If you want to learn more about the topics of
today's episode, visit the podcast website at
naturessecretservice .com. Thanks for listening.
Okay, people listen up, here we go. This is Nature's
Secret Service, the podcast that puts you in
the room with the men and women of wildlife law
enforcement. I'm Ed Newcomer, your host, and
welcome back to the first episode of season two
of our podcast. With us today, we have an absolutely
fantastic guest, Todd Vandivert, a former wildlife
officer with the state of Washington. Todd has
a really impressive background, and he's got
just phenomenal stories about his career in wildlife
law enforcement up in the Pacific Northwest.
He was a wildlife law enforcement officer for
the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife,
forget this, 33 years, which is an extremely
impressive career in public service. He worked
first part of his career as a uniform patrol
officer, and then a second part of his career
as a plainclothes detective with the Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife. You know, in
addition to that, he did a lot of what we call
in the business collateral duties, which often
you're not paid for. It's just, thank you very
much for your service. But he was a defensive
tactics instructor, a critical incident peer
support counselor for the agency, a meth lab
tech, a certified polygraph examiner. All of
those things are so valuable to other law enforcement
officers in his department. And like I said,
they're often done as collateral duties for no
pay. He really has an, you know, impressive accolades
for his career. I mean, he's one of only two
officers in the state of Washington who received
the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
statewide officer of the year award, not once,
but twice. And his other awards include... things
like the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
Case of the Year Award, Detective of the Year
Award, and there's just many others. We could
have a whole episode about all of the accolades
that Todd has. One of the coolest ones, though,
this is what I love. He's believed to be one
of the first, if not the first, game warden in
the United States to build and use... a radio
controlled robotic deer decoy. And in the business,
what we call those are robo deers. And basically,
it's a robotic deer you put out in the field,
it moves, it might wag its tail or move its head.
And it's designed to test whether or not people
driving by shoot at it illegally. Good stuff.
And now, of course, those are used all over the
country, all over the world. There's robotic
deer, elk, moose, wolves, cougars. They have
all types. Bears, yeah, exactly. Anyway, Todd,
you've had to be quiet while I introduced you,
but... Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much
for being on. It's a real pleasure to finally
meet you kind of virtually in person, but thank
you for being on. It's my pleasure. I can't wait
to talk to you today. One of the things I didn't
mention is that since you retired, you've written
and published 12 different books related to wildlife
conservation issues and law enforcement. And
one of those books is Operation Cody. And that's
what I want to talk to you about today, because
I've read Operation Cody now twice, and it always
struck me as such a really cool case. I don't
want to give anything away. I want you to tell
us about it, but tell us a little bit about the
impetus for your undercover operation called
Operation Cody. What year did it start, and what
gave you the idea to develop an operation like
that? Sure. Every year, there's a conference
for undercover fish and wildlife officers from
around the western states and western provinces
of Canada. And I went to one of those years back
and there was a guy that was speaking there and
he was from the East Coast and he had done a
storefront operation. And for those that don't
know what a storefront operation is, in the undercover
world, it's a business that you create hoping
to entice poachers in this case into deal doing
business with you and so the guy that presented
this operation to us at the conference had done
so as a fish buyer sent up a fish buying business
and and it was in a state where the sale of sport
caught fish was illegal and That's that was his
primary target and it was extremely successful.
That really got my brain going, but the one part
of it I didn't really care for was the fact that
he literally lived at 24 -7. I mean, he lived
upstairs of the fish business. That's all he
did. I was a dedicated employee, but I didn't
want to do that. I've got a family. I just wanted
to be able to go home once in a while. So I started
giving a lot of thought to how I could do it
my way rather than living it like that. And at
the time, I was running a small business on the
side selling law enforcement equipment, law enforcement
and firefighting equipment. And I did that by
way of the internet, internet sales, all that
kind of stuff. So I started thinking about that.
Well, why can't I do that with a wildlife operation?
Just put up a website and offer to buy and sell
things that are legal to buy and sell by Washington
law but might appear tempting to to people who
are willing to do business illegally that was
the concept is to make an internet -based business
and buy and sell hopefully illegal items that
we could catch the people that were harvesting
them and selling them. What year was this, Todd?
2010 is when it really started taking form. Okay.
And at this time, you were part of, you had transitioned
from out of a uniformed role into a plain clothes
detective role. What's the unit there at Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife? Is it SIU? Is
that what they call it? SIU, Statewide Investigative
Unit. Okay. And so you kind of had to make this
transition from a person who wore a uniform,
drove a marked vehicle every day and did patrol
work and, you know, shorter term investigations.
Now you're transitioning. into this detective
work where you can kind of focus on problems
or issues that you become aware of, right? Right.
One of the things I always liked about SIU at
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is
that like at the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
you guys really focused in on, you know, people
who were commercializing wildlife. Right. Because,
you know, that's as I've described in this podcast
in other episodes, you know, that's that's taking
it beyond just like the recreational poacher
who gets a little out of control or goes out
and kills a deer here and there. You got, you
know, organized ongoing activity that's designed
specifically to exploit wildlife, which can really
add the numbers up. You know, it's kind of interesting.
I want to talk a little bit just briefly about
the whole logistics of setting up a business,
because I did that too in my career and it's
a huge pain in the butt. But, you know, having
your patrol experience and now being a detective,
kind of dialed in with what's going on in patrol,
it's really valuable because you kind of have
a sense of what's a problem area? might we need
to focus our attention, which is really one of
the reasons I love Operation Cody, because normally
when we think about, you know, we talk about
operations, it's usually focused on a particular
crime network or individual, and we're going
after that particular group to try to, you know,
as they say, chop the head off the snake and
stop that particular group of co -conspirators
from engaging in criminal activity. but Operation
Cody was designed to really focus on a broad
problem. It wasn't focused on an individual,
it was focused on commercialization and wildlife
trafficking across species and with multiple
potential targets, which I really love because
that is identifying a potential problem within
the state, coming up with a solution and then
executing, which is... You don't hear about those
operations a lot, but they're super effective
and they're super needed, I think, sometimes.
But you really wouldn't have thought about it
if you hadn't been like a former patrol officer
yourself and in touch with the patrol division
and kind of understanding, I think there's a
lot of bad stuff going on here that we need to
address, right? Did you find that doing Operation
Cody as an online business, made it a little
easier for you to kind of control that balance
between work life and personal life? It did,
yeah. I still got a lot of phone calls. When
I set it up, I set up the online presence, but
I also put an email address down and my phone
number, my cell phone number. So I, I still got
a lot of after hour calls and I wasn't that I
ignore them, you know, so I, I took calls, but,
um, yeah, it, it was time consuming for sure,
especially since, and I guess we'll get into
it in a little bit, but especially since I had
almost no help. Um, how long did it take you
to, I mean, were you at all worried? Oh, this
might not work. I mean, how long did it take
you before people started to contact you and
hint that they might be interested in either
buying or selling illegal wildlife? I can't,
I can't give you the exact date, but I think
it was in December of 2010. It was just a couple
of days after I activated the website, I got
a call from a guy and first thing out of his
mouth is do you buy deer? Interesting. And I'm
like, it's illegal to buy deer. You know, you
can't do that. That's against the law. And of
course, he said, I know it's illegal. I'm asking
you, do you buy it? Are you willing to buy it?
And so we did the whole conversation about it
and keeping our mouth shut and all that kind
of neat stuff. And it was a U .S. Army soldier
based at Fort Lewis who was, I think, poaching
the deer on base. And he was a significant poacher.
I mean, he killed a lot of deer and he sold all
of them. I mean, the guy didn't even know how
to gut a deer. He just shot him and sold them.
So he's selling them for what? The everything,
the meat, the skin, the antlers? Whatever you
want to buy them for, I guess. But yeah, primarily
the meat. Interesting. And for, you know, for
listeners who don't know the Pacific Northwest,
there's a huge military base up there. It used
to be an Air Force base and an army base that
since merged. Still is. They're merged. Yeah,
joint base, but it's huge. And there's so much
property up there, wooded prop, heavily wooded
property that you could easily poach, poach animals
right off the base. Nobody'd probably know. Well,
you dodge the, the, uh, artillery that's coming
in. Right there. There are some firing ranges
up there. Anyway, isn't that interesting that
the first person, so your idea is working. You
didn't do anything to entrap anybody. You just
put this out on the website and right away, like
moths to a flame, the poachers are coming to
you and gosh, the first one out of the box is
a U .S. Army soldier who's based at a base. That's
crazy. So it must have, that must have been reassuring.
Like, okay, I'm onto something here, right? How
did it, and for how, like what was your vision?
How long did you think this operation would go
on running this business? I had asked for two
years and the reason I asked for two years was
twofold. One was I knew it would take a while
for the word to get out. I mean, you can't just
throw a website out and hope people will find
it. You have to do some advertising. You have
to get the word out. So I knew it would take
a while for that. The second thing is the statute
of limitation in Washington for a gross misdemeanor.
All the crimes that we would be dealing with
were almost all of them were felony level, but
some of them were gross misdemeanor. The statute
of limitation on gross misdemeanor is two years.
So I figured that way, everything we get, we
can charge. And so that's what I had asked for.
That's what the chief told me I could have. It's
not what we got, but yeah. So you're off and
running with that. Explain how did you, you talked
to this guy, this soldier, we'll just talk about
him first and then we'll get into all the other
characters you got into. But you, with this soldier
then, he's admitted to you, he knows it's illegal,
he's willing to move forward. As an undercover,
what do you do next? Did you end up buying deer
from him? We did, yes. He called me in the evening
and said that, you know, he's got a deer in the
back of his truck. I wanted to know if I wanted
to buy it. So after going over the whole conversation
about the legalities and so forth, I agreed to
meet him at the north end of the runways at SeaTac
Airport. OK. I know the area well. OK. And so
he came driving up, no tail lights on his truck,
an illegal deer, untagged, closed season, sitting
in the open of the bed of his pickup truck. Unbelievable.
That's brazen. And plus, you know, Washington
State Patrol troopers on I -5 are pretty diligent.
I'm surprised he didn't get pulled over for the
tail light issue. Yeah. Well, we had a little
talk about that. I said, you know, if you and
I are going to do business, you got to be a little
bit more careful than that. You know what I mean?
So yeah, he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
It wasn't one to, you know, go home and brag
about. But the guy was a poacher, that's for
sure. And, and you right there, like, like a
drug deal right there in the parking lot, you
did this exchange for an illegal deer right out
of the back of his truck. Yeah, we literally
did it right off the end of the runway on the
side of the, a little pull off of the side road.
He was not the only person that you were contacted
who was selling, you know, game meat like deer
and elk and. No, it became, it became very prevalent.
And you bought from him more than once, right?
Yes. So it wasn't like he was just a one time
guy. He was doing this to make money. Yeah. Who
were some of the other people that came up initially
and you know, how did you, how did you work this
with the partner you had who was only part time?
How did that play out? Well, obviously we couldn't
work. Um, we couldn't use Jennifer in the immediate
area that she's a uniform officer. The one advantage
she, we had with her is that she had spent her
whole career in one spot. And so I had moved
three or four times around the state during my
career. So, you know, the chances of somebody
recognizing me were I would think would be higher.
Although I can change my appearance by, you know,
I grew long hair, had a ponytail and a beard.
Women are kind of limited on how much they can
change, you know, so we were very conscientious
about not using or any place that. she might
be recognized, but other than that, we knew each
other really well. We've been friends a long
time. So we, uh, you know, we could walk the
talk, you know, um, we, it's, it's difficult
to fake that you're in a long -term relationship
with somebody without knowing a lot about them.
So exactly. And having a certain, you know, camaraderie
off of each other, but So that worked out. You
knew her well, right? Yes. Yeah. How long did
it take you for things to really get rolling?
You had this first soldier and then, then how
did it play out? How many, what other kinds of
characters came, came calling? Well, we did a
couple things to get customers. One is did a
little bit of advertising, you know, made business
cards and brochures and we spread them all over
the place. What we did to get intelligence on
people that are potentially doing commercialization
and illegal wildlife was we had the chief put
out an email to all the regions and say if you
have information about any potentially illegal
wildlife trafficking or any form of illegal wildlife
violations that are commercial related. Send
the information in and so we got quite a we got
quite a bit of information from the regions because
Game wardens all over I mean if you're a state
game warden for very long you hear all kinds
of rumors You know and some of them are true
some of them are not But every game warden in
the state with much time had something tucked
away in their memory or in the back of their
notebook or something about, you know, a guy
came up and said, hey, I went into a grocery
store and they asked me this. So we asked for
that. And as I expected, a couple of the regions
were very helpful. They sent in a ton of good
intel. A couple of the regions didn't even reply
whatsoever. So that was part of it. The other
part of it was everybody that we did business
with, and we did a lot of legal business, too.
Everybody that we did business with, we'd leave
them with brochures and all that kind of neat
stuff. And so the word started spreading out.
But as we got these tips from the uniform officers,
we would do statewide tours. And you've been
in the business a long time. We call them cold
contacts, where You go into a business, a taxidermist
for example, and you don't know the guy you've
never met and nobody introduces you. There's
no informant. It's just an officer said, I think
this guy is dirty. And so, you know, we would
go in and strike up a conversation with the person
and see where it went. You mentioned entrapment
earlier and that's one of the things we were
super concerned about from the beginning is You
know, a lot of people think that undercover as
a whole is entrapment. And I'm not an attorney,
so nobody take this as law, but my understanding
of entrapment, and you can give me yours, is
the idea for the crime originated in law enforcement's
mind. Law enforcement are the ones that came
up with this idea, and it's too tempting for
an ordinary citizen to pass up. Exactly. Exactly.
And that's a defense that they can raise later,
a defendant can raise, is that I was entrapped.
And then it becomes incumbent on the government
to prove they weren't. But the key thing in the
law, just so listeners understand, everybody
who's a law enforcement officer will know this,
but to defeat a claim of entrapment, all the
government has to show is that there was a scintilla
of evidence that the person was predisposed.
Pre -plan what they're going to do to attack
your case and entrapment was our our number one
concern. So We never once I mean not once did
we ever suggest that somebody do something at
least we didn't say Hey, you know what you ought
to do. Yeah, kill some up and give them to me.
I mean no as a matter of fact When you read the
book, you probably read a couple times where
we told people to stop You're just like you're
you're killing too much stop I was just gonna
bring that up as you know I was gonna bring that
up later in our conversation as we talked about
how your business got going Yeah, there were
times when you had folks who were Excited to
have sold to you and they wanted to go out and
kill more and you actually had to put the brakes
on a couple of them Because they were killing
so much you that you weren't even asking for
they were just they'd sell something to you And
they'd run out and kill something else, right?
Yeah Yeah, and we had One individual that we
bought elk from that, I don't know how many elk
they went through a year, 35 or 40, that's a
lot of elk. And he sold elk every week. And yeah,
there's just no way to get somebody like that
to stop. He had tons of buyers. We were only
one of his buyers, so. Was that the character
in your book you described as a guy named Bori?
Is it Bori? Yeah, Bori. But let's talk about
Bori for a second, because how did you get onto
Bori? And I don't want to give too much for the
book, because I want people to buy it and read
it, because it's a great read. But Bori was kind
of an interesting character. He's a little bit
funny, a little bit scary, but he was an Asian
guy, right? Yes, Cambodian. Cambodian. OK, so
how did... And he's interesting to me for a lot
of reasons, but how did he come to your attention?
How'd you connect up with Bori? That was a really
odd one. This guy called our office in Olympia,
told our headquarters office that he knew of
a guy that was selling deer and elk, all you
could buy, but he only dealt with Asian people.
So, or like, okay. So, you know, once I ... and
I called the guy back myself, the reporting party,
which is a little bit hazardous, because if he
recognized my voice in the later ... but anyway.
So, I called the guy back, and I picked his brain,
and he said, yeah, I've got this number you can
call, and I said, well, what's the guy's name?
And he said, I don't know. I just, a friend of
mine bought his elk from him, and I asked him,
how he does it. And he says, you just call this
number and tell him you want an elk. And so I
said, Oh, okay. Um, so I did the reverse directory,
trying to find out whose number that was. And
it came back as no record, you know, and I, so
I was totally out of luck. So I just called the
guy myself, um, and, and no, I didn't try and
fake Asian accents. I just, that would be stupid.
You just got to count on these people being greedy,
right? Which they are. Yeah. So I called him
and the conversation probably lasted less than
a minute. I called up and said, this is my name.
This is my business name. I said, do you have
internet? And he goes, yep. And I said, look
up our website on the internet. Call me back
if you're interested. And that's where I left
it. Because on our website, We had a lot of antlers.
Antlers in Washington, you can buy and sell them.
That's fine. And so we had a lot of antlers on
there, deer and elk both. But we also had elk
meat for sale, because Washington law allows
the sale of elk meat if it's raised in a licensed
game farm in another state or another country.
Most of what they get in Washington is red deer
from New Zealand. So, you know, if you go to
a restaurant, and they say it's an elk tenderloin,
that's most likely what it is, is a red deer
tenderloin from New Zealand. The farm raised.
But, we had that on there. So, he looked on that,
called back, and said, okay, I want to meet you
guys. You know, I don't know who you are, so
I need to meet, talk to you, and all that. Okay,
great. Where are we going to meet? Well, uh,
give me a day that you're going to be around.
And he's from Tacoma and, uh, South of Seattle.
And he said, give me a day that you're going
to be around the area. So we, we did. And, and,
uh, he said, I'll give you instructions on where
to meet me when you get close. So called them
up and said, we're coming into Tacoma. Where
do we meet? And he gave us his home address and
his home address wasn't in the nicest neighborhood.
There's some parts of Tacoma that are pretty
dodgy. That's for sure. That's one of them. So
we went in there. There was four or five Cambodian
men hanging around. He had us, we had assigned
seating. He told us to sit on this little short
couch and he sat in a, you know, an easy chair
in front of us. And then he had these four or
five guys behind us. And the only weapon that
I saw as we went in was a sword. And it was on
the counter behind us. And so basically what
he did is interviewed us. And he did a pretty
good job. Yeah, I mean, it became obvious to
me pretty quickly that he had looked up our business
online. You can, you know, get into the Department
of Licensing and look to see if you have a business
license, which I did, which we did. And it comes
back to you talking about setting up a business.
Had I not taken that step, that might have been
a problem right there. He also, and this is really
common, offered us a beer. And I don't remember
what time of day it was, but I had quit drinking
a couple years before that. And I wasn't about
to start again, so I just said, nope, I don't
drink. That really bothered him. Yeah, he's like,
so Jennifer volunteered to have a beer. So she
had a beer and that made him feel a whole lot
better. At one point, he said he wanted more
business cards or brochures. I don't know which.
And so he sent me out to the truck to get more.
And I knew what he was doing. He's gonna ask
her questions while I'm gone and then he's gonna
ask me the same question when I come back in
and He was good at it. I mean it really was and
he he said at the end of our deal I said, what
are we gonna do business? He said I'll let you
know Okay So I thought well, that's it. We're
not getting we're not getting the call back.
We didn't pass the the interview and God, we're
driving down the road 15, 20 minutes later, phone
rings and it's him and he said, I don't remember
exactly, but it was something like, I'll have
three up for you on Thursday, this much money,
cash only, see you then. And so that's how that
started and we did business with him for the
entire. you know, year and a half. Yeah, he's
a regular character. Once he got started and
you know, you passed his test, he became a regular
character. And one of the things that struck
me about him is, you know, you mentioned he's
Cambodian and, you know, he likes to work with
people he knows from the Asian community. So,
and other times, you know, I believe you saw
a lot of weapons at Burry's house over the course
of the investigation, right? Including assault
rifles and things like that. He described shooting
somebody to us too. So, yeah. So, but interestingly,
I want to ask you, you know, he didn't like dealing
with non Asians, but in the investigation you
found out he was getting on some of his deer
and elk from tribal members, right? Yes. Yeah.
So he's interconnected with tribal members who
have very unique, I mean, and special hunting
rights in Washington, but they're not allowed
necessarily to go then and go sell them meat.
But And the other thing he was into was sturgeon
as well, right? Sturgeon, cock fighting and marijuana
grows. So he, you know, he, he didn't, he didn't
like working with Asians, but he had to, to get
sturgeon and to be involved in, you know, salmon
and sturgeon and deer and elk. He's working with
a lot of people who aren't Asians. So he, he
really was a true trafficker. Yeah. Yeah. He's
pretty good at it. Pretty active. Yep. But over
time, I think he actually got to like you, didn't
he? He did. Yeah, he always referred to me as
his favorite white boy. As soon as I come in
the room, he'd go, oh, my favorite white boy.
You know you're in when that happens, right?
Yeah. So that's so far we talked about stuff
going on on the western side of the state. Did
you did you get into people across Washington
and eastern Washington or any of the neighboring
states? We basically ended up across the country.
We did business with New York, Chicago, California.
I think Oklahoma too, right? Oklahoma, Canada,
BC. Yeah. And that was one of the things early
on when we first got approval to do it. And I
met with the deputy chief and the deputy chief
and my captain spelled out a couple of the rules.
And one of them was no working with the feds.
I want to get to that. Having been a fed myself.
And no doing business with tribal members. Oh,
there's three. No, no interstate. And I'm like,
because that would involve the feds. And so I
argued to a lot of blue in the face on that.
I'm like, you can't have a website. and do business
just in this state, you know, I mean, that doesn't
make sense. You are going to get contacted by
people all over the country, yeah. And the tribal
stuff. Yeah. I mean, that was just plain frustrating
because we got a lot of offers from tribal members
that we just said, no, not interested, can't
do it. So yeah, I mean, those are the rules that
were put on us and we still went about doing
business. And some of the rules got changed.
So we've talked a lot about the, you know, Western
Washington and deer and elk and all that. Did
you ever, I do remember in the book, there's
a couple of restaurants that were involved too.
There was more than one, it's not like one restaurant
wanted to buy from you, but multiple restaurants,
right? Yeah, we had, and again, I can't remember,
I'll tell you, I had five or six different restaurants
that we dealt with. And those came about by uniformed
officers telling us that they had heard. you
know, that this restaurant buys. Well, I use
one that was in Tri -Cities. The initial thing
we got was that they were buying waterfowl and
serving it at the restaurant. Yeah, for ducks
on the menu, right? Which is, that kind of pokes
a nerve for a wildlife officer because knowing
the history of decimation of waterfowl in this
country in the early 20th century, you know,
that to know that market hunting of while of
ducks still goes on is kind of a sore spot. But
and then of course you have safety issues, right?
You have unknown meat going to restaurants that
sold to the public. That's that's an issue. And
that's one of the things that concern both Jennifer
and myself is that we're selling meat that we
got from poachers and most of them are drug addicts.
We got meat that we got from poachers and then
we turn around and sell that same meat to a restaurant
who then prepares it and sells it to their customers.
And I was a little bit concerned about somebody
getting sick and going after the state for their
involvement in providing this. uncertified meat
or uninspected meat. The last thing you want
when you walk into a restaurant is to know that
the meat you're eating was handled by a methamphetamine
user and dealer, right? Yeah, well, that's probably
more common than we believe. But yeah, so I was
concerned about that. We asked our captain to
run it by the attorney general's office and see
what they had to say. And I normally don't. look
forward to a decision from the attorney general's
office, but that one I wanted to know. And they
came back and said, if we had a reason to believe
that they were already engaged in buying and,
and, uh, preparing and selling game meat in the
restaurant that we were good to go as long as
we used every due care and caution to make sure
that it was, it was safe and edible. And this
whole restaurant thing though kind of got kind
of blew up on you, right? Because we're not just
talking about the kind of meats that you ordinarily
might see in a restaurant, which might be deer
or elk or salmon, certainly. But this led to
like some crazy stuff, like people buying whole
bears from you and cougars and tell us about
that. Like that was Eastern Washington restaurants,
I believe, but tell us about that. Like how did
you... What did you think when you got it? You
start getting inquiries where a guy wants to
buy a whole bear from you. And why would they
want a whole bear? It's funny because that the
bear and mountain lion were one, one individual
with one restaurant in particular. And, uh, the
story is kind of strange. When, when I was uniform
officer in the blue mountains, two of our other
officers in a different area had been approached
by a guy that worked for a beverage company,
Pepsi or Coca -Cola, and he delivered to restaurants
and stores. And he had gone into this one particular
restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, and he walked
into the cooler to put the soda in the cooler
for them, and there was three or four deer laying
on the floor of the cooler. And he thought, well,
that's interesting. And he's a hunter. So he
called up those officers and said, this is what
I saw. I don't know why I wasn't involved in
it. Don't know a thing about it. But they never
went. They didn't go look at the restaurant.
They didn't inspect. As far as I know, they never
looked at it. So we were coming back from a contact
in Oregon. And we were coming through Walla Walla,
where this restaurant was. So we stopped in and
gave him a brochure and a card. This is the same
place that had been reported for having bachia
oligo beer. And that night, I went back and I
was, oh, I gotta back up a little bit, I'm sorry.
So the guy at the restaurant wasn't there. The
owner of the restaurant wasn't there. The people
that I dealt with didn't speak very, they spoke
very little English. And so they said they'd
have him call. Well, the guy finally did call.
And that was one of the most entertaining conversations
I had because he looked at our brochure and he
said, I see you sell bear. And I put on there
that we sell bear hides because you can legally
do that. And he said, I see you sell bear. And
I said, yeah. And he said, What kind of what
parts of bear do you have? And I said, well,
what part are you looking for? And he wouldn't
say it. There's these people that think that
if I say it then, you know, I'm in trouble. So
he wouldn't say what he was looking for. I knew
what he was looking for, but he said, what parts
do you sell? So I started naming every part of
a bear I could think of. And I went from the
claws to the paws to the teeth to the tail to
the... You know, the ear, I mean, I did everything.
Heart, liver, dah, dah, dah. Finally, I said
gallbladder and he goes, oh, you have gallbladder?
Acting surprised. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, let me
try those. So, so he asked me to bring over one
gallbladder for him to test. And so I brought
over one gallbladder, sold it to him for whatever.
a 50 bucks or something, because it was his test
drive when it was a real small one. And, um,
and that night I was by myself, Jennifer didn't
go on the second one. And so I was by myself.
So that night I stayed at, at Corky Robert's
house with Corky and his wife, special agent
Corky Roberts was us Christian wildlife service
so much for not cooperating with the feds. Yeah.
Well, um, so I'm sitting in his, in his house
when this guy calls back. And this is the day
that I sold him the one to test. And the guy
called back and he said, your gallbladder turned
out to be bare, so I'm happy. And he said, I
want to buy more. He said, how many do you want?
And he goes, how many do you have? And I said,
more than you can afford. And he said, no, I'll
buy all of them that you've got. And we set a
price, and that was it. I mean, it was so fun
having that conversation in front of Corky and
his wife, the very fed that would be working
it later. And I'm sitting in his living room
having this conversation with a guy that wants
to buy all the gallbladder I can get him. And
the crazy thing is, where's that gallbladder
going? According to him, it was going to Hong
Kong. You go from like a restaurant by an occasional
salmon filets or deer meat. Now you're into this
Asian guy who's interested in all the gallbladders
you can get. What, what is the price of a goal?
What were you charging him for your gallbladders?
You know, with him, I ended up going, um, per
gram and I, and I don't remember the price per
gram that, you know, yeah, normally We would
sell them between one and $200 a piece. Yeah.
Yeah. And that adds up if you're talking, you
know, all you've got. 25 or 30. Yeah. And where
were you getting them? Where did, where did you
source your gallbladders when you were selling
them to this guy? So we had hound hunters that
were out there on, on special permits to kill
problem bears. And that's where we got the bear.
And it wasn't all the timber company stuff, you
know, when bearers would terrorize the garbage
cans in Issaquah or whatever, then those bear
too, if they got put down, would take the gallbladder
out of them too. Yeah, lots of opportunities
for you to lawfully come across. It could be
a seized bear, it could be in all kinds of situations
where you could come across a bear. Okay, that's
interesting. But now, that guy became kind of
an interesting character because he had connections
in Oregon as well, right? connections all over
the place. Yes, he had connections in Oregon.
He sent us down to Oregon to sell bear. We shipped
whole bear. I remember right before Christmas,
we shipped a whole frozen bear. It had been chopped
up, you know, but the whole thing was in the
box. And we shipped it, I think, to part of it
to Chicago and part of it to New York, if my
memory serves me right, which probably doesn't.
But anyway, we shipped them by UPS. And I remember
asking him, I said, you know, I'm shipping, he's
paying for the shipping. And I said, You want
them shipped, you know, like second day, I assume.
And he's like, no, no, just regular UPS. And
I said, you know, it's Christmas, right? I mean,
Christmas is in a week or two. And he goes, yeah.
And I said, so things are kind of slow. So I'm
just worried about it thawing out. And he said,
no, no, send it UPS. I'm like, okay. So I did.
And I stewed about that for a long time thinking
that. You know, kids are going to open up their
Christmas presents on Christmas and then they're
going to smell really funny because these rotting
bear carcasses in the stack of packages above
them was leaking down onto their package. But
ironically, they got to their destinations and
they were still frozen. So dodge the bullet.
Did he tell you like, what are they doing with
a whole bear? I mean, there's the gallbladder,
but he, this was weird about this guy that struck
me when I read the book is he wanted the whole
bear. What are they doing with the whole bear?
Well, it kind of goes back to we delivered him
a whole mountain line one time about 160 pound
cat. It was a big, a big Tom, one of our uniform
officer seized it from a guy that guy that they
seized it from hadn't gutted it. And it was probably
four days old at that point, so it stunk really
bad. And I called the same restaurant owner up
and said, you know, and he had asked us before,
if you get a mountain lion, I want the whole
thing. Okay. I called him up and said, I have
a lion, you know, it's been gutted, but the whole
thing. And he goes, I'll take it. And I said,
it stinks. I mean, I think it's spoiled. He goes,
I'll still take it. Okay, so we sold it to him
for I don't know five or six hundred bucks something
like that for a stinking mountain lion and And
we pulled away from that and I was confused,
you know I mean I remember turning around to
Jennifer saying I don't get it the guy can buy
pork For a tenth that price, you know, so why
is he paying so much for a mountain lion? to
serve to his customers instead of just serving
it as pork, which is what he would portray it
as. And she said, I don't think it's going to
his regular customers. And I go, what do you
mean? And she goes, I think it's going to Asian
customers only. Because several of them told
us that eating the meat or parts of the powerful
predators, whether it's mountain lion, I don't
know if they believe it with wolves or not, but
mountain lions and bears especially, gives them
energy and strength. So it's just, yeah. And
then, you know, they do, they can, with cats
in particular, the big cats, they'll, they'll
melt down the bones and make, you know, what
they call tiger bone wine, but tigers are getting
so scarce that they've turned to other big cats.
But it's just weird because it's just, it's a
reminder that there's a lot of people out there
who commercialize wildlife. for reasons that
we don't normally contemplate, right? There may
be other motivations going on here that you never
even thought of when you started Operation Cody,
right? Exactly. And I, you know, we could, we're
kind of getting short on time a little bit, so
I need to jump ahead a little. I'll just say
that, you know, Operation Cody, the book that
you wrote is a very... natural fun read and it
it's hard to write a book that tells the story
about this case because there's so many different
suspects so many different types of animals so
many unique funny scary dangerous contacts that
you had so you know people should go get your
book and read it because it's it's uh you walk
us through that whole operation pretty smoothly
but let's fast forward now Todd maybe to a year
a year and a half end of your two -year op I
think that everybody was kind of blown away by
the success of your operation. Cause let me correct
me if I'm wrong here, Todd, but let me just summarize
by the time you're at about a year, a year and
a half into this two year op, you've got like
a hundred suspects and a thousand potential counts.
I think by the end of the whole thing, as you
describe in your book, you and Jennifer had like
600 undercover contacts during this op. I think
what happened is they, the senior leadership
was like, Holy shit we have this is a big deal
and that raises all kinds of other questions
of Naturally, we got to bring in some other agencies
to help us get this done But what I want to get
into next Todd is when you're at that point It's
not just doing the case and having these 600
contacts and developing a hundred suspects and
a thousand counts You gotta now to talk start
thinking about how we gonna prosecute these people,
right? So you've got huge evidence issues You
have huge like report writing issues that now
are gonna face you as you come to the close Can
you kind of explain to listeners like? What that
was like as you're wrapping this up now? What
what was what was the state of your evidence
control and your report writing and all of that?
I mean that must have just been a nightmare Yeah,
it's the detective that they first assigned to
assist in that capacity. Nice guy, you know,
smart enough, all that kind of neat stuff. But
they tasked him with working shellfish investigations
and also doing, you know, helping with our stuff,
with our evidence and all that. Well, I think
it was just you know, how did you deal with this
point? They're wrapping it up How did you cope
with the you know, did you have evidence issues
report issues? How did that all play out? Well
Yeah, when it came down to we've got this date.
We've got to be ready. We've got to get all the
prosecutors Packages already. I grabbed all the
case files and I opened them up and the guy that
had done them made a really nice little tab,
you know, that are all typed out stuff. I mean,
the folders look really cool. But when I opened
them up, the only thing in the folders at all
was my case apart and Jennifer's case report.
Nothing else. There was no background information.
There was no evidence forms or nothing. And so
then I found out that almost none of the evidence
had been tested. Oh boy. Tested at a lab, you
mean, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean like we're seizing
raptor feathers feathers from hawks eagles owls
and I can't stand it. I can't get up on the stand
and say I'm an expert on raptors and I can tell
you for sure this is from a snowy out. Exactly.
Yeah, you know it. You're experienced enough.
You know it in the field. But yeah, for proving
something in court beyond a reasonable doubt
does require those expert witnesses to say, hey,
this is what this is, confirming what it is.
And that has to come from a forensics lab. And
bear gallbladder. looks identical to pig gallbladder.
As a matter of fact, I think it's been done many
times where people get pig gallbladder and sell
them to Asian buyers as bear gallbladder. But
since they look identical, the only way to tell
them apart is by DNA testing. So we had a bunch
of testing left to do. Well, it hadn't been done.
And so it was a mess. It was an absolute total
mess. So they... Then at the last few months
of the operation, they put in another officer,
Julie Cook, as a temporary detective. But Jennifer
was assigned to be full -time at that point.
Earlier than that, they switched her to full
-time. They put in Julie as part -time to handle
the evidence. the reports and all that kind of
stuff. So we did get it all squared away by the
time it was time to start sending out the packages
to prosecutors and meeting with them in the USA,
etc. So, but it was an absolute total mess. Yeah,
and I think US Fish and Wildlife Services Forensics
Lab kind of got involved at that point, too,
to help kind of rush through some of these IDs,
right? Very much so. Yeah, we have our own DNA
lab in Washington, but we had an overwhelming
number of samples. So I think about half went
to Ashland to the lab there. And the other half
went to ours. So that let's talk about the takedowns
then you have this date set for you for you by
management that you have to do your takedowns.
There was a little bit of a cluster fuck and
officer safety issue at those takedowns. If I
remember right, how'd that play out? Not so well.
Yeah, but you know what? The reason I want to
talk about this, Todd, is not to bash anybody
in particular, but I think it's a really good
kind of a, I don't know, learning lesson or lesson
learned kind of thing about you have to be vigilant
all the way through these ops right to the end
because... So yeah, we had, like you said, roughly
a hundred suspects, criminal suspects to be charged.
Now, there weren't 100 of them in Washington.
There was probably 70 or so in Washington. The
rest were in New York, California, Oklahoma,
etc. So we had 100 people. We had over a thousand
criminal charges. Almost all of them fell on
the level. And we were only going to do search
warrants on the top eight people. on September
18th. Everybody else would just be charged and
like summoned into court or whatever, right?
Right. Yeah. But you know, we would, my goal
on this thing was not to just get the people
that sold the stuff, but I wanted to get the
people that poached it and sold it to the people
that sold it to us. I wanted all of it. And the
way you get that is through their electronics,
their phones, their computers, all that. In order
to get those things, we had to have a search
warrant. You're not going to get a search warrant
on information that's eight months old. So everything
other than those top eight went stale. And so
no chance to do a search warrant. Therefore,
not much of a chance to do a further dig on them
post arrest. But on that date, Jennifer and I
had split up the cases 50 -50. So she has half
of them. I have half of them. We set up a little
command center at one of our offices and we spread
out all the case reports. She was on her side
of the table. I was on my side. We're all ready.
We told all the officers, if anything comes up,
you want to know anything, call us. And so we
were getting calls from the field. Everything
was good. And then around noon, a friend of mine
called up and said, Hey, are you part of this
big statewide investigation on wildlife trafficking?
And I said, what are you talking about? And he
said, oh, it was on the news. They have this
big takedown where they're, they're hitting up
restaurants and all these people for selling
wildlife, buying and selling wildlife items.
And since that's your kind of thing, I just figured
you were in on it. And I'm like, what channels
this? And he told me, and I looked it up and
sure as hell there it is. our deputy chief had
taken the media to, um, one of the search warrants,
as a matter of fact, to the guy in Tacoma, um,
yeah, and had taken the, uh, media to that house
and they filmed everything and, and they put
it on the internet news before noon. And so Obviously
we had to start calling all the teams that hadn't
yet served their warrants because some teams
had multiple warrants. Uh, Yakima is a good example.
We had one group of people, but there was four
people in the group. So they had to search all
their places. Um, so we had to start calling
everybody that hadn't served their warrants yet
and tell them there's a chance your suspect knows
it's coming. Yeah. Which is a problem for two
reasons. One is evidence is going to be disappearing.
and officers might walk right into an ambush.
It's an officer safety issue. Yeah, exactly.
We normally don't tell people anytime that we're
gone. Yeah, exactly. It's not a good practice.
Aye, aye, aye. So how do you handle that? You
just tell everybody to just go right away, huh?
Yeah, I mean, what can you do? We just told everybody
this is the deal. They may or may not know it's
coming. And I think we only have one guy that
we... knew for sure, knew it was coming. Oh,
no doubt. I mean, he got rid of all his evidence.
Yeah, I say that because that one particular
guy, his phone logs were deleted, everything,
no text messages, no people's phone numbers.
He just wiped it clean. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But fortunately, it all ended without anybody
getting shot or attacked or assaulted, but yeah.
went off there wasn't there wasn't any physical
confrontations whatsoever everybody and we had
a couple guys i was worried about um the the
guy the borney one we had a SWAT team do it um
he was a his higher risk he wasn't in in my opinion
of of him he wasn't a gang member he was a gang
leader he was the head of a organized crime gang
and he he referred to his uh subordinates, the
ones that were just kind of labor, he called
them monkeys. And the ones that were had more
responsibilities than just labor, he called them
soldiers. So we had soldiers and monkeys that
that he bossed around like that, like he owned
them. Yeah. Yeah, that struck me in the in the
book too is right in front of these guys, he
would refer to them and kind of derogatory terms.
And obviously nobody's going to stand for that
unless you're working for the guy or somehow
otherwise kind of either out of necessity or
monetary greed, you're loyal to him, right? Yeah.
I've always wondered how well that loyalty worked
after they all got arrested. Yeah. That's your
face though. Borey, Borey's on the hook for trusting
the, his favorite white guy, right? Yeah. So,
so that was a funny thing about when I said that
he called us after we first met him, he called
us on our way back. Um, I think I left this part
out, which is one of my favorite at the very
end of that conversation. He says, I hope I don't
regret this. And I go, regret what? And he said,
doing business with Whitey, I've never done business
with Whitey before and I hope I don't regret
this. Be fun to talk to him now, wouldn't it?
Find out what his thoughts are. Good choice on
the first two Whiteys you decided to deal with.
Yeah. Well, you know, there is so much more I
kind of want to talk to you about on this case,
but I think what we should say at this point
is... Operation Cody's available on Amazon and
it's a great read and anybody who wants to kind
of know all the details of the case and all the
adventures should definitely pick up your book
and give it a read. It's a great read. I enjoyed
it thoroughly. So I can't recommend the book
enough. But you know, this is a great operation.
There are so many lessons here to be taken. I
think if a... whether it's Washington Department
of Fish and Wildlife, some other state agency,
or U .S. Fish and Wildlife Service, you know,
looking at this type of operation where you target
a problem versus an individual person or an individual
organization is really valuable, but so many
takeaways from your book in terms of if an agency's
going to do this, they got to commit. They got
to commit the resources, the time, the money,
the personnel, and the follow -up to make sure
it gets all done because you You know, you had,
like we said, 600 UC contacts, 100 suspects,
1 ,000 charges. You had states involved, Oklahoma,
New York, Florida, Idaho, South Carolina, Oregon,
Montana, California, and Illinois is what I counted.
And then, you know, we didn't get into this,
but you retired once the takedowns were done.
And then the agency kind of didn't follow up
on some of your cases in court. And that was,
that required you to kind of come back free of
charge to help. Push that through. I think, you
know, let me ask you this, Todd, from your view,
I think I hope that you view Operation Cody as
a success because I think it it was and it was
worthwhile. Maybe it didn't. Some of the things
didn't happen exactly the way you wanted, but
I think it was a great case. Probably was a wake
up call to a lot of people in the state of Washington
about the consequences for being involved in
wildlife crime. But what do you think were the
long term impacts of Operation Cody? What are
your thoughts on it? I think that I think that
mere fact that we illustrated what's going on
in, you know, Washington's nothing special in
that regard. I'm sure that similar activities
are occurring in every state in the country and
every province in Canada. These problems are
not local problems. They're not, I mean, Yeah,
you're probably not gonna sell a lot of gallbladders
if you live in a town full of Mennonites in Pennsylvania.
But in most jurisdictions, there's bear gallbladder
going on. There's deer and elk meat. We did a
lot of raptors. I mean, that stuff's going on
everywhere. And so I hope that the best takeaway
from it was that other agencies, other jurisdictions,
and even people in our agency, because everybody's
new now. It's a whole new squad. We've got a
new chief. He's a great guy. New deputy chief.
He's a great guy. So things are wiped a slate
clean, essentially. Jennifer, my partner, is
now a captain. She is the captain of the largest
region in the state. So everything has changed,
and in my opinion, has changed for the better.
And I just wanted to educate everybody as to
what is most likely happening right there in
your jurisdiction, too. Yeah. And pay attention
to what you're kind of hearing through the grapevine
among other enforcement officers, because there's
going to be a clue about what problems need to
be attacked. And then this type of operation
is a real good example of the creative approach
that you can take to try to tackle a problem
versus an individual violator, right? Right.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Um, I can't tell
you how much I appreciate you being on this,
on the program to talk about it. And, uh, thank
you so much for the work you did. When did you
retire? 2012, the end of January 30th. I mean,
I'm sorry, December 31st, 2012. Right at the
conclusion of operation Cody, right? Yep. A couple
of months. Uh, yeah, it's during November descent,
three months later. Yeah. Well, a fantastic operation
and a fantastic career, Todd. I hope you're proud
of everything you've accomplished. Thank you.
And I appreciate your support. Absolutely. Thank
you so much for being on the show. I appreciate
it. Maybe we'll have you back sometime. I know
you've got a hundred other stories you could
tell us. And everybody else, thanks for joining
us. We'll see you next time. and is co -produced
by the DHTV team here at California State University
Dominguez Hills. Follow us on social media and
connect with us online at naturessecretservice
.com.