turtle.

• 1:14:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, the one you touch, the one you don't touch, right? Yeah. Yeah. And most countries don't have anything like the Endangered Species Act. So they, they rely only on what's listed in Cites. Uh, Great Britain, for example, you know, they have their own wildlife act, but when it comes to international species, they're, they're only enforcing Cites, you know?

• 1:14:42Steven Rinella?

  Cool.

• 1:14:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Steven Rinella?

  Butterflies.

• 1:14:44Speaker 04

  Butterflies. Yeah. So this, uh, I was pretty new agent and we got a tip that this guy Yoshi Kojima is coming to the International Bug Fair at the LA Museum of Natural History, which go ahead and laugh, but there is such a thing. I love it. I want to go. It's actually the, the largest event that the Museum of Natural History hosts every year in LA. They get about 10,000 visitors a day. And it's everything. It's kids running around who are interested in, you know, scorpions. And then there are these serious collectors that go and they sell high end butterflies to each other, basically. But, uh, some of these things, you know, the most endangered, uh, bird wing butterfly could go for $10,000 for a male female pair. Easy.

• 1:15:28Steven Rinella?

  Alive.

• 1:15:29Speaker 04

  No, dead. Yeah. They're not, they're not really valuable alive. Uh, people want them displayed, pinned in a frame or in a display box. So again, it's a status thing. Friend of mine describes it as kind of like the obsessive, uh, baseball card collector. Like

• 1:15:45Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 1:15:46Speaker 04

  Somebody who would spend $10,000 for obscure baseball player. Or art or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Or art. Yeah. Yeah. I have another friend who talks about it like it's, you know, if you, if, if you steal a Van Gogh, what do you do with it? You know, what, where do, where do you display your stolen?

• 1:16:02Steven Rinella?

  You're saying to your buddies, see that?

• 1:16:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's, he always.

• 1:16:07Steven Rinella?

  You're really good buddies.

• 1:16:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. He described it as you have a secret room in your house with a secret door. And when certain people come over, you open the door and you're like, my Van Gogh, right? I mean, what's the point?

• 1:16:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Speaker 04

  But that's, that's kind of the driver for these things and they're beautiful. They're, they're cool. But anyway, Yoshi Kojima was, uh, had already been on our radar screen. This agent named John Mendoza in California had tracked him for years and believed he was going into Death Valley National Park and the Grand Canyon National Park and poaching butterflies and then selling them overseas.

• 1:16:38Steven Rinella?

  Himself.

• 1:16:38Speaker 04

  Himself, yeah. So John had been doing a lot of surveillance, trying to catch Kojima in the act, but as you can imagine, doing surveillance in Death Valley, you're, it's not easy because you're going to get seen, right? And eventually to John's chagrin, um, you know, uh, justified chagrin, he was ordered by his commands, a chain of command to close the investigation. And I, I loved it. When I picked up the Kojima case, first thing I did is I looked up John's old reports and his closing line on that last report was awesome. You know, it was just like, you know, he just dimed out his supervisor. He's like, my supervisor ordered me to close this case closed. It's pretty sharp.

• 1:17:18Steven Rinella?

  For what reason?

• 1:17:19Speaker 04

  You know, uh, didn't think it was a good enough priority, didn't think it was going to succeed, whatever, you know? Um, 20 years ago and farther, there, there were still some agents around who, who didn't really understand why it was important to work on international trafficking cases, didn't think it was important, disagreed that it was important. So, you know, I don't know if that was the case there.

• 1:17:41Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:17:42Speaker 04

  It just happened. Um, so the story was Kojima's coming into LA. We had an informant who we were working with and we, and my boss said, this is a great opportunity for you to work with an informant. You're going to go to the fair, the informant's going to make the contact. We're going to see if Kojima will admit to anything, kind of see, right? So I thought shit, my job's just to get the guy wired up and supervise, make sure nothing bad happens. So I meet with the informant the night before, we show him how to work the equipment. He goes to the fair the next day and for whatever reason, Yoshi Kojima.

• 1:18:17Steven Rinella?

  Can you, can you real quick?

• 1:18:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:19Steven Rinella?

  Who the hell's the informant?

• 1:18:20Speaker 04

  Informant is, uh, somebody else involved in the insect trade. Yeah. I'm not going to name him, but.

• 1:18:26Steven Rinella?

  Who's already been caught or they're like, uh?

• 1:18:29Speaker 04

  No, he was kind of irritated that Kojima was undercutting all his prices. Yeah, and that happens a lot.

• 1:18:36Speaker 07

  So you keep, you keep certain informants. Involved in

• 1:18:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:41Speaker 07

  In your orbit.

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, to be a good agent, you really have to, you have to make contact with people in the trade, right? And you have to develop trust with them and try to get them to help you. Because animals can't tell you what's going on. They can't call you. No, no wolf or grizzly bear, California condor is going to call you and say, guys are shooting me. So, um, yeah, you get to know a lot of different people. And, and the motivations are varied. Sometimes you'll arrest somebody and then they're like, well, I'm not going to go down for this by myself. I'm going to be an informant for you and get a better sentence. Other times it's people who are trying to do things legit and they're getting undercut by people like Kojima and they're pissed off. So they're going to turn.

• 1:19:23Speaker 04

  Um, sometimes the best people to go to are ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, ex-husbands. I'm telling you, you're investigating somebody and you find out they're divorced, the first person you talk to is their ex. Definitely, definitely. They will give you fantastic information about what's going on. Oh yeah, I've had so many wives invite me, give me permission to search their husband's garage or whatever, because they're just tired of the reptile smell out in the garage. Yeah, it's happened more than once.

• 1:19:54Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:19:55Speaker 04

  So, um,

• 1:19:57Steven Rinella?

  Think about my own wife.

• 1:19:57Speaker 07

  I was just gonna say.

• 1:19:59Speaker 04

  I mean, once it,

• 1:20:00Steven Rinella?

  She's like, please go look in the garage.

• 1:20:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's,

• 1:20:03Steven Rinella?

  Something's out there.

• 1:20:04Speaker 04

  That literally happened. We showed up at a house in San Diego and knocked on the door and the wife answered and we identified ourselves and she said, what's he done now?

• 1:20:16Speaker 04

  And we explained it and she goes, oh, his garage, our garage is full of reptiles. My partner said, can we take a look? She's like, yeah. Walk out and there's, there's endangered monitors out there and, uh, yeah, he was, he was in trouble in more ways than one. But, uh, anyway, so I go to the fair thinking I'm just going to be kind of overseeing our informant, right? But Kojima's very cagey. He, he's the, remember, he's the guy that invented the phrase fish and wild guys. And he, he was very paranoid. He,

• 1:20:49Speaker 04

  John Mendoza had actually gone out and interviewed him at one point, kind of frustrated because he knew his case was getting shut down. So he just thought, what the heck, I'll go interview Kojima. And Kojima later, when I was working Kojima undercover, Kojima bragged to me about how he had outsmarted the fishing wild guys. And this agent, which is a dumb thing to say to an undercover fishing wild agent.

• 1:21:13Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. I'll tell you one thing that binds together all of the vehicles in the Rinella fleet at my house. They all have WeatherTech floor liners. When we get a new car, the first thing we do, out with the junky factory carpet mats, in with WeatherTech. They really are the

• 1:21:58Steven Rinella?

  best. They're indestructible. You can pull them out, hose them off. It doesn't matter what happens on the floor of your rig. If you've got WeatherTech, you're going to be covered. I love these things. If you're looking to get a great gift for someone, especially if they're a big time outdoors kind of person, like if you really want to do them a favor, get them some WeatherTech floor liners for their truck or car. They'll have a way easier time keeping their rig nice and clean, and they'll get years and years of use out of a set. Visit weathertech.com for your holiday shopping today. Okay, so buying a new car or a new home starts by building credit, right? So how do you start

• 1:22:39Steven Rinella?

  building credit? It's easy. With OnePay's Builder Card, there's no credit check and no monthly or annual fees, just a card that helps you build credit to reach goals like buying a car or home. Download the OnePay app or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 1:23:00Speaker 03

  OnePay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Builder Card results may vary and aren't guaranteed. Learn more about banking through OnePay at onepay.com/podcast.

• 1:23:16Speaker 04

  And the Kojima case really kickstarted a long few years of me doing pretty complicated undercover work. I actually ended up starting undercover businesses and working the roller pigeon guys. And I made some great undercover cases. And it was all because I learned how to do undercover work getting Kojima. It took me three years to get that guy. And my boss was absolutely fantastic mentor. She's one of the greatest undercover fish and wildlife agents ever, as far as I'm concerned, Marie Palladini. And she really tutored me on how to do this work. Because what happened at the fair was Kojima would not talk to our informant. He talked to him, but he just wouldn't, he wouldn't get tripped up and say anything, even remotely incriminating. So by the end of

• 1:24:00Speaker 04

  the day, I was kind of frustrated that our informant wasn't getting anywhere and it wasn't his fault. So I just, you know, it's a public insect fair. So I just walked, Kojima had a booth, he was selling stuff. So I just walked up and I was like, what's this? What's that? I don't know anything about this. And for whatever reason, we hit it off. He just loved telling me about all these butterflies and nothing he had for sale on the table was illegal. It was all legal stuff. He wasn't that stupid, right? But one thing he did that was really weird, he, I think he was trying to impress me, he pulled out from underneath the table, which is usually where the illegal stuff is, this live beetle in a little Tupperware container. And this beetle is called

• 1:24:42Speaker 04

  a Dynasties beetle. And you'd know him if you saw him because you probably only see him in a museum. They're huge, six inches long, maybe. And they have a giant horn. Yeah, sometimes it's called rhinoceros beetles, but they're just

• 1:24:54Steven Rinella?

  Wasn't it Doug Amelin?

• 1:24:57Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:24:58Steven Rinella?

  We interviewed a guy that works on those horn beetles.

• 1:25:00Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, cool. The horn actually looks like a jaw.

• 1:25:03Steven Rinella?

  Not worked in your way.

• 1:25:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, I understand.

• 1:25:05Steven Rinella?

  He works in a university way.

• 1:25:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And they look like they'd be really ferocious, right? But anyway, it's alive. And I was like, oh, where'd that come from? And he goes, oh, I brought it up from South America. And the reason he shushed me is because generally, it's a violation of USDA regulations to bring a live insect into the US. So it's not the crime of the century, but here he was admitting he'd done something illegal. So I thought, oh, that's good. But I didn't know where to take it next because I I didn't really done undercover work. So the weird.

• 1:25:39Steven Rinella?

  But you're undercover.

• 1:25:40Speaker 04

  There I am, just kind of impromptu. I'm just talking to him, making sure I identify him as Yoshi Kojima, just trying to do whatever I can. Right. But the weirdest thing was at the end of the day, I'm just loitering in a group and I feel that somebody tapped my shoulder and I turn around and it's Yoshi standing there. And I actually kind of, you know, I kind of panicked a little bit because I'm like, you know, why are you here? And he had this box in his hand and he said, here for your collection, to start your collection. And he gave me this cardboard box. I opened it up and it's full of just crappy, you know, butterflies, ding ding up wings, moths, nothing. And on the top, he wrote his email address.

• 1:26:22Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:26:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I went back and told my boss this and she goes, this is perfect situation, right?

• 1:26:29Speaker 06

  Now, I don't want to spoil what I already know because I I listened to the interview.

• 1:26:35Speaker 04

  She recorded that? She didn't tell me she's recording that interview.

• 1:26:38Speaker 06

  No, the one you do with Leanne for NPR.

• 1:26:42Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:43Speaker 06

  Telling the story.

• 1:26:43Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, years ago.

• 1:26:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:26:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26:45Speaker 06

  Because like now, looking back at that, you know, the reason that maybe you got a little preferential treatment.

• 1:26:51Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 1:26:51Speaker 06

  Maybe.

• 1:26:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know if it existed then or not.

• 1:26:54Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:26:55Speaker 04

  I didn't get weird vibes from him then. But what you're getting to is later, Kojima definitely had a crush on me later. I don't know if he did then, maybe.

• 1:27:03Steven Rinella?

  You know what? I was, we, I have a friend whose sister, um, worked undercover narcotics. And she was at the time in her late twenties. And I was asking her a million questions about her. She's she's out of it now. She did it for a long time. And she said, um, they always think there's going to be a relationship. Always.

• 1:27:30Speaker 04

  Interesting. Interesting. If it's.

• 1:27:32Steven Rinella?

  And the role she played.

• 1:27:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:34Steven Rinella?

  And the role she played.

• 1:27:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's and it's.

• 1:27:36Steven Rinella?

  As a young woman.

• 1:27:37Speaker 04

  It's hard. I mean, you know, I was telling you about my boss, Marie. She did a lot of undercover work when she was younger and it's it's a problem because the bad guys will hit on you, you know? You know, you got to be, obviously you can't get in a relationship with an informant or a bad guy. That's just not cool. But.

• 1:27:58Steven Rinella?

  I want to tell you something funny that you told me about it. I said. Her, her, she was like an out of state drug buyer, right?

• 1:28:05Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:28:05Steven Rinella?

  So she would periodically show up in a town to buy.

• 1:28:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:28:09Steven Rinella?

  Even though she lived in the town, her, her cover was that she lived elsewhere. It would travel to buy.

• 1:28:13Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:28:14Steven Rinella?

  Um, and I said, well, how do you avoid, like if some

• 1:28:18Steven Rinella?

  drug dealer wants you to go in this creepy ass house and you're undercover, how do you not go? She said, I would say, I'm not going into your creepy ass house.

• 1:28:26Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. And, and I'm sure she would, she would tell you that there's a temptation to go in, right? Could, cause as a law enforcement officer, how often do you get invited into the bad guy's house? Right? Normally you gotta have a warrant, right? But if you're undercover and they invite you in, you don't need a warrant.

• 1:28:44Steven Rinella?

  Cops, come on in.

• 1:28:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, you get this free opportunity to look around, but it's super dangerous to do that. Super dangerous. And then, you know, it happened to me with Kojima invited me into his place and I had to make a call. And at the time, it was a different story, but you know, I had a cover team behind me and they lost me in LA traffic.

• 1:29:03Speaker 07

  Oh shit.

• 1:29:03Speaker 04

  And we pulled into Kojima's underground apartment and in there I was like, oh, well there, my cover team's definitely not going to reacquire me now. Right? And so I thought, well, I'll make a fake phone call to my cover team. I'll say, hey Yoshi, I, yeah, we can go check out your place, but I gotta make a call because I gotta change this appointment. And, and Murphy's Law, I step out of the car and my undercover cell phone actually fell, landed right on the antenna and broke into like three pieces. So now I have no way to contact anybody. And I gotta make a call. Am I going to go into this apartment when nobody knows I'm there? Or am I gonna, you know, get out of this?

• 1:29:42Speaker 06

  Did you feel like this guy was, could be physically dangerous?

• 1:29:46Speaker 04

  I was, you know, physically, I was never afraid of Kojima. Like he, he wasn't going to beat me up, but you know, I, I can't defeat a gun. If Kojima's got a gun and I don't know who else is in his apartment. And he's so paranoid about the fish and wild guys, you know, if he's got a friend or two friends in that apartment, they're going to beat the crap out of me till I tell them who I am. I can't, once I'm in there, it's hard to extricate, right? So you, you never want to assume that this little guy is not going to hurt you. Cause anybody can hurt you with the right weapon, right? So, uh, anyway, I, I did it because I'm like, I gotta see in this apartment. And, uh, but I knew I had limited time because what my cover team is going to do, they're going

• 1:30:30Speaker 04

  to follow certain protocols to reacquire me, right? And if they can't find me, pretty soon they're going to notify the LAPD that we have a missing undercover agent. And that's going to cause helicopters and black and whites to be in the neighborhood. So I knew I had a limited amount of time to get in and out of that apartment. And it, it was fine. It worked out fine. I made sure I stayed closer to his front door than he did, but getting into that apartment was amazing because he, his whole apartment was filled with butterflies and, and these illegal beetles that he'd been bringing up from South America that he was selling, claiming, selling in Japan for $10,000 apiece. I don't know whether that's true or not, but anyway, it was, uh, I, I got in and out of there in about 10 minutes.

• 1:31:14Speaker 04

  And by the time, this is, I had no cell phone, so I raced to the local, uh, like 7-Eleven, find one of the last remaining payphones in the city of Los Angeles, call the office. And yeah, the cover team was getting ready to call the LAPD. We just, just got out of there.

• 1:31:30Steven Rinella?

  Checked back in.

• 1:31:31Speaker 04

  Just checked back in, yeah. That was fun.

• 1:31:33Speaker 06

  Well, other than like seeing some evidence of what's going on there, like, I mean, did you have expectations of what his apartment is like? Like it was, it was it like a super nice apartment? You're like, oh my God, this guy's crushing it in his field because look at this apartment. Or was it dingy and dirty and crusty?

• 1:31:52Speaker 04

  Dingy and dirty. I mean, it's nice, nice place, right? Nice building, but dark, kept his curtains closed. Just gross. Like, you know, they got a big wraparound couch, but there was only one place to sit and everything else was just stacked with butterflies or butterfly containers. The grossest thing was, two gross things actually. One is I, I looked down the hallway of the apartment from the living room and there was like a T. I assume it went to a bedroom on the right and a bedroom on the left. And then there was a bathroom and the door was open and I could actually see into the bathtub and there was this disgusting black ring all around the tub. It was like a Silence of the Lambs.

• 1:32:30Steven Rinella?

  Like he had some weird shit living in that tub.

• 1:32:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe, or he didn't, or I don't know. But the second gross thing was he very proudly goes to the kitchen and opens the cupboards to the, above the sink. There's no, no food in the cupboards. It's all. Tupperware bins filled with these beetles.

• 1:32:48Steven Rinella?

  So it's more of a warehouse?

• 1:32:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. He lived in Kyoto, but he had this apartment in LA and it was just kind of his base. He did ultimately admit to me that he did poach butterflies out of Grand Canyon and Death Valley. But what he was doing now, he didn't do as much poaching himself. He hired people to go. And he eventually tried to recruit me to go out to Death Valley and collect, collect butterflies for him. Yeah.

• 1:33:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Was he, you take a guy like this. Is he like, does, does he imagine himself as mostly legitimate, but now and then I'll fudge the line? Or is he a, is he a career criminal?

• 1:33:28Speaker 04

  He was committed. He, he described himself to me as the world's most wanted butterfly smuggler. He, he took pride in the fact that Fish and Wildlife was after him. And he took pride in bragging that he outsmarted us, which as soon as I heard him say, you know, he outsmarted John Mendoza, I was like, no, you didn't.

• 1:33:46Speaker 04

  Number one, no, you didn't. And number two, I'm going to catch you. I'm putting you in jail, dude. That is, that went through my mind when he said that. I was like, nope, I'm never quitting until I put Yoshi Kojima in jail.

• 1:33:58Steven Rinella?

  How did you, how does it go about the event? I mean, at some point you gotta make an arrest, right?

• 1:34:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. There were a few ups and downs with him. He was real touchy and, you know, it would take a long time to explain how that whole case transpired over three years. But suffice it to say, there were two times during my relationship with him in an undercover capacity where he cut me off. He got, he got mad at me. So he would stop talking to me. At one point, what he wanted to do was he wanted to go into business with me and have me sell butterflies for him online that he would send me from Japan. And very clearly, obviously, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what he wanted was a fall guy, right? So when the Fish and Wild guys came coming, he would feed them Ted Nelson, which was my undercover name. He'd feed them Ted.

• 1:34:47Speaker 04

  And he'd slink away and he'd hope Fish and Wildlife would be happy because they caught Ted, right? So I knew that was his plan going in. But at one point, he wasn't sending me enough butterflies. Like he wasn't sending me the endangered stuff. So I created this undercover eBay account where I looked like I was selling some stuff on the side. And what I hoped he would ask me, my plan was he would come back and say, hey, Ted, where are you getting these? And I'd say some baloney line like, oh, I got a dealer, a supplier out of Germany, and he's terrible. He sends me horrible material. And I hope that Kojima would then say, well, I can give you that.

• 1:35:26Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:35:27Speaker 04

  But instead, he turned me into the local tip line for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

• 1:35:32Steven Rinella?

  You're kidding me.

• 1:35:33Speaker 04

  No, I got it. His game warden called me. His game warden called me one day and he goes, hey, Ed, I know you're doing a butterfly case. We got this weird tip on our tip line. And some Japanese guy turning in some guy. And I'm like, well, send it to me. And I listened to it and it's like, yeah, turning in Ted Nelson for selling Seides material that he doesn't have permits for.

• 1:35:52Steven Rinella?

  You are kidding.

• 1:35:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. So at that point, case is done, right? Because Kojima, I'm thinking, I can't get him now because if I stay in the business, Kojima thinks he turned me in. If I, if I stay in the business, he's going to think I'm an informant.

• 1:36:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:09Speaker 04

  He's going to think I turned.

• 1:36:10Speaker 07

  Oh, goodness.

• 1:36:11Speaker 04

  So I let it go. And my boss, Marie, was like, oh, case is done. You're never going to get this dude. So I literally put it aside and I started working on High Roller. Yeah. That's when High Roller came up. Like I said, I had nothing to do that day, right? So I went out and did that hawk case. But about a year later, right in the middle of High Roller, so I'm all right, now I'm doing a different undercover case with a different persona where I play a much rougher guy than I was portraying with Kojima. I get a tip that Kojima's coming back to the fair. And I'm like, I'm gonna take one more shot. So by this time, I have this-

• 1:36:49Steven Rinella?

  You got a striped suit, so they're going, you're just out of jail?

• 1:36:52Speaker 04

  No, but I did have a giant handlebar mustache because I grew a big mustache to kind of fit in with the pigeon people better. And I go to the fair and my plan is I'm gonna find him and I'm gonna accidentally, in quotes, air quotes, run into him and I'm gonna see what happens. So I, I go to the fair, I find him, he's in this big hall doing his usual thing. He's got his fanny pack in the front where he usually carried about $10,000 cash in his fanny pack. I don't know how this guy never got robbed walking around LA, but whatever. So- I wait till he's moving from one hall to the other where you gotta go through like this narrow walkway and I come the other direction and he looked like he looked scared

• 1:37:34Speaker 04

  out of his wits when he saw me but I immediately went out and said hey Yoshi it's so good to see you and in the conversation I very quickly let out that I owe him a huge debt and that caught his interest and I said because of the advice you gave me about how you handled the fish and wild guys I didn't get arrested I said I said some asshole turned me in to fish and game and they came to my house they did a search warrant but because of the advice you gave me I had everything hidden somewhere else they never found a thing they couldn't prove anything and thanks to you Yoshi I'm not in jail

• 1:38:12Speaker 06

  is this what they call a double cross in Koren show

• 1:38:17Speaker 04

  he bought the whole thing man he bought it hook line and sinker

• 1:38:20Speaker 07

  this is such excellent material

• 1:38:22Speaker 04

  so he he takes me to lunch and at that and at that moment

• 1:38:29Steven Rinella?

  he liked that handlebar mustache too didn't he

• 1:38:32Speaker 04

  he did it turned out I think he did like the handlebar mustache yeah but he he takes me to lunch at this awful Korean restaurant in you know Koreatown in LA I'm not sure we had beef I'm not sure what the meat was in that

• 1:38:48Speaker 06

  you're like man I might need to investigate this place

• 1:38:50Speaker 04

  I'm telling you it was not good but he was so convinced at that point that I was also a bad guy and now I gave him the line I initially planned to he said where are you where are you getting your material and I said I got a German supplier but he gives me crap and boom he immediately said oh I can give you the material perfect condition and right then I knew I had him because he said look I'm gonna go back to Japan get on Skype we'll start talking by Skype in early 2000s right and I'll show

• 1:39:26Steven Rinella?

  whatever happened to those guys

• 1:39:27Speaker 04

  yeah what happened to Skype I was just thinking about that as I was coming here to talk about this

• 1:39:30Speaker 06

  Zoom happened to them

• 1:39:31Speaker 04

  Zoom Zoom killed Skype so he says we'll talk by Skype I'll show you what I've got you tell me what you want pay me I'll send it to you and I was like this is perfect right I'm gonna I'm gonna record him on camera making incriminating statements and that's exactly how it played out the only thing that was weird is after we were at lunch he wanted me to drive him to a

• 1:39:55Speaker 04

  Like a, I don't know what you call it, a sauna in Koreatown?

• 1:39:58Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:39:59Speaker 04

  And the whole-

• 1:39:59Speaker 07

  Oh yeah, those hot baths.

• 1:40:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, the hot baths.

• 1:40:01Steven Rinella?

  This Corin's gonna do this scene. Exciting Corin for her TV show.

• 1:40:06Speaker 04

  I just wanna know what restaurant you went to. I can't remember. He did take me later, like, later that weekend, he took me to dinner at Lowry Steakhouse, which is pretty nice, cuz he bought the whole thing.

• 1:40:17Steven Rinella?

  Cuz she's already picturing the network saying there's not enough sex. Corin's like, "But wait."

• 1:40:20Speaker 04

  But wait.

• 1:40:22Speaker 07

  We got a scene there. Spice it up a little bit.

• 1:40:25Speaker 04

  So the whole way to this bathhouse, I'm driving him there and he, you know,

• 1:40:32Speaker 04

  he's asking me, he starts asking me, "Who, what actors do you like?" And I didn't know, so I just said, I just started saying actors.

• 1:40:39Steven Rinella?

  You look like Keith Sutherland.

• 1:40:39Speaker 04

  I do?

• 1:40:40Speaker 07

  Oh, man.

• 1:40:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh, big time, man. I'm not hitting on you either. Just looks like you're a star.

• 1:40:46Speaker 04

  Wait till I get my mustache. I'll grow my mustache back. I'll be irresistible to you.

• 1:40:52Speaker 04

  So anyway, on the way there, he starts, he asks, "What actors do you like?" And I just named somebody, right? Whatever, Brad Pitt. And he goes, "Oh, he's gay." I'm like, "Oh, Brad Pitt's gay, okay." And I'd say, "Who else?" He'd say, "Who else?" "Oh, Tom Cruise. Oh, so gay." Everybody I named was gay. And I was like, "I didn't really understand what was going on."

• 1:41:12Steven Rinella?

  Cuz then you're like, "Jeez, I must be gay."

• 1:41:14Speaker 04

  Well, I think he was trying to hint. This is, now he's like trying to hint that he's either bi or gay. And it kinda played out after that. When we, when we started to talk on Skype, we started to do a lot of deals with butterflies. He starts sending endangered stuff. Like, he would send stuff to me that I would then let, take to the University of California at Riverside to make sure I had it ID'd right.

• 1:41:38Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:38Speaker 04

  So they have a big entomology department. So I'd get it and I'd immediately drive out there and have them look at it. And they'd be like, "Where did you get this?"

• 1:41:46Steven Rinella?

  It's a long story.

• 1:41:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, this is a, you know, internationally known entomology university. And they're like, "We cannot get this for research. We can't even, these don't exist." And you're, you're getting them in the mail? So Kojima had a very, very sophisticated network around the world.

• 1:42:07Steven Rinella?

  He had the good shit. Where are you getting the, um-

• 1:42:10Speaker 04

  The money?

• 1:42:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like, and how do they, how do they, as you're getting the money, how are they sort of confident enough that they're gonna wind up getting the money back?

• 1:42:16Speaker 04

  Sometimes you, you don't know.

• 1:42:18Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:42:18Speaker 04

  Sometimes you do spend money in an undercover situation and you do get ripped off. And that just happens.

• 1:42:24Steven Rinella?

  But you have to live under a sort of price cap, right? Like, you couldn't go and say, "I need ten million dollars to buy a butterfly."

• 1:42:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:42:29Steven Rinella?

  They're gonna be like, "No, no, no."

• 1:42:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you usually ask for more than what you, what you need, right? So I can't remember how much I had to start with, it was like maybe thirty grand or something.

• 1:42:38Steven Rinella?

  Okay, like a little con man budget.

• 1:42:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. So what you're doing is, you're, to avoid entrapping people, you don't want to, you can't entrap people, right? So you gotta offer reasonable rates for these things.

• 1:42:52Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:42:53Speaker 04

  And, and so, you take the risk that they might walk away from you, or they might steal your money. That's just part of the, part of the risk.

• 1:42:59Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:42:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. But he didn't, he wanted the money and he provided the stuff. But a- as we were talking, it became clear that he had a thing for me. And, uh, you know, that's fine, whatever. It just became really awkward when you're on a Skype call with somebody and they, they want you to take your shirt off and stuff like that, it was very uncomfortable.

• 1:43:17Steven Rinella?

  I would've had butterfly tattoos all over.

• 1:43:20Speaker 07

  That's just the real entrapment there.

• 1:43:23Speaker 04

  You know what, it was the worst part is, at the time I was married, and, uh, you know, we would have a lot of these calls at, when it was convenient for him. Cause one of the things that really made him mad is if you were not available when he wanted to talk.

• 1:43:36Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:43:37Speaker 04

  So he's in Japan, you know, whatever, twelve hours ahead, thirteen hours, yeah.

• 1:43:41Steven Rinella?

  He's winding down for the night.

• 1:43:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I'm, I'm winding down for the night. He wants to talk like-

• 1:43:46Steven Rinella?

  I had my time zones wrong.

• 1:43:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, twelve, one o'clock in the morning, I'm on Skype. And my wife has to be extremely quiet. She cannot come into that room, she cannot make any noise, cause he'd be very alert to, "I thought you lived alone, I thought you were single."

• 1:43:59Steven Rinella?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:44:01Speaker 04

  So that was, that was stressful, cause he wanted to talk almost every night for a couple of months. It was pretty rough. But, I ended up, you know, back then, we didn't, you couldn't, I didn't have a fast enough computer to record screen, on the screen, so I just had a video camera set up to the side that he couldn't see. And I'd just record him and me on this call, and man, I got some incredible incriminating statements, just about how much material he had, how much- How he would get his species, which species he could get. Um, I remember once I, I expressed some interest in an endangered butterfly out of the Caribbean and he said, well, it'll take me a couple of weeks, but I can get you one.

• 1:44:40Steven Rinella?

  Name one of these butterflies for me.

• 1:44:41Speaker 04

  Well, the big one, uh, the, the final one that I got was, uh, the queen Alexandria butterfly. It's the largest butterfly in the world.

• 1:44:49Steven Rinella?

  You can pull one up. I want to see what looks like.

• 1:44:51Speaker 04

  They're about, the female's about the size of a small dinner plate, maybe 10, 10, 11 inches across. And the male, the males are generally colorful, but they're smaller.

• 1:45:01Speaker 07

  You can click around there. And there's like someone's head next to it for comparison. It's like the, it's.

• 1:45:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're big.

• 1:45:09Speaker 07

  Like a tenant. Yeah.

• 1:45:11Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. I'll tell you one thing that binds together all of the vehicles in the Rinella fleet at my house. They all have WeatherTech floor liners. When we get a new car, the first thing we do, out with the junky factory carpet mats, in with WeatherTech.

• 1:45:56Steven Rinella?

  They really are the best. They're indestructible. You can pull them out, hose them off. It doesn't matter what happens on the floor of your rig. If you've got WeatherTech, you're going to be covered. I love these things. If you're looking to get a great gift for someone, especially if they're a big time outdoors kind of person, like if you really want to do them a favor, get them some WeatherTech floor liners for their truck or car. They'll have a way easier time keeping their rig nice and clean, and they'll get years and years of use out of a set. Visit weathertech.com for your holiday shopping today.

• 1:46:32Steven Rinella?

  What if you could save up for that new car or vacation just by buying the stuff you're already buying? With the One Pay banking app, you earn 3% cash back on up to $150 in monthly spending in categories you choose. So it's easy to save. So what are you saving for? Maybe you've got your eyes on a new truck, or a new boat, or you're saving up for your first house. Download the One Pay app, or visit onepay.com for banking that gives you more for what matters.

• 1:47:03Speaker 03

  One Pay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, members FDIC. Cash back is earned as points. Go to onepay.com/rewards/terms for redemption options and additional details.

• 1:47:19Speaker 05

  With these cases, like the butterfly one, I'm sure a lot of other ones, were you in a position where you were having to work with another country's law enforcement?

• 1:47:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I worked a little bit.

• 1:47:35Speaker 05

  Did Japan get involved with the butterfly thing at all?

• 1:47:39Speaker 04

  Interesting question, because later, we tried to get some help out of Japan. And I went through the Homeland Security Law Enforcement Attache based in Tokyo. And we did not get, we got minimal cooperation.

• 1:47:54Speaker 05

  That's what I was getting at. Like, when you're dealing with something that's ending up in China, or coming out of China, is there any kind of cooperation?

• 1:48:03Speaker 04

  It depends. Sometimes it's great. Sometimes China's actually really good. It just kind of depends on the species, who's involved. The interesting thing with the Japanese government is, and the Homeland Security Attache told me this, they consider undercover work to be dishonorable. So when they heard that it was an undercover agent who had basically built a case against a Japanese citizen, they weren't that interested.

• 1:48:29Speaker 05

  No kidding?

• 1:48:30Speaker 04

  No. It didn't matter. We had everything we needed on Kojima.

• 1:48:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, eventually, he, I owed him some money and he made some flirtatious statements to him and I basically kinda hinted that things might heat up if he came back to LA cuz he was, I had an arrest warrant for him, we just needed to get him. And then he came and we hooked him up at the airport. Yeah, it's fun.

• 1:48:55Steven Rinella?

  Were you present?

• 1:48:56Speaker 04

  I was there, but I, we wanted to kinda see what he said after he was arrested, so I wasn't part of that. I didn't see him till the next day.

• 1:49:03Steven Rinella?

  But you interacted with him?

• 1:49:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz when you arrest somebody in the federal system, you move them, you take them into the jail for the evening and then the next day, you're responsible for moving them to the court. So I had to go pick him up at the jail and move him over to the district court.

• 1:49:17Steven Rinella?

  How's that conversation go?

• 1:49:19Speaker 04

  It was, it was funny. He, he looked, he's excited to see me when I first walked in, then he saw my belt badge. And he saw I was wearing a holster and I had handcuffs and stuff.

• 1:49:27Steven Rinella?

  He was excited to see, like, he thought you were in trouble too?

• 1:49:30Speaker 04

  No, I think he thought I was there to bail him out. Pretty sure he thought I was there to get him out.

• 1:49:34Speaker 05

  Was he an American citizen?

• 1:49:36Speaker 04

  No, a Japanese citizen, but he, uh, he claimed, he, he was very good at weaving lies, so he, he made up a whole American life where he claimed to have a wife and a half Japanese, half, uh, you know, Anglo kid. And so, he claimed he had a passport, an American passport, but he would never tell me what name the American passport was in. So, I didn't think he was telling the truth, but we didn't know for sure if he had an American passport. And, uh, he was pretty tricky. He would, he would tell people, he would tell, if he knew all of us, he might tell you, "Hey, I'm in Grand Canyon," but he really was in Japan, right? He might tell you, "I'm in Utah next week."

• 1:50:21Speaker 04

  And so, what you would hear, the buzz you would hear among the insect trading community was very confusing and conflicting about where he was. It's tricky.

• 1:50:30Steven Rinella?

  I always tell sons of bitches right where I'm at.

• 1:50:33Speaker 05

  How's that work?

• 1:50:34Steven Rinella?

  Stop doing that, man.

• 1:50:35Speaker 05

  How does that work in cases where you're dealing with? Like, your target is not an American citizen. As far as like sentencing and getting them in jail and like, what ends up happening?

• 1:50:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I actually did a lot of cases against foreign nationals and I was involved in extraditing a number of those people.

• 1:50:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:50:54Speaker 04

  And it's a long, very complicated process, but it is possible that, you know, extradite people back here to the United States, whether they're Americans or foreign nationals. And I did that in a number of cases. The, the, the way it should work out is a foreign national should not get bail, right? Unfortunately, sometimes they do and I've seen foreign nationals flee.

• 1:51:18Speaker 05

  Just hop on a plane.

• 1:51:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And that, that's really frustrating when you're the case agent because now, thanks to a judge who stupidly gave this guy bail, now you gotta spend possibly years trying to hunt this guy down and then get him back, right?

• 1:51:33Speaker 04

  But generally, a foreign national who commits a crime in the US or where there's US jurisdiction can be sentenced here, no problem. You get them back here, they go through their trial if they want one or they plead guilty and they're sentenced. The thing that's most interesting about a foreign national though is if you're convicted of a felony in the US and you don't have US legal residence, you're immediately deported after you finish your sentence and you cannot return to the US. So that's actually a big deal. A lot of people want to come to the US. They want to, you know, take advantage of our banking, our business. They want to go on vacation here. They want their kids to go college here. And, um, once you're convicted of a felony and you get out of jail, you know, Kojima

• 1:52:17Speaker 04

  got out of jail and was immediately turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They drove him to LAX, they watched him get on a plane and boop, he went back to Japan and is not allowed to return to the US ever.

• 1:52:29Speaker 05

  Was he then arrested in Japan?

• 1:52:30Speaker 04

  I don't know. I doubt it. I doubt it. But um.

• 1:52:34Steven Rinella?

  Would you send a file case like that to them to say, hey, heads up?

• 1:52:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've done that before. I've shared information with like South Africa.

• 1:52:41Steven Rinella?

  They just might not give a shit, might not have time.

• 1:52:43Speaker 04

  Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Yeah, it's their business, you know, if they do or don't. I've worked real closely with Germany on some cases, actually a case involving, remember when Justin Bieber got busted for the monkey?

• 1:52:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:57Speaker 04

  Germany needed to serve Justin Bieber with some papers because Justin left the country before they were able to give him his fine. So in German law, they had to serve him personally. So they were like, how are we going to do this? They called me. I happen to know some German cops. Who are working the case and they said, hey, we got to serve Justin Bieber. Can you do it? And I was like, hell, yeah, I can serve Justin Bieber.

• 1:53:20Speaker 04

  That was one of the best days of my life. When I tracked down Justin Bieber, gave him German paperwork to pay a fine.

• 1:53:27Speaker 07

  Oh, my God.

• 1:53:30Steven Rinella?

  So how much time did, uh, what's his name?

• 1:53:32Speaker 04

  Kojima, he got just under two years. So I think it's about 21, 22.

• 1:53:36Steven Rinella?

  He get a lot of restitution and fines and stuff?

• 1:53:38Speaker 04

  Uh, he did. He never paid them, but uh, nothing you can do about that. We confiscated whatever property we could and did a US Marshal sale on it. I think it. The property had in LA, we only got about 16,000 out of him, but you know.

• 1:53:51Steven Rinella?

  Two years.

• 1:53:52Speaker 04

  Two years, yeah.

• 1:53:53Steven Rinella?

  Imagine that conversation.

• 1:53:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:53:55Steven Rinella?

  When you're like, what are you in here for, you know? Like Norm MacDonald, the comedian Norm MacDonald, he used to have a joke where he's talking about the hierarchy. You know, in prison, like the worse you did, you know, the higher he is. He's talked about OJ going to prison. And uh, when he finally went to prison for stealing memorabilia, that he would sit so low on the hierarchy, but he would say like, no, man, I killed my wife in a waiter with a knife. And all the guys like, no, you didn't. We saw that trial.

• 1:54:23Steven Rinella?

  So it's like, when you're in there on butterfly theft, it's gotta be a weird position you occupy.

• 1:54:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:28Speaker 05

  International smugglers, what you tell everyone.

• 1:54:30Steven Rinella?

  That sounds good. You're right. Yeah, I'd leave the butterflies out.

• 1:54:33Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:54:33Steven Rinella?

  They'd be like, well, what were you smuggling? Nothing. For me to know you didn't find out.

• 1:54:38Speaker 04

  Contraband, contraband.

• 1:54:40Steven Rinella?

  Contraband, yeah.

• 1:54:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:54:41Speaker 06

  Did you have any or? Or possibly many instances where you really felt scared for your life, like in situations where maybe you got into that apartment and all of a sudden you thought, oh.

• 1:54:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I was lucky in the service has been lucky in general. We haven't had an agent shot in the line of duty since nineteen sixty eight.

• 1:55:00Speaker 07

  That was shocking.

• 1:55:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, and of all things, that agent was ambushed by duck hunters.

• 1:55:05Speaker 06

  And fully ambushed.

• 1:55:07Speaker 04

  Fully ambushed, yeah.

• 1:55:08Speaker 06

  Like they set him up.

• 1:55:09Speaker 04

  They set him up, yep. They set him up. They knew he was coming down a dike. He's working with the state game warden. They knew he was coming. Think it was Illinois. I think it was Illinois.

• 1:55:17Speaker 06

  Illinois.

• 1:55:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:19Speaker 06

  Oh, you're gonna tell me Louisiana.

• 1:55:21Speaker 04

  Coming down a dike, they set him up, they hid, they popped up right in front of him, shot him point blank.

• 1:55:26Speaker 06

  What?

• 1:55:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. He li- he lived. He was, he had a sho- he had a shoulder holster on at the time and they, they were loaded with birdshot because they were duck poachers, but.

• 1:55:35Speaker 05

  That was their first mistake.

• 1:55:37Speaker 04

  That was their first mistake. So he, but it was close, you know, it was close range is like ten yards is close. And he, uh, he was drawing his pistol. He had a shoulder holster. He was drawing this revolver and most of the shot hit the revolver. And he tried to fire back, but for whatever, it somehow disabled his pistol and he was hit. He got hit in the eye and the head and yeah. He lived though. He stayed an agent till he retires. Yeah. But anyway, to answer your question, you know, uh, I always considered LA to be like a higher risk place to work, but I was lucky. I, you know, I think in my whole career, I had to chase one guy on foot. I wrestled one guy to the ground. I pulled my gun often.

• 1:56:18Speaker 04

  But I only ever came close to shooting one person and, you know, didn't have to. But I never felt like. I was ever in a me- I never felt super scared. There were moments when people said creepy things to me where I, I realized I need to get out of this situation. But it never got to the point where, you know, anybody ever physically assaulted me or drew a gun on me. There, there have been agents that have had guns pulled on them, which is pretty scary.

• 1:56:44Speaker 06

  When you pull your gun, you mean just like to be like.

• 1:56:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:56:46Speaker 06

  Get down, you're under arrest.

• 1:56:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, to be, to be ahead of them on the Oodle Loop, right?

• 1:56:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:56:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. I always want to be ahead of the bad guys. Yeah, so, um.

• 1:56:58Speaker 04

  You know, an agent who retired a long time ago, uh, who's deceased now, a guy named Sam Mahola, when he retired, he said something very profound at his retirement party. He said, "You cannot be in law enforcement for 20-plus years and not have had a few close calls, including the ones you don't know about."

• 1:57:16Speaker 06

  Mm.

• 1:57:16Speaker 04

  And that last, that last part, that really hit me. I, I had been on maybe 10 years when he retired and that, I had never thought of that before. And you know, if somebody's gonna assault you, it's not your choice, it's their choice, right? So you don't know, you don't know if somebody's thinking about killing you, looking at you to see if they could get the upper hand on you. And you know-

• 1:57:39Speaker 06

  Or hiding in the bushes, like that one story we heard of-

• 1:57:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, man, we had a game warden, we did this couple of volumes of this series called Close Calls, about near-death experiences with people.

• 1:57:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:57:52Steven Rinella?

  And we interviewed a game warden who-

• 1:57:58Steven Rinella?

  He had a close call that he didn't know about. But then later happened to interview, later happened to interview a serial poacher. And in the interview, the serial poacher, who, he's been arrested on other charges, he's been arrested on drug charges or domestic violence, can have a handful of charges. And he's interviewing him because of potential connection to a poaching case.

• 1:58:19Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:58:20Steven Rinella?

  But he's in trouble now, so now he just wants to talk. He tells a story about a night in Colorado, and the warden interviewing him realizes he's telling him a story about himself.

• 1:58:31Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 1:58:32Steven Rinella?

  About his plan to kill the guy.

• 1:58:34Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:58:35Steven Rinella?

  But the guy didn't follow him down the right road.

• 1:58:37Speaker 04

  Wow. Yeah.

• 1:58:39Steven Rinella?

  And he's sitting there being like, "He's talking about me, like I remember that night."

• 1:58:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:58:43Steven Rinella?

  He's like, "He, he's, if he turned down my road, I was gonna give it to him right through his window."

• 1:58:47Speaker 04

  Oof. Yeah, how many times, you know, you never know, if it ever happened to you.

• 1:58:52Steven Rinella?

  No, he's been living his life, no idea.

• 1:58:54Speaker 04

  And so, I always kept that in mind, what Sam had said at his retirement party, that, you know, you just can't predict what people are gonna do. Hmm, yeah.

• 1:59:01Steven Rinella?

  All the undercover things gotta be scary, man.

• 1:59:03Speaker 04

  It is, but it's also so fun. It's so, it's so rewarding to, to know that you're in there and they're, they're believing, they're believing what you're saying, and they're saying these incredibly incriminating statements in front of you. Sometimes it is just so fun to, to leave the undercover contact and just be like, "I got them, I got these guys."

• 1:59:23Steven Rinella?

  But how often do you end up liking the guys?

• 1:59:27Speaker 04

  You know, it's weird. I, there were times when I got to like the people I was working undercover, especially like in High Roller. I respected some of those guys. They reminded, I went to an inner-city high school and they reminded me, people I knew in high school. And I liked them. But, you know, they're just blatant killers. They're blatant lawbreakers. And I just have no respect for that. So.

• 1:59:51Steven Rinella?

  It always, yeah.

• 1:59:52Speaker 04

  What I.

• 1:59:53Steven Rinella?

  It affects the affection.

• 1:59:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, it does. It really does. I mean, I guess it's, I like you, but you need to have consequences. And I'm gonna see what you do when those consequences are delivered, right? So what I'm more interested in is what happens after these guys are caught? Do they accept responsibility? Do they change their ways? If that's the case, I can like those people, right? But if they snub their nose and they call me a jackbooted thug and I made up everything and I fabricated everything and they don't take responsibility, I don't have any respect for that person. So, can't, can't really like a person like that.

• 2:00:26Steven Rinella?

  So if you do, if you do undercover, take the Japanese individual. You do undercover, but then because of the way your agency works, you don't vanish.

• 2:00:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:00:37Steven Rinella?

  Right? You gotta, he's not like, whatever happened to that guy, right? It's like, there you are.

• 2:00:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:00:43Steven Rinella?

  You're like, oh no, I'm me. I'm Special Agent Blank. Anyone can find out what my family history is, where I live. How does that not wind up stressing you out that all of a sudden, you're a known thing? And if they ever had some kind of vengeful impulse, it's like, they know exactly who betrayed them.

• 2:01:03Speaker 04

  Right. Yeah. And this is where I think sometimes our agents get too paranoid. They act like they're secret agents, not special agents. And the bottom line is, we're not secret agents. We are special agents. And at the end of your undercover, you are gonna have to sign affidavits. And you may have to go to court and testify. And you're not gonna do all of that with your undercover name. You're gonna, you're gonna be known.

• 2:01:28Speaker 04

  And the way.

• 2:01:31Speaker 04

  You know, I had so many situations where after I had worked somebody undercover for a year or more, I would run into them in court, and now I'm in a suit and tie, I'm clean shaven, now I'm referred to as special agent newcomer, they know me as Ted Nelson or whatever. It's like this weird disconnect in their brain. I had people wave and smile at me in court. Yoshi Kojima waved and smiled at me while he was in belly chains with his hands chained in front of him. I had high roller guys smiling and waving at me in court, and I could never figure it out, and I think it's just, there's like this disconnect, they don't associate me with Ted Nelson. I'm now the agent who's treated them decently since the case has gone down, you know?

• 2:02:16Speaker 04

  But more to your point, I did have a case once where I arrested a guy, he became a fugitive because he jumped bail, and I spent years trying to get him back, eventually caught him in Mexico, we extradited him. His two sons absolutely hated me, I mean hated. And these guys had guns, they were former Israeli army, they knew how to use guns. And I was worried about those guys, because they knew who I was, because now I'd signed all these affidavits, I'd testified in court against their dad, and they're adults, you know? So, when I drove home, I did counter surveillance whenever I drove home, I took different routes

• 2:02:56Speaker 04

  home every day, I never drove directly from the office to my driveway. You know, I keep a gun in my bedroom, and you just have to be careful, you have to be aware that there are, people may be planning things you don't know, but it doesn't mean you don't do your job. I mean, these guys, sometimes you hear game wardens or federal agents saying, "Well, I'm not going to get killed over a deer." Well, it's not, if you're doing your job, it's not your choice. If some deer poacher decides to ambush you, take a shot at you just for doing your job, yeah, you darn right might get killed for, you know, over a deer.

• 2:03:37Speaker 06

  Well, like you said, though, you're possibly gonna take away their money, their house, their liberty, right? So it's not just a deer.

• 2:03:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, and sometimes, you know, you were talking about the low penalties, right? Bad guys don't know what the, that they might get off with just probation. They think they're, they think they, they sell an illegal butterfly, they're gonna go to jail for 10 years. So their ignorance of the law may cause them to react in a way that's not, not right. But, bottom line is, my, my belief on this is, you become a federal agent in any, whatever agency, but Fish and Wildlife, Secret Service, FBI, whatever, you're making a commitment that you're gonna carry a gun, you're going to physically arrest people, you're going to threaten their liberty, their money, their house, right? And with that comes certain risks. And if you are not willing to accept those risks, then you better not be a federal agent, you better not do undercover work. It's not mandatory you do undercover work.

• 2:04:30Speaker 04

  It's, they ask you, do you wanna do this undercover case? And if you say no, you don't have to do it.

• 2:04:36Speaker 06

  Did you have a conversation with your wife, or spouse, before you started doing undercover work?

• 2:04:43Speaker 04

  Uh, no.

• 2:04:44Steven Rinella?

  Is that why they're not your wife anymore?

• 2:04:46Speaker 04

  Uh, she, uh, well, I don't know why my wife's not my wife anymore, but, um, you know, there were times when, uh, it was very stressful on the relationship, because, uh, she did not like sometimes when I carried my gun off duty. I always carried my gun off duty. And there were times in LA, 10, 10 million people live in LA, right? I was working on a case involving Russian, uh, caviar traffickers, and these are probably mobbed up people.

• 2:05:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:12Speaker 04

  Uh, and I'm talking about, I'm taking a million dollars worth of caviar from them at a time, right? When I seize it at the airport, a million dollars, definitely get killed over a million dollars. One time, my wife and I are at a restaurant in Santa Monica, I'm, you know, I'm off, we're just having dinner. We happen to be seated at the window, and these two, two Russian dudes walk by who are connected to the guy I just seized a million dollars worth of caviar from. And they, they do the double take, they recognize me, 'cause I, we had just done a big search warrant at this caviar processing place, they saw me, I interviewed them. And I just looked at my wife. I was like, we gotta go. We gotta leave. And you know, that's not, she was planning on a nice dinner out and that all changed. So, um,

• 2:05:57Speaker 06

  Oh, man, my heart rate's going up. Just listen to that.

• 2:06:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Cancels your caviar order?

• 2:06:03Speaker 04

  That was kind of a no crap moment. You know, another time-

• 2:06:05Steven Rinella?

  I'll take that caviar to go.

• 2:06:07Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 2:06:08Speaker 06

  Gosh.

• 2:06:10Speaker 04

  You know, one, one time I went, I just went into a McDonald's during High Roller. I still have my big mustache, but I had to go down to the US Attorney's Office. So now I got my mustache, but I'm in my federal agent suit, you know, my uniform, my black suit, white shirt, plain tie. And I thought, I'll just go to McDonald's and get a Coke. I walk in and two people in front of me, I'm like, how do I know this guy? Right? I hear his voice. I'm like, I know this dude. And I realized he's one of the guys in Operation High Roller. He's one of the bad guys. And I just, I put my sunglasses on and I turned around and I walked out and he never saw me. Or if he did see me, he never made the connection. Guy in a suit versus who he was seeing on the weekends. But you know, I'm in a city of 10 million people. What are the odds?

• 2:06:53Speaker 04

  I'm going to run into this guy. I just was working undercover six days ago, you know? That's freaky. And what if they see you and you don't see them?

• 2:07:01Steven Rinella?

  You also have developed a probably very heightened spatial awareness. And you're probably more likely to

• 2:07:09Speaker 04

  Well-

• 2:07:09Steven Rinella?

  recognize and you know, who's going on.

• 2:07:12Speaker 04

  One thing we haven't talked about is I worked five years of my career. I worked in Africa as an agent based at the embassy overseas. And I did not realize how, how stressful it was to constantly be on like that deep yellow alert. I was more on yellow, hot, you know, deep yellow or light red alert in Africa than I ever was in LA. And when I came back, I just had this huge release of tension that I didn't realize I had. And I've talked to other federal agents who were based overseas when I was, HSI and FBI, and they said, they said they had the exact same reaction. They came back from Southern Africa and they just like- Like they just had their muscles relaxed.

• 2:07:53Speaker 06

  And that's because it's just a more hostile place?

• 2:07:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, and there's so much gun crime, right? Just related just being a person there. You are constantly, you know, you don't even stop. When I lived in Africa, if you're driving at night, you don't stop at red lights. You're insane if you stop at a red light. Yeah, you slow down, you look, but if nobody's coming, you go. Because that's where car hijackings happen is at stoplights at night in Pretoria. So you just don't do it. And, you know, I, I won't get into the gun stuff in Africa, but yeah, people get killed all the time over stupid stuff in Africa. And so not only now are you a federal agent working overseas on rhino horn trafficking.

• 2:08:36Steven Rinella?

  Which people die over every year all the time.

• 2:08:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, and yeah, life is cheap in Africa, right? They'll kill you for anything. And if you're talking about a hundred thousand dollar rhino horn, they'll definitely kill you. So you've got the law enforcement aspect, but then you also have just going to the grocery store is super dangerous. So, you know, and I don't want to scare people. I never got in trouble in Africa, never had anybody try to do anything to me. But at the same time, I never went from a store and directly got into my car. I, I'd walk to another car. I'd look behind me before I got in the car. I'd sometimes walk around the car, just do something unusual to so that I'd see somebody change their behavior around me. So, yeah, you do get in this mode of being on yellow alert all the time.

• 2:09:19Speaker 04

  And back to your question, if somebody's gonna do undercover work, they don't automatically become a secret agent. They just have to be careful, right? They're still a special agent. They have to do their job and they're gonna have to just suck it up.

• 2:09:34Steven Rinella?

  Are you gonna go now and launch a whole second career?

• 2:09:39Speaker 04

  So since I retired, I've been doing some adjunct teaching at Cal State, which I really enjoy.

• 2:09:44Steven Rinella?

  On law enforcement?

• 2:09:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, criminal justice. I teach criminal justice administrative law. I do some consulting here and there, but if you don't mind me plugging.

• 2:09:52Steven Rinella?

  Please.

• 2:09:53Speaker 04

  In conjunction with Cal State, I'm starting a podcast called Nature's Secret Service. Where we're gonna focus on wildlife crime. Interviewing people involved in it and try to talk about what drives it, some of the things that happen, some of the interesting stories. Should be fun. It's gonna, should, first episode should launch in like, early March.

• 2:10:12Steven Rinella?

  Oh, great.

• 2:10:13Speaker 04

  So, nature's Secret Service, anybody wants to look for it, they can find it.

• 2:10:17Steven Rinella?

  And that's in conjunction with who?

• 2:10:18Speaker 04

  Uh, Cal State University.

• 2:10:19Steven Rinella?

  Oh, congratulations.

• 2:10:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks. Should be fun. I don't know if I'll be a good, you know, host, but we'll see how it goes, right?

• 2:10:24Steven Rinella?

  I think you'll probably do alright.

• 2:10:27Speaker 04

  I'll get some tips from you if I need them.

• 2:10:29Steven Rinella?

  I don't know, that's where I'd go for them. I think you got it figured out.

• 2:10:32Speaker 04

  Well, I think, I think it'll be fun. Mostly, it's gonna be talking to, you know, law enforcement professionals and, and when you get two law enforcement people talking, the good stories come out pretty quick.

• 2:10:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:43Speaker 04

  So, I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure we'll get to some good stuff.

• 2:10:45Steven Rinella?

  That's great, man. Congratulations.

• 2:10:46Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 2:10:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, thanks for coming on the show.

• 2:10:48Speaker 04

  Oh, it's been a pleasure. I appreciate it, but you're very welcome.

• 2:10:51Steven Rinella?

  I appreciate it. Thank you.

• 2:10:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, thanks, Ed.

• 2:10:53Speaker 06

  Thanks, Ed.

• 2:10:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, nice to meet you guys.

• 2:11:21Steven Rinella?

  In military families, service is more than a job, it's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military. I'll tell you one thing that binds together all of the vehicles in the Rinella fleet at my house. They all have WeatherTech floor liners. When we get a new car, the first thing we do, out with the junky factory carpet mats, in with WeatherTech. They really are the

• 2:12:06Steven Rinella?

  best. They're indestructible. You can pull them out, hose them off. It doesn't matter what happens on the floor of your rig. If you've got WeatherTech, you're going to be covered. I love these things. If you're looking to get a great gift for someone, especially if they're a big time outdoors kind of person, like if you really want to do them a favor, get them some WeatherTech floor liners for their truck or car. They'll have a way easier time keeping their rig nice and clean, and they'll get years and years of use out of a set. Visit weathertech.com for your holiday shopping today. Hey, let me tell you, when the hunt is over, the work isn't over. You've still got all the grinding, stuffing, slicing and sealing.

• 2:12:49Steven Rinella?

  Turning your harvest into meals takes the right tools. L E M Products offers grinders, stuffers, slicers, dehydrators, vacuum sealers, and more for hunters and home meat processors. For more than 30 years, L E M has been helping people bring their harvest from field to table. Visit L E M products.com and use promo code STEVE15 to receive 15% off plus free shipping. That's STEVE15 at L E M products.com.

• 2:13:25Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.