Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Zeren Sorry I was napping ZN Listen.
How you doing today?
I am well rested, now are you?
Yeah?
What about you?
How are you doing?
I'm good. I'm hanging in there.
You seem bright eyed? Bushy tail?
Hey, am my tail? Bushy full bush? Yes, bushy. Do you know what's ridiculous?
I do?
Pinocchio?
Sure?
No.
Do you know the story of the Pinocchio? Like the premiere in New York City of the movie, it was like a big deal. Walt Disney like hired people like little people to play Pinocchio. He hired like what's the opposite of a Baker's dozen, like eleven eleven eleven. He hired eleven little people. This is in nineteen forty, right. He put them up on top of like this marquee, and they're all dancing up there and supposed to like grow stuff and like blow kisses at the people, all dressed as Pinocchio.
Right, little people, eleven Pinocchio.
But they're gonna be up there for like all day long.
There's only one Pinocchio, I.
Know when in this case there was eleven. And he gave him lunch and then also bottles of wine, and yeah, I know, white is wild. And it was so hot that day that they ate all the food and by the afternoon they drank all the wine. And then they're so hot did they took off their costumes. They stripped down and got naked. So you had these naked, painted little people on top of this marquis and he started like throwing things at people and shouting provanities at the crowd.
It was amazing, but eventually got so bad that the police had to be called in to pull them down off the marquee. And do you know how they did it? They put them in pillowcases and drug them off like a bag of kittens. No, not happen nineteen forty, not that long ago.
They put them in pillow grown.
Drunk, grown people, drunk, naked and pillow cases and threw them over their sacks like you know, like they're going down to the river to get rid of kittens.
Yeah, Pinocchio, I don't like this.
It's it's ridiculous, right, it's totally Do you know what else is ridiculous?
Oh, I got it, I hope so plants.
Plants are ridiculously cool. This is ridiculous. Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. You I'm right, that's right. Today Saren is gardening day here at Ridiculous Crime.
Oh, Gardening's my escapism.
Yes, Like I'm outside, which I love.
That's true.
All that matters are the living things I'm assisting.
True.
I love the entire process and the cycle.
And the sun too.
Yeah. Well, from like starting seeds, prepping beds, fertilizing, pruning, cultivation, blah.
Blah blah, all the stuff.
The rest of the world doesn't exist when I'm in the gardens.
You got two green thumbs.
Sometimes I listen to music, do you. Most of the time, I just listen to what's around me.
I what you grow, you eat what I grow.
I listen to birds, practicing the clarinet.
I used to like doing that as a housepanner, sitting on the roof listening to birds.
Listen to birds. It's good stuff. That's how I stay relatively sane, you know almost. I love gardening shows. Let's just talk about me for a little bit. Let's do it.
You introduced me to monty Don.
That was to say, my dog is named after the host of BBC Gardener's World, Monty Don Gardener's World, best show ever show. It's like Xanax. It's pleasant, relaxing, happy. If you have brit Box and you want to chill out and be spoken to intelligently and quietly, just watch it. Watch Gardener's World. But this is going to be a mellow episode. I'm going to take the temperature down a little bit. Yeah. I follow a bunch of gardening subreddits. Of course you do, and that's where I'm going to
start today. Okay, so this is something I read about on Reddit and then I experienced it for my interesting There are indeed gardening crimes. I'm going to start off with one that's more of a scandal, but I suppose you could classify it as fraud.
Like stolen It is Peppergate.
Peppergate, So this Peppergate was the seed distribution scandal that went down two years ago, twenty twenty three.
Seed distribution scandal.
Yeah, I know, it's it's hard boiled.
Is so different than mine.
So it's so Pablo Escobar. It's like, yeah, it's edgy, So that's summer twenty twenty three, gardeners, small agg producers, they started reporting that their pepper plants weren't growing true to type.
What does that mean?
So seed packets would be labeled as like specific varieties like say sweet bell peppers or very specialized hot peppers, and they were producing either the wrong type of pepper or in some cases no fruit at all.
Oh, that's got to be frustrated. Its a while to figure that out.
Right, exactly. So the issue started to gain traction on gardening forums, like you know, it was in Reddit TikTok where the name peppergate was coin and.
So I missed all of them.
I read about it, and then I lived at saren.
You lived it. It happened to you.
Well, I start my vegetable plants from seed, do you yes? And I use small or heirloom seed suppliers, and I stay away from stuff like Burpie or things at the hardware store because I'm not like really specific.
For right, I'm gonna be really dumb. Is Burpie a brand?
Berpie's a brand that's like the Big Dog.
Garden, like a technique or what?
Now Burpie? Well, isn't that like a CrossFit thingye know? I don't do that either, but like that's all I knew it as I knew that's not what you meant. I had some peppers that I started from seed in January of twenty twenty three. Okay, Horno de toro, Italian
sweet peppers, zapptec, halapanos, that kind of thing. So I was at home, deskpot right, and I'm picking up some dirt, okay, and I saw peblano pepper seedlings from like a big garden brand, and I was like, you know what, I forgot to start poblanos from seed because if you drive.
Them Elizabeth internal dialogue.
I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna grab two of them and tuck them into my raised beds. You know, No, it's the wiser. And they flourished and then they started producing and producing, and honey, there were no poblanos. What they were shashidos zaren Oh.
My gosh, ishetos like the face brush.
Yeah. I occasionally enjoy some roasted shashitos, but not too bustling. It's like a It's the thing about shashido peppers, is it like one out of ten that you eat is hot. It it's like a Russian roulette of pepper. Okay, otherwise like a regular kind of sweet pepper.
This one's this one coolah yeah.
And so you you pick them, you roast them in the oven, and then people have them like they'll dip them and stuff. But it's like an appetizers roasted shios. And then every now and then you get a YoY this wild right, So you know I have all these sashidos, right, I'd seen this happen in other people's and now it's happening.
In mind your garden.
Yeah. So here's what went down. A large seed distributor, a subcontractor for a lot of popular retail seed brands, mislabeled pepper seed batches during packaging. So one of the things this exposed is that most seed packet brands you see are filled by pretty much the same company. Oh yeah, and so a mistake at the top of the chain trickled down to stores everywhere and numerous brands. Yes, there are about four companies that control most of the small
seeds in the world. It's totally monopolized. So like small businesses don't always have clear lines to the product origin and seeds they're purchased through a broker working under a larger broker or distributor, and then that's owned by even larger.
And this is also true for the airloms.
You're saying, yes, whoa, Well no, not for the airlooms, for the small So like the I only had the problem with the seedlings that I got at home.
Depot ah, so not the airline.
Like the ones I grew from seed from small places. They knew exactly where it was coming from. So a lot of the seed. Yeah, the seed packet companies, like when you go into like say ACE Hardware, you have like that whole rack and they like so they don't divulge their sources.
You can't see on theirs from no Wow, and.
A lot of times you know, because they'll market themselves as like old timey and organic ish and small, but they're getting their seeds from like mon Santo.
Okay.
Yeah, So the seed packet that you buy for ninety nine cents at a dollar tree might have the exact same seeds as those in a packet for four ninety nine at ACE or six point fifty at a specialty store. Wow, same supplier. So somewhere along the line, there was a lack of quality control and the labeling and the sorting, and there also could have been like cross contamination, but it looks like it was just a mix up and it was massive.
Sounds like it.
So sweet peppers were labeled as hot peppers vice versas. It was chaos Zarin. The big thing was that a lot of people bought more expensive rarer varieties and wound up with like cheaper basic stuff like generic Hall of Pans or banana.
Peppers fraud and then like it seemed.
Like a lot of people wound up with banana peppers.
Huh.
I know, some like me, they bought seedlings at a store. Others started from seed and they didn't get what they wanted. Reddit TikTok. Just chock full of people angry.
Oh I bet your people will drive them nuts.
So many This was not big Gardner's world energy. This is angry. So all of these, like a bunch of different major seed brands, they issued public statements, they offered refunds or replacements, and there was talk about a class action lawsuit based on breech of warranty. Yeah, because small scale farmers they sell it like farmers markets and such, or they supply the CISA boxes the community supported agriculture. Yeah, you know you get stuff direct from a collective of local farms.
I've done that. They dropped the food off and you don't.
Know what's going to be in there in season and ripe amazing so CSAs and small farmers' markets. They were out of a whole year's worth of peppers, you know, And that's sad, like it blew like.
Also it's going to mess up a lot of stuff. Not just sad, but I mean that's like it ruined.
It ruined their their whole business. You know, if you were, like, you know, doing a lot of peppers.
And possibly the next year because how do you trust them?
Again?
Exactly exactly So what it did though, it started driving business to small seed companies. That's good. Uh. And it got people saving their own seeds from year to year instead of buying new seed. Thearen It was a cautionary tale I'm telling you about supply chain fragility, high steaks for something so small. Serious speaking of small seed companies, I have an even bigger scandal for you, please, the Purple Galaxy tomato scandal.
What is that a tomato?
Yes? It all started when the twenty twenty four Baker Creek seed catalog came out. I get the catalog.
I bet you they do.
I don't usually buy from Baker Creek because apparently they had Clive and Bundy speak at some event once, and their seeds aren't the best germinators. But I do love their catalog.
Wait, the like BLM Cloud Bundy like steal the land from the government.
Why is he talking to garden'? That's what a lot of I guess they just.
Feed themselves because they're sovereign citizens.
I guess, so a lot of people don't order from them because of that. But also they're just kind of they get duds sometimes. But they have an amazing catalog.
It gives me ideas like pictures, why did you talk?
Yeah, and it comes in like December or January. It has all the seeds for the years.
Now do they have like a J. Peterman catalog where there's a character telling you about these seeds?
Almost really all not a character, but like there's the descriptions are really fabulous. Some of them have incredible illustrations. So but this is like, you get this catalog in the dead of winter, you're dreaming of warm weather, being out in the garden, it's garden porn.
I can see that.
So the twenty four Baker catalog, it had a stunning ever model. Oh my god, the cover model. It was the purple galaxy tomato. Is that the man alive? It was a liquor. Okay, this is a blackish purple tomato with tiny pink dots on the outside and like a deep violet fuchia inside. Whoa, yeah, that was the distinction because most purple tomatoes they don't hold their color.
Inside the skin.
And so it was built so as the quote purplest non GMO tomato ever, purple is GMO, being genetically modified organisms. So this was either way you slice the tomatoes are. It was a great looking to me. And they're also supposed to be all these like health benefits because it's like when you have a purple skin tomato, high antioxidants, high anthi cyanin, so these compounds you know, reduce the risk of cancer inflammation, and they're also good source of vitamins and minerals.
Totally fature colors, people, that's right.
So there it is on the cover. Some people noticed that it looked a whole lot like a GMO tomato made by a company called Norfolk Healthy Produce and HP. Now remember Baker Creek is like, we're no GMO, We're heirloom, We're.
Yeah, we draw pictures.
And HP is a UK company with American operations based in Davis, California, my hometown. You see, Davis, my alma mater from mir ag School. Some me would say it's the best in the planet, and I should know, because I have an English degree from it. I should know. So they've always been on the cutting edge of crop innovation.
And the flavorsavor tomato.
Yeah, so there's Cultivar VF one, aka the square tomato. There's that one too, Yeah, came out of Davis. It wasn't really a square, it was just less round and it was to keep it from keep the tomatoes from rolling off of conveyor belts. Also had thicker skins so they'd pack in the boxes better wouldn't roll off the top of a truck.
Very Japanese.
Yeah, fewer losses. So Davis, as you know from growing up, there is smack dab in the middle of commercial tomato country.
Oh my goodness.
Yes, Trucks haul tons of the things from fields to canneries each fall, and the square tomatoes. They were designed for just that commercial use, not you know, around my birthday.
Every country road do you turn a corners just littered, but tomatoes where the trucks have made a turn, and tomatoes.
Because they weren't using the square. The inventor of the square tomato was this guy, Gordie Jack Hannah. He was an associate in the Agricultural Experiment Station and a professor in truck crops, which, like truck cps the greatest at Davis. He was also a plant breeder with this private company petto Seed in Woodland, Califun.
Okay shout out Woodland.
According to local lore on the Davis Wiki, yes, doctor Hannah would quote stand in the fields, walk among the plants, collecting random tomatoes, and then go and throw them ounta into the road as a test. Captain rebred from the plants, featuring tomatoes hardy enough to survive his test, eventually giving us the hardy tomato that can withstand being picked by machine and transported by truck.
And have flavor and have flavor.
So NHP based in Davis, they engineered a purple tomato called the Purple Tomato, and that was just like the one from Baker Creek only it was engineered with the jenes from a snap dragonflower in order to achieve purple flesh. So tomatoes they have about thirty five thousand genes, and purple tomato has only two extras from a snapdragon, according to NPR quote. When news of a non GMO purple flesh tomato variety started circulating on social media last fall,
some scientists and tomato enthusiasts weren't so sure. I had discussions with colleagues about it, and all of us just looked at it and said, well, that's the GMO tomato, says David Francis, a professor of horticulture and crop science at the Ohio State Universe City who specializes in tomato breeding and genetics. Traditional plant breeders to date have not been able to create a purple flesh tomato with cross pollination.
Purple skin, yes, purple flesh not so much. But using recombinant DNA technology, scientists in the United Kingdom had developed a purple flesh tomato high in antioxidants. It was recently approved for sale and consumption in the United States. So you can see where it has to be genetically modified to get there exactly. Baker Creek says, we don't do GMO, like they're aggressive about the sounds. NHP very much GMO.
So NHP sees the catalog, they get the catalog, they're like, hub, but wait a second, it looks familiar.
I recognized that flesh they call foul.
So they got some of the seeds, tested them and found they were actually GMO. They were genetically modified.
But that's not hard to test, right.
Baker Creek immediately pulled the seeds from the catalog and destroyed all the stock. Ooh yeah, And then they released the statement on Facebook, because that's where if you're serious, you put your seeds. Quote. After repeated testing, we are unable to conclusively establish that the Purple galaxy does not contain any genes that have been genetically modified. So they said, well, we got our seeds from this really reputable traditional plant breeder and per PR quote a hobby breeder in France,
where growing GMOs is banned. Yeah, they probably blame a French guy.
Blame the French to blame the front.
The problem is that the purple tomato and the technology used to breed it patented. So NHP was like, look, just take the seeds off the market, but we do want to know how did the seeds go from a UK lab to some guy in France corporate espionage. So NHP was like, look, GMOs low risk in you know, terms of spreading and damaging biodiversity. When it comes to tomatoes, yes, I mean they're just like, you know, there's they're just trying to explain that, Look, these aren't poisonous tomatoes, gotcha.
And so there were threats of lawsuits, threats of investigations, and it kind of stalled out. Those are two plant scandals to get us warmed up today, Like next up, serious crime. Okay, let's break for some ads and when we get back we'll experience the smugglers.
Blues Zaren Elizabeth, Welcome.
I'm sorry, I was thinking about Davis and tomatoes right back to the summer that was wild on.
Welcome to my garden. The big dog of plant crimes is smuggling. And there are a lot of reasons why it's illegal.
Smuggling.
Yeah, because like well smuggling plants. So you know, if you take plants from like really fragile ecosystems, disrupting natural processes, you you get habitat loss for other species. Uh, you know, there's like the over collection of rare and endangered plant species that can push them to extinction, reducing biodiversity. If you smuggle a plant zarin, there could be pests and disease in it. Oh yes, yes, harming native plants, animals, whatever.
Some smuggled plants pose a health risk to animals humans.
Oh yeah, because if they're the wrong environment, they're like, we have no natural defenses.
People like this is a beautiful flower and they smell it and they die because they don't know what it is, because someone smuggled it somewhere. Anyway. So the plant trade is often also linked to organized criminal networks, and that
is an episode of law and order organized crime. Then I want to see, let me give you some example cases, and you and I we can pretend that Elliott's Chris Maloney detective Juicy Booty is the one investigating all these all right, So, succulents and cacti very popular these days.
Seculents and cacti, Yes, I like them personally because they're hard to kill.
That is true.
And then you don't have to water them for like a week, sometimes two weeks. I can go on to vacation, come back, and like, oh I should have thought about my plants.
And living in California, we can just leave them outside all the time where it's like another climate. They got to bring them in.
Go back, and what zone are we in? I just learned that we have zones.
Of plants can be here.
Oh wow, Okay, I'm going to keep that for parties.
Don't quote me on that, because you know my brain is Anyway. A very popular and highly coveted succulent these days is the living rock cactus living cool. It is close cousin to peyote.
Oh yeah, does that.
Have any properties?
No?
People love them because there are no thorns, and they're very plush. They're tiny, they're not tall, and the only place that it's found is in the Big Bend region of the Chihuahuan Desert.
Oh dope, hardy plant.
It kind of looks like grogu hands. Nice, that's what they look like. They aren't endangered, but they are protected and they're only found in this very small area and they take decades to mature.
If it's not that, then it's a sparkling succulent.
Yes, exactly, it's a it's a sparkling rock living rock. So back in twenty twelve, US Fish and Wildlife they got a tip there was smuggling going on in Texas moving living rock cacti, thousands of them. Yeah, so smugglers were offering these rare plants online to customers in Asia Europe.
Oh yeah, and they.
Would falsify custom slips to say the plants for something else. And this, my friend, is a violation of the Lacy Act of nineteen hundred. Okay, okay, so this is that was the first federal law in the United States to address wildlife conservation. Yeah right, thank you Lacey and Cagny. It originally went into effect that so you can't eat things that are made from the part of it. They go hand in hand. Did you ever told you I saw Tyne Daily in person? You have? She's across the street from me.
Apparently was really memorable for you.
Really was. That's like my one celebrity sighting. No, I didn't even get to Tyne Daily. There she is across Okay. So the LASIAC goes into effect to stop illegal commercial hunting and interstate shipment of wildlife, and it currently prohibits trade in wildlife, fish, and plants that have been illegally taken, possessed, transported, or sold. So what's crazy about this is that it applies to both US and foreign laws. So if a plant or animal is taken illegally under another country's law
and imported to the US, it's still illegal under the late. Yeah, and it requires the declaration of plant and timber species and country of origin when inward certain products. So Fish and Wildlife they take this seriously as well. They should.
Yeah, it sounds like it's like one of their major things to do.
The director of their Southwest region amy looters, she said in a statement. Quote. Those who came before US knew the importance of protecting wildlife from unlawful trade. And this law continues to stay relevant each time a poacher or wild plants smuggler is charged. So booms erin, Yeah, this is the laws to kill the law. So Fish and Wildlife they got search warrants for six different houses, all
in West Texas. We don't know how many plants were smuggled in total, but authorities seized around four thousand in the raids.
YEA.
One of the plants that they seized was like thirty years old.
And they're taking them one and at a time in it, right.
No, they're going out in the desert and scooping them up and throwing them into a bag.
Yeah, but they have to pick each one. They're not like just taking up like a big section of earth.
Oh yeah, no, one by what. Some of the plants were just like stored in plastic bags, so they had started to rot. Oh gosh, this was not cool, dude, Come on, Don would never do that. Oh, Don would faint. The surviving seas cacti they were turned over to soul Ross State University. They have preserved a large number on campus, but they also found like permanent homes home. They couldn't really return most of them to the wild because they didn't know what subpopulation they were from.
Anyone interrupt.
I mean it's like if you get taken from like East Oakland and then planted back in West Oakland.
That ain't right. No, you don't know.
You can't just go stick them anywhere. So the big dog in the ring that was Harry George Bach the second.
Not Harry George Box. Second, Harry Box.
He shipped forty one living rock cactuses that were seized in an international mail facility in Chicago.
It was like a doctor se Harry box Rock.
Yeah, Bock was shipping rock twenty eighteen in Chicago. In twenty twenty, he pleaded guilty before a magistrate in Pecos, Texas, to one count of mislabeling exports in the scheme to ship cactuses overseas. As part of a plea agreement. He faced three years probation, seventy two hundred dollars in restitution, and he had to forfeit the forty one living rock cactuses, but no.
Time behind bars. So they threw the plant catalog out.
They busted another dude he got he got like three years probation, had to pay more than ten grand in restitution. There's a seventy two year old fell out a study Butte Texas. Yeah, he got misdemeanor charges going back to twenty sixteen probation. So that all these guys they get probation. One dude he got felony, three years probation and sixty grand in restitution.
Should you imagine.
Losing your voting rights because you were like running hot plants?
Oh that how you go in like you go inside. No, they're lucky. They didn't go behind bars. What are you in caractice smuggling? It looked like grogu hand.
Did you say plump smuggling? No, cactus smuggling.
Guy, he had, he got He was busted on the charges, but he also had to forfeit his firearms.
They seized his colonies.
Yeah, yes, they're like, I know you're a You're a plant smugg and a gun owner. Can't have the guns now, sir. Here are some wise words from US Attorney John Bash on the matter. Quote, when you miss with protected Texas cacta, you're missing with Texas Pako's building.
No other way.
So these bad own rays, though, right, they have nothing on the world's most notorious succulent thief, South Korean national jongsu Kim.
Wait a minute, this sounds familiar.
Let's talk dude. Leah, okay, hey, let's talk about it. Commonly known as live forevers, okay, I think so. These are a type of rosette forming succulent plants that are in the stone crop family super Desirable. They're native to California and northern Baja California forty seven species, twenty one subspecies. As a very popular, very trendy, very like Pinterest, insta esthetic.
Grin, I got you like an airplane, Like people want these things because they're the thing.
Yes, And it's dawning on me that I think you probably heard about it from another place that I heard about it. Yes, we have a mutual friend. Yes, Kip, yesse in the California Native Plant Society, and he will go on a diatribe about it. Oh, totally.
I think he helped some of the detective.
I think he went under cover as a rock.
They cling to the coastline right to get the area.
Yeah, and like if you get Kip started.
About this, oh, he turned red.
Yeah, he's just like this is really upsetting.
You think he was talking about like like orphans, you know, like children in.
My word, talking about Dudleia.
Yeah.
Yes, they're a California game warden. He told the USC Paper quote, it's like having a Fendi bag on rodeo drive Dulia Farinosa from the wild bluffs of Mendocino, California. Especially a five headed one is apparently a super cool thing to have. And I was like, I didn't get the game warden's name, but I wanted to know if it was Kip. So many of the plants traffic to South Korea probably ended up being resold elsewhere.
And they sold for a lot. Right, they're really desirable and because they grow and they look really beautiful when they sit there.
But right, and so you know these things start getting popular California Fish and Wildlife, they're like, oh I noticed that. As they're going through their Pinterest, they're like, that's that's not a houseplant. But so the truth is that the hipsters in South Korea, they weren't the ones buying up the plants because like, these plants don't do well in domestic captivity for the average. So the one that was both sought after that Pharaonsa. It's, according to The Guardian,
is quote particularly charismatic to humans. Experts say they boast the precise mix of qualities that Americans demand from crime victims. They are pretty and small, very fragile and yet curiously resilient.
That's what we demand from crime.
I guess I know.
That about that. Yeah, like make them pretty and small. Anyway, so that's not going to make you a lot of money with mass consumers. Something that's you know, not going to live very long. So once well, no, because they smuggle them to South Korea because there are these high end greenhouses there and the wild Dudley. It could then be babied there for a few years in perfect conditions, and then they're big and beautiful. They're not small and
gragule anymore. They're big and beautiful. These are big mamas, and they get sold at these astronomical prices to like elite collectors.
When he told me, I couldn't believe.
Yeah, So how does mister Kim factor intoll? Well, first of all, I need to let you know that his alias was Neo, like like in the Matrix. I love that movie. But being called Neo while stealing plants is like big loser. No, I'm not going to He's like spinning around in a trench stopped.
Stop, bend over, bullet time, stop it throw the plant at me.
Watch this, mister Kim call me Neo. No. Neo flew from Mexico into Los Angeles International Airport in October twenty eighteen, and with them were his two assistants, Young and Back and Bong Junkin. And they thought they were like slipping in, but California fish and wildlife were all over them the moment they set foot watch well. Yeah, so game wardens tailed the trio. They watched as they went and rented a minivan, and then they filled up the van with
like empty backpacks and plastic bins and boxes. They got all their supplies.
Picturing the game wardens in like a rental car, but they've got like dirty boots.
In there, like like a tan jeep totally but with like false nose and glasses on it. So then they trailed the minivan up as they drive up the coast. And for a week, the wardens watched and followed as the guys stopped at state parks all along the northern California and in each stop they like scramble up to the rocky shore. Sometimes cliffs snatch up the plants and like you know how the coast is up there in Mendocine, Like you said.
It's just like sheer.
They got lucky.
It's not sandy flat cliffs craggy and it is dramatic.
Yeah you're hanging.
Yeah. So the three dudes they filled the van chok full, took the loop van filled the van, took it back down south to a business called Secret Garden Nursery in Vista, California, it's kind of halfway between like La and San Diego, so inland from ocean side. And I say that to those who know the state, and I apologize to the rest when who this means absolutely nothing? And yeah, but like the inland from ocean side. No, yeah, anyway, so Vista,
California's secret garden nursery. So they drop off the stolen plants, they get back in the minivan and then they go up to Mendocino again. They're like Tomndo, another load. And so you know who was with them, game wardens with the state watching.
They're in the car.
They're like cleaning to the underside. So they waited and they watched as Neo hooked up documents to have the secret garden nursery legally export two hundred and fifty nine pounds of julio and the manifest said all the plants had originated in San Diego. And then the wardens watched while Neo and the crew took scores of boxes of plants to an export facility in Compton, and then they struck.
Finally, Neo and the boys.
Were driving off when they were intercepted by the plant police. Oh, they did like a pit move on it totally. And it turns out the boxes held more than six hundred pounds of succulents, three seven hundred and fifteen individual plants.
These are not heavy plants. That's a lot, all of them.
It's like maybe the size of your fists. Yeah, all of them. More than double what the documentation closed. So, folks from the California Native Plant Society like people stoked and so Neo and his little goons, they were charged with conspiracy and violating a California law against destruction or removal of plant material on public land. And the wardens estimated that the total for all of this that they stole on the South Korean market was six hundred thousand dollars. WHOA, yeah,
So those were state charges. The Feds, specifically the US Attorney's Environmental Crimes Unit, they wanted in on it too. They wanted to make an example of these dudes. Whether that department exists in the US Attorney's office today, who's to say either way. Neo and the boys they caught federal charges too. It's like they say, you know, as California goes, so goes the nation. So May of twenty nineteen, Kim Neo found out that the Feds were going to bring the hammer down, so he ran.
Fact.
Yeah, well no, they had confiscated his passport when he got busted, Well, he got busted on the California state charges. He gets around it by going to the South Korean Embassy in La and he's like, guys, I lost my passport, which I mean, technically is not wrong.
So they issued him.
A new one and then he went down Mexico Way. He crossed over to TJ's on Foot Tijuana and from there he flew to China and from there South Korea. So he's in the wind until he wasn't. After only five months, he popped up again.
He couldn't stay away the first time.
In South Africa. What And it was there that South African investigators busted him as he was illegally harvesting more than two thousand rare succulents. South African climate is very similar.
Yeah, I just what I say. Yeah, imagine that they would have like he's like, okay, I'll go to my secondary spot the harvesting.
One of the ones that he poached was more than two hundred and fifty years old, were and like dozens of them are more than one hundred years old, like tortoises. Uh huh. So the prosecutor on the case gets a phone call ring Ring Hello, michel A, I guess what. I'm an American Fish and Wildlife officer. I work at the embassy as an attache. It's a cool job, and
I have crazy news. Your plant smuggler is wanted back in the US of A. So the South Africans they were already like heated up about Neo and according to the Guardian, they quote highlighted the severity and brutality of Kim's crime against nature and how stealing quote large ancient mother plants puts the entire species at risk, especially during times of serious drought. The collection of these plants is an ecological tragedy, they wrote. They were They're totally right.
So Kim pleads guilty to the South African charges, pays a large fine, does a year in prison there, then gets extradited to the US. US prosecutors they asked for three years in prison. They're like, we want to make an example of him. Neo's attorney it was like, slow down, Joe. His client had been through the ringer. So yeah, he got COVID in prison, he got the stuff and beaten
out of him. It was so bad that his jaw had to be wired shut, which is how he showed up in court and the attorney was like, you know, this is what happens when you were locked up and you don't speak the language. I think it's because he went in there and was like, call me neo. They're just like yeah, either way. He gets sentenced to two years.
Bureau of Prisons gave him credit for South African time served, and then he gets shipped off again, just like the plants he stole, this time to the tippy top of California in none other than your favorite place, the Lamb. That time forgot Crescent City.
Oh god.
He had to face the music on the plant theft and fleeing prosecution charges from the state. So twenty twenty two he pleads guilty, sentenced to twenty four months. He only had to pay like four grand in restitution to the state of California for expenses related to replanting the stolen plants after his arrest. So let's take a break. I gotta go water my plants. When we come back.
More smuggling, yeah, Zaren Elizabeth Daren.
Do you remember what.
I was saying during the break. I've been like translating what you were telling me because I think this is a new world to me. So I'm like, let me put this in smoking the bandit terms, and so I've been using that as like a way to understand. I'm like, you can't take cours east of the Mississippi. That's bootlegs.
There it is.
I'm like, now I guess it's clicking.
Yeah, Okay, Well, do you remember when I was like telling you about the Lacey Act time? It was a good time. We were so young, so fresh, different times. Well, I have what is supposed to be a perfect example of a Lacy Act violation and battle with the government. Please, and it involves Gibbson guitars.
Do they grow those?
Yeah? So they're famous for the Les Paul the SG Gibson Guitar Corporation. They mainly make guitars and basses, Mandolins. Yeah, Orville Gibson. He started making instrum Gibson eighteen four wow, And the company was founded in nineteen oh two. As like Gibson Mandolin guitar, Kalamazoom Michigan and as you can tell by the name. They were very mandolin forward in the early days. So the company they invented arch top guitars that had the same principle behind violins, like how
they're kind of that arch face of it. Then they started making flat top acoustic guitars, and then the first commercially available hollow body electric guitars all Jangle Jangled soneteen forty. It's true they do chief dobras. In the nineteen forty four Gibson got bought by Chicago Musical Instruments, and then they got bought nineteen sixty nine by Ecuadorian Company Limited,
which was actually a Cannanian firm. Eighty six nineteen eighty six, the company got scooped up by a group led by Henry Yuskovic and David Barman, and then in November of twenty eighteen, private equity stepped in and it was bought by Colberg, Kravitz Roberts.
Sorry, Gibson, it really is.
Throughout its history, Gibson has been involved in a lot of lawsuits, almost all of which stem from copyright stuff for design, because people rip off the less Paul design the.
Way, Yeah, because you see the knockoffs. I had friends when we were They.
Have their own down market version of the epiphone.
Yeah, yeah, but.
Tons of them. But there's another legal issue, and this one popped up during the Uskowitz.
Barrim in years towards the end.
Yeah, in two thousand and nine, US Fish and Wildlife Services are heroes today. They raided a Gibson factory where they grow It seems they were using ebony wood illegally imported from Madagascar. Oh, this is a big problem. Madagascar suffers terrible poverty, corrupt government, and the world suffers from a terrible desire for beautiful at a low cost. And they've got a lot of them, and they got a
lot of and one of them is fine green lumber. Yeah, so stuff like rosewood, ebony, stuff that makes Gibson guitars so gorgeous. So in its investigation, the US Department of Justice found some smoking guns. They got their hands on emails in which Gibson employees talked about how ebeny wood was part of a quote gray market and that they could get it from a German wood dealer and just not ask questions about where he got it, and even
though they knew that it was coming from a supplier truck. Yeah, so they made plans to buy the wood even though they knew the sale wasn't on the up and up violation of the Laciact. In June of twenty eleven, the DOJ filed a civil proceeding and it was the first of its kind under the recently amended Lacy Act. So importing companies had to follow the environmental laws in the country of origin, even if the place was corrupt and no one was enforcing those laws.
Okay, so that me and mar Yeah ma a gascar.
So Gibson fought the suit. They said that the government was quote bullying Gibson without filing charges. Then the owners of Gibson made the whole thing political by getting the Tea party segment of the GOP the Republicans, to side against the government on this, saying that it was going to impact jobs.
What.
Yeah, So then there was another Gibson factory. Rate zaren close your eyes. I want you to picture it. You are a nineteen year old guy named Colby. You are forklift certified, and you work at the Gibson Electric Division rough Mill facility in Nashville, Tennessee. When you tell people where you work, they think it's the coolest job ever, and it sort of is. But you aren't surrounded by cool guitars all day. You move palettes of wood to and from the kilns. You don't ever really see guitars,
and certainly no rock stars or anything. You got this job through your cousin who works repair and restoration next door. Now she gets to see a cool stuff. She processes all the guitars that come in and sometimes meets some musicians come to check the place out. But you you're in the mill. It's a warm late summer day. More than warm, it's sweltering. This is when it's pretty bogus
working in the rough mill. You are at the wheel of a forklift, backing out of the storage area of the warehouse with a palletful of raw rosewood, headed for the kiln to be dried. After that it'll be plain and then headed to the manufacturing building. And that's where the magic happens. Baby, You've spent the morning moving bundles of Indian ebony wood. The manifest ticket on these reads Indian ebony fingerboards, but there's another slip of paper that
says they're veneers for the body of guitars. You know that's not true, but whatever must be a paperwork mix up. Just as you're moving your load of new rosewood toward the kiln, the warehouse doors open to get some sort of air circulation, are crowded with guys in mid breakers. They look like FBI guys, but their jackets read us Fish and Wildlife. You've heard something about this before. But the building was rated a few years ago and the
FEDS were looking for wood from Madagascar. But this stuff's from India. You don't know what the big deal is. Over the crackle of their walkie talkies, an agent yells at you to turn off the forklift and step aside. You do as you're told. There's a slam of an office door. You know what that means. It's Eugene. Eugene Nix. He's in charge of all the wood that comes in. He inspects it and then okays it for the killed. Then he sends it for milling and then off to
the factory. He's pissed. He marches up to the agents, a tiny radio playing classic rock in the background. Yeah, brother, you tell him you think Eugene grabs some papers from the hand of the agent out front. It's a warrant. The agent tells him, I can see that. Eugene says, listen. The agent says, I know you're a craftsman, an expert, but we have to do our jobs here. Eugene scans the papers as agents fan out and shut the rest of the operation down. Your coworkers slowly emerge and gather
around watching the standoff. Eugene size folds up the warrant paperwork, tucks it into the front pocket of his thin, worn, short sleeve button down shirt, and then whips his cell phone from his belt holster. He pushes some buttons and weights. After a moment, he barks, feds are here. It's the Indian Wood. Yeah, call the lawyers into the phone and hangs up. You and your coworkers look at each other, then at Eugene. He looks at all of you and tells you it looks like you have the rest of
the day off. You'll get paid out for the hours, head on home and he'll see you tomorrow. And this Zarin was the raid that ground everything to a halt. So they hit a bunch of locations, including headquarters where they seize computers, oh and fish and wildlife found that Gibson had been importing lumber from India, which is fine, sure, but what they were importing wasn't legal because here's the thing.
The International Tariff Code, also known as the Harmonized Schedule GRISS items shipped all over the globe and it's standardized across nations in order to smooth out trade, true globalization. So India forbids export of items categorized under the Code forty four oh seven quote wood sawn or chipped, lengthwise, sliced or peeled, whether or not planed, sanded or enjointed,
of a thickness exceeding six millimeters. So basically, you can't export lumber from India unless it's already been worked on by Indian workers.
Smart so they.
Want to protect their jobs.
That makes sense, like everyone's.
Got to look out for their own. Every country does this sort of thing. We do it got to protect your industries. So Gibson, though, was importing unprocessed wood, just bundles of the wood, and they knew they weren't supposed to, And all those shipping documents that were supposed to keep this in line to be transparent about sourcing and destination, they were all off full of discrepancy. Yeah, and so the bundles of wood that you were moving at the
Gibson rough Mill, they weren't supposed to be there. They're remarked for destination Germany. This company called Luthier's Mercantile International in California was the importer of record, but they had nothing to do with this. The stuff was just being sent straight to Gibson in Tennessee, and so US Fish
and Wildlife they showed up seized the wood. They'd been watching this at customs and they'd seized some other shipments, the tracking shipments, and so they took all the wood at the kiln, at the factory, at the storage facility. And like Gibson pitched a fit, they were caught red handed. And so they went politically.
How did they pitch a fit based on what?
They blamed President Obama? They thanks Obama, all right, So, despite despite evidence that they willfully flouted the law, they said that Obama had it out for them and specifically targeted them. Okay, so usk of its right. He said that Martin Guitars did the same thing and they didn't get raised. He said it's because Martin were donors to the Democratic National committee.
Oh god.
But here's the thing. Martin Guitars had all their paperwork in line, and they could prove they hadn't violated the Lacy Act, an act that went into effect more than one hundred years before Obama was elected. So of course.
They made classic guitars like Willie Nelson's is a Martin.
Yeah, that's like the og. According to NPR, quote, Chris Martin, chairman and CEO of the C. F. Martin Guitar Company in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, said that when he first heard guitars built from Madagascar rosewood, he dreamed it might be the long sought substitute for Brazilian rosewood, whose trade was banned in the nineteen nineties due to over harvest. Then the situation in Madagascar changed. There was a coup. Martin says. What we heard was the international community has come to
the conclusion that the coup created an illegitimate government. That's when we said, Okay, we cannot buy any more of this would Yeah. And while some say the Lacy Act is burdensome, Martin supports it. Quote, I think it's a wonderful thing. I think illegal logging is appalling. It should stop up and if this is what it takes, unfortunately to stop unscrupulous operators, I'm all for it. It's tedious, but we're getting through it.
That's the way, that's the approach, that's reasonable and responsible business.
So after all the bluster, all the victimhood and moaning a development, after one year Gibson yusk of it admitted to violating the Lacy Act. Good because like if they kept trying to fight it, they knew criminal charges for the ownership was on the horizon. And so there's like a major digital paper trail proving they knew what they were doing.
They it was bad and a lot of musicians are ethically, you're going to start to these customers.
Well that was the thing too, is that online Like the response apparently it was just like burning up Facebook with all this like these are American heroes and the Obama governments trying to go after them, right, But it was not. Guitar folks. Guitar folks and forums were like, this is actually I don't want to play something that
came from totally. So Gibson had to pay a three hundred thousand dollars far and they forfeited the majority of the wood that was seized, but they did get some back, and what happened with it is the question.
What happened with Elizabeth?
Thank you? In twenty fourteen, they released the Government Series Les Paul SG three point thirty five and Flying V guitars the color Government Tan, and so the guitar featured that rosewood seized by the Feds in the Nashville raids. They made one thousand, seven and fifty guitars, and they started out at around eleven hundred dollars retail. They sold out all of them. Of course, company officials said the guitars quote suitably marks this infamous time in Gibson's history.
Did they go to Cabo Wabbos? People liked?
Well, it gets better. So each guitar features a pit guard quote hot stamped in gold with the Government series graphic a bald eagle hoisting a Gibson guitar neck. Are you kidding me?
That's no Willie Nelson's IRS tape?
I'm gonna not at all. So the company gave pad a press release quote when the Powers the Beat confiscated stocks of tone woods from the Gibson factory in Nashville, only to return them once there was a resolution and the investigation ended. It was an event worth celebrating. Well, yeah, it was. The investigation ended because you were guilty and you paid for it. So they didn't really become the collector's item that Gibson thought they were going to be.
I saw them online for maybe like twenty five hundred thirty two hundred dollars according to Ultimate Guitar dot com.
Okay, amazing, one of my favorite reads every morning.
Quote. Seven years after the raids, Yuskowitz had run the company five hundred million dollars into debt since his departure. He insisted to Guitarist magazine that any notion that he had anything to do with Gibson guitars dwindling reputation is quote fake news. A company, now under new management is committed itself to making guitars without critically endangered lumber, and
the article continues. A report in the Nashville Business Journal in October of twenty twenty claim that Yuskovitz is now starting up his own healthcare company in Nashville. Apparently he found a business with bigger ethical loopholes to be exploited. Anyways, we look forward to what the future will hold for Gibson under new management, and we wish them the very best. Ultimate Guitar dot com Zaren was your ridiculous takeaway.
I knew so little about any of this, but after hearing it all, I'm not surprised that the people involved are doing the stuff, like the smugglers and then the businessmen with the unethical like yeah, we'll take what from whatever?
Yeah, Like why are people like this?
Like why do need to respect exactly? I know, I know what about you, Elizabeth, but my takeaway is that I still manage to get all heated talking about plants. It's supposed to be chilled.
You worked it in.
That's not the xanax I promised. But I he's going to go watch some gardener's world and cool out, Dave. I think we should have a talk back.
God, I went, Elizabeth.
I'm very, very sick right now and I'm listening.
To you guys.
This is actually is the vocal range of my voice at the moment, and I've just add to the introductions of the pac Man Fever episode and the chicken lozenges. Ridiculous do not want We love you, but you're a sick, lady. This is creepier than it sounds.
Save your voice, My goodness made me have a chicken lost.
You know you laugh chicken.
By the way, if you're ever sick, chicken soup, orange juice, shout out. Tequila will heal you every time. But not for that. We were just works every time.
Yeah, but just like what about like generalized malaise.
Like just on a Monday. I'll probably.
That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. The website just won the Outstanding Act of Bravery Metal from the Elko, Nevada Police Department.
Wow, finally, I know.
I'm so proud. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod, and you can email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. But most importantly, as you know, I love these leave it talk back, save your voices, do it with robust. I don't want to hear anyone hurting themselves. Get the free iHeart app. Go through that reach out.
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited by Fugitive Luther Dave coustm starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is by GMO Truth Marissa Brown and Keen Observation Quality Assurance Skills by Gray Witten. The theme song is by Poor Dirt Farmers Just Trying to make a Live and Grow and hollow Body guitars Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided by Body five hundred. Guest hair and makeup provided by Sparkleshot and
Mister Andre. Executive producers are Dandelion Smuggler, Ben Bollen and Rogue Fish and Game Warden Noel.
Broun, Gus Crime Say It One More Time, Geequeous Crime.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts. My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,