October 31, 2023 • 44 mins
With as many as a million plant and animal species expected to vanish by 2050, the time is now to intervene and reverse the tide…before it is too late. Andrea Crosta is the founder of the non-profit Earth League International, an “Intelligence agency for Earth,” which protects wildlife, oceans, and forests through intelligence-gathering, research and investigative operations. ELI collaborates with governmental agencies and helps bring down illegal wildlife traffickers, their networks, and those engaged in the “criminal exploitation of nature.” Their work has resulted in the arrest of a jaguar-fang ring in Bolivia and helping the Mexican government pursue the “Cartel of the Sea,” which trafficks sea cucumbers and totoaba. Alec Baldwin speaks with Andrea Crosta about the experiences that led him to this work, what it’s like meeting wildlife traffickers face to face, and why we are in a “now or never” moment for our ecosystem.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
the Thing from My Heart Radio. The statistics are staggering.
Up to a million plant and animal species are expected
to vanish by the year twenty fifty, and we've experienced
an almost seventy percent decline in wildlife since nineteen seventy alone.
(00:24):
My guest today, Andrea Crosta is the founder of Earth
League International, a nonprofit organization whose objective is to protect
our oceans, forests, and wildlife through research and investigation. It's
an intelligence agency like the CIA, but for earth. The
(00:45):
organization has helped crack down on wildlife trafficking, from a
cartel moving sea cucumbers in Mexico to a jaguar fang
ring in Bolivia. The dangerous work of infiltrating the organized
crime units was recently profiled in the New Yorker article
entitled Earth League International Hunts the Hunters. The path to
(01:10):
Andrea Crosto's calling has been a long and winding road.
Prior to his work as head of EIL, he held
various positions in security and animal activism before starting the
online shopping company Think Italy in his native country.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I Think Italy was we're talking about ninety seven ninety
eight was the prehistory of shopping online in Italy. So
there was the second e commerce website ever in Italy
with Microsoft was the first Casey history of Microsoft in
Italy free shopping. And I went all the way up,
and then when the Nazda crashed in two thousand and one,
I went all the way down and I sold the
(01:49):
full debts basically, but it was like an Amazon type
of time. Yeah yeah, yeah, back in the I mean
ninety eight we were talking really about it. But Dawn
and you would not believe how many people in ninety
eight told me e commerce.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I don't think it's the thing.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
No, never work, You're an idiot and says, okay whatever.
But then when I then sold Think Italy, I was
already into business and I did another master degree in
business administration. My first one was conservation zoology and actually
that my love was always there. And then I started
to work as a business consultant for those companies that
(02:26):
was pre snowed and those companies who that produce technologies
for spying basically who taught you that I was just
doing the business part, so I was just no, I
was help selling stuff to spies, but not me. But
I got in contact with a lot of them, of course.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
But I see you go from animal rights activists to businessman,
security consultant, and then it says he occasionally trained park.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Rangers, correct, and that trained you. My job was to
find people to train them. So I was always you know.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
In the train them in terms of but not with
weaponry as well. Oh really yeah, until trained you, nobody
I was.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
My job was just okay, let's find the great trainer
or you would.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Have especially the man yeah, exactly doing the train.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And I was going down in the middle of nowhere
in Kenya when the Kenye Wildlife Service has a sort
of a shooting range and the training center, and we
were there for two weeks, three weeks trying to help
these rangers too.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
That was was twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
We were right in the middle of the elephant poaching
crisis and we were losing twenty five.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Where's the training center, what part of the.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
It's near Sao National So when.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
You're there, those rangers are under what flag? Meaning they
were service Keny that's the National wild to protect all cares.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, and they were very undertrained there in their whip
you know they were.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
I think that the wealth of Kenya interns.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I know that they didn't some of them didn't have shoes,
I mean really really, and they were up to train poachers.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
And they couldn't pay them very much. No, not very much.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yeah, exactly. We thought, okay, let's that was the beginning.
And that I and this is when you know, the
will started to in my head said, okay, wait a second.
I went out many times with them. I witnessed those terribles,
you know, seeing that you can imagine, you know, an
entire family of elephants Gonne down with Ak forty seven
(04:21):
and and I could see almost you know when you're
see in comics like a question mark on the head
of the Rangers. And back then the whole world international
community was asking them, the Rangers.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
To solve the problem. And I thought, that's unfair.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I mean, I mean, elephant poaching and ivory trafficking is
like you can it's under environmental crime. We're talking about
the fourth largest criminal enterprise in the world, up more
than two hundred billions of dollars every year, and you're
asking the Rangers to solve the problem. It's like asking
for exactly so It's like it's like asking your you know,
the La County sheriff to solve narco trafficking.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
It's not their job.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
So because of my past and here we come to
you know, the circle is because of my past and
working with intelligence agency. I asked, okay, but who is
using professional intelligence. I'm talking about CIA kind of intelligence
to fight back because the problem is not the poachers,
is the traffickers in international traffickers, trafficking networks, organized crime.
(05:20):
And the answer was nobody. And so I said, okay,
I'm going to do it. I mean, I didn't know
how difficult it would would be big, but I said, okay,
So I stopped what I was doing. Back then, I
was in Kenya. My job was a security consultant again,
hiring the right people for the former Prime Minister of
Somalia who had huge security problems with the terrorist group
(05:43):
al Shabab. You know, that was the time when al
Shabab controlled all Somalia and also part of Kenya. So
this guy had and I was there for this reason,
and I said, okay, I think it's time to go
back to my roots today. And I was born with
this huge love for animals and for wild life and
this huge desire to protect them.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
And I said, how I'm going to do it.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Okay, I'm going to create the first intelligence agency for
the first CIA for the planet. And I start looking
for the right people because it's not easy, of course,
form a CIA from FBI crime analyst under separators to point.
The selling point was, I remember to Mark Davis is
my right hand right now, twenty eight years with the FBI,
(06:26):
one of the most successful undercover agents in the history
of the FBI. We're actually doing a documentary about him.
And I told him, listen, Mark, you were under cover
with Chapon, Escobar, Russia mafia, Italian mafia, pedophile, corrupt government official.
I have the biggest, most important war you ever fought
(06:46):
in your life, and it's the war for Earth. And
that's it was sold. It's instantaneously.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And he is best San Diego and he's an incredible person.
You can imagine twenty eight years with and the agency
as well.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
And what did you tell him that you wanted him
to do? You wanted him to do what.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
The task was to build, to build a brand new
organization with former CIA FBI.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
What budget?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Now I have the budget, but back back then I
was I was really crazy. I mean I was, and
he marked to his credit he has been working for me,
for us for many years. We started to pay him
this year. Okay, this is extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
People.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
So they volunteered, volunteer, some of them absolutely him first
of all. So and so slowly we started to create
this mini Meani Intelligence Agency with the task. The objective
is to investigate and collect intelligence at the highest possible
level from these international trafficking networks. And when you go
(07:49):
so high in the network as not environmental crime anymore,
there is a lot of what is called crime convergence,
so the convergence of environmental crimes with other serious crimes,
money laundering, human smuggling, human trafficking, arco traffic, same people,
same networks.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
They can offer you.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Same infrastructure, same infrastructure, same people to bribe and during
a meeting, they can offer you three tons of shark fins,
three under jaguar fanks, two tons of ivory. But I
also I also smuggled exactly exactly, and that's what was
till now, that was the layer of the problem, completely
(08:27):
misunderstood actually unknown also by law enforcement. And that's why
it's precious what we do because we're we have under
COVID teams who are that are in the field.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Get you know, the.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Kind of work we do is a sort of sophisticated
social engineering work. In other words, we are really good
in becoming your friend. And when we are friends, you
are gonna tell me everything I need to know of
the time.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
And why do you think I'm going to get to
that in terms of your methodology, because I have read
that in the article. That was a great article. So
how do you get them to talk? How do you
get them to trust?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Your trust?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
That's the magic world, and so you have to take
your time to establish trust with these people.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Give me an example of someone you're after, why and
what do you do? What do you say to him
or her?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So, first of all, there's work done before through our
content because we operate like a small agency, so we
are crude sources and informants on the ground, doesn't matter
where Colombia, South Africa, Mexico doesn't matter. And they tell
us who are the big players, and then we send
another team and their team is to become their friends.
So they introduce themselves as businessmen, as potential traffickers. We
(09:39):
never do anything illegal. We never buy anything illegal, which
is really good in listening. We also use a lot
of under COVID devices to capture videos and conversations, so
we produce a ton of intelligence and over a period
of time, their job is to become their friends. And
so they these people, the targets, the traffickers. They have
to see in our people a potential gain and put
(10:02):
potential money down the road. Okay, so we have to play.
It's like acting for these people pretty much. And until
you get to a point where there is trust, there
is friendship. So they invite you, Hey, when are you
coming back again to Columbia? When are you coming back
again to Thailand? Because we have I have have these
have that are you in. They want to do business,
They want to do business. You lead them to you
(10:23):
lead them to believe you're there to do business or
or even better not me business, but I know somebody
because this money. Yeah, and this allows us to stretch
it even more because the point is to spend with
them as much time as possible. Right, So if you
say I'm the buy exactly, if I'm the buyer, okay,
how many time you want to meet them with exactly?
(10:45):
So it's no my boss is in here, isn't there?
And so with that we sometimes stay with them two
three years, so dangling, and they invite us to family
events wedding, birthday, and we go there and we film
and record everything and everything is then passed to our
crime analyst who receives like an incredible amount of information.
(11:08):
And that's the second part, very interesting, so data processing
and they understand figured out what we get.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
But that's this is how we work.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
And I'm seeing a movie now. Oh yeah, I'm seeing
a movie now where like The Godfather, you're at the
airport and all the containers are filled with rhino horn
and the cops come to bust the guy that you've
been soliciting for two years and he's in shock because
he thought you and he were best friends, and you
just kiss him on the mouth of Francesco. I am
(11:36):
so sorry, and he just take it up. He goes
to prison for twenty years and you've been working on
this case for a while.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Absolutely, And what happens with the exception is that we
usually disappear a little before the arrest or the action,
and best case scenario is when the bad guys do
not understand what went wrong, Okay, well, I don't even
think you're to blame exactly, and we were so.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Operating in that sphere with us.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Exactly, wise it will be over right.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So, of course, as you can imagine, our field operators,
their identity is confidential even within our organization. There are
no pictures of them, and of course it's it's a
very delicate job they do.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Of course, are you Are you concerned since the article
came out now that people know who you are?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
No about me, not really, I mean that ship. You're
not the sale already.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I mean you're not the face of a lot of
these operations.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
You never No, I cannot be people who you've.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Trained and who work for you there the operative.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Absolutely No.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
My job is when we have enough information is to
engage government agency and local enforcement, including in the US,
and say hey, we have this information, we have this intelligence.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
And the beauty of crime convergence, or the convergence without
a serious crime, is that if you approach like it
happened in a US law enforcement agency, a big one,
and say hey, I have a case about this guy
and he's a big shark trafficker, they say thank you,
But you know, we have a lot of work. But
if I say that the same guy is into international
money laundering and human smuggling, human trafficking, all of.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
A sudden, you just have their attention. And that's my
whole point. Okay, I'm going to bring you a good case.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
It's like a poison pill.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
You can take the credit, you can arrest them.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
It's fine as long as I can work behind the scene,
as long as you put them away for a longer
period of time. Because sometimes if you arrest these people
for environmental crime or wildlife trafficking, they get maybe a
few weeks or a year of if but if you're
arresting for money laundering, oh that's different.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Is that typically the goal is is that the reality
meaning you have to accept this compromise. And I'm gladly
because you're getting your work done, but you have to
accept this compromise whereby you have to embed it inside
these other things. They're never going to act just on
the spirit of the animal protection and animal rights alone.
They won't do that.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
No, they will do it. Only they started to do it.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
You know, there are for example, US Homeland Security just
launcher like a new unit deDion.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Correct, So that's great news.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
So they will they will have money and they have
certainly they have the mandate now to do it. And
we also help them as well with information. So that's
the that's the goal, is to have these big agencies
like gorillas, Yeah, with money jumping into the fight.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Where around the world would you say, do you enjoy
the highest level of cooperation.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
One for sure?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
The US, it is yes, absolutely, we WI We have
been sharing confidential information. We produce those reports that we
call confidential intelligence briefs and with many US agency and
they're acting on the information. In the past couple of years,
we help a public prosecutor in Mexico to arrest people,
We help a public prosecutor in Bolivia to arrest people.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
They do it.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
The problem is that a like the US in almost
any other country, they don't have the capability.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
To investigate these people.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Just too high, okay, And so when we give information
to the US authorities, they can redo what we did
and collect evidence and actually do even more than that.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Of course you can imagine, right, But.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
When you share information with Bolivia, Colombian, Thai or South Africa,
you just have to direct them toward Okay, go to
this place now and you will find these and these
and these, and you can arrest them and they do it. Unfortunately,
they don't have the capacity to do more.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So you're like dogs who sniff out the crime and
sniff out the people. Then you have to turn it
over to somebody else.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Now, one would assume only because of money. I don't
want to speak ill of the policies or the people
for that matter, of places like Africa and India, but
I would imagine because of budgets and money that those
are some of the toughest places for you to deal
with what you are rich in these resources and have
no money to defend.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Them, sometimes also no interest Sadly, environmental crime in many
countries is not a priority. It's saying okay, it's nature,
it's animals, whatever, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So the human compoundent is viewed as part of the cycle.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So the agents not only under resources but also underfunded,
but also the people are are not people of the will, no,
and they from the top, from policy makers, from the officials,
big of you know, important officials or minis. Even the
minis sometimes they don't have a clear mandate or what
to do on.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Top of it.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
What we do in the field, we often uncover corruption
at the highest level.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Okay, and they what do you do them? And they
don't like exactly and they don't like it?
Speaker 1 (16:40):
What are you doing? You go home?
Speaker 3 (16:42):
No, we share with US authorities days.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
So the US ever taken any actions on that information.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely they did.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
They did, And actually there was an important arrest in
southern California, San Diego end of May this year, and
that was I cannot give you too many details, but
it's basically that was our work for almost two years
and they took down three of the most important, in
my opinion, whilelife traffics that've been operating between Mexico and
(17:11):
the US and China, because a lot of stuff goes
to China. And that's a great example of us doing
the first part of the job, and they do.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
What they're supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Of course, Earth League internationals Andrea Krosta. If you enjoy
conversations with activists fighting for animal rights, check out my
episode with the co founder of People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals, Ingrid Newkirk.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
There was a time when hunting was what many people
had to do to survive, and just as other animals hunt,
some humans had to hunt. I think those times have
also largely gone, and most people who hunt today are
not just getting one caribou to put it on the table.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
It does happen.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
I think being pragmatic is very good. You have to
have your head in the sky and your feet on
the ground. But we're looking at you know, Donald Trump
Junior going out to put a head on his wall.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
That's a different story. To hear more of my conversation
with Ingrid Newkirk, go to Hear's Thething dot org. After
the break, Andrea Crosta shares how we are at a
now or never moment for rescuing our ecosystem. I'm Alec
(18:43):
Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. The illegal
slaughter of wildlife for human consumption in food or medicine
is well documented. Most of us are aware of shark
vin soup or rhino horn virility pills. But there is
a rare animal, very much at risk that is not
(19:04):
getting the same attention as the others. Earth League International's
founder Andrea Crosta is fighting to save a porpoise called
the Wakita in the Sea of Cortez. This little known
marine mammal is dying in the guild nets of fishermen
as they pursue a fish called the toto waba.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
So the whole story of the wakita is one of
the most bizarre stories I ever because it's the wakita
is the rarest marine mammal in the world, you know.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And sadly now.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
The baby whale, it's sort of a baby.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Was really exactly a miniature twin whale and dolphin. Correct,
And it's endemic of the Sea of Cortes. Ba Californas
are only there and now probably less than ten survive
in the whole Sea of Cortez. Okay, they are at
what like on literally on the brink of extinction, and
the reason.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Is because they die as bycatch in those nets.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
But those nets are actually for a fish called toto aba,
and the swim bladder of the toto aaba is actually
they what we're looking for. So it's from medicine, for
traditional Chinese medicine.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
So they put this.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
The Chinese wanted to toaba from Mexico.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Swim bladder just swim describe.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Of the Chinese allowed by any kind of territorial agreements.
I mean that water off the coast of Baja California
must belong to some government entity in Mexico, of course,
allowing the Chinese to take all that.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
No, but there is not nothing that is being smuggled.
It's crime. It's one hundred percent crime living.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Based on the other things you said that a lot
of the people who are doing the smuggling are also
drug dealers who are.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Smuggling because they make a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
You know, you have the pathways the rahaps.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Imagine one swim bladder, which is a swim better Okay,
we're talking about a swim letter of a fish. In
Baja California, the fishing cooperatives and the fishers make three
thousand dollars per swim bladder. Usually they make six hundred
dollars a month fishing.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
So you can.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Imagine the temptation. How That's why sometimes my whole bottle
was Hey, stop pointing the finger towards to theatres and
the illegal fishermen.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
You don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
You don't know what is to live there in the
middle of nowhere, with no state, no jobs, no nothing,
no security.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Of course they do it.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
The problem are the traffickers go after them, not after
the posers. Okay, you make six hundred dollars a month fishing,
and one swim bladder is three thousand dollars, of course
you do it. So the swim bladder three thousand dollars
apiece in the Sea of Cortes and then this strange
illegal supply chain begins through Mexico, through the US all
the way to China, and in China the same swim
(21:32):
bladder goes for forty fifty, sixty, even seventy thousand dollars
third piece. And that's why then art courts and organized
crime jump in because it's a lot of money with
almost zero resk. Because you're not dealing with cocaine or stuff.
You're right be dealing with swim bladders. Nobody cares, but
it's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
It's ironic to me, and it's not lost on me
that there's duplicative in terms of this. They toto waba
swim bladder issue in the Sea of Cortez and the
drugs themselves. Meaning we've had a policy for forty something
years in this country of interdiction and only going after
the producers and not going to the demand and trying
(22:09):
to stop the demand because these poor people are going
to produce it and trying to make money anyway that
they can, and it mimics the same thing in the
drug world as it does.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
And they today I read that in Colombia for another year,
they're cultivating more cocaine than last year. So it's growing
because these are poor people who have nothing else to do,
and yet they became the villain. And what I'm keep
saying is the villain is not the poacher. The villain
is not the compass, you know. The villain is the
trafficker who lives in Park.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Avenue by the way, Miami.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Oh exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Now, when I was younger, the portal for me into
a lot of this stuff was my ex wife, who
was a big animal rights person and is a big
animal rights person, and she introduced me to different people.
We met, you know, in the early days. We met
Alex Pacheco when he was still involved with Peter and
then he left, Ingrid Newkirk, who co founded with Alex.
(23:00):
There's people who this is such a cause for them,
this is such a burning ache in them, how these
animals are treated. They open up there will they give
you a lot of money, They give you a lot
of money, and I'm wondering if that same with you.
Do you find people who really are No, we gotta
work on. I gotta give you a phone couple of
phone numbers.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
I know one reason. One reason, because I really suck.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
If you put me in a room fundraising, I will
leave the room giving money to somebody. So my team said, Andrea,
come at the very end. Okay, But the point is
it's easier to raise money when you deal with animals directly.
I mean, you rescue elephants, you rescue dogs, or you
rescue baby elephants in Kenya.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Then you have what they're.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Buying, so to speak, when they give you the money.
Is this the emotion of rescuing a creature living creature?
I mean on the spot, probably right, because you can
give them money so I know that the elephant is
safe in our case, they first to I mean the
business of keeping the animals alive in the wild. In
terms of visual, for example, I produce a lot of
(24:04):
undercover footage of bad, bad people trafficking parts. Okay, that's
it's not that as sexy as Okay, look at this
baby elephant or look at this. Please help me if
I always make the joke in Los Angeles if I
go around with the photo of a baby elf and
there is millions of dollars in an evening. But if
I go around like I do, say, actually, we need
(24:26):
time to work on this network for two years, but
they're responsible for the killing of thousands of elephants for
the ivory. But any time, and maybe you will not
see everything we do because it's dangerous. It's confidentially, so
I'm sorry. I will share with you so that you
see where I'm going. So the whole thing is way
more complicated for us. From our website, you understand, but
(24:47):
not so much. The only way to understand what we
do is to it's meeting with me or Mark Davis,
my right art. Otherwise you will miss most of the
work that we do. So law enforcement and other professionals
appreciate a lot what we do because they get it.
But with the public, it's a whole different story.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Now this also leads me to you know, I'm in
rooms with people all over the country. In Washington, New York, LA.
When Tom Freston ran Paramount Pictures and his wife his
ex wife Kathy Preston, was a huge and is a
huge animal rights supporter. This was how we got to
have the PEEDA fundraiser on the lot of paramount. But
(25:28):
the idea is for most people, beyond pets, beyond a
dog or a cated domestic animal, the relationship with all
other animals is a meal on plates. How do you
get people who have the money, perhaps, how do you
get them to care? But what do they give a
shit about rhino horn?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Exactly? What do you tell them exactly?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
So my pitch now is that at the level we work,
we are really talking about industrial scale criminal exploitation of nature.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
So it's destroying the planet.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
It's destroying and entire We have a project now in
the Amazon on deforestation, land grabbing, and then how they
use this land for cattle and the meat. So they're
destroying our planets. So even if you don't care about animals,
it's important for our future to stop these criminal enterprises.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
And by the way, what they do also has.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
An impact on climate change as well. When destroying the forest,
when you're emptying the oceans, it will have repercussions also
on climate change. Unfortunately, climate change, in my opinion, is
a very self center narrative. It's mostly about us human
We are afraid. Okay, you're going very rarely. You hear
what about biodiversity? I mean we are destroying what's that?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
What's that word?
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Anthropocent interpose totally intra percent. You know, we are afraid
of we are afraid. But that's that's what it is about. Yeah, exactly,
so I tried.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
For example, we are we've been working on a network
of track trafficing network in operating between Peru Ecuador. They're
responsible alone for half a million sharks every year. Okay,
so before understanding our impact, you have to understand the
impact of these networks, how they're destroyed, and how it
is important to stop them. Otherwise the next generation we
(27:12):
keep talking about, oh hey, let's do our best to
protect as much as we can, so the next generation
will find something. Well, I app news for you. If
you continue like this, they will find nothing. There's nothing
to protect. Even if they will come up with the
best possible solution, there will be nothing to protect. So
most of the species and ecosystem and wild spaces do
not have the time for a generational change.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
It's now or never.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Animal activist Andrea Crosta, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell
a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing
on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, Andrea Croster shares his experiences meeting
wildlife traffickers on the ground. I'm Alec Baldwin and you
(28:16):
were listening to Here's the Thing. In the early days
of Earth League International, Andrea Kroster was given a crash
course in some of the darkest parts of humanity, those
people willing to hurt vulnerable animals for profit. That knowledge
came at a price, one which included his marriage at
(28:36):
the time. Kroster has since rebounded and re partnered.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
That was the early days when I had to go
through educate myself. So I it took a toll on you.
Of course, it was a cost for you. It was painful,
was paid. It would be for anybody. No, and I
was also probably not prepared. But I had to do
it because you had to see what you're fighting. And
so progress at Detroy, my soul at destroy and the
(29:04):
marriage by the way, and that makes you sick and
makes you sick. I moved to Los Angeles. I got
an informa in Los Angeles. I took you know and
all this while trying to fundraise and work right, and
and then after the informat it was COVID for two
three years. So it was just a mess. And I
never gave up. I never saw okay, that's that's enough.
(29:24):
Maybe okay the tallest tootle now, I never said that
we could, you know, with my small team, we continue
to work throughout well informa throughout the COVID, But on
a personal level, I was dead broken, broken completely. I
was just living with my dog Argus in Marianda in
my apartment. And then that's of course you Argosia from
(29:46):
from the Olysses, So Argus first and Sophia later.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Literally you know when you when where did you meet her? Friends?
In in in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
And and she has a really she is a nurse
for you know, for working or children. I see us
are really you can imagine the grounded, grounded or and
I needed somebody like this to, you know, to pull
me up. I was ready to continue with my work,
but trading off my personal life. You know, when you think, okay,
(30:16):
I'm going.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
To sacrifice one, you're going to continue, We're.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Going to continue, going to bust the ass of these people.
That's what I The reason I'm on this earth is
to protect the animals and doesn't matter what happens to me.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Do you think things have changed in the time you've
done this, Have things gotten better or people's attitudes towards
I mean to me, the most profound thing, or among
the many profound things you say, is their understanding of
the entire ecosystem correct, and that wildlife conservation is a
part of the ecosystem. Especially with fishing. You see what
you can take all those fish out of the water.
(30:47):
What's going to happen? Do you think things are improving?
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Maybe locally here and there. It's all about you know,
with everything, it's all about people. If the right people
is doing the right thing in the right place, things
will change. Globally, I don't think so, And I think
one of the reasons is because again, environmental protection is
still not a priority. The climate change movement is ultra
focus on fossil fuel and this and that, but it's
(31:12):
not it comprehensive enough, exactly, not comprehensive enough. On the
other hand, what is moving finally, especially in the US,
is that the government, government agencies and big law enforcement
agencies are finally getting what is happening, and they're willing
to do something about it. But of course the US,
I mean, what you're going to do, and you know,
to change things in the Amazon, for example, you need
(31:34):
the Brazilian government, you need the Columbian government to do something,
and how.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
How do you do it? I honestly, I don't have
the answer for that.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
I mean I see myself as you know, running, you
know the relay run in the Olympics. You know, when
you run and you pass the baton to somebody else.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
That's my role.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
So I'm running as fast as I can, and I'm
doing as much as I can, and then I will
pass the baton to someone else and someone else because
I'm the more I work now and the more he
or she will find alive, and then it's her job
or his job to continue. I don't think I will
see a change in my life.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I want you to describe two different people you may
have met. I'm assuming you have met, and I want
to start with have you ever met a trafficker? Have
you ever seen it? Talk to a traffic Yeah? Yeah,
we described the country, where were you the circumstances? What
did they tell you?
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (32:24):
It's a long lead.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I have a long I mean, we can do ten
different movies just from our stories. It's funny because we
recently started to produce also on top of our intelligence,
were also producing profiles, psychological profiles of the traffickers to
help law enforcement and agencies to understand who is this
who this guy. The big difference is that on top
of environmental criminal networks and trafficking networks, unlike narco trafficking,
(32:49):
they are businessmen. So first of all, they're business and
they do a lot of criminal stuff, but they're business.
They make a lot of money also from legal stuff.
Actually they are masters in overlapping legal and illegal. So
they have import, export, supermarket, restaurants, all kinds of businesses,
real estate, and on top of it, they also do
all kinds of trafficking and also not only I mean
(33:10):
we're not talking about again, while trafficing, illegal log illegal fishing,
illegal mining is a big thing as well.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Some of them are I would say, funny people.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I having a couple of them in mind, and every
time my mind, the COVID team comes back home and
we do the debrief and we discuss what they did.
They also they always say this guy are funny. They
know how to live. They have no clue what they're doing,
I mean the destruction that they don't care about it.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
They are usually very rich.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
They have ties with hundred percent criminal organizations and narco
trafficking for example, and they are really really good in
doing certain things without doing too much. For example, a
lot of the traffickers we have been investigating in the
past few years, they lounder the money for organized crime
and arco traffickers. They will never do drugs themselves, but
(33:59):
they are really good in laundering the money. And organized
crime and arco trafficing organization have the need of a
big they have to lounder a lot of money, a
lot of cash. They sit on cash in the US
as well, right, they don't know what to do with
all this cash. They're really good in doing that, so
they mix. They constantly mixed cousins. Absolutely, yeah, and that's
(34:19):
the same family. Absolutely, And that's the opportunity actually, because
while environmental crime and while trafficking and illegal logging whatever,
it has a lot of similarities with narco trafficking, with
one very important difference. At the top of an arco
trafficking organization, you have a big narcos, a big trafficker,
and you have zero average on this person. You kill
(34:41):
him or jailim. It's not you cannot do anything else.
And if you kill him somebody else, we can't part
with him. On the top of who runs the show,
environmental crime, the trafficking, they are businessmen. They make a
lot of money also from legal businesses. So my job
is to raise their cost of business, going after them
in a way there were nobody else, nobody ever, you know,
(35:02):
went after them like that, raise the cost of business,
arrest a bunch of them, and eventually hopefully push them
out of it.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
They don't want to but they don't want to go
to prison. Of course. People on the narco trafficking, then
they assume either they're going to pay off the cops
they shoot their way exactly. But eventually they realized they
might go to prison exactly.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
And they know they know right, but not these people.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I don't want to go to the prison, of course,
so Mike, no, So I'm trying to change the game
in this way. Forget about the ports, forget about the
little little fish, go after these people, show them that
they are not ghosts anymore. Because these people are ghosts
are no names, no face. My job is to give
a face and a name to ghost, and to do
that I use my ghost. Okay, so it's a battle
between ghosts. But the end game is at the end
(35:44):
this guy will have a name, will have a face,
and usually we provide intelligence about these people with you.
You had to understand you our reports are maybe you
will find fifty pages of intelligence about one single person.
So imagine how much you can do as law enforcement
agency about this person if you want to.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
You know John Hume, the character movie Trophy. In the
movie Trophy, what did you think about that argument where
he says, I've got to we have to kill some
of these animals, and we have to let people come
here and shoot some of these animals so I can
monetize the product to save the animals. I don't have
any budget. What do you think of that?
Speaker 3 (36:21):
So I know stuff about him that I cannot share here, just.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
To begin, I would imagine, but he it.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Wasn't the news a few days ago.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
He recently managed finally to sell his property, the whole
property thing, with all the rhinos included.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
And he has a huge vault of horn.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Exactly, So apparently when I heard the news, because he's
selling this this I don't know how many rhinos I think,
I don't know to Angil. Actually it's a big one
of the largest environmental organization in the world to African parks.
So they take in it and they it's a great
It's a strange idea, but okay, I can see the point.
And when I when someone asked me, you know, in
(36:59):
an interview, my reaction, the first thing I said was,
is he allowed to keep this stockpile because.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
He's sitting on hundreds of millions.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Of dollars of horns But there's a band on horns still.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Absolutely apparently apparently, I don't know, if it's true, he will,
he will be forced to destroy it. But because of course,
I mean, you know, you cannot. I'm completely against the
legal trade of this, of ivory or rhino.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
You just fuel the demand.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
And again, let's not forget we are dealing with Asia,
so two three billion people.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
You don't want to fuel the demand.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Of anything with exactly it's not Rhode Island, okay, it's Asia, Okay.
So so yeah, it's an interesting story. And he for
mister Hume, for many years kept saying Okay, we have
to sell Rhino a bit of fuel horns to sustain
the expenses. And I was always against absolutely.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Someone you worked with and they don't have to be
somebody who put their lives at risk. But I'm obviously
I'm thinking along those lines. Someone you work with, who
you really admired, someone you worked with you thought, my god,
this person like yourself. They're really committed to the scores
and they're willing to risk almost anything to follow through. Well.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
One of my is our chief investigator, the head of
our UNDERCOVID team, is incredible and he does things that,
in my opinion, nobody else in the world can do.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
And he's not out of it in the press. He
is still is.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Not American, and he does He's able to with his
team and also our guidance because there's a lot of
preparation before the mission, you know, we try to improvise
as lot as possible. He's able to really become good
friend of the worst possible people that you can imagine
on the planet and then get the kind of information
(38:48):
that not even the government can get from these people.
And I'm really proud of my team. I always say
I'm just I mean Most of the work is my team,
the undercover guys, the analysts, the people in the field.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
So I coordinated the whole thing. I had the idea.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
But they do that.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
They have to be praised, not really mean.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I can tell you a little story just to tell
you how sometimes the value of why is important to
become their friends.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Friends of these people.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
We work for more than a year in a Latin
American country on jaguar trafficking, so that they traffic parts
of jaguar, mostly.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
South America.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
In Brazil is Pantanalia, but they do it in Colombia
and Bolivia and Peru and Ecuadora and Surina everywhere, and
then they ship bones and fangs to Asia because with fangs,
they like to have fangs, you know, like jewelry and bones.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
They actually do like they do with tiger.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
They actually jaguar bones in Asia is then sold as
tiger and they do bone wine tiger bone wine to
enhance your you know, sexuality and stuff like that. But
they're destroying entire population of jaguars and Latin America. So
we help a local public prosecutor in Latin America to
a as the five most important jaguar traffickers in the
(40:02):
country and we did it very successful.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
We also published something. Then we went back to.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
The same country six months later last year to see
you know what happened. So the good news is that
everyone else stopped buying Jaguar, which is exactly my point.
If you scare them, they will stop, unlike narcle traffickers.
Believe me, if it's all about the right pressure points.
If you identify the right pressure point and then you
(40:29):
have fly pressure, they have fear, they stop. The funny
thing is that you're out of a movie.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Believe me. Is true.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
While we were meeting these traffickers, one of them received
first and SMS and then a call from a policeman
alerting them about us because they knew but they didn't
know exactly who we were. So this guy and we
were filming everything right away in the same time, so
filming up the cover of course. So this guy the
(40:56):
traffickers was telling my guy about us without knowing it
was us.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Right do you think AI? I mean, AI has become
a huge watchword in my business, was replaced by AI.
AI can help you in the work.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
You do eventually, probably, yeah, I mean in terms of
finding connection when you have a lot of data, and you.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Have a lot of forks.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Imagine you have a lot of names and address and
telephone numbers and emails and reach out accounts and all
kinds of names, all kinds of alienses, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
I think, Yes, the problem is.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
That all this information you should we should you know,
there should be one repository, one database with all this information,
or find a way to in this. Yeah, but I
want to say, you know, because every time people coming
up with all kinds of technologies and try to help us,
and what I answer is yes, but first of all,
you need human intelligence that only people can do. You
(41:53):
have to go there, get dirty, go in the middle
of nowhere, meet these people, understand these people. Okay, intelligence
come from the Latin intelligure. It doesn't mean to know,
it means to understand. And if you don't understand, you
will never have the right tools to fight back.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Now, in my travels around the world, many places of world,
no one knows how to relax and enjoy life and
and and get the most out of like the Italians.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
And you are an Italian and American recently.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Okay, so you're an Italian American, but you are Italian, yeah,
by birth, and I'm wondering, do you ever get to
unplug and live like Italians do and enjoy yourself or
you always plugged in. I'm a bad example of bad Italian.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
I'm an Argus and Sofia again are helping me a
lot to unplug. And it's so so important because if
you break, everything breaks.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Down with you, right, you put a lot of pressure.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yeah. But on the other hand, I think Italians have
in their DNA we know how to enjoy ourselves.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
So what do you do when you want to unplug?
Speaker 2 (42:55):
I usually hike on the Santa Monica Mountains with Argus
and Sofia or on the beach.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
That's it. I love.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
I mean, I'm a big, big lover of the Pacific
Northwest and Rocky Mountains, so whenever is possible, I go
there and just disappear for a while.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
If I want to wish you the best of luck,
I mean, I've read this article and I'm so admiring
of what you do, because you really are fighting what
I think it's one of the great battles to bring
to people the understanding that these environmental crimes all are
of one. Thank you, Andrea Crosta. This episode was recorded
(43:33):
at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by
Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is
Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm
Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that is brought to you
by iHeart Radio. The company can make the company
This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
the Thing from My Heart Radio. The statistics are staggering.
Up to a million plant and animal species are expected
to vanish by the year twenty fifty, and we've experienced
an almost seventy percent decline in wildlife since nineteen seventy alone.
(00:24):
My guest today, Andrea Crosta is the founder of Earth
League International, a nonprofit organization whose objective is to protect
our oceans, forests, and wildlife through research and investigation. It's
an intelligence agency like the CIA, but for earth. The
(00:45):
organization has helped crack down on wildlife trafficking, from a
cartel moving sea cucumbers in Mexico to a jaguar fang
ring in Bolivia. The dangerous work of infiltrating the organized
crime units was recently profiled in the New Yorker article
entitled Earth League International Hunts the Hunters. The path to
(01:10):
Andrea Crosto's calling has been a long and winding road.
Prior to his work as head of EIL, he held
various positions in security and animal activism before starting the
online shopping company Think Italy in his native country.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I Think Italy was we're talking about ninety seven ninety
eight was the prehistory of shopping online in Italy. So
there was the second e commerce website ever in Italy
with Microsoft was the first Casey history of Microsoft in
Italy free shopping. And I went all the way up,
and then when the Nazda crashed in two thousand and one,
I went all the way down and I sold the
(01:49):
full debts basically, but it was like an Amazon type
of time. Yeah yeah, yeah, back in the I mean
ninety eight we were talking really about it. But Dawn
and you would not believe how many people in ninety
eight told me e commerce.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I don't think it's the thing.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
No, never work, You're an idiot and says, okay whatever.
But then when I then sold Think Italy, I was
already into business and I did another master degree in
business administration. My first one was conservation zoology and actually
that my love was always there. And then I started
to work as a business consultant for those companies that
(02:26):
was pre snowed and those companies who that produce technologies
for spying basically who taught you that I was just
doing the business part, so I was just no, I
was help selling stuff to spies, but not me. But
I got in contact with a lot of them, of course.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
But I see you go from animal rights activists to businessman,
security consultant, and then it says he occasionally trained park.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Rangers, correct, and that trained you. My job was to
find people to train them. So I was always you know.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
In the train them in terms of but not with
weaponry as well. Oh really yeah, until trained you, nobody
I was.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
My job was just okay, let's find the great trainer
or you would.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Have especially the man yeah, exactly doing the train.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And I was going down in the middle of nowhere
in Kenya when the Kenye Wildlife Service has a sort
of a shooting range and the training center, and we
were there for two weeks, three weeks trying to help
these rangers too.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
That was was twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
We were right in the middle of the elephant poaching
crisis and we were losing twenty five.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Where's the training center, what part of the.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
It's near Sao National So when.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
You're there, those rangers are under what flag? Meaning they
were service Keny that's the National wild to protect all cares.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, and they were very undertrained there in their whip
you know they were.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
I think that the wealth of Kenya interns.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I know that they didn't some of them didn't have shoes,
I mean really really, and they were up to train poachers.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
And they couldn't pay them very much. No, not very much.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yeah, exactly. We thought, okay, let's that was the beginning.
And that I and this is when you know, the
will started to in my head said, okay, wait a second.
I went out many times with them. I witnessed those terribles,
you know, seeing that you can imagine, you know, an
entire family of elephants Gonne down with Ak forty seven
(04:21):
and and I could see almost you know when you're
see in comics like a question mark on the head
of the Rangers. And back then the whole world international
community was asking them, the Rangers.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
To solve the problem. And I thought, that's unfair.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I mean, I mean, elephant poaching and ivory trafficking is
like you can it's under environmental crime. We're talking about
the fourth largest criminal enterprise in the world, up more
than two hundred billions of dollars every year, and you're
asking the Rangers to solve the problem. It's like asking
for exactly so It's like it's like asking your you know,
the La County sheriff to solve narco trafficking.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
It's not their job.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
So because of my past and here we come to
you know, the circle is because of my past and
working with intelligence agency. I asked, okay, but who is
using professional intelligence. I'm talking about CIA kind of intelligence
to fight back because the problem is not the poachers,
is the traffickers in international traffickers, trafficking networks, organized crime.
(05:20):
And the answer was nobody. And so I said, okay,
I'm going to do it. I mean, I didn't know
how difficult it would would be big, but I said, okay,
So I stopped what I was doing. Back then, I
was in Kenya. My job was a security consultant again,
hiring the right people for the former Prime Minister of
Somalia who had huge security problems with the terrorist group
(05:43):
al Shabab. You know, that was the time when al
Shabab controlled all Somalia and also part of Kenya. So
this guy had and I was there for this reason,
and I said, okay, I think it's time to go
back to my roots today. And I was born with
this huge love for animals and for wild life and
this huge desire to protect them.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
And I said, how I'm going to do it.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Okay, I'm going to create the first intelligence agency for
the first CIA for the planet. And I start looking
for the right people because it's not easy, of course,
form a CIA from FBI crime analyst under separators to point.
The selling point was, I remember to Mark Davis is
my right hand right now, twenty eight years with the FBI,
(06:26):
one of the most successful undercover agents in the history
of the FBI. We're actually doing a documentary about him.
And I told him, listen, Mark, you were under cover
with Chapon, Escobar, Russia mafia, Italian mafia, pedophile, corrupt government official.
I have the biggest, most important war you ever fought
(06:46):
in your life, and it's the war for Earth. And
that's it was sold. It's instantaneously.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And he is best San Diego and he's an incredible person.
You can imagine twenty eight years with and the agency
as well.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
And what did you tell him that you wanted him
to do? You wanted him to do what.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
The task was to build, to build a brand new
organization with former CIA FBI.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
What budget?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Now I have the budget, but back back then I
was I was really crazy. I mean I was, and
he marked to his credit he has been working for me,
for us for many years. We started to pay him
this year. Okay, this is extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
People.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
So they volunteered, volunteer, some of them absolutely him first
of all. So and so slowly we started to create
this mini Meani Intelligence Agency with the task. The objective
is to investigate and collect intelligence at the highest possible
level from these international trafficking networks. And when you go
(07:49):
so high in the network as not environmental crime anymore,
there is a lot of what is called crime convergence,
so the convergence of environmental crimes with other serious crimes,
money laundering, human smuggling, human trafficking, arco traffic, same people,
same networks.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
They can offer you.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Same infrastructure, same infrastructure, same people to bribe and during
a meeting, they can offer you three tons of shark fins,
three under jaguar fanks, two tons of ivory. But I
also I also smuggled exactly exactly, and that's what was
till now, that was the layer of the problem, completely
(08:27):
misunderstood actually unknown also by law enforcement. And that's why
it's precious what we do because we're we have under
COVID teams who are that are in the field.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Get you know, the.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Kind of work we do is a sort of sophisticated
social engineering work. In other words, we are really good
in becoming your friend. And when we are friends, you
are gonna tell me everything I need to know of
the time.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
And why do you think I'm going to get to
that in terms of your methodology, because I have read
that in the article. That was a great article. So
how do you get them to talk? How do you
get them to trust?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Your trust?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
That's the magic world, and so you have to take
your time to establish trust with these people.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Give me an example of someone you're after, why and
what do you do? What do you say to him
or her?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So, first of all, there's work done before through our
content because we operate like a small agency, so we
are crude sources and informants on the ground, doesn't matter
where Colombia, South Africa, Mexico doesn't matter. And they tell
us who are the big players, and then we send
another team and their team is to become their friends.
So they introduce themselves as businessmen, as potential traffickers. We
(09:39):
never do anything illegal. We never buy anything illegal, which
is really good in listening. We also use a lot
of under COVID devices to capture videos and conversations, so
we produce a ton of intelligence and over a period
of time, their job is to become their friends. And
so they these people, the targets, the traffickers. They have
to see in our people a potential gain and put
(10:02):
potential money down the road. Okay, so we have to play.
It's like acting for these people pretty much. And until
you get to a point where there is trust, there
is friendship. So they invite you, Hey, when are you
coming back again to Columbia? When are you coming back
again to Thailand? Because we have I have have these
have that are you in. They want to do business,
They want to do business. You lead them to you
(10:23):
lead them to believe you're there to do business or
or even better not me business, but I know somebody
because this money. Yeah, and this allows us to stretch
it even more because the point is to spend with
them as much time as possible. Right, So if you
say I'm the buy exactly, if I'm the buyer, okay,
how many time you want to meet them with exactly?
(10:45):
So it's no my boss is in here, isn't there?
And so with that we sometimes stay with them two
three years, so dangling, and they invite us to family
events wedding, birthday, and we go there and we film
and record everything and everything is then passed to our
crime analyst who receives like an incredible amount of information.
(11:08):
And that's the second part, very interesting, so data processing
and they understand figured out what we get.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
But that's this is how we work.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
And I'm seeing a movie now. Oh yeah, I'm seeing
a movie now where like The Godfather, you're at the
airport and all the containers are filled with rhino horn
and the cops come to bust the guy that you've
been soliciting for two years and he's in shock because
he thought you and he were best friends, and you
just kiss him on the mouth of Francesco. I am
(11:36):
so sorry, and he just take it up. He goes
to prison for twenty years and you've been working on
this case for a while.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Absolutely, And what happens with the exception is that we
usually disappear a little before the arrest or the action,
and best case scenario is when the bad guys do
not understand what went wrong, Okay, well, I don't even
think you're to blame exactly, and we were so.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Operating in that sphere with us.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Exactly, wise it will be over right.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So, of course, as you can imagine, our field operators,
their identity is confidential even within our organization. There are
no pictures of them, and of course it's it's a
very delicate job they do.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Of course, are you Are you concerned since the article
came out now that people know who you are?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
No about me, not really, I mean that ship. You're
not the sale already.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I mean you're not the face of a lot of
these operations.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
You never No, I cannot be people who you've.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Trained and who work for you there the operative.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Absolutely No.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
My job is when we have enough information is to
engage government agency and local enforcement, including in the US,
and say hey, we have this information, we have this intelligence.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
And the beauty of crime convergence, or the convergence without
a serious crime, is that if you approach like it
happened in a US law enforcement agency, a big one,
and say hey, I have a case about this guy
and he's a big shark trafficker, they say thank you,
But you know, we have a lot of work. But
if I say that the same guy is into international
money laundering and human smuggling, human trafficking, all of.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
A sudden, you just have their attention. And that's my
whole point. Okay, I'm going to bring you a good case.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
It's like a poison pill.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
You can take the credit, you can arrest them.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
It's fine as long as I can work behind the scene,
as long as you put them away for a longer
period of time. Because sometimes if you arrest these people
for environmental crime or wildlife trafficking, they get maybe a
few weeks or a year of if but if you're
arresting for money laundering, oh that's different.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Is that typically the goal is is that the reality
meaning you have to accept this compromise. And I'm gladly
because you're getting your work done, but you have to
accept this compromise whereby you have to embed it inside
these other things. They're never going to act just on
the spirit of the animal protection and animal rights alone.
They won't do that.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
No, they will do it. Only they started to do it.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
You know, there are for example, US Homeland Security just
launcher like a new unit deDion.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Correct, So that's great news.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
So they will they will have money and they have
certainly they have the mandate now to do it. And
we also help them as well with information. So that's
the that's the goal, is to have these big agencies
like gorillas, Yeah, with money jumping into the fight.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Where around the world would you say, do you enjoy
the highest level of cooperation.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
One for sure?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
The US, it is yes, absolutely, we WI We have
been sharing confidential information. We produce those reports that we
call confidential intelligence briefs and with many US agency and
they're acting on the information. In the past couple of years,
we help a public prosecutor in Mexico to arrest people,
We help a public prosecutor in Bolivia to arrest people.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
They do it.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
The problem is that a like the US in almost
any other country, they don't have the capability.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
To investigate these people.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Just too high, okay, And so when we give information
to the US authorities, they can redo what we did
and collect evidence and actually do even more than that.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Of course you can imagine, right, But.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
When you share information with Bolivia, Colombian, Thai or South Africa,
you just have to direct them toward Okay, go to
this place now and you will find these and these
and these, and you can arrest them and they do it. Unfortunately,
they don't have the capacity to do more.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So you're like dogs who sniff out the crime and
sniff out the people. Then you have to turn it
over to somebody else.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Now, one would assume only because of money. I don't
want to speak ill of the policies or the people
for that matter, of places like Africa and India, but
I would imagine because of budgets and money that those
are some of the toughest places for you to deal
with what you are rich in these resources and have
no money to defend.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Them, sometimes also no interest Sadly, environmental crime in many
countries is not a priority. It's saying okay, it's nature,
it's animals, whatever, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So the human compoundent is viewed as part of the cycle.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So the agents not only under resources but also underfunded,
but also the people are are not people of the will, no,
and they from the top, from policy makers, from the officials,
big of you know, important officials or minis. Even the
minis sometimes they don't have a clear mandate or what
to do on.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Top of it.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
What we do in the field, we often uncover corruption
at the highest level.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Okay, and they what do you do them? And they
don't like exactly and they don't like it?
Speaker 1 (16:40):
What are you doing? You go home?
Speaker 3 (16:42):
No, we share with US authorities days.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
So the US ever taken any actions on that information.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely they did.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
They did, And actually there was an important arrest in
southern California, San Diego end of May this year, and
that was I cannot give you too many details, but
it's basically that was our work for almost two years
and they took down three of the most important, in
my opinion, whilelife traffics that've been operating between Mexico and
(17:11):
the US and China, because a lot of stuff goes
to China. And that's a great example of us doing
the first part of the job, and they do.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
What they're supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Of course, Earth League internationals Andrea Krosta. If you enjoy
conversations with activists fighting for animal rights, check out my
episode with the co founder of People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals, Ingrid Newkirk.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
There was a time when hunting was what many people
had to do to survive, and just as other animals hunt,
some humans had to hunt. I think those times have
also largely gone, and most people who hunt today are
not just getting one caribou to put it on the table.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
It does happen.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
I think being pragmatic is very good. You have to
have your head in the sky and your feet on
the ground. But we're looking at you know, Donald Trump
Junior going out to put a head on his wall.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
That's a different story. To hear more of my conversation
with Ingrid Newkirk, go to Hear's Thething dot org. After
the break, Andrea Crosta shares how we are at a
now or never moment for rescuing our ecosystem. I'm Alec
(18:43):
Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. The illegal
slaughter of wildlife for human consumption in food or medicine
is well documented. Most of us are aware of shark
vin soup or rhino horn virility pills. But there is
a rare animal, very much at risk that is not
(19:04):
getting the same attention as the others. Earth League International's
founder Andrea Crosta is fighting to save a porpoise called
the Wakita in the Sea of Cortez. This little known
marine mammal is dying in the guild nets of fishermen
as they pursue a fish called the toto waba.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
So the whole story of the wakita is one of
the most bizarre stories I ever because it's the wakita
is the rarest marine mammal in the world, you know.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And sadly now.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
The baby whale, it's sort of a baby.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Was really exactly a miniature twin whale and dolphin. Correct,
And it's endemic of the Sea of Cortes. Ba Californas
are only there and now probably less than ten survive
in the whole Sea of Cortez. Okay, they are at
what like on literally on the brink of extinction, and
the reason.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Is because they die as bycatch in those nets.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
But those nets are actually for a fish called toto aba,
and the swim bladder of the toto aaba is actually
they what we're looking for. So it's from medicine, for
traditional Chinese medicine.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
So they put this.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
The Chinese wanted to toaba from Mexico.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Swim bladder just swim describe.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Of the Chinese allowed by any kind of territorial agreements.
I mean that water off the coast of Baja California
must belong to some government entity in Mexico, of course,
allowing the Chinese to take all that.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
No, but there is not nothing that is being smuggled.
It's crime. It's one hundred percent crime living.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Based on the other things you said that a lot
of the people who are doing the smuggling are also
drug dealers who are.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Smuggling because they make a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
You know, you have the pathways the rahaps.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Imagine one swim bladder, which is a swim better Okay,
we're talking about a swim letter of a fish. In
Baja California, the fishing cooperatives and the fishers make three
thousand dollars per swim bladder. Usually they make six hundred
dollars a month fishing.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
So you can.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Imagine the temptation. How That's why sometimes my whole bottle
was Hey, stop pointing the finger towards to theatres and
the illegal fishermen.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
You don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
You don't know what is to live there in the
middle of nowhere, with no state, no jobs, no nothing,
no security.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Of course they do it.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
The problem are the traffickers go after them, not after
the posers. Okay, you make six hundred dollars a month fishing,
and one swim bladder is three thousand dollars, of course
you do it. So the swim bladder three thousand dollars
apiece in the Sea of Cortes and then this strange
illegal supply chain begins through Mexico, through the US all
the way to China, and in China the same swim
(21:32):
bladder goes for forty fifty, sixty, even seventy thousand dollars
third piece. And that's why then art courts and organized
crime jump in because it's a lot of money with
almost zero resk. Because you're not dealing with cocaine or stuff.
You're right be dealing with swim bladders. Nobody cares, but
it's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
It's ironic to me, and it's not lost on me
that there's duplicative in terms of this. They toto waba
swim bladder issue in the Sea of Cortez and the
drugs themselves. Meaning we've had a policy for forty something
years in this country of interdiction and only going after
the producers and not going to the demand and trying
(22:09):
to stop the demand because these poor people are going
to produce it and trying to make money anyway that
they can, and it mimics the same thing in the
drug world as it does.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
And they today I read that in Colombia for another year,
they're cultivating more cocaine than last year. So it's growing
because these are poor people who have nothing else to do,
and yet they became the villain. And what I'm keep
saying is the villain is not the poacher. The villain
is not the compass, you know. The villain is the
trafficker who lives in Park.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Avenue by the way, Miami.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Oh exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Now, when I was younger, the portal for me into
a lot of this stuff was my ex wife, who
was a big animal rights person and is a big
animal rights person, and she introduced me to different people.
We met, you know, in the early days. We met
Alex Pacheco when he was still involved with Peter and
then he left, Ingrid Newkirk, who co founded with Alex.
(23:00):
There's people who this is such a cause for them,
this is such a burning ache in them, how these
animals are treated. They open up there will they give
you a lot of money, They give you a lot
of money, and I'm wondering if that same with you.
Do you find people who really are No, we gotta
work on. I gotta give you a phone couple of
phone numbers.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
I know one reason. One reason, because I really suck.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
If you put me in a room fundraising, I will
leave the room giving money to somebody. So my team said, Andrea,
come at the very end. Okay, But the point is
it's easier to raise money when you deal with animals directly.
I mean, you rescue elephants, you rescue dogs, or you
rescue baby elephants in Kenya.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Then you have what they're.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Buying, so to speak, when they give you the money.
Is this the emotion of rescuing a creature living creature?
I mean on the spot, probably right, because you can
give them money so I know that the elephant is
safe in our case, they first to I mean the
business of keeping the animals alive in the wild. In
terms of visual, for example, I produce a lot of
(24:04):
undercover footage of bad, bad people trafficking parts. Okay, that's
it's not that as sexy as Okay, look at this
baby elephant or look at this. Please help me if
I always make the joke in Los Angeles if I
go around with the photo of a baby elf and
there is millions of dollars in an evening. But if
I go around like I do, say, actually, we need
(24:26):
time to work on this network for two years, but
they're responsible for the killing of thousands of elephants for
the ivory. But any time, and maybe you will not
see everything we do because it's dangerous. It's confidentially, so
I'm sorry. I will share with you so that you
see where I'm going. So the whole thing is way
more complicated for us. From our website, you understand, but
(24:47):
not so much. The only way to understand what we
do is to it's meeting with me or Mark Davis,
my right art. Otherwise you will miss most of the
work that we do. So law enforcement and other professionals
appreciate a lot what we do because they get it.
But with the public, it's a whole different story.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Now this also leads me to you know, I'm in
rooms with people all over the country. In Washington, New York, LA.
When Tom Freston ran Paramount Pictures and his wife his
ex wife Kathy Preston, was a huge and is a
huge animal rights supporter. This was how we got to
have the PEEDA fundraiser on the lot of paramount. But
(25:28):
the idea is for most people, beyond pets, beyond a
dog or a cated domestic animal, the relationship with all
other animals is a meal on plates. How do you
get people who have the money, perhaps, how do you
get them to care? But what do they give a
shit about rhino horn?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Exactly? What do you tell them exactly?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
So my pitch now is that at the level we work,
we are really talking about industrial scale criminal exploitation of nature.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
So it's destroying the planet.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
It's destroying and entire We have a project now in
the Amazon on deforestation, land grabbing, and then how they
use this land for cattle and the meat. So they're
destroying our planets. So even if you don't care about animals,
it's important for our future to stop these criminal enterprises.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
And by the way, what they do also has.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
An impact on climate change as well. When destroying the forest,
when you're emptying the oceans, it will have repercussions also
on climate change. Unfortunately, climate change, in my opinion, is
a very self center narrative. It's mostly about us human
We are afraid. Okay, you're going very rarely. You hear
what about biodiversity? I mean we are destroying what's that?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
What's that word?
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Anthropocent interpose totally intra percent. You know, we are afraid
of we are afraid. But that's that's what it is about. Yeah, exactly,
so I tried.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
For example, we are we've been working on a network
of track trafficing network in operating between Peru Ecuador. They're
responsible alone for half a million sharks every year. Okay,
so before understanding our impact, you have to understand the
impact of these networks, how they're destroyed, and how it
is important to stop them. Otherwise the next generation we
(27:12):
keep talking about, oh hey, let's do our best to
protect as much as we can, so the next generation
will find something. Well, I app news for you. If
you continue like this, they will find nothing. There's nothing
to protect. Even if they will come up with the
best possible solution, there will be nothing to protect. So
most of the species and ecosystem and wild spaces do
not have the time for a generational change.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
It's now or never.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Animal activist Andrea Crosta, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell
a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing
on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, Andrea Croster shares his experiences meeting
wildlife traffickers on the ground. I'm Alec Baldwin and you
(28:16):
were listening to Here's the Thing. In the early days
of Earth League International, Andrea Kroster was given a crash
course in some of the darkest parts of humanity, those
people willing to hurt vulnerable animals for profit. That knowledge
came at a price, one which included his marriage at
(28:36):
the time. Kroster has since rebounded and re partnered.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
That was the early days when I had to go
through educate myself. So I it took a toll on you.
Of course, it was a cost for you. It was painful,
was paid. It would be for anybody. No, and I
was also probably not prepared. But I had to do
it because you had to see what you're fighting. And
so progress at Detroy, my soul at destroy and the
(29:04):
marriage by the way, and that makes you sick and
makes you sick. I moved to Los Angeles. I got
an informa in Los Angeles. I took you know and
all this while trying to fundraise and work right, and
and then after the informat it was COVID for two
three years. So it was just a mess. And I
never gave up. I never saw okay, that's that's enough.
(29:24):
Maybe okay the tallest tootle now, I never said that
we could, you know, with my small team, we continue
to work throughout well informa throughout the COVID, But on
a personal level, I was dead broken, broken completely. I
was just living with my dog Argus in Marianda in
my apartment. And then that's of course you Argosia from
(29:46):
from the Olysses, So Argus first and Sophia later.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Literally you know when you when where did you meet her? Friends?
In in in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
And and she has a really she is a nurse
for you know, for working or children. I see us
are really you can imagine the grounded, grounded or and
I needed somebody like this to, you know, to pull
me up. I was ready to continue with my work,
but trading off my personal life. You know, when you think, okay,
(30:16):
I'm going.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
To sacrifice one, you're going to continue, We're.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Going to continue, going to bust the ass of these people.
That's what I The reason I'm on this earth is
to protect the animals and doesn't matter what happens to me.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Do you think things have changed in the time you've
done this, Have things gotten better or people's attitudes towards
I mean to me, the most profound thing, or among
the many profound things you say, is their understanding of
the entire ecosystem correct, and that wildlife conservation is a
part of the ecosystem. Especially with fishing. You see what
you can take all those fish out of the water.
(30:47):
What's going to happen? Do you think things are improving?
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Maybe locally here and there. It's all about you know,
with everything, it's all about people. If the right people
is doing the right thing in the right place, things
will change. Globally, I don't think so, And I think
one of the reasons is because again, environmental protection is
still not a priority. The climate change movement is ultra
focus on fossil fuel and this and that, but it's
(31:12):
not it comprehensive enough, exactly, not comprehensive enough. On the
other hand, what is moving finally, especially in the US,
is that the government, government agencies and big law enforcement
agencies are finally getting what is happening, and they're willing
to do something about it. But of course the US,
I mean, what you're going to do, and you know,
to change things in the Amazon, for example, you need
(31:34):
the Brazilian government, you need the Columbian government to do something,
and how.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
How do you do it? I honestly, I don't have
the answer for that.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
I mean I see myself as you know, running, you
know the relay run in the Olympics. You know, when
you run and you pass the baton to somebody else.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
That's my role.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
So I'm running as fast as I can, and I'm
doing as much as I can, and then I will
pass the baton to someone else and someone else because
I'm the more I work now and the more he
or she will find alive, and then it's her job
or his job to continue. I don't think I will
see a change in my life.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I want you to describe two different people you may
have met. I'm assuming you have met, and I want
to start with have you ever met a trafficker? Have
you ever seen it? Talk to a traffic Yeah? Yeah,
we described the country, where were you the circumstances? What
did they tell you?
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (32:24):
It's a long lead.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I have a long I mean, we can do ten
different movies just from our stories. It's funny because we
recently started to produce also on top of our intelligence,
were also producing profiles, psychological profiles of the traffickers to
help law enforcement and agencies to understand who is this
who this guy. The big difference is that on top
of environmental criminal networks and trafficking networks, unlike narco trafficking,
(32:49):
they are businessmen. So first of all, they're business and
they do a lot of criminal stuff, but they're business.
They make a lot of money also from legal stuff.
Actually they are masters in overlapping legal and illegal. So
they have import, export, supermarket, restaurants, all kinds of businesses,
real estate, and on top of it, they also do
all kinds of trafficking and also not only I mean
(33:10):
we're not talking about again, while trafficing, illegal log illegal fishing,
illegal mining is a big thing as well.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Some of them are I would say, funny people.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I having a couple of them in mind, and every
time my mind, the COVID team comes back home and
we do the debrief and we discuss what they did.
They also they always say this guy are funny. They
know how to live. They have no clue what they're doing,
I mean the destruction that they don't care about it.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
They are usually very rich.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
They have ties with hundred percent criminal organizations and narco
trafficking for example, and they are really really good in
doing certain things without doing too much. For example, a
lot of the traffickers we have been investigating in the
past few years, they lounder the money for organized crime
and arco traffickers. They will never do drugs themselves, but
(33:59):
they are really good in laundering the money. And organized
crime and arco trafficing organization have the need of a
big they have to lounder a lot of money, a
lot of cash. They sit on cash in the US
as well, right, they don't know what to do with
all this cash. They're really good in doing that, so
they mix. They constantly mixed cousins. Absolutely, yeah, and that's
(34:19):
the same family. Absolutely, And that's the opportunity actually, because
while environmental crime and while trafficking and illegal logging whatever,
it has a lot of similarities with narco trafficking, with
one very important difference. At the top of an arco
trafficking organization, you have a big narcos, a big trafficker,
and you have zero average on this person. You kill
(34:41):
him or jailim. It's not you cannot do anything else.
And if you kill him somebody else, we can't part
with him. On the top of who runs the show,
environmental crime, the trafficking, they are businessmen. They make a
lot of money also from legal businesses. So my job
is to raise their cost of business, going after them
in a way there were nobody else, nobody ever, you know,
(35:02):
went after them like that, raise the cost of business,
arrest a bunch of them, and eventually hopefully push them
out of it.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
They don't want to but they don't want to go
to prison. Of course. People on the narco trafficking, then
they assume either they're going to pay off the cops
they shoot their way exactly. But eventually they realized they
might go to prison exactly.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
And they know they know right, but not these people.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I don't want to go to the prison, of course,
so Mike, no, So I'm trying to change the game
in this way. Forget about the ports, forget about the
little little fish, go after these people, show them that
they are not ghosts anymore. Because these people are ghosts
are no names, no face. My job is to give
a face and a name to ghost, and to do
that I use my ghost. Okay, so it's a battle
between ghosts. But the end game is at the end
(35:44):
this guy will have a name, will have a face,
and usually we provide intelligence about these people with you.
You had to understand you our reports are maybe you
will find fifty pages of intelligence about one single person.
So imagine how much you can do as law enforcement
agency about this person if you want to.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
You know John Hume, the character movie Trophy. In the
movie Trophy, what did you think about that argument where
he says, I've got to we have to kill some
of these animals, and we have to let people come
here and shoot some of these animals so I can
monetize the product to save the animals. I don't have
any budget. What do you think of that?
Speaker 3 (36:21):
So I know stuff about him that I cannot share here, just.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
To begin, I would imagine, but he it.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Wasn't the news a few days ago.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
He recently managed finally to sell his property, the whole
property thing, with all the rhinos included.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
And he has a huge vault of horn.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Exactly, So apparently when I heard the news, because he's
selling this this I don't know how many rhinos I think,
I don't know to Angil. Actually it's a big one
of the largest environmental organization in the world to African parks.
So they take in it and they it's a great
It's a strange idea, but okay, I can see the point.
And when I when someone asked me, you know, in
(36:59):
an interview, my reaction, the first thing I said was,
is he allowed to keep this stockpile because.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
He's sitting on hundreds of millions.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Of dollars of horns But there's a band on horns still.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Absolutely apparently apparently, I don't know, if it's true, he will,
he will be forced to destroy it. But because of course,
I mean, you know, you cannot. I'm completely against the
legal trade of this, of ivory or rhino.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
You just fuel the demand.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
And again, let's not forget we are dealing with Asia,
so two three billion people.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
You don't want to fuel the demand.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Of anything with exactly it's not Rhode Island, okay, it's Asia, Okay.
So so yeah, it's an interesting story. And he for
mister Hume, for many years kept saying Okay, we have
to sell Rhino a bit of fuel horns to sustain
the expenses. And I was always against absolutely.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Someone you worked with and they don't have to be
somebody who put their lives at risk. But I'm obviously
I'm thinking along those lines. Someone you work with, who
you really admired, someone you worked with you thought, my god,
this person like yourself. They're really committed to the scores
and they're willing to risk almost anything to follow through. Well.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
One of my is our chief investigator, the head of
our UNDERCOVID team, is incredible and he does things that,
in my opinion, nobody else in the world can do.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
And he's not out of it in the press. He
is still is.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Not American, and he does He's able to with his
team and also our guidance because there's a lot of
preparation before the mission, you know, we try to improvise
as lot as possible. He's able to really become good
friend of the worst possible people that you can imagine
on the planet and then get the kind of information
(38:48):
that not even the government can get from these people.
And I'm really proud of my team. I always say
I'm just I mean Most of the work is my team,
the undercover guys, the analysts, the people in the field.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
So I coordinated the whole thing. I had the idea.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
But they do that.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
They have to be praised, not really mean.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I can tell you a little story just to tell
you how sometimes the value of why is important to
become their friends.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Friends of these people.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
We work for more than a year in a Latin
American country on jaguar trafficking, so that they traffic parts
of jaguar, mostly.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
South America.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
In Brazil is Pantanalia, but they do it in Colombia
and Bolivia and Peru and Ecuadora and Surina everywhere, and
then they ship bones and fangs to Asia because with fangs,
they like to have fangs, you know, like jewelry and bones.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
They actually do like they do with tiger.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
They actually jaguar bones in Asia is then sold as
tiger and they do bone wine tiger bone wine to
enhance your you know, sexuality and stuff like that. But
they're destroying entire population of jaguars and Latin America. So
we help a local public prosecutor in Latin America to
a as the five most important jaguar traffickers in the
(40:02):
country and we did it very successful.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
We also published something. Then we went back to.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
The same country six months later last year to see
you know what happened. So the good news is that
everyone else stopped buying Jaguar, which is exactly my point.
If you scare them, they will stop, unlike narcle traffickers.
Believe me, if it's all about the right pressure points.
If you identify the right pressure point and then you
(40:29):
have fly pressure, they have fear, they stop. The funny
thing is that you're out of a movie.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Believe me. Is true.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
While we were meeting these traffickers, one of them received
first and SMS and then a call from a policeman
alerting them about us because they knew but they didn't
know exactly who we were. So this guy and we
were filming everything right away in the same time, so
filming up the cover of course. So this guy the
(40:56):
traffickers was telling my guy about us without knowing it
was us.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Right do you think AI? I mean, AI has become
a huge watchword in my business, was replaced by AI.
AI can help you in the work.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
You do eventually, probably, yeah, I mean in terms of
finding connection when you have a lot of data, and you.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Have a lot of forks.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Imagine you have a lot of names and address and
telephone numbers and emails and reach out accounts and all
kinds of names, all kinds of alienses, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
I think, Yes, the problem is.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
That all this information you should we should you know,
there should be one repository, one database with all this information,
or find a way to in this. Yeah, but I
want to say, you know, because every time people coming
up with all kinds of technologies and try to help us,
and what I answer is yes, but first of all,
you need human intelligence that only people can do. You
(41:53):
have to go there, get dirty, go in the middle
of nowhere, meet these people, understand these people. Okay, intelligence
come from the Latin intelligure. It doesn't mean to know,
it means to understand. And if you don't understand, you
will never have the right tools to fight back.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Now, in my travels around the world, many places of world,
no one knows how to relax and enjoy life and
and and get the most out of like the Italians.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
And you are an Italian and American recently.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Okay, so you're an Italian American, but you are Italian, yeah,
by birth, and I'm wondering, do you ever get to
unplug and live like Italians do and enjoy yourself or
you always plugged in. I'm a bad example of bad Italian.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
I'm an Argus and Sofia again are helping me a
lot to unplug. And it's so so important because if
you break, everything breaks.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Down with you, right, you put a lot of pressure.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yeah. But on the other hand, I think Italians have
in their DNA we know how to enjoy ourselves.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
So what do you do when you want to unplug?
Speaker 2 (42:55):
I usually hike on the Santa Monica Mountains with Argus
and Sofia or on the beach.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
That's it. I love.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
I mean, I'm a big, big lover of the Pacific
Northwest and Rocky Mountains, so whenever is possible, I go
there and just disappear for a while.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
If I want to wish you the best of luck,
I mean, I've read this article and I'm so admiring
of what you do, because you really are fighting what
I think it's one of the great battles to bring
to people the understanding that these environmental crimes all are
of one. Thank you, Andrea Crosta. This episode was recorded
(43:33):
at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by
Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is
Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm
Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that is brought to you
by iHeart Radio. The company can make the company
Host
Alec Baldwin
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