Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Saren. It's Elizabeth, Hello, Elizabeth Dutton, It's Saren.
How are you doing.
I'm good. I'm really good.
If you look happy, thank you?
So do you listen? Career, you know what's ridiculous?
Yes, lean in, I got one. Okay, okay. George Steinbrenner, the owner of the ridiculous right New York Yankees owner.
Yes.
When he first bought the team, he had to endure one of the strangest sports conferences of all time. And it doesn't involve him or Billy Martin. Oh Billy, yeah, right. So George Steinbrand buys the team. At the time, the Yankee manager was the dude Ralph howk Right. He comes into Ralph. He's like, look, I want the players who have got long hair to cut it because the Yankees clean cut look right. It's why Don Mattingly had to
shave his mustache. Anyway, Steinbrener's like, yeah, all of these guys look clean and stuff.
Right.
The manager's laughing because he's like, you have no idea what's going on in your team? Bro? Because and I thought this was wild. In nineteen seventy three, in March, two Yankees, Frisbee and this dude, Mike Kekech They called a press conference and they told the world that they were swapping wives and families. He said, it just happened.
It wasn't playing. Peterson said. During the summer, the two teammates they talked about, like you know, trading wise, right, So they did it for a week and they then decided, okay, we got to go back, you know, after it was the summer. It was fun, right, and then eventually one of them was like, I got I gotta go back, right. He's like, he said, quote I told Marylynd, I just have to have Susan, And Maryland said she was in
love with Mike. So they decided that the children should stay with the mothers and then they you know and stay in their own homes. And then the two left hand pitchers switched and partners, right, and they said, quote, there are degrees of love involved. We tried something with a common understanding. It was completely a four way thing, right. So the two decided they now need to let the world know about this.
That's my like, so that means I actually know someone who does this. His family was part of that, like where the parents just all.
Sweat, will swap it out.
And then they went forward from there, but like to tell the world.
Well they wanted this was the seventies one, so they told their GM Lee mcfail. Then they told manager Ralph Holk and they're like, hey, we gotta like let the world know, right. So they go out and now after the press conference or manager Ralph Hoak, he's like, ask why of the reporters, what the hell's going on your team? It's surprisingly, dude's chill. He's like, quote, they live their own lives and they got a lot of years to live. If you're not happy, you only go through the world
one time, and why go through it unhappy. Some people say, you have to stay together for the sake of the kids. We've seen people living together and they're practically separated. So they did this and then they managed for years to have this swap right. Eventually, though, one couple broke up and one couple is still happily married to this day. And they said it was not a sex thing, it was not a cheap swap.
They should have just keep it, keep it their own business. I mean, I'm always encouraging everyone to mind their own business, but also keep your business.
Out of the Oh my god. And it made the pay papers. You can see here.
Are you're kidding?
Yank pictures? Trade Wives. That's the cover of New York paper, The Daily News. Yeah. In twenty eleven, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck we're gonna make a movie about.
They were gonna swap No.
That would be fun. I guess j Lo and Matt and Matt together Matt love no.
Joe, and then you swapped it the other way. You know what. There are a lot of permutations.
They were going to make a movie called The Trade about this, and they decided that's not a good idea.
Yeah, thank you.
They stuffed so in saying I'm telling you about it.
That is ridiculous, Right, that's super ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Her for it?
I love it, tell it stealing cheese? Yeah, this is ridiculous. Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and percent ridiculous. I talk about food crimes on this show. Yeah, I would say often because I share a lot of horrible food mesh.
Those are food crimes in my books. Yeah, and I've reported.
You mustard skittles.
God, no, we know what they are.
Ice cream, all right. The only actual crime involving food that I've talked to you about is the Sonoran hot dog feud, which was amazing.
You know.
Since then, every time I see a cart selling Sonoran hot dogs, I've already eaten and I'm not interested. So I haven't tried when you really, yeah, I've seen the cart like a couple of times after Yeah, there's always one after the A's game, when you walk.
Out fingers going come this way.
Yeah, and I see it. I'm always like just not.
Hungry given to the flavor.
I need to try one.
You do, I'll thank you for one.
So such as life with that. There was also succulent Chinese meal.
Man.
Yes, but we didn't talk about the meal itself.
There, that's true, not really knowing.
So here's the things, Aaron, here's something fun about me?
Oh, please share? Are we sharing?
I try to explain to people that there are three main things that I like to talk about.
Okay, gardening, okay, yes, I can test to that. Dogs, I can totally attest to that.
And food.
I haven't even expanded to say dogs and other animals that are charming like dogs.
Yeah, there's wolves, yeah yeah, so animals, so we'll say gardening, animals, non reptiles, and food.
Yeah, I'm with it right.
There are obviously other things music, keeping the a's in Oakland, California, history.
Californ history of California, gold in general, costco Y, California.
If you've never seen the TV show California's Gold, it was a PBS show that ran out here, find it online.
The host has an amazing Southern accent. He goes around California going, well.
All, be so enthusiastic yourself. He is so enthusiastic as well he should be.
He'll be talking to somebody who has like a sock collection.
Right exactly. So I like I do like talking about food, yes, and I love to cook, I love to eat things, all these things. So it makes sense that today I'm going to give you a Schmorgesborg of food crimes, a veritable cornucopia, a buffet of one poo poop platter of criminal capers.
So now I'm thripchip.
So many of these are crimes that have been suggested to us over the course of the show going back decades, and they don't. But they don't have enough meat on their bones to be full episodes on their own. So today we have a buffet. Okay, just a little sampler. Let's begin with our most requested crime. Yes, we have a most most requested food crime for us to cover, for us to car. So it's something that I've been told you have a lot of at your house talking about maple syrup.
Honey, Oh, maple syrup, yes, I mean pretty into all the sweet syrups.
Yeah, you're a syrupy kind of guy. So maple syrup, real maple syrup, not the brown corn syrup goo.
No, no, no high freak toast current and brown in it. No.
Real maple syrup is expensive, yes, yeah, top that top You can get a good deal at Costco.
By the oh Man. I was recently in New England. I was wild.
Oh, were you just like suckling on a tree tree like vampire? Did you know that maple syrup runs almost two thousand to thirty five hundred dollars US a barrel these days?
Yes, it is very expensive.
It's up from thirteen hundred dollars a barrel in twenty sixteen.
Prices.
It's going up like gold and with global warming, who's saying it's more expensive than crude oil?
It should be more valuable, right.
So Vermont makes the most syrup of any US states. But Quebec, Yes, they put out seventy percent of the world's maple syrup supplying. Yeah, that's the leaves exactly. So the Global Maple Syrup Strategic Reserve is located in rural Quebec east of Montreal. Monreal. It's managed by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers. Yes, which if you're if you're going to do the acronym francis, it's f p a Q. Yeah, it's their OPEC and they oftentimes are
compared to OPEK. Oh really, it's a government sanctioned union of syrup. It's a cartel.
Yes.
So they managed the supply of syrup to balance out the good and bad years of production so we never miss out. Yeah. So it's just consistent syrup. That's right. So you have a boom time you take it, you know, set it aside. Summer of twenty twelve, Monsieur Gavreau.
Michelle, you say it again. I like the way you say no.
He was one of the f PAQ. He was at one of the f PAQ warehouses to take inventory. So there's like this huge stack of barrels going up to the sky. Yeah, and he's got he's got like a piece of chalk in the chocolate marking him down. So he has to climb the barrels to get to the top to start the count. So he climbs, and he gets up to the top and the whole thing starts to wobble. It's gonna give He freaks out and he's like, oh,
it doesn't collapse. It almost but if it was. If it had collapsed, he would have been killed one percent. So he's oh, it's like boe wobbling, and he like stops it. Okay. So then he realized that all of the barrels underneath him were empty, and they sho've been full of sticky syrup.
Okay, I was picturing this wrong.
So they're big pyramid style.
Of barrels, okay, And he's going up on the kind of weird ladders growling up. He's scrabbling up the actual barrel.
Yeah, he's on the barrels. He's on the barrels. They start to walk.
Now it's making sense.
A barrel of maple syrup weighs around six hundred pounds, and so you can see how he didn't have the support that he thought he was going to have up there.
If they're empty, fas miessing hundreds thousands of pounds.
Yeah, So he starts opening the barrel and confirms that they are devoid of syrup. But they weren't completely empty. They had water in them.
Huh.
So this wasn't like a shipping era where like a batch of empties that you know, supposed to be for syrup gets you know, switched around. This was obviously on purpose. About twelve point five percent of the total syrup reserve, five hundred and forty thousand gallons had been stolen. Whoa, that's thirteen point four million dollars worth of the forest's sweet nectar. Yeah. So the cops like.
An eighth of the whole world's supply.
Yeah. So the cops, Quebec Police, the Mounties, US Customs, they start their investigation. The security at the facility left much to be desired. But then again, who would steal such a thing in such a giant quantity?
Usually pretty heavy too.
Exactly, and there's no CCTV at the warehouse, so there's no video of the truck leaving with that Sylvan sap. The syrup was now colloquially hot. Yes, and this was now known as the Great Maple Syrup. Hece, Oh, yes, we do get a lot of kay, so we're in it.
Inspectors.
They questioned hundreds of people, They ran multiple, multiple search warrants, dozens of search warrants. The whole thing was kind of tricky though, because the logistics didn't make sense. Vanity Fair interviewed a local who said, quote, try to think up the scenario and it's impossible. Syrup is heavy and sticky. How do you hide it? Who do you get to smuggle it? Where can you sell it? It's like stealing the salt out of the sea.
Wow, yeah, poets the crime.
Eventually, though, investigators they were able to piece everything together. There was a group of criminals who would take the barrels from the warehouse and bring them to their sticky layer. Oh really, They'd siphon off the syrup into their own barrels like sipening gas out of a car, fill the original barrels with water, and then return the barrels to the warehouse.
Why are you the extra step?
I don't know. Well, that's the thing. So okay, So there wasn't a lot of traffic in and out of the warehouse, so they started getting lazy, and then they started just siphoning the barrels right there, and so over time they stole almost ten thousand barrels of syrup.
It's a lot, that's a lot of times.
And then they took them out of the FPA CU zone. This is inside, this is a huge well. Yeah, so they take them out of the FPAQ zone and they sold them to mostly unwitting buyers.
Okay, so people don't know they're putting in new labeled stuff. Okay.
And what's wild is that the cops were able to recover most of the syrup they hadn't They just rang out pancakes in the buckets they found. They found some of it with a candy maker in Vermont. Oh, hundreds of barrels were in Kenswick, New Brunswick.
This is why he was getting all those calls from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. So I was like, I'm not answering that call.
I have a lot of syrup in my house. Syplus this new Brunswick area, super rural, really beautiful. I've always wanted to go to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and my Google street View experience just confirmed that, So I love it. In all, seventeen men were arrested for the heist.
Wow, seventeen. Yeah.
The ringleader was a man named Richard or Richard Vallier, and he was sentenced in twenty seventeen to eight years in prison and got a nine point four million dollar Canadian Canadian dollar fine with an extension to fourteen years if the fine wasn't paid. And then in twenty sixteen the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled that it was excessive. This whole the fine, They're like nine point four million Canadian dollars.
That's ridiculous, nine of business. We're talking syrup.
Yeah, so they're like knocked it down to a million. Just still that's a lot of money. But then the Supreme Court of Canada reversed that decision in twenty twenty teen reinstated.
We said, people, leaf is on the flag exactly.
You don't mess with that. So Richard's dad, Raymond, Raymond.
What do you get if you go in to shoot like a bald eagle in America, you're probably getting like twenty five years in federal prison. Right whatever. If you have it on your fly, you got to protect that. I'm with the judge.
We don't have the baldygle in our floor.
I know, we don't have it on our flag, but it's our symbol. You can't shoot a star, exactly, shoot a stripe. I shot a candy striper and.
Call you should call a wait for that.
They definitely so.
Richard's dad, Raymond.
I shot the color blue.
He gets convicted of possession, yes, with intent to sell. He was sentenced to two years in jail minus one day, I don't know, and three years of probation. Tien sant Pierre, Tienne Saint Pierre, the guy in New Brunswick with the with all the syrup. He was a sur of reseller. He got two years in jail minus one day. I don't get it, plus three years of probation and an eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars fine. A vi caron and he was the insider on it. His spouse owned
the warehouse that they were poking into. He got five years in prison plus a one point two million dollar fine, and then Sebastian Joutra trucker who moved the stole, got eight months. He's like, look, I just drove the truck. This theft of a really large quantity of food products isn't limited to maple syrup. In the criminal justice system, food based offenses are considered especially us in tou Larry County, California.
The dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies or members of an elite squad known as the Agricultural Crimes Unit. These are their stories.
Oh wait, before you get to TULARI, I wanted to point out something about Canada. Yeah, that is what happens if you allow the French and the English to make a country. Okay, yeah, you get Canada. Just think about it. Pretty cool, they're better together.
Pretty cool. Yeah it is anyway, Hoses. So there is actually an Agricultural Crimes Unit in the Tillarry County Sheriff's Office. This is how they're described on their website. Quote to Larry County leads the nation in dairy production. To Larry County also ranks as one of the largest agricultural producing counties in the entire nation. Agriculture is the largest private employer in the county, with farm employment accounting for nearly
a quarter of all jobs. Due to this, Sheriff Boudrou has made the Agricultural Crimes Unit one of his top priorities. The Agricultural Crimes Unit consists of six detectives, one sergeant and one lieutenant. They are responsible for all crimes agricultural and nature, including but not limited to, cattle theft, copper wire thefts, tree nut thefts, tractor trailer thefts.
And fuelfs. Be yeah, I bet thehas in Central California.
The Agricultural Crimes Unit has specific liaisons for the areas of row crops, citrus, cattle, dairy and tree nuts. We send out monthly publication to update all farmers, ranchers and dairymen of current crimes, investigations, arrests, and recoveries. If you would like to receive this bulletin, please contact pam shot at seven three five nine eight if sign up. If you want to get updates, called pam So. August twenty twenty, the unit they caught a hot case a real tough.
Nut to crack lay it on.
Yeah, so, someone stole two tractor trailers filled with about three hundred thousand dollars worth of pistachios.
Oh, Pista. I wonder if it was gonna be almonds of pistachia.
Yeah, it's gotta be, you know, maybe walnuts far south for the walnuts on that. So detectives were called out to set In, Pistachio and Terrabella, California. Set In Pistachios, California exactly. It's the second largest pistachio processor in the US. They can process more than one hundred and ten million pounds of pistachios and have more than ten thousand acres of planted nuts flex on them. So Lex the wonderful company that they produce Wonderful brand pistachos.
That's the country's largest.
They're the largest processor. But Settin right right close behind them, So Seton was missing its nuts. Apparently someone used the name of a real trucking company to get entrance and pick up two large cargo trailers filled with pistachios. Then they took off and headed to a secret abandoned warehouse they're Lair. There they took the pistachios out of the set and packaging and sold them loose to an unsuspecting buyer.
One county over, Okay, so they just there's just some big packaging always but there's just like a big pile of net bag I'm sure somewhere. So the problem for the crimers is that the trailers had GPS tracking in them.
Of course, I was gonna ask about this, that's the maybe.
That's standard for transportation.
With your luggage. What do you think I'm doing with that trailer full of exactly.
As an aside, there was a case of the missing chickpeas that could have used a GPS tracker. A restaurant in Washington, DC called Little Sesame lost a shipment of chickpeas coming in from Montana. Ups said it made it to DC, but not the restaurant. That's where the case went cold cold like hummus zaren that's what chickpeas were for. So the local papers were calling that garbonzogate. Oh really, Yeah,
they've stole six and fifty pounds of garbonzobeans chickpeas. That's like more than twenty six bo Jackson's.
Yeah, that's a lot about Jackson. You were putting in on some relative.
That of course, Well, they weren't ever recovered anyway. Back to the pistachios. The nut recovery the nut grab became a multi jurisdictional effort. California Highway Patrol, Fresno County Sheriff's Office, Fresno Police Department, Madera County Sheriff's Office. They all joined up with the two Larry County egg investigators and took the purpse down.
Bring that hammer down.
Bovna Singh second, a twenty three year old Fresno man arrested at home for conspiracy, grand theft, identity theft, looting. At the last report immediately following his arrest, they said that more people were going to get arrested.
Oh yeah, more to come. Yeah, watch this space.
And all the nuts recovered.
Oh nice, they got their handle they cradled.
I couldn't find out what happened to this case. Whatever happened to the guy? Know news stories about it, but whatever. So they got the nuts back. When we come back, Yes, I'll tell you about more foodie crimes and they aren't mashups.
Thank god. Hello, Hello, some nuts? Yeah, I got some just for this. This is going well.
So like occasion Delicious, Yes please New Bedford, Massachusetts.
I've been there, have you okay, whaling.
Well, did you know more than three hundred and fifty million dollars worth of seafood is brought to the docks there, Yes, every year.
Big, yes, exactly.
Fishing whaleless it still is. It's a huge fishing town. Off the coast of New Bedford, almost between Massachusetts and Nova Scotia. There's this like underwater shelf where the Gulf Stream meets the Labrador current.
Oh yes, okay, I'm familiar.
Turns up all the good stuff, all the juices, the nutrients, and the little guys, all the jubblis from the ocean, total ocean jubbleees. It makes it like this really booming area for fishing.
Oxygen rich, nutrient rich.
Delicious jubble, temperature, adience, everything, all the stuff. So from February to April each year, just in that little window, all these large schools of cod come up from the Atlantic Ocean and they hang out in like the shallow waters.
They're just like.
Child's meeting ingreetons. What's the hey, They hunt for food eels and they were gone, yes, yes, and then they spawned. So at the center of this bustling industry is Carlos Raphael Carlos. He immigrated to New Bedford from the Azores as a teenager in nineteen Sixty's.
Part of that Cape ver.
Yes, yes there's and that's a huge population in New Bedford. He got a job in a fish processing plant and then he eventually became a foreman at a seafood distribution facility. Now, in nineteen eighty one he bought his first boat. He started his own company, Carlos Seafood, like Carlos Danger, Carlos Seafood. Over time his business grew to forty boats. So he's a juggernaut, forty boats. He's got like this whole crew.
Twenty thirteen, he took in more than twenty five percent of New England's groundfish revenue.
What.
Yeah, he's just like he's the man. A reporter from WECE went to interview him at his warehouse in twenty thirteen, and Carlos had pictures of Tony Montana al Patino's coking character from Scarface on the walls of.
My little Friend.
Yeah, he's all on the walls of his office. He tells the reporter that his small family competitors were quote, mosquitos on the balls of an elephant.
Okay, I'm starting to figure it out.
Local newspapers called him Elizabeth. They called him the waterfront wizard. Yeah, and oracle of the ocean. Yeah, he had a dark side, no really what how In the nineteen eighties he got six months in prison for tax evasion, right fine. Ninety four he gets indicted but acquitted for price fixing.
Not this Johnny friendly of water front.
He's a little fishies. Twenty eleven, he got busted for illegally catching an eight hundred and eighty one pound tuna. Is all fountain nemo.
Yeah, he got caught for an illegal fish.
Illegal eight hundred and eighty one pound. That's a fig in.
That's a big boy. Yeah.
Over twenty years, he racked up more than five hundred thousand dollars in fines for more than thirty federal fishing violations.
Just always catching fish.
He's the bad boy of the seas.
Can't stop him.
So these were some of his cancers violations overfishing, Failing to throw back undersized fish and lobsters bearing eggs, which is a big no no. Oh, having boats with secret coolers in them, blocking Coastguard inspectors from boarding, failing to declare fishing trips and then filing false reports on his catch.
Using dynamite to catch fish.
Do you know what he once told regulators quote, I'm a pirate, it's your job to catch me.
I think that's accurate. I think that is he knows himself.
He has all these ships right and over time, like he's rotating through them. Sure, if one got old, he just left it to rot at the docks and then people would say you got to move your boat, and you like start threatening them. One he just let it sink and was like the government's got to clean it up now, Like he just didn't care, So.
Then I shouldn't laugh. That's the worst behavior. It's totally wow.
One time the coast guard boarded one of his boats and the troll winch where the you know that releases the net was like spinning out and the fishing net was just like heading down into the ocean where no one could see it. So the coast guard knew this was not an accident. That like, yeah, So they pull up the net they saw that it had an illegal liner in it that would keep undersized fish from slipping through the regulation manch. So he's just like yeah, basically
twenty fifteen. He's worth tens of millions of dollars.
Is an extension, but go on.
Yes, he was done though he wanted out. At the beginning of the year, he put in word that he was selling his boats and his dealership. He wanted to retire to kate Verde, Portuguese, former Portuguese colony off the coast of Africa. Then three dudes showed up. They wanted to make a deal. Sarin shows you. Oh yes, I want you to picture it. It's June third, twenty fifteen.
You are a man with a sick Russian accent. Oh yes, you and another Russian are with your financial broker walking into a warehouse at three fifty South Front Street in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
My name is Zovich.
I had to give you time to get that out there, so seagulls swoop overhead. Big big trucks rumble by. Headed to the marine commerce terminal, kind of out by Buzzard's Bank. Yeah it. The door to the warehouse creeks open, and you head to a small office off to the side. You expect a place to smell like fish. It just cold. Is this cold? Your feet strike the cement floors and you tuck your bald fist tightly into your member's only jacket. An older gentleman, his gray hair balding, motions for you
to sit down. He's got a wincedon cigarette hanging between his fingers.
You need to light tiny.
A tiny radio perched on top of a filing cabinet plays soft rock. He introduces himself as Carlos Raphael of Carlos Seafood.
I'm Zenovich.
The broker has told Carlos everything that he needs to know about you and the other Russian. Carlos seems impressed. The broker told him in subtle terms, at you and your power Russian gangsters. You're looking to park money and maybe make them while you're at it, because exactly so.
Carlos tells you that the irs thinks his business is worth about twenty million dollars and loses about half a million annually, but it's actually worth one hundred and seventy five million, and he rakes in way more than a few million a year. You nod to show how impressed you are. Carlos reaches into his desk and pulls out a Ledger book on the front in big black felt tip permanent marker inc Is scrawled cash. We are profitable, he tells you. You will not see it on paper.
For Carlos seafood profit the good. He tells you that this big wod is from off the book's cod. It's wadcod. He sells literal tons of fish to an under the table fish dealer in New York, and he tells you he always gets paid in cash. I call this the dance, he says. You look at your broker. He nods slightly, and you know it's on. Carlos is super stoked. He pulls a bottle of rum from the large desk drawer and begins to pour celebratory shots for everyone he has found.
Fellow criminal underworld Kindred Spirits. He laughs and says, as will later appear in court transcripts, you could be the Irs in here. This could be a cluster, so I'm trusting you. The only thing is I open myself up because both of you is Russian, and I don't think they would have two Russians me. That would be some bad luck. Here's the thing, you're broker, Ronald Mullet, like
the fish, but with an extra tea. Mister Mullet, undercover Irs agent, And what was Carlos talking about with the off the books fish the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, they have a requirement for fishing boats. They need to log and report the species and the weight of their
catch every single time they go out. On the other end, seafood dealers submit their own reports that tell what they're purchasing from the fishermen, and then Noah Cross references the data to confirm and make sure everything matches that match exactly. So Carlos found a crack to slip through. He owned both boats and a dealership, and he told his captains to fudge their reports. Then he verified their catch and fudged his reports to back it up. There were other
restrictions in place that Carlos hopped around. Fishermen are allowed to catch bigger quantities of common species of fish than rare ones. Okay, so let's say you're allowed to pull in lots of haddock, which is a common fish, but then you get a net full of dabs like sandebs. By the rules, you have to either stop fishing or rent more dabs quota from other fishermen. Oh, this is all in an effort to not overfish the waters and also like create like an equitable sales environment.
So this is not working at all, No.
Not under Carlos. Carlos gets around this by mislabeling a lot of stuff as haddock. Like everything becomes happy.
So that's why when you get stuff in the fish and they go and they have like the scientists check the fish and they go, yeah, this is all haddock and it's all listed. Is different.
It's him, that's him, that's him. So like he as he gestures to like the cooked books, he said to Mullet, quote, this is we paint it all week see seven hundred. We call these haddock like okay. And he even had a crooked cop who helped him smuggle the cash back home to Portugal through Boston Logan International Airport. Oh, so he's got all these connections, Rs Man Mullet. He collected intel, he collected evidence. You're also an undercover, by the way, if you hadn't figured that.
Hey, baby business at a front party in the back.
So Mullet met with that New York dealer whose name was Michael Peretti. He was a dealer at Fulton Fish Market and he was once busted for selling fish illegally caught in polluted waters.
Is Fulton Fish Market a big market from fish markets, Yeah, I know, like Pike Street marketplace and then.
Fulton Fish The big dogs, the big dogs of the fish world, the big the big catfish. On February twenty six, twenty sixteen, I'm letting cat federal agents. I just imagine with like big like whiskers.
Oh like Snoopy's brother.
Yes, who lives in that's my reference in needles. He lives in Needles. So federal agents raided the Carlos Seafood warehouse arrested Carlos that may. He was indicted on twenty seven counts of fraud.
That's it, like eighty five.
Well, and all of his crimes involved around eight hundred thousand pounds of fish.
Oh my god.
So the press when this all happens, they start calling Carlos the cod Father.
Oh of course, God, there you go.
So what's wild is that his crimes threw off the fishery stock forecasts of various fish species. And that meant that Noah had to recalibrate everything and reset the quotas.
That is the baseline.
That is how massive his fraud was. The cod Father he didn't let something like federal charges slow him down.
There.
Oh, Carlos August twenty sixteen, The Codfather out on two million dollars spond. He's wearing an ankle monitor.
Yes.
Look, one of his boats got busted by the Coastguard for illegal fishing. And he had his wife buying boats in her name to grow the business. And he was still a fixture at the docks and the fish aux course. Like he's just showing up in like barking orders at people. In the end, the federal government prevailed. So twenty seventeen, Carlos the Codfather, he pled guilty and agreed to give up thirteen of his vessels and leave the fishing industry for good.
But he's not in behind bars.
He got forty six months in prison, okay. And so while he was in jail, he bought Hawthorne Country Club in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
He bought a country club jail for years in jail.
Yeah, And he also did like real estate developments. He and his family were going to buy this like senior retirement apartment complex.
Oh, I totally trust them to care seniors.
And in twenty in twenty twenty, they transferred him from the prison to a half way house, and he got out in March twenty twenty one.
Okay, what's he been doing since? Well?
His attorney, John Marky said that Carlos and his children are quote investing in the future of New Bedford and in projects to improve their community.
I don't believe them.
No, that's all we have on them, codfather. Everybody, let's take a break that they cut it him like a fish. I'm going to share more crimes, but these are going to involve when he your favorite foods cheese, glorious cheese. You talking about language cheese I.
Used to steal. I'm sorry, I shouldn't just come off so quick with that, but I was in college and I was very struggling, and my friend and I we wore big clothing, so we would go and steal one pound blocks of cheese from like the local Safeway in San Francisco, the one on church there in Market, and then we go back to his place and we'd sit down on the couch and each of us would get out like a steak knife and we would cut off slices of cheese and eat the entire one pound block.
You guys all stove up, no smooth running after that? Wow? Oh yeah five or diet maybe?
Oh wow.
I love cheese like none.
Cheese is amazing. I'm a huge cheese fan. Did you know it has an almost drug like effect on the brain.
I just told you that story.
Well that sound it contains casin. Yeah, it gets protein the opioid receptors. So yeah, cheese.
Proteins, baby good stuffs like drugs.
The French are sometimes referred to as cheese eating surrender monkeys. But Americans are cheese eaters too.
You never heard that.
I've heard that, but people are really called No.
No, they don't. I just did, but I don't mean it. I was just looking, really, I was just looking for a good you know, segu So Americans are cheese eaters too. Did you know that Americans ate more than five billion pounds of cheese and twenty twenty one. That sounds low, that's like and you did like twelve percent of that.
I'm doing my part.
About a billion pounds were consumed in the American Midwest.
That makes sense, Okay, yeah, I'm thinking like all the fast food cheese. It's a big grown out there, I mean, but that's they throw cheese on everything.
Macaroni and cheese like potato.
Like, there's all the regular foods. I was trying to think, where are the numbers, really, cheese soup exactly, all the French cheddar soup and the French.
Blue cheese, the cheese soup.
Yeah, there's French onion soup has cheese in it.
Yeah, and then yeah whatever anyway, so we're not going to get all sidetracked on cheese soup. Dame Wisconsin. They produce the most cheese in the US each year.
In California's mad about that they are.
We're coming up behind them.
Dude, it's a battle. You ever seen that?
Well?
Oh yeah, I was looking at the numbers literally way ahead of us. But you know, we have superior cheese.
I think gauntlet like that.
Wisconsin is officially the Badger state, but unofficially the dairy state. In the cheese state.
Yeah, yeah, I got a heart for the cheeseheads.
And just like the maple syrup of our neighbors to the north, Wisconsin cheese is worth a.
Lot totally, and that the cheese.
Brings about criminals like flies to syrup.
It's like the syrup is the flag, the Canadian flag with they have the maple leaf. In Wisconsin they have the cheesehead. It's very similar.
That's the flag.
If they could redo the state flag, it would be.
A cheese made out of cheese. The state flag. You can usual their state constitution is enough.
Cheese has to be printed on cheese and the constitution itself, oh itself. I did not know that. Fun, Yeah, it's fun.
Fun fact twenty thirteen Venamine Balika. He stole forty two thousand pounds of munster cheese from the pasture Pried Cheese company in Wisconsin. Now he rolled up to the company like he was picking up a shipment, complete with forged document's kind of like pistachio.
Boy got a manifest whole bit totally.
And then he took off with one and thirty five cases of cheese that had a street value of two hundred thousand dollars. Put it into little.
Baggies, then two for five.
The cops caught up with him a thousand miles away at a stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Cheese.
What was he doing there? He was trying to sell the load and the rest.
Get this cheese restop in New Jersey.
The whole truck according to New Jersey State Police Sergeant Adam Grossman. He told ABC News he was charged with receiving stolen property and fencing fencing cheese and a New Jersey rest stop.
Hey, that's what we do.
If you pull into a rest stop and a guy's like buy some cheese, like parked on the other side of he was the guy with steaks in his trunk.
Then the van with the stereo parts, and then there's a truck.
How did I get here? So the cheese in the truck were sent to an impound lot, and.
After they didn't take the cheese out.
No, no, After the cheese passed New Jersey health inspections, though it was donated to charity because no one wants to buy used cheese.
Wait a minute, what do you mean what? I'm right here, I'm right here.
Wisconsin got hit again, though, just like a month later, claim.
Takes care of the cheese lost right for the company, and then they're like, hey, who do you give this to? What pores want to eat this?
You have the cheese, you pours and the pores are like delicious. Twenty sixteen again Wisconsin, so or actually no, that was what twenty thirteen twenty sixteen, we jumped forward in time. Okay, to flash forward, all the stars go by us. First, ninety pounds of parmesan cheese.
Sorry, taking a shot at the stars go on.
The parmesan cheese. We're stolen from a warehouse in Marshfield, Wisconsinsin someone commandeered a semi truck full of forty pound blocks of cheese that was supposed to go to Illinois. Police were on the case. No one lifts Wisconsin cheese and gets away with it. So two weeks after the theft, the cheese is recovered. Someone called in a tip that the forty one pounds of parmesan was held in a
warehouse in Grand Shoot, Wisconsin. All right, how great is that to be the like rat on that with the cheese, the rat under the cheese. But I mean really like, hey, I know where.
The cheese for you and some cold cheese.
The cops race to the warehouse. They find the cheese there, unmolested with parmesan.
It could be dry, right, just sitting out.
Yeah, it's just sitting there. So there was never any statement made about the culprits or catching them or anything. I noticed that just pure relief that the cheese was apparently this is.
The thing to steal. They just go, we got the cheese. We don't care. We're not looking past the cheese.
You do, just make sure you get the cheese. Just a month later after that parmesan heist, Beeves struck again. There's a debate as to whether it's the same crew or a whole new group occurred.
Someone yelling down the street, that's not your cheese.
You did it. So this time, seventy thousand pounds of cheese were stolen from a cheese store in Germantown, Wisconsin. It's referred to as quote cheese product in most of the news articles, but I found one that called it parmesan. So I don't think it was like Velveta or craft shingles, but like it was, we'll say. We'll say that this tangy treasure was parmesan. It was taken from a parking lot at two just after midnight, okay, and so early morning.
It wasn't just sitting in the lot loose cheese just laying there. It was an attractor trailer. So the trailer was found empty and abandoned later that morning. All right, but what about the cheese? They found that later that night in Milwaukee Milwaukee cheese. How did they know where to look? The thieves were trying to sell the hot cheese for just a dollar a pound.
Oh, so they didn't do like one of those We put a map down in der a circle and they don't have to be inside this circle. Probably like they just got lucky. We're like, we saw someone selling hot cheese on the corner.
They were selling it on the cheap, like flea market steaks. Don't trust. It had to be thrown away, so they sent it to the landfill.
You got like white teas and cheese, which.
What socks, laundry detergent. So the seal on the trailer had been broken, so they couldn't They couldn't sell it.
Because it won't pass code.
Yeah, and since like I guess, New Jersey was like, it's fine, give it to give it to charity, They're like, no, we don't know what has happened to this cheese while it was on.
The difference between the Midwest and the land.
Yeah, they're like road cheese could be so bad. So they put it in the landfill. Like I said, you can't sell used cheese. So these were Wisconsin takes on Parmesan cheese. Let's look at the real deal. This is not the powdered form. This is the heavenly form. Parmisano reggiano. You like, it's not what It's an Italian hard cheese. It's made from thousands.
I like that. Yes, it's hard.
It's hard. It's age. You're thinking of fresh mozzarella.
Oh right, that's the stuff I do.
This stuff, Parmigiano reggiano is aged at least twelve months. Yeah, some people call it the King of cheese.
It's the one that's yes, I know the recipe.
Goes back to the Middle Ages.
Is this also the one in New York where they'll take the round and melt it and like they put the stuff.
For the Instagram. So the cheese is named after two of the areas that produce it, Parma yes and Reggio Emilia. Oh and so true. Parmesan is also produced in the part of Bologna west of the River Reno and Medina and part of Mantua on the south bank of the River Po. So it's very particular and both Parmigiano reggiano and parmesan are protected designations of origin. Pdo like champagne. Yeah, for cheeses that are produced in the provinces under Italian
both Italian and European law. So outside of the.
EU we have like ter laws for cheese. Is that something kind of.
Yeah, because it has to do with like the cows and the Yeah. So when you're not in the EU, like when you're in Wisconsin.
Yes, sure, the name.
Parmesan can legal it can legally be used for similar cheeses, but they can't say Parmegiano reggiano.
Okay.
Yeah, all producers of Parmegiano reggiano cheese, they belong to the Consortia del Fromaggio Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese OPEC. Yeah, the cheese consortium founded in nineteen twenty eighth.
Wow.
As of twenty seventeen, about three three point six million wheels.
That's one hundred and nineteen twenty eight in Italy. Yeah, so they're like fascist cheese.
Totally fascist cheese.
Okay, I just wander, okay completely.
So one hundred and thirty seven thousand metric tons of parmesan are produced every year. Wow, and that uses eighteen percent of all the milk produced in Italy. What to make this delicious parmesan. Thank you cows, thank you so much. The cheese is made from grass fed cow's milk only, and then they put it in this stainless steel round form. The form is tightened to make the giant wheel shape of the finished product. There's like a plastic belt inside the buckle and it imprints the cheese.
With that.
They get the print, the name.
And the plant number, the month and year of production.
Big circle seal.
Yeah, it call it yeah and it looks.
Like brail like this cool.
Each cheese is put out on wooden shelves. Twenty four cheeses high, ninety cheeses long.
I love those videos.
Over two thousand cheeses per ale. Oh yeah, the smell must be amazing.
So after thet thing to say.
After twelve months, the Consortcio inspects every wheel of cheese. Wheels that pass the test get heat branded on the rind with the Consortio's special logo. Cheese that doesn't pass the test, they either mark the rines with lines and crosses all the way around.
They sell to America, or.
They just strip all the markings off altogether and like you're not getting top quality product. I've seen footage of earthquake damage to the curing room. It's heartbreaking. They're just broken wheels of cheese everywhere, broken cheese, broken dreams. So heart I thank you American manufactured, speak of the cheese. Americans. They aren't always on the up and up with their parmesan.
So here's the Food and Drug Administration. They looked into a Pennsylvania company's powdery cheese determined that quote no Armisan cheese was used to manufacture it.
There is zero, So.
Why you can't trust that powdered stuff. It's disgusting. You have to get a hunk of your own and use a microplane or for salads and such vegetable peeler anyway, all right, there are an estimated three hundred thousand wheels of parmesano reggiano worth around two hundred million dollars kept in Italian bank vaults.
Wow, don't they have like in caves too?
They haven't been caves, but the ones in the vaults. There's an Italian bank Kredem, and there are other ones. They take wheels of parmesan as collateral against loans made to the farmers who need fronting.
All the cheese is mature makes sense when you have those long maturing products. Exactly, what if you have a wheeled cheese, can you use that as a credit line, Like, just take it off my cheese, your.
Taste a little off. Parmesan wheels only increase in value as they age, and that makes them really appealing to criminals. In the early twenty teens, a gang stole over two thousand wheels of parmesan over the course of a couple of years, slowly with the sloan. There were eleven gang members and they were fully kitted out for their heists. They were armed, but they had all this like technology for bypassing the security in the warehouses where the cheese is stopped.
Oh, I was imagining them dressed like Chester Cheetah, he said they were out. I'm like, let's say they were total Chester.
I wasn't there. Let's say they were.
Headphones, sunglasses, leatherjacket. Sure Chester Cheetah.
And Maario brothers. In twenty fifteen, they were arrested though and charged with the theft of seven hundred and eighty five thousand euros, which was about eight hundred and seventy five thousand dollars at the time, which would be one point one million dollars to day worth of parmesan cheese. This wasn't the only cheese thieving gang. Organized crime had
crews hitting the cheesemakers on the regular. So cheesemaker Lorenzo Pinetti, he said, thieves made off with one hundred thousand dollars of his cheese in just a matter of minutes.
He said, can I just do an extortion, let me keep the cheese. I'll pay.
What they did is the thieves came in and they formed an assembly line and slid the wheels of parmesan out a window.
What they made this? Yeah, thank you, Henry Ford.
Alessandro Vaccari is an Italian police officer thirty years on the force of that trend. He said, quote, there have been so many thefts. Cheese is a bit like gold here. The price is so high. So it's not only warehouses that get robbed though, Like since parmesan has to be aged for at least a year before it can be called parmesan, and some others are aged two to three years, that means a lot of wheels are stored all over northern Italy at any given time, so it's not just
in big warehouses. There's tons of like small artisanal businesses.
All you sit down on a bench and there's a wheel of cheese.
Ought, I thought it was by myself. According to the Consortio, over three million dollars in parmesan is stolen in Italy every year. Whoa, oh crazy.
Three million every year. Let us know it's going to be part of their pilferage.
Yeah, it's like the angel share. One wheel can be bought for several hundred dollars and some for several thousands, depending and even though what are those markers on the cheese, You can't really see him once it's been cut into wedges. So black market cheese, man, that's where it's got so from Italy.
You got to break it down. Once you get the reup, you break it down.
Okay, let's head to France. Queen of the cheeses?
Are they now?
I say so? So this also took place in twenty fifteen. The owner of cheese of a dairy in eastern France was proud of his comte cheese. You ever had that? Oh my god? So good to be called comte. It can only be produced in that region.
Okay, there's a lot of Yeah, you're finding this, okay, champagne everywhere, right.
It's just sort of how like you can't call it a mission burrito outside of the Mission district in San Francisco.
Yeah, that's like how I call it champagne. The miller of wines exactly so.
The Montabayard and Scimital bread breeds of cow. They're the only type that produced the milk that's used to make the cheese. So very specific and it takes up to thirty six months to mature the cheese. And a cellar, they're like, get mature here, stop being so childish. Whip them. The owner of the dairy went to milk his cows one morning and saw something terrible. The storage area where he kept his comte was open and empty.
Ooh yeah, girl.
The thieves had taken approximately one hundred wheels of the cheese. They cut through barbed wire to get into the property. Then they used a crowbar to force open the back door of the barn, and the cows were like, I don't know that. We heard nothing, said Andre, who lives next door. He told this to the local press. The people who did this, they must know the area, because I mean again, I went to street view. It's really rural.
Rural.
Obviously it's gorgeous and I want to go there, but it's it's real.
Do you think if you put up like sound dampening cloth around you, you could be able to use a metal grind or cut through and nobody would hear anything.
I don't. I think. I don't know how big the property was, but probably if you do something like that, although I don't know. If it's really really quiet and night, you can hear that stuff pretty far away. But I think that's why they used like clippers for the barbed wire, and then the crowbarts not too loud. One hundred wheels of cheese stolen were worth about fifty thousand dollars, okay, and as far as I can tell, the cheese was never recovered.
Every time I know, and when it is, they just give it away.
Well, they assumed that it was cut into smaller pieces and maybe sold to restaurants or just.
From the black market.
Yeah, so if you're eating that around there, you're probably stolen cheese. And since all this is starting to sound a lot like art heists, let's go to the Netherlands. Ooh, in the town of Fignart On March twenty ninth, twenty twenty two, Gerda van Dorp and her husband juiced juiced, juiced, Yes, the juice is loosed. They're Dutch cheese farmers. They woke up and they headed out to work on their farm. They made their way down to the cheese storage room,
just like you know homeboy over in France. They wanted to admire their hard work.
Of course, just like taking a good gander at the cheese totally.
Just like the dude in France cupboard was bear.
Oh no, juiced, why we are missing our cheeses.
So sometime in the night thieves snatched one hundred and sixty one wheels of cheese. That's thirty five hundred pounds of it. Valued it twenty three one thousand dollars. It's not as pricey as French or then really Italian.
You know, they make a good like peasant cheese, Gerda.
She said, quote it was like waking up in a movie. Really, Gerda, what movies do you watch? So the thieves they also stole a trailer and two wheelbarrows which were discovered nearby, so they use them as tools. Yeah, Gerda figured the cheese burglars had been monitoring her farm for a while, and the robbery happened the one night that the gate to the property was left open because there was going to be an overnight milk delivery.
Oh I wonder if neighbors Yeah.
Or juiced her husband?
Oh yeah, sold, there's any pigs. No, there's no hamburglar. Don't try to keep over here.
I'm so proud of you. Don't throw it so like the Italian cheese. The Dutch cheese is marked with the name of the farm, logo, serial number, but that doesn't matter on the black market bird. No one's been caught, cheese never recovered. What's your ridiculous takeaway?
Apparently I need to get into cheese crime, I think so I wouldn't get caught, get back into crime. Nobody would know. It's a little subtle ease back. It is like dipping your toe in.
The passed out on the country roads.
Cheese crimes. It's cool. They catch me, they just give the cheese away anyway, no harm, no foul, Insurance takes care of it. Nobody gets hurt. I gained a little weight, little cheese. I got some cheese burps. Whatever, you know, no problem. Take away in all honesty is there's not enough of these crimes. I would think that there would be more food crimes. There are no, But I mean,
like you could definitely do volume two through nine. But I mean it's that like I thought there'd be more specific food crimes rather than like, oh, we just took everything we could from this place, so all we went in and just like you know, basically pillage. I was thinking like specific, like if somebody went in and took like Paris Hilton steak.
Oh you want celebrit be crime.
No not, I'm just using her as a name that we've thrown in the way in the past. But I mean it's just somebody who was like I would love to hear about like Russell Crowe getting his lunch.
Do you want celebrity food crimes to get people?
I could say my neighbors names. You don't know them, though. I just want something where it's like somebody went in to go get their specific pie, Like like, okay, how about this a pie eating contest winner is a turns out he's using performance enhancing drugs.
Okay, well that's a kind of food crime you I'm talking about.
All right, I'll come back with you two I'm.
Not all on you perfect that's it for today.
I like those.
You can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. We're at ridiculous Crime on Twitter, Instagram, I don't know threads, flurcle, uh, triangle, don't fangle, don't email ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Do leave a talk back in the iHeart app. That's it. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited by Cheese Some to the Stars Dave Cousten. Research is by Marissa Badass, Verada Brown and Andrea Criminal
Colby Song Sharpened Hear. The theme song is by Thomas the Gouda Gangster Lee and Travis Felonious Feta Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Brebandit Bolin and Noel Cheddarchaser.
Brown dis Crime Say It One More Times Cry.
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.