July 31, 2025 • 54 mins
We are stardust, we are golden. We are billion-year-old carbon. And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. Unless, of course, you're there to scam or steal. In that case, stay out of the garden, bro.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zeren Sorry I was napping ZN Listen.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
How you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I am well rested, now are you?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What about you?
Speaker 4 (00:12):
How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm good. I'm hanging in there.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
You seem bright eyed? Bushy tail?
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Hey, am my tail? Bushy full bush? Yes, bushy. Do
you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I do?
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Pinocchio?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (00:25):
No.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Do you know the story of the Pinocchio? Like the
premiere in New York City of the movie, it was
like a big deal. Walt Disney like hired people like
little people to play Pinocchio. He hired like what's the
opposite of a Baker's dozen, like eleven eleven eleven. He
hired eleven little people. This is in nineteen forty, right.
He put them up on top of like this marquee,
(00:47):
and they're all dancing up there and supposed to like
grow stuff and like blow kisses at the people, all
dressed as Pinocchio.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Right, little people, eleven Pinocchio.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
But they're gonna be up there for like all day long.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
There's only one Pinocchio, I.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Know when in this case there was eleven. And he
gave him lunch and then also bottles of wine, and yeah,
I know, white is wild. And it was so hot
that day that they ate all the food and by
the afternoon they drank all the wine. And then they're
so hot did they took off their costumes. They stripped
down and got naked. So you had these naked, painted
little people on top of this marquis and he started
(01:18):
like throwing things at people and shouting provanities at the crowd.
It was amazing, but eventually got so bad that the
police had to be called in to pull them down
off the marquee. And do you know how they did it?
They put them in pillowcases and drug them off like
a bag of kittens. No, not happen nineteen forty, not
that long ago.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
They put them in pillow grown.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Drunk, grown people, drunk, naked and pillow cases and threw
them over their sacks like you know, like they're going
down to the river to get rid of kittens.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Yeah, Pinocchio, I don't like this.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
It's it's ridiculous, right, it's totally Do you know what
else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Oh, I got it, I hope so plants.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Plants are ridiculously cool. This is ridiculous. Crime, a podcast
(02:21):
about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always
ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
You I'm right, that's right. Today Saren is gardening day
here at Ridiculous Crime.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Oh, Gardening's my escapism.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yes, Like I'm outside, which I love.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
All that matters are the living things I'm assisting.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
True.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I love the entire process and the cycle.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And the sun too.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah. Well, from like starting seeds, prepping beds, fertilizing, pruning, cultivation, blah.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Blah blah, all the stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
The rest of the world doesn't exist when I'm in
the gardens.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
You got two green thumbs.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Sometimes I listen to music, do you. Most of the time,
I just listen to what's around me.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
I what you grow, you eat what I grow.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I listen to birds, practicing the clarinet.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I used to like doing that as a housepanner, sitting
on the roof listening to birds.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Listen to birds. It's good stuff. That's how I stay
relatively sane, you know almost. I love gardening shows. Let's
just talk about me for a little bit. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You introduced me to monty Don.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
That was to say, my dog is named after the
host of BBC Gardener's World, Monty Don Gardener's World, best
show ever show. It's like Xanax. It's pleasant, relaxing, happy.
If you have brit Box and you want to chill
out and be spoken to intelligently and quietly, just watch it.
Watch Gardener's World. But this is going to be a
(03:44):
mellow episode. I'm going to take the temperature down a
little bit. Yeah. I follow a bunch of gardening subreddits.
Of course you do, and that's where I'm going to
start today. Okay, so this is something I read about
on Reddit and then I experienced it for my interesting
There are indeed gardening crimes. I'm going to start off
with one that's more of a scandal, but I suppose
(04:06):
you could classify it as fraud.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
Like stolen It is Peppergate.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Peppergate, So this Peppergate was the seed distribution scandal that
went down two years ago, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Seed distribution scandal.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah, I know, it's it's hard boiled.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Is so different than mine.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
So it's so Pablo Escobar. It's like, yeah, it's edgy,
So that's summer twenty twenty three, gardeners, small agg producers,
they started reporting that their pepper plants weren't growing true
to type.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
So seed packets would be labeled as like specific varieties
like say sweet bell peppers or very specialized hot peppers,
and they were producing either the wrong type of pepper
or in some cases no fruit at all.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Oh, that's got to be frustrated. Its a while to
figure that out.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Right, exactly. So the issue started to gain traction on
gardening forums, like you know, it was in Reddit TikTok
where the name peppergate was coin and.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
So I missed all of them.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
I read about it, and then I lived at saren.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
You lived it. It happened to you.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Well, I start my vegetable plants from seed, do you yes?
And I use small or heirloom seed suppliers, and I
stay away from stuff like Burpie or things at the
hardware store because I'm not like really specific.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
For right, I'm gonna be really dumb. Is Burpie a brand?
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Berpie's a brand that's like the Big Dog.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Garden, like a technique or what?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Now Burpie? Well, isn't that like a CrossFit thingye know?
I don't do that either, but like that's all I
knew it as I knew that's not what you meant.
I had some peppers that I started from seed in
January of twenty twenty three. Okay, Horno de toro, Italian
sweet peppers, zapptec, halapanos, that kind of thing. So I
was at home, deskpot right, and I'm picking up some dirt, okay,
(05:48):
and I saw peblano pepper seedlings from like a big
garden brand, and I was like, you know what, I
forgot to start poblanos from seed because if you drive.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Them Elizabeth internal dialogue.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna grab
two of them and tuck them into my raised beds.
You know, No, it's the wiser. And they flourished and
then they started producing and producing, and honey, there were
no poblanos. What they were shashidos zaren Oh.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
My gosh, ishetos like the face brush.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yeah. I occasionally enjoy some roasted shashitos, but not too bustling.
It's like a It's the thing about shashido peppers, is
it like one out of ten that you eat is hot.
It it's like a Russian roulette of pepper. Okay, otherwise
like a regular kind of sweet pepper.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
This one's this one coolah yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
And so you you pick them, you roast them in
the oven, and then people have them like they'll dip
them and stuff. But it's like an appetizers roasted shios.
And then every now and then you get a YoY
this wild right, So you know I have all these sashidos, right,
I'd seen this happen in other people's and now it's happening.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
In mind your garden.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah. So here's what went down. A large seed distributor,
a subcontractor for a lot of popular retail seed brands,
mislabeled pepper seed batches during packaging. So one of the
things this exposed is that most seed packet brands you
see are filled by pretty much the same company. Oh yeah,
and so a mistake at the top of the chain
(07:25):
trickled down to stores everywhere and numerous brands. Yes, there
are about four companies that control most of the small
seeds in the world. It's totally monopolized. So like small
businesses don't always have clear lines to the product origin
and seeds they're purchased through a broker working under a
larger broker or distributor, and then that's owned by even larger.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And this is also true for the airloms.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
You're saying, yes, whoa, Well no, not for the airlooms,
for the small So like the I only had the
problem with the seedlings that I got at home.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Depot ah, so not the airline.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Like the ones I grew from seed from small places.
They knew exactly where it was coming from. So a
lot of the seed. Yeah, the seed packet companies, like
when you go into like say ACE Hardware, you have
like that whole rack and they like so they don't
divulge their sources.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
You can't see on theirs from no Wow, and.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
A lot of times you know, because they'll market themselves
as like old timey and organic ish and small, but
they're getting their seeds from like mon Santo.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, So the seed packet that you buy for ninety
nine cents at a dollar tree might have the exact
same seeds as those in a packet for four ninety
nine at ACE or six point fifty at a specialty store. Wow,
same supplier. So somewhere along the line, there was a
lack of quality control and the labeling and the sorting,
and there also could have been like cross contamination, but
(08:47):
it looks like it was just a mix up and
it was massive.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Sounds like it.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So sweet peppers were labeled as hot peppers vice versas.
It was chaos Zarin. The big thing was that a
lot of people bought more expensive rarer varieties and wound
up with like cheaper basic stuff like generic Hall of
Pans or banana.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Peppers fraud and then like it seemed.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Like a lot of people wound up with banana peppers.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I know, some like me, they bought seedlings at a store.
Others started from seed and they didn't get what they wanted.
Reddit TikTok. Just chock full of people angry.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Oh I bet your people will drive them nuts.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
So many This was not big Gardner's world energy. This
is angry. So all of these, like a bunch of
different major seed brands, they issued public statements, they offered
refunds or replacements, and there was talk about a class
action lawsuit based on breech of warranty. Yeah, because small
(09:44):
scale farmers they sell it like farmers markets and such,
or they supply the CISA boxes the community supported agriculture. Yeah,
you know you get stuff direct from a collective of
local farms.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
I've done that. They dropped the food off and you don't.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Know what's going to be in there in season and
ripe amazing so CSAs and small farmers' markets. They were
out of a whole year's worth of peppers, you know,
And that's sad, like it blew like.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Also it's going to mess up a lot of stuff.
Not just sad, but I mean that's like it ruined.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
It ruined their their whole business. You know, if you were, like,
you know, doing a lot of peppers.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And possibly the next year because how do you trust them?
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Again?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Exactly exactly So what it did though, it started driving
business to small seed companies. That's good. Uh. And it
got people saving their own seeds from year to year
instead of buying new seed. Thearen It was a cautionary
tale I'm telling you about supply chain fragility, high steaks
for something so small. Serious speaking of small seed companies,
(10:49):
I have an even bigger scandal for you, please, the
Purple Galaxy tomato scandal.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
What is that a tomato?
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yes? It all started when the twenty twenty four Baker
Creek seed catalog came out. I get the catalog.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
I bet you they do.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
I don't usually buy from Baker Creek because apparently they
had Clive and Bundy speak at some event once, and
their seeds aren't the best germinators. But I do love
their catalog.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Wait, the like BLM Cloud Bundy like steal the land
from the government.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Why is he talking to garden'? That's what a lot
of I guess they just.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Feed themselves because they're sovereign citizens.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I guess, so a lot of people don't order from
them because of that. But also they're just kind of
they get duds sometimes. But they have an amazing catalog.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
It gives me ideas like pictures, why did you talk?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah, and it comes in like December or January. It
has all the seeds for the years.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Now do they have like a J. Peterman catalog where
there's a character telling you about these seeds?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Almost really all not a character, but like there's the
descriptions are really fabulous. Some of them have incredible illustrations.
So but this is like, you get this catalog in
the dead of winter, you're dreaming of warm weather, being
out in the garden, it's garden porn.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
I can see that.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
So the twenty four Baker catalog, it had a stunning
ever model. Oh my god, the cover model. It was
the purple galaxy tomato. Is that the man alive? It
was a liquor. Okay, this is a blackish purple tomato
with tiny pink dots on the outside and like a
(12:19):
deep violet fuchia inside. Whoa, yeah, that was the distinction
because most purple tomatoes they don't hold their color.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Inside the skin.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
And so it was built so as the quote purplest
non GMO tomato ever, purple is GMO, being genetically modified organisms.
So this was either way you slice the tomatoes are.
It was a great looking to me. And they're also
supposed to be all these like health benefits because it's
like when you have a purple skin tomato, high antioxidants,
(12:51):
high anthi cyanin, so these compounds you know, reduce the
risk of cancer inflammation, and they're also good source of
vitamins and minerals.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Totally fature colors, people, that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
So there it is on the cover. Some people noticed
that it looked a whole lot like a GMO tomato
made by a company called Norfolk Healthy Produce and HP.
Now remember Baker Creek is like, we're no GMO, We're heirloom, We're.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah, we draw pictures.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
And HP is a UK company with American operations based
in Davis, California, my hometown. You see, Davis, my alma
mater from mir ag School. Some me would say it's
the best in the planet, and I should know, because
I have an English degree from it. I should know.
So they've always been on the cutting edge of crop innovation.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
And the flavorsavor tomato.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Yeah, so there's Cultivar VF one, aka the square tomato.
There's that one too, Yeah, came out of Davis. It
wasn't really a square, it was just less round and
it was to keep it from keep the tomatoes from
rolling off of conveyor belts. Also had thicker skins so
they'd pack in the boxes better wouldn't roll off the
top of a truck.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Very Japanese.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah, fewer losses. So Davis, as you know from growing up,
there is smack dab in the middle of commercial tomato country.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yes, Trucks haul tons of the things from fields to
canneries each fall, and the square tomatoes. They were designed
for just that commercial use, not you know, around my birthday.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Every country road do you turn a corners just littered,
but tomatoes where the trucks have made a turn, and tomatoes.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Because they weren't using the square. The inventor of the
square tomato was this guy, Gordie Jack Hannah. He was
an associate in the Agricultural Experiment Station and a professor
in truck crops, which, like truck cps the greatest at Davis.
He was also a plant breeder with this private company
petto Seed in Woodland, Califun.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Okay shout out Woodland.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
According to local lore on the Davis Wiki, yes, doctor
Hannah would quote stand in the fields, walk among the plants,
collecting random tomatoes, and then go and throw them ounta
into the road as a test. Captain rebred from the plants,
featuring tomatoes hardy enough to survive his test, eventually giving
us the hardy tomato that can withstand being picked by
(15:10):
machine and transported by truck.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
And have flavor and have flavor.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
So NHP based in Davis, they engineered a purple tomato
called the Purple Tomato, and that was just like the
one from Baker Creek only it was engineered with the
jenes from a snap dragonflower in order to achieve purple flesh.
So tomatoes they have about thirty five thousand genes, and
purple tomato has only two extras from a snapdragon, according
(15:37):
to NPR quote. When news of a non GMO purple
flesh tomato variety started circulating on social media last fall,
some scientists and tomato enthusiasts weren't so sure. I had
discussions with colleagues about it, and all of us just
looked at it and said, well, that's the GMO tomato,
says David Francis, a professor of horticulture and crop science
(15:58):
at the Ohio State Universe City who specializes in tomato
breeding and genetics. Traditional plant breeders to date have not
been able to create a purple flesh tomato with cross pollination.
Purple skin, yes, purple flesh not so much. But using
recombinant DNA technology, scientists in the United Kingdom had developed
a purple flesh tomato high in antioxidants. It was recently
(16:21):
approved for sale and consumption in the United States. So
you can see where it has to be genetically modified
to get there exactly. Baker Creek says, we don't do GMO,
like they're aggressive about the sounds. NHP very much GMO.
So NHP sees the catalog, they get the catalog, they're like, hub,
but wait a second, it looks familiar.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
I recognized that flesh they call foul.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
So they got some of the seeds, tested them and
found they were actually GMO. They were genetically modified.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
But that's not hard to test, right.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Baker Creek immediately pulled the seeds from the catalog and
destroyed all the stock. Ooh yeah, And then they released
the statement on Facebook, because that's where if you're serious,
you put your seeds. Quote. After repeated testing, we are
unable to conclusively establish that the Purple galaxy does not
contain any genes that have been genetically modified. So they said, well,
(17:13):
we got our seeds from this really reputable traditional plant
breeder and per PR quote a hobby breeder in France,
where growing GMOs is banned. Yeah, they probably blame a
French guy.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Blame the French to blame the front.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
The problem is that the purple tomato and the technology
used to breed it patented. So NHP was like, look,
just take the seeds off the market, but we do
want to know how did the seeds go from a
UK lab to some guy in France corporate espionage. So
NHP was like, look, GMOs low risk in you know,
(17:47):
terms of spreading and damaging biodiversity. When it comes to tomatoes, yes,
I mean they're just like, you know, there's they're just
trying to explain that, Look, these aren't poisonous tomatoes, gotcha.
And so there were threats of lawsuits, threats of investigations,
and it kind of stalled out. Those are two plant
(18:07):
scandals to get us warmed up today, Like next up,
serious crime. Okay, let's break for some ads and when
we get back we'll experience the smugglers.
Speaker 6 (18:16):
Blues Zaren Elizabeth, Welcome.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I'm sorry, I was thinking about Davis and tomatoes right
back to the summer that was wild on.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Welcome to my garden. The big dog of plant crimes
is smuggling. And there are a lot of reasons why
it's illegal.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Smuggling.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, because like well smuggling plants. So you know, if
you take plants from like really fragile ecosystems, disrupting natural processes,
you you get habitat loss for other species. Uh, you know,
there's like the over collection of rare and endangered plant
species that can push them to extinction, reducing biodiversity. If
(19:15):
you smuggle a plant zarin, there could be pests and
disease in it. Oh yes, yes, harming native plants, animals, whatever.
Some smuggled plants pose a health risk to animals humans.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Oh yeah, because if they're the wrong environment, they're like,
we have no natural defenses.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
People like this is a beautiful flower and they smell
it and they die because they don't know what it is,
because someone smuggled it somewhere. Anyway. So the plant trade
is often also linked to organized criminal networks, and that
is an episode of law and order organized crime. Then
(19:53):
I want to see, let me give you some example cases,
and you and I we can pretend that Elliott's Chris
Maloney detective Juicy Booty is the one investigating all these
all right, So, succulents and cacti very popular these days.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Seculents and cacti, Yes, I like them personally because they're
hard to kill.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
And then you don't have to water them for like
a week, sometimes two weeks. I can go on to vacation,
come back, and like, oh I should have thought about
my plants.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
And living in California, we can just leave them outside
all the time where it's like another climate. They got
to bring them in.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Go back, and what zone are we in? I just
learned that we have zones.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Of plants can be here.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Oh wow, Okay, I'm going to keep that for parties.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Don't quote me on that, because you know my brain
is Anyway. A very popular and highly coveted succulent these
days is the living rock cactus living cool. It is
close cousin to peyote.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
Oh yeah, does that.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Have any properties?
Speaker 7 (20:51):
No?
Speaker 3 (20:51):
People love them because there are no thorns, and they're
very plush. They're tiny, they're not tall, and the only
place that it's found is in the Big Bend region
of the Chihuahuan Desert.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Oh dope, hardy plant.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
It kind of looks like grogu hands. Nice, that's what
they look like. They aren't endangered, but they are protected
and they're only found in this very small area and
they take decades to mature.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
If it's not that, then it's a sparkling succulent.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yes, exactly, it's a it's a sparkling rock living rock.
So back in twenty twelve, US Fish and Wildlife they
got a tip there was smuggling going on in Texas
moving living rock cacti, thousands of them. Yeah, so smugglers
were offering these rare plants online to customers in Asia Europe.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Oh yeah, and they.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Would falsify custom slips to say the plants for something else.
And this, my friend, is a violation of the Lacy
Act of nineteen hundred. Okay, okay, so this is that
was the first federal law in the United States to
address wildlife conservation. Yeah right, thank you Lacey and Cagny.
(21:58):
It originally went into effect that so you can't eat
things that are made from the part of it. They
go hand in hand. Did you ever told you I
saw Tyne Daily in person? You have? She's across the
street from me.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Apparently was really memorable for you.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Really was. That's like my one celebrity sighting. No, I
didn't even get to Tyne Daily. There she is across Okay.
So the LASIAC goes into effect to stop illegal commercial
hunting and interstate shipment of wildlife, and it currently prohibits
trade in wildlife, fish, and plants that have been illegally taken, possessed, transported,
(22:40):
or sold. So what's crazy about this is that it
applies to both US and foreign laws. So if a
plant or animal is taken illegally under another country's law
and imported to the US, it's still illegal under the late. Yeah,
and it requires the declaration of plant and timber species
and country of origin when inward certain products. So Fish
(23:02):
and Wildlife they take this seriously as well. They should.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, it sounds like it's like one of their major
things to do.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
The director of their Southwest region amy looters, she said
in a statement. Quote. Those who came before US knew
the importance of protecting wildlife from unlawful trade. And this
law continues to stay relevant each time a poacher or
wild plants smuggler is charged. So booms erin, Yeah, this
is the laws to kill the law. So Fish and
(23:29):
Wildlife they got search warrants for six different houses, all
in West Texas. We don't know how many plants were
smuggled in total, but authorities seized around four thousand in
the raids.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
YEA.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
One of the plants that they seized was like thirty
years old.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
And they're taking them one and at a time in it, right.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
No, they're going out in the desert and scooping them
up and throwing them into a bag.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, but they have to pick each one. They're not
like just taking up like a big section of earth.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Oh yeah, no, one by what. Some of the plants
were just like stored in plastic bags, so they had
started to rot. Oh gosh, this was not cool, dude,
Come on, Don would never do that. Oh, Don would faint.
The surviving seas cacti they were turned over to soul
Ross State University. They have preserved a large number on campus,
but they also found like permanent homes home. They couldn't
(24:16):
really return most of them to the wild because they
didn't know what subpopulation they were from.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Anyone interrupt.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I mean it's like if you get taken from like
East Oakland and then planted back in West Oakland.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
That ain't right. No, you don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
You can't just go stick them anywhere. So the big
dog in the ring that was Harry George Bach the second.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Not Harry George Box. Second, Harry Box.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
He shipped forty one living rock cactuses that were seized
in an international mail facility in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It was like a doctor se Harry box Rock.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Yeah, Bock was shipping rock twenty eighteen in Chicago. In
twenty twenty, he pleaded guilty before a magistrate in Pecos, Texas,
to one count of mislabeling exports in the scheme to
ship cactuses overseas. As part of a plea agreement. He
faced three years probation, seventy two hundred dollars in restitution,
and he had to forfeit the forty one living rock cactuses,
(25:14):
but no.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Time behind bars. So they threw the plant catalog out.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
They busted another dude he got he got like three
years probation, had to pay more than ten grand in restitution.
There's a seventy two year old fell out a study
Butte Texas. Yeah, he got misdemeanor charges going back to
twenty sixteen probation. So that all these guys they get probation.
One dude he got felony, three years probation and sixty
(25:39):
grand in restitution.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
Should you imagine.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Losing your voting rights because you were like running hot plants?
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Oh that how you go in like you go inside. No,
they're lucky. They didn't go behind bars. What are you
in caractice smuggling? It looked like grogu hand.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Did you say plump smuggling? No, cactus smuggling.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Guy, he had, he got He was busted on the charges,
but he also had to forfeit his firearms.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
They seized his colonies.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, yes, they're like, I know you're a You're a
plant smugg and a gun owner. Can't have the guns now, sir.
Here are some wise words from US Attorney John Bash
on the matter. Quote, when you miss with protected Texas cacta,
you're missing with Texas Pako's building.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
No other way.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
So these bad own rays, though, right, they have nothing
on the world's most notorious succulent thief, South Korean national
jongsu Kim.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Wait a minute, this sounds familiar.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Let's talk dude. Leah, okay, hey, let's talk about it.
Commonly known as live forevers, okay, I think so. These
are a type of rosette forming succulent plants that are
in the stone crop family super Desirable. They're native to
California and northern Baja California forty seven species, twenty one subspecies.
(26:54):
As a very popular, very trendy, very like Pinterest, insta esthetic.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Grin, I got you like an airplane, Like people want
these things because they're the thing.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Yes, And it's dawning on me that I think you
probably heard about it from another place that I heard
about it. Yes, we have a mutual friend. Yes, Kip,
yesse in the California Native Plant Society, and he will
go on a diatribe about it. Oh, totally.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
I think he helped some of the detective.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
I think he went under cover as a rock.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
They cling to the coastline right to get the area.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Yeah, and like if you get Kip started.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
About this, oh, he turned red.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah, he's just like this is really upsetting.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
You think he was talking about like like orphans, you know,
like children in.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
My word, talking about Dudleia.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Yes, they're a California game warden. He told the USC
Paper quote, it's like having a Fendi bag on rodeo
drive Dulia Farinosa from the wild bluffs of Mendocino, California.
Especially a five headed one is apparently a super cool
thing to have. And I was like, I didn't get
the game warden's name, but I wanted to know if
(27:59):
it was Kip. So many of the plants traffic to
South Korea probably ended up being resold elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
And they sold for a lot. Right, they're really desirable
and because they grow and they look really beautiful when
they sit there.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
But right, and so you know these things start getting
popular California Fish and Wildlife, they're like, oh I noticed that.
As they're going through their Pinterest, they're like, that's that's
not a houseplant. But so the truth is that the
hipsters in South Korea, they weren't the ones buying up
the plants because like, these plants don't do well in
domestic captivity for the average. So the one that was
(28:33):
both sought after that Pharaonsa. It's, according to The Guardian,
is quote particularly charismatic to humans. Experts say they boast
the precise mix of qualities that Americans demand from crime victims.
They are pretty and small, very fragile and yet curiously resilient.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
That's what we demand from crime.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
I guess I know.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
That about that. Yeah, like make them pretty and small. Anyway,
so that's not going to make you a lot of
money with mass consumers. Something that's you know, not going
to live very long. So once well, no, because they
smuggle them to South Korea because there are these high
end greenhouses there and the wild Dudley. It could then
(29:16):
be babied there for a few years in perfect conditions,
and then they're big and beautiful. They're not small and
gragule anymore. They're big and beautiful. These are big mamas,
and they get sold at these astronomical prices to like
elite collectors.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
When he told me, I couldn't believe.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Yeah, So how does mister Kim factor intoll? Well, first
of all, I need to let you know that his
alias was Neo, like like in the Matrix. I love
that movie. But being called Neo while stealing plants is
like big loser. No, I'm not going to He's like
(29:55):
spinning around in a trench stopped.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Stop, bend over, bullet time, stop it throw the plant
at me.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Watch this, mister Kim call me Neo. No. Neo flew
from Mexico into Los Angeles International Airport in October twenty eighteen,
and with them were his two assistants, Young and Back
and Bong Junkin. And they thought they were like slipping in,
but California fish and wildlife were all over them the
moment they set foot watch well. Yeah, so game wardens
(30:26):
tailed the trio. They watched as they went and rented
a minivan, and then they filled up the van with
like empty backpacks and plastic bins and boxes. They got
all their supplies.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Picturing the game wardens in like a rental car, but
they've got like dirty boots.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
In there, like like a tan jeep totally but with
like false nose and glasses on it. So then they
trailed the minivan up as they drive up the coast.
And for a week, the wardens watched and followed as
the guys stopped at state parks all along the northern
California and in each stop they like scramble up to
the rocky shore. Sometimes cliffs snatch up the plants and
(31:01):
like you know how the coast is up there in Mendocine,
Like you said.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
It's just like sheer.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
They got lucky.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
It's not sandy flat cliffs craggy and it is dramatic.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah you're hanging.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Yeah. So the three dudes they filled the van chok full,
took the loop van filled the van, took it back
down south to a business called Secret Garden Nursery in Vista, California,
it's kind of halfway between like La and San Diego,
so inland from ocean side. And I say that to
those who know the state, and I apologize to the
rest when who this means absolutely nothing? And yeah, but
(31:37):
like the inland from ocean side. No, yeah, anyway, so Vista,
California's secret garden nursery. So they drop off the stolen plants,
they get back in the minivan and then they go
up to Mendocino again. They're like Tomndo, another load. And
so you know who was with them, game wardens with
the state watching.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
They're in the car.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
They're like cleaning to the underside. So they waited and
they watched as Neo hooked up documents to have the
secret garden nursery legally export two hundred and fifty nine
pounds of julio and the manifest said all the plants
had originated in San Diego. And then the wardens watched
while Neo and the crew took scores of boxes of
(32:18):
plants to an export facility in Compton, and then they struck.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
Finally, Neo and the boys.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Were driving off when they were intercepted by the plant police. Oh,
they did like a pit move on it totally. And
it turns out the boxes held more than six hundred
pounds of succulents, three seven hundred and fifteen individual plants.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
These are not heavy plants. That's a lot, all of them.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
It's like maybe the size of your fists. Yeah, all
of them. More than double what the documentation closed. So,
folks from the California Native Plant Society like people stoked
and so Neo and his little goons, they were charged
with conspiracy and violating a California law against destruction or
removal of plant material on public land. And the wardens
(33:02):
estimated that the total for all of this that they
stole on the South Korean market was six hundred thousand dollars. WHOA, yeah,
So those were state charges. The Feds, specifically the US
Attorney's Environmental Crimes Unit, they wanted in on it too.
They wanted to make an example of these dudes. Whether
(33:22):
that department exists in the US Attorney's office today, who's
to say either way. Neo and the boys they caught
federal charges too. It's like they say, you know, as
California goes, so goes the nation. So May of twenty nineteen,
Kim Neo found out that the Feds were going to
bring the hammer down, so he ran.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Fact.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Yeah, well no, they had confiscated his passport when he
got busted, Well, he got busted on the California state charges.
He gets around it by going to the South Korean
Embassy in La and he's like, guys, I lost my passport,
which I mean, technically is not wrong.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
So they issued him.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
A new one and then he went down Mexico Way.
He crossed over to TJ's on Foot Tijuana and from
there he flew to China and from there South Korea.
So he's in the wind until he wasn't. After only
five months, he popped up again.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
He couldn't stay away the first time.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
In South Africa. What And it was there that South
African investigators busted him as he was illegally harvesting more
than two thousand rare succulents. South African climate is very similar.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, I just what I say. Yeah, imagine that they
would have like he's like, okay, I'll go to my
secondary spot the harvesting.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
One of the ones that he poached was more than
two hundred and fifty years old, were and like dozens
of them are more than one hundred years old, like tortoises.
Uh huh. So the prosecutor on the case gets a
phone call ring Ring Hello, michel A, I guess what.
I'm an American Fish and Wildlife officer. I work at
the embassy as an attache. It's a cool job, and
I have crazy news. Your plant smuggler is wanted back
(34:53):
in the US of A. So the South Africans they
were already like heated up about Neo and according to
the Guardian, they quote highlighted the severity and brutality of
Kim's crime against nature and how stealing quote large ancient
mother plants puts the entire species at risk, especially during
times of serious drought. The collection of these plants is
an ecological tragedy, they wrote. They were They're totally right.
(35:18):
So Kim pleads guilty to the South African charges, pays
a large fine, does a year in prison there, then
gets extradited to the US. US prosecutors they asked for
three years in prison. They're like, we want to make
an example of him. Neo's attorney it was like, slow down, Joe.
His client had been through the ringer. So yeah, he
(35:41):
got COVID in prison, he got the stuff and beaten
out of him. It was so bad that his jaw
had to be wired shut, which is how he showed
up in court and the attorney was like, you know,
this is what happens when you were locked up and
you don't speak the language. I think it's because he
went in there and was like, call me neo. They're
just like yeah, either way. He gets sentenced to two years.
(36:05):
Bureau of Prisons gave him credit for South African time served,
and then he gets shipped off again, just like the
plants he stole, this time to the tippy top of
California in none other than your favorite place, the Lamb.
That time forgot Crescent City.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Oh god.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
He had to face the music on the plant theft
and fleeing prosecution charges from the state. So twenty twenty
two he pleads guilty, sentenced to twenty four months. He
only had to pay like four grand in restitution to
the state of California for expenses related to replanting the
stolen plants after his arrest. So let's take a break.
(36:42):
I gotta go water my plants. When we come back.
Speaker 7 (36:45):
More smuggling, yeah, Zaren Elizabeth Daren.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Do you remember what.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
I was saying during the break. I've been like translating
what you were telling me because I think this is
a new world to me. So I'm like, let me
put this in smoking the bandit terms, and so I've
been using that as like a way to understand. I'm like,
you can't take cours east of the Mississippi. That's bootlegs.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
There it is.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I'm like, now I guess it's clicking.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Yeah, Okay, Well, do you remember when I was like
telling you about the Lacey Act time? It was a
good time. We were so young, so fresh, different times. Well,
I have what is supposed to be a perfect example
of a Lacy Act violation and battle with the government. Please,
and it involves Gibbson guitars.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Do they grow those?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Yeah? So they're famous for the Les Paul the SG
Gibson Guitar Corporation. They mainly make guitars and basses, Mandolins. Yeah,
Orville Gibson. He started making instrum Gibson eighteen four wow,
And the company was founded in nineteen oh two. As
like Gibson Mandolin guitar, Kalamazoom Michigan and as you can
(38:09):
tell by the name. They were very mandolin forward in
the early days. So the company they invented arch top
guitars that had the same principle behind violins, like how
they're kind of that arch face of it. Then they
started making flat top acoustic guitars, and then the first
commercially available hollow body electric guitars all Jangle Jangled soneteen forty.
(38:32):
It's true they do chief dobras. In the nineteen forty
four Gibson got bought by Chicago Musical Instruments, and then
they got bought nineteen sixty nine by Ecuadorian Company Limited,
which was actually a Cannanian firm. Eighty six nineteen eighty six,
the company got scooped up by a group led by
(38:53):
Henry Yuskovic and David Barman, and then in November of
twenty eighteen, private equity stepped in and it was bought
by Colberg, Kravitz Roberts.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Sorry, Gibson, it really is.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Throughout its history, Gibson has been involved in a lot
of lawsuits, almost all of which stem from copyright stuff
for design, because people rip off the less Paul design the.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Way, Yeah, because you see the knockoffs. I had friends
when we were They.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Have their own down market version of the epiphone.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Tons of them. But there's another legal issue, and this
one popped up during the Uskowitz.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Barrim in years towards the end.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Yeah, in two thousand and nine, US Fish and Wildlife
Services are heroes today. They raided a Gibson factory where
they grow It seems they were using ebony wood illegally
imported from Madagascar. Oh, this is a big problem. Madagascar
suffers terrible poverty, corrupt government, and the world suffers from
(39:58):
a terrible desire for beautiful at a low cost. And
they've got a lot of them, and they got a
lot of and one of them is fine green lumber. Yeah,
so stuff like rosewood, ebony, stuff that makes Gibson guitars
so gorgeous. So in its investigation, the US Department of
Justice found some smoking guns. They got their hands on
emails in which Gibson employees talked about how ebeny wood
(40:20):
was part of a quote gray market and that they
could get it from a German wood dealer and just
not ask questions about where he got it, and even
though they knew that it was coming from a supplier truck. Yeah,
so they made plans to buy the wood even though
they knew the sale wasn't on the up and up
violation of the Laciact. In June of twenty eleven, the
DOJ filed a civil proceeding and it was the first
(40:43):
of its kind under the recently amended Lacy Act. So
importing companies had to follow the environmental laws in the
country of origin, even if the place was corrupt and
no one was enforcing those laws.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
Okay, so that me and mar Yeah ma a gascar.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
So Gibson fought the suit. They said that the government
was quote bullying Gibson without filing charges. Then the owners
of Gibson made the whole thing political by getting the
Tea party segment of the GOP the Republicans, to side
against the government on this, saying that it was going
to impact jobs.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
What.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Yeah, So then there was another Gibson factory. Rate zaren
close your eyes. I want you to picture it. You
are a nineteen year old guy named Colby. You are
forklift certified, and you work at the Gibson Electric Division
(41:39):
rough Mill facility in Nashville, Tennessee. When you tell people
where you work, they think it's the coolest job ever,
and it sort of is. But you aren't surrounded by
cool guitars all day. You move palettes of wood to
and from the kilns. You don't ever really see guitars,
and certainly no rock stars or anything. You got this
job through your cousin who works repair and restoration next door.
(42:02):
Now she gets to see a cool stuff. She processes
all the guitars that come in and sometimes meets some
musicians come to check the place out. But you you're
in the mill. It's a warm late summer day. More
than warm, it's sweltering. This is when it's pretty bogus
working in the rough mill. You are at the wheel
of a forklift, backing out of the storage area of
(42:23):
the warehouse with a palletful of raw rosewood, headed for
the kiln to be dried. After that it'll be plain
and then headed to the manufacturing building. And that's where
the magic happens. Baby, You've spent the morning moving bundles
of Indian ebony wood. The manifest ticket on these reads
Indian ebony fingerboards, but there's another slip of paper that
(42:44):
says they're veneers for the body of guitars. You know
that's not true, but whatever must be a paperwork mix up.
Just as you're moving your load of new rosewood toward
the kiln, the warehouse doors open to get some sort
of air circulation, are crowded with guys in mid breakers.
They look like FBI guys, but their jackets read us
Fish and Wildlife. You've heard something about this before. But
(43:07):
the building was rated a few years ago and the
FEDS were looking for wood from Madagascar. But this stuff's
from India. You don't know what the big deal is.
Over the crackle of their walkie talkies, an agent yells
at you to turn off the forklift and step aside.
You do as you're told. There's a slam of an
office door. You know what that means. It's Eugene. Eugene Nix.
(43:28):
He's in charge of all the wood that comes in.
He inspects it and then okays it for the killed.
Then he sends it for milling and then off to
the factory. He's pissed. He marches up to the agents,
a tiny radio playing classic rock in the background. Yeah, brother,
you tell him you think Eugene grabs some papers from
the hand of the agent out front. It's a warrant.
(43:48):
The agent tells him, I can see that. Eugene says, listen.
The agent says, I know you're a craftsman, an expert,
but we have to do our jobs here. Eugene scans
the papers as agents fan out and shut the rest
of the operation down. Your coworkers slowly emerge and gather
around watching the standoff. Eugene size folds up the warrant paperwork,
(44:09):
tucks it into the front pocket of his thin, worn,
short sleeve button down shirt, and then whips his cell
phone from his belt holster. He pushes some buttons and weights.
After a moment, he barks, feds are here. It's the
Indian Wood. Yeah, call the lawyers into the phone and
hangs up. You and your coworkers look at each other,
then at Eugene. He looks at all of you and
(44:30):
tells you it looks like you have the rest of
the day off. You'll get paid out for the hours,
head on home and he'll see you tomorrow. And this
Zarin was the raid that ground everything to a halt.
So they hit a bunch of locations, including headquarters where
they seize computers, oh and fish and wildlife found that
Gibson had been importing lumber from India, which is fine, sure,
(44:51):
but what they were importing wasn't legal because here's the thing.
The International Tariff Code, also known as the Harmonized Schedule
GRISS items shipped all over the globe and it's standardized
across nations in order to smooth out trade, true globalization.
So India forbids export of items categorized under the Code
(45:12):
forty four oh seven quote wood sawn or chipped, lengthwise,
sliced or peeled, whether or not planed, sanded or enjointed,
of a thickness exceeding six millimeters. So basically, you can't
export lumber from India unless it's already been worked on
by Indian workers.
Speaker 4 (45:31):
Smart so they.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Want to protect their jobs.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
That makes sense, like everyone's.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Got to look out for their own. Every country does
this sort of thing. We do it got to protect
your industries. So Gibson, though, was importing unprocessed wood, just
bundles of the wood, and they knew they weren't supposed to,
And all those shipping documents that were supposed to keep
this in line to be transparent about sourcing and destination,
they were all off full of discrepancy. Yeah, and so
(45:55):
the bundles of wood that you were moving at the
Gibson rough Mill, they weren't supposed to be there. They're
remarked for destination Germany. This company called Luthier's Mercantile International
in California was the importer of record, but they had
nothing to do with this. The stuff was just being
sent straight to Gibson in Tennessee, and so US Fish
and Wildlife they showed up seized the wood. They'd been
(46:16):
watching this at customs and they'd seized some other shipments,
the tracking shipments, and so they took all the wood
at the kiln, at the factory, at the storage facility.
And like Gibson pitched a fit, they were caught red handed.
And so they went politically.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
How did they pitch a fit based on what?
Speaker 3 (46:33):
They blamed President Obama? They thanks Obama, all right, So,
despite despite evidence that they willfully flouted the law, they
said that Obama had it out for them and specifically
targeted them. Okay, so usk of its right. He said
that Martin Guitars did the same thing and they didn't
(46:55):
get raised. He said it's because Martin were donors to
the Democratic National committee.
Speaker 4 (47:00):
Oh god.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
But here's the thing. Martin Guitars had all their paperwork
in line, and they could prove they hadn't violated the
Lacy Act, an act that went into effect more than
one hundred years before Obama was elected. So of course.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
They made classic guitars like Willie Nelson's is a Martin.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Yeah, that's like the og. According to NPR, quote, Chris Martin,
chairman and CEO of the C. F. Martin Guitar Company
in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, said that when he first heard guitars
built from Madagascar rosewood, he dreamed it might be the
long sought substitute for Brazilian rosewood, whose trade was banned
in the nineteen nineties due to over harvest. Then the
(47:37):
situation in Madagascar changed. There was a coup. Martin says.
What we heard was the international community has come to
the conclusion that the coup created an illegitimate government. That's
when we said, Okay, we cannot buy any more of
this would Yeah. And while some say the Lacy Act
is burdensome, Martin supports it. Quote, I think it's a
wonderful thing. I think illegal logging is appalling. It should
(47:59):
stop up and if this is what it takes, unfortunately
to stop unscrupulous operators, I'm all for it. It's tedious,
but we're getting through it.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
That's the way, that's the approach, that's reasonable and responsible business.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
So after all the bluster, all the victimhood and moaning
a development, after one year Gibson yusk of it admitted
to violating the Lacy Act. Good because like if they
kept trying to fight it, they knew criminal charges for
the ownership was on the horizon. And so there's like
(48:31):
a major digital paper trail proving they knew what they
were doing.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
They it was bad and a lot of musicians are ethically,
you're going to start to these customers.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Well that was the thing too, is that online Like
the response apparently it was just like burning up Facebook
with all this like these are American heroes and the
Obama governments trying to go after them, right, But it
was not. Guitar folks. Guitar folks and forums were like,
this is actually I don't want to play something that
came from totally. So Gibson had to pay a three
(48:59):
hundred thousand dollars far and they forfeited the majority of
the wood that was seized, but they did get some back,
and what happened with it is the question.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
What happened with Elizabeth?
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Thank you? In twenty fourteen, they released the Government Series
Les Paul SG three point thirty five and Flying V
guitars the color Government Tan, and so the guitar featured
that rosewood seized by the Feds in the Nashville raids.
They made one thousand, seven and fifty guitars, and they
(49:30):
started out at around eleven hundred dollars retail. They sold
out all of them. Of course, company officials said the
guitars quote suitably marks this infamous time in Gibson's history.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Did they go to Cabo Wabbos? People liked?
Speaker 3 (49:46):
Well, it gets better. So each guitar features a pit
guard quote hot stamped in gold with the Government series
graphic a bald eagle hoisting a Gibson guitar neck. Are
you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (49:57):
That's no Willie Nelson's IRS tape?
Speaker 3 (49:59):
I'm gonna not at all. So the company gave pad
a press release quote when the Powers the Beat confiscated
stocks of tone woods from the Gibson factory in Nashville,
only to return them once there was a resolution and
the investigation ended. It was an event worth celebrating. Well, yeah,
it was. The investigation ended because you were guilty and
you paid for it. So they didn't really become the
(50:22):
collector's item that Gibson thought they were going to be.
I saw them online for maybe like twenty five hundred
thirty two hundred dollars according to Ultimate Guitar dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
Okay, amazing, one of my favorite reads every morning.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
Quote. Seven years after the raids, Yuskowitz had run the
company five hundred million dollars into debt since his departure.
He insisted to Guitarist magazine that any notion that he
had anything to do with Gibson guitars dwindling reputation is
quote fake news. A company, now under new management is
committed itself to making guitars without critically endangered lumber, and
(50:56):
the article continues. A report in the Nashville Business Journal
in October of twenty twenty claim that Yuskovitz is now
starting up his own healthcare company in Nashville. Apparently he
found a business with bigger ethical loopholes to be exploited. Anyways,
we look forward to what the future will hold for
Gibson under new management, and we wish them the very best.
(51:16):
Ultimate Guitar dot com Zaren was your ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
I knew so little about any of this, but after
hearing it all, I'm not surprised that the people involved
are doing the stuff, like the smugglers and then the
businessmen with the unethical like yeah, we'll take what from whatever?
Speaker 4 (51:33):
Yeah, Like why are people like this?
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Like why do need to respect exactly? I know, I
know what about you, Elizabeth, but my takeaway is that
I still manage to get all heated talking about plants.
It's supposed to be chilled.
Speaker 4 (51:48):
You worked it in.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
That's not the xanax I promised. But I he's going
to go watch some gardener's world and cool out, Dave.
I think we should have a talk back.
Speaker 8 (52:05):
God, I went, Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
I'm very, very sick right now and I'm listening.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
To you guys.
Speaker 8 (52:19):
This is actually is the vocal range of my voice
at the moment, and I've just add to the introductions
of the pac Man Fever episode and the chicken lozenges.
Ridiculous do not want We love you, but you're a sick, lady.
(52:40):
This is creepier than it sounds.
Speaker 4 (52:46):
Save your voice, My goodness made me have a chicken lost.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
You know you laugh chicken.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
By the way, if you're ever sick, chicken soup, orange juice,
shout out. Tequila will heal you every time. But not
for that. We were just works every time.
Speaker 3 (53:01):
Yeah, but just like what about like generalized malaise.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Like just on a Monday. I'll probably.
Speaker 3 (53:11):
That's it for today. You can find us online at
ridiculous Crime dot com. The website just won the Outstanding
Act of Bravery Metal from the Elko, Nevada Police Department.
Speaker 4 (53:20):
Wow, finally, I know.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
I'm so proud. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue
Sky and Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod,
and you can email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail
dot com. But most importantly, as you know, I love
these leave it talk back, save your voices, do it
with robust. I don't want to hear anyone hurting themselves.
Get the free iHeart app. Go through that reach out.
(53:48):
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette,
produced and edited by Fugitive Luther Dave coustm starring Annals
Rutger as Judith. Research is by GMO Truth Marissa Brown
and Keen Observation Quality Assurance Skills by Gray Witten. The
theme song is by Poor Dirt Farmers Just Trying to
make a Live and Grow and hollow Body guitars Thomas
(54:10):
Lee and Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided by Body
five hundred. Guest hair and makeup provided by Sparkleshot and
Mister Andre. Executive producers are Dandelion Smuggler, Ben Bollen and
Rogue Fish and Game Warden Noel.
Speaker 5 (54:23):
Broun, Gus Crime Say It One More Time, Geequeous Crime.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts.
My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zeren Sorry I was napping ZN Listen.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
How you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I am well rested, now are you?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What about you?
Speaker 4 (00:12):
How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm good. I'm hanging in there.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
You seem bright eyed? Bushy tail?
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Hey, am my tail? Bushy full bush? Yes, bushy. Do
you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I do?
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Pinocchio?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (00:25):
No.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Do you know the story of the Pinocchio? Like the
premiere in New York City of the movie, it was
like a big deal. Walt Disney like hired people like
little people to play Pinocchio. He hired like what's the
opposite of a Baker's dozen, like eleven eleven eleven. He
hired eleven little people. This is in nineteen forty, right.
He put them up on top of like this marquee,
(00:47):
and they're all dancing up there and supposed to like
grow stuff and like blow kisses at the people, all
dressed as Pinocchio.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Right, little people, eleven Pinocchio.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
But they're gonna be up there for like all day long.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
There's only one Pinocchio, I.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Know when in this case there was eleven. And he
gave him lunch and then also bottles of wine, and yeah,
I know, white is wild. And it was so hot
that day that they ate all the food and by
the afternoon they drank all the wine. And then they're
so hot did they took off their costumes. They stripped
down and got naked. So you had these naked, painted
little people on top of this marquis and he started
(01:18):
like throwing things at people and shouting provanities at the crowd.
It was amazing, but eventually got so bad that the
police had to be called in to pull them down
off the marquee. And do you know how they did it?
They put them in pillowcases and drug them off like
a bag of kittens. No, not happen nineteen forty, not
that long ago.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
They put them in pillow grown.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Drunk, grown people, drunk, naked and pillow cases and threw
them over their sacks like you know, like they're going
down to the river to get rid of kittens.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Yeah, Pinocchio, I don't like this.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
It's it's ridiculous, right, it's totally Do you know what
else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Oh, I got it, I hope so plants.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Plants are ridiculously cool. This is ridiculous. Crime, a podcast
(02:21):
about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always
ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
You I'm right, that's right. Today Saren is gardening day
here at Ridiculous Crime.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Oh, Gardening's my escapism.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yes, Like I'm outside, which I love.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
All that matters are the living things I'm assisting.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
True.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I love the entire process and the cycle.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And the sun too.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yeah. Well, from like starting seeds, prepping beds, fertilizing, pruning, cultivation, blah.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Blah blah, all the stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
The rest of the world doesn't exist when I'm in
the gardens.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
You got two green thumbs.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Sometimes I listen to music, do you. Most of the time,
I just listen to what's around me.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
I what you grow, you eat what I grow.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I listen to birds, practicing the clarinet.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I used to like doing that as a housepanner, sitting
on the roof listening to birds.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Listen to birds. It's good stuff. That's how I stay
relatively sane, you know almost. I love gardening shows. Let's
just talk about me for a little bit. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You introduced me to monty Don.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
That was to say, my dog is named after the
host of BBC Gardener's World, Monty Don Gardener's World, best
show ever show. It's like Xanax. It's pleasant, relaxing, happy.
If you have brit Box and you want to chill
out and be spoken to intelligently and quietly, just watch it.
Watch Gardener's World. But this is going to be a
(03:44):
mellow episode. I'm going to take the temperature down a
little bit. Yeah. I follow a bunch of gardening subreddits.
Of course you do, and that's where I'm going to
start today. Okay, so this is something I read about
on Reddit and then I experienced it for my interesting
There are indeed gardening crimes. I'm going to start off
with one that's more of a scandal, but I suppose
(04:06):
you could classify it as fraud.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
Like stolen It is Peppergate.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Peppergate, So this Peppergate was the seed distribution scandal that
went down two years ago, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Seed distribution scandal.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah, I know, it's it's hard boiled.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Is so different than mine.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
So it's so Pablo Escobar. It's like, yeah, it's edgy,
So that's summer twenty twenty three, gardeners, small agg producers,
they started reporting that their pepper plants weren't growing true
to type.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
So seed packets would be labeled as like specific varieties
like say sweet bell peppers or very specialized hot peppers,
and they were producing either the wrong type of pepper
or in some cases no fruit at all.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Oh, that's got to be frustrated. Its a while to
figure that out.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Right, exactly. So the issue started to gain traction on
gardening forums, like you know, it was in Reddit TikTok
where the name peppergate was coin and.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
So I missed all of them.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
I read about it, and then I lived at saren.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
You lived it. It happened to you.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Well, I start my vegetable plants from seed, do you yes?
And I use small or heirloom seed suppliers, and I
stay away from stuff like Burpie or things at the
hardware store because I'm not like really specific.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
For right, I'm gonna be really dumb. Is Burpie a brand?
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Berpie's a brand that's like the Big Dog.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Garden, like a technique or what?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Now Burpie? Well, isn't that like a CrossFit thingye know?
I don't do that either, but like that's all I
knew it as I knew that's not what you meant.
I had some peppers that I started from seed in
January of twenty twenty three. Okay, Horno de toro, Italian
sweet peppers, zapptec, halapanos, that kind of thing. So I
was at home, deskpot right, and I'm picking up some dirt, okay,
(05:48):
and I saw peblano pepper seedlings from like a big
garden brand, and I was like, you know what, I
forgot to start poblanos from seed because if you drive.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Them Elizabeth internal dialogue.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna grab
two of them and tuck them into my raised beds.
You know, No, it's the wiser. And they flourished and
then they started producing and producing, and honey, there were
no poblanos. What they were shashidos zaren Oh.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
My gosh, ishetos like the face brush.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yeah. I occasionally enjoy some roasted shashitos, but not too bustling.
It's like a It's the thing about shashido peppers, is
it like one out of ten that you eat is hot.
It it's like a Russian roulette of pepper. Okay, otherwise
like a regular kind of sweet pepper.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
This one's this one coolah yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
And so you you pick them, you roast them in
the oven, and then people have them like they'll dip
them and stuff. But it's like an appetizers roasted shios.
And then every now and then you get a YoY
this wild right, So you know I have all these sashidos, right,
I'd seen this happen in other people's and now it's happening.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
In mind your garden.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah. So here's what went down. A large seed distributor,
a subcontractor for a lot of popular retail seed brands,
mislabeled pepper seed batches during packaging. So one of the
things this exposed is that most seed packet brands you
see are filled by pretty much the same company. Oh yeah,
and so a mistake at the top of the chain
(07:25):
trickled down to stores everywhere and numerous brands. Yes, there
are about four companies that control most of the small
seeds in the world. It's totally monopolized. So like small
businesses don't always have clear lines to the product origin
and seeds they're purchased through a broker working under a
larger broker or distributor, and then that's owned by even larger.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And this is also true for the airloms.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
You're saying, yes, whoa, Well no, not for the airlooms,
for the small So like the I only had the
problem with the seedlings that I got at home.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Depot ah, so not the airline.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Like the ones I grew from seed from small places.
They knew exactly where it was coming from. So a
lot of the seed. Yeah, the seed packet companies, like
when you go into like say ACE Hardware, you have
like that whole rack and they like so they don't
divulge their sources.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
You can't see on theirs from no Wow, and.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
A lot of times you know, because they'll market themselves
as like old timey and organic ish and small, but
they're getting their seeds from like mon Santo.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, So the seed packet that you buy for ninety
nine cents at a dollar tree might have the exact
same seeds as those in a packet for four ninety
nine at ACE or six point fifty at a specialty store. Wow,
same supplier. So somewhere along the line, there was a
lack of quality control and the labeling and the sorting,
and there also could have been like cross contamination, but
(08:47):
it looks like it was just a mix up and
it was massive.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Sounds like it.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So sweet peppers were labeled as hot peppers vice versas.
It was chaos Zarin. The big thing was that a
lot of people bought more expensive rarer varieties and wound
up with like cheaper basic stuff like generic Hall of
Pans or banana.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Peppers fraud and then like it seemed.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Like a lot of people wound up with banana peppers.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I know, some like me, they bought seedlings at a store.
Others started from seed and they didn't get what they wanted.
Reddit TikTok. Just chock full of people angry.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Oh I bet your people will drive them nuts.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
So many This was not big Gardner's world energy. This
is angry. So all of these, like a bunch of
different major seed brands, they issued public statements, they offered
refunds or replacements, and there was talk about a class
action lawsuit based on breech of warranty. Yeah, because small
(09:44):
scale farmers they sell it like farmers markets and such,
or they supply the CISA boxes the community supported agriculture. Yeah,
you know you get stuff direct from a collective of
local farms.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
I've done that. They dropped the food off and you don't.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Know what's going to be in there in season and
ripe amazing so CSAs and small farmers' markets. They were
out of a whole year's worth of peppers, you know,
And that's sad, like it blew like.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Also it's going to mess up a lot of stuff.
Not just sad, but I mean that's like it ruined.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
It ruined their their whole business. You know, if you were, like,
you know, doing a lot of peppers.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And possibly the next year because how do you trust them?
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Again?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Exactly exactly So what it did though, it started driving
business to small seed companies. That's good. Uh. And it
got people saving their own seeds from year to year
instead of buying new seed. Thearen It was a cautionary
tale I'm telling you about supply chain fragility, high steaks
for something so small. Serious speaking of small seed companies,
(10:49):
I have an even bigger scandal for you, please, the
Purple Galaxy tomato scandal.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
What is that a tomato?
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yes? It all started when the twenty twenty four Baker
Creek seed catalog came out. I get the catalog.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
I bet you they do.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
I don't usually buy from Baker Creek because apparently they
had Clive and Bundy speak at some event once, and
their seeds aren't the best germinators. But I do love
their catalog.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Wait, the like BLM Cloud Bundy like steal the land
from the government.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Why is he talking to garden'? That's what a lot
of I guess they just.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Feed themselves because they're sovereign citizens.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I guess, so a lot of people don't order from
them because of that. But also they're just kind of
they get duds sometimes. But they have an amazing catalog.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
It gives me ideas like pictures, why did you talk?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah, and it comes in like December or January. It
has all the seeds for the years.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Now do they have like a J. Peterman catalog where
there's a character telling you about these seeds?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Almost really all not a character, but like there's the
descriptions are really fabulous. Some of them have incredible illustrations.
So but this is like, you get this catalog in
the dead of winter, you're dreaming of warm weather, being
out in the garden, it's garden porn.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
I can see that.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
So the twenty four Baker catalog, it had a stunning
ever model. Oh my god, the cover model. It was
the purple galaxy tomato. Is that the man alive? It
was a liquor. Okay, this is a blackish purple tomato
with tiny pink dots on the outside and like a
(12:19):
deep violet fuchia inside. Whoa, yeah, that was the distinction
because most purple tomatoes they don't hold their color.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Inside the skin.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
And so it was built so as the quote purplest
non GMO tomato ever, purple is GMO, being genetically modified organisms.
So this was either way you slice the tomatoes are.
It was a great looking to me. And they're also
supposed to be all these like health benefits because it's
like when you have a purple skin tomato, high antioxidants,
(12:51):
high anthi cyanin, so these compounds you know, reduce the
risk of cancer inflammation, and they're also good source of
vitamins and minerals.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Totally fature colors, people, that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
So there it is on the cover. Some people noticed
that it looked a whole lot like a GMO tomato
made by a company called Norfolk Healthy Produce and HP.
Now remember Baker Creek is like, we're no GMO, We're heirloom, We're.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah, we draw pictures.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
And HP is a UK company with American operations based
in Davis, California, my hometown. You see, Davis, my alma
mater from mir ag School. Some me would say it's
the best in the planet, and I should know, because
I have an English degree from it. I should know.
So they've always been on the cutting edge of crop innovation.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
And the flavorsavor tomato.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Yeah, so there's Cultivar VF one, aka the square tomato.
There's that one too, Yeah, came out of Davis. It
wasn't really a square, it was just less round and
it was to keep it from keep the tomatoes from
rolling off of conveyor belts. Also had thicker skins so
they'd pack in the boxes better wouldn't roll off the
top of a truck.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Very Japanese.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah, fewer losses. So Davis, as you know from growing up,
there is smack dab in the middle of commercial tomato country.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yes, Trucks haul tons of the things from fields to
canneries each fall, and the square tomatoes. They were designed
for just that commercial use, not you know, around my birthday.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Every country road do you turn a corners just littered,
but tomatoes where the trucks have made a turn, and tomatoes.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Because they weren't using the square. The inventor of the
square tomato was this guy, Gordie Jack Hannah. He was
an associate in the Agricultural Experiment Station and a professor
in truck crops, which, like truck cps the greatest at Davis.
He was also a plant breeder with this private company
petto Seed in Woodland, Califun.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Okay shout out Woodland.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
According to local lore on the Davis Wiki, yes, doctor
Hannah would quote stand in the fields, walk among the plants,
collecting random tomatoes, and then go and throw them ounta
into the road as a test. Captain rebred from the plants,
featuring tomatoes hardy enough to survive his test, eventually giving
us the hardy tomato that can withstand being picked by
(15:10):
machine and transported by truck.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
And have flavor and have flavor.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
So NHP based in Davis, they engineered a purple tomato
called the Purple Tomato, and that was just like the
one from Baker Creek only it was engineered with the
jenes from a snap dragonflower in order to achieve purple flesh.
So tomatoes they have about thirty five thousand genes, and
purple tomato has only two extras from a snapdragon, according
(15:37):
to NPR quote. When news of a non GMO purple
flesh tomato variety started circulating on social media last fall,
some scientists and tomato enthusiasts weren't so sure. I had
discussions with colleagues about it, and all of us just
looked at it and said, well, that's the GMO tomato,
says David Francis, a professor of horticulture and crop science
(15:58):
at the Ohio State Universe City who specializes in tomato
breeding and genetics. Traditional plant breeders to date have not
been able to create a purple flesh tomato with cross pollination.
Purple skin, yes, purple flesh not so much. But using
recombinant DNA technology, scientists in the United Kingdom had developed
a purple flesh tomato high in antioxidants. It was recently
(16:21):
approved for sale and consumption in the United States. So
you can see where it has to be genetically modified
to get there exactly. Baker Creek says, we don't do GMO,
like they're aggressive about the sounds. NHP very much GMO.
So NHP sees the catalog, they get the catalog, they're like, hub,
but wait a second, it looks familiar.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
I recognized that flesh they call foul.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
So they got some of the seeds, tested them and
found they were actually GMO. They were genetically modified.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
But that's not hard to test, right.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Baker Creek immediately pulled the seeds from the catalog and
destroyed all the stock. Ooh yeah, And then they released
the statement on Facebook, because that's where if you're serious,
you put your seeds. Quote. After repeated testing, we are
unable to conclusively establish that the Purple galaxy does not
contain any genes that have been genetically modified. So they said, well,
(17:13):
we got our seeds from this really reputable traditional plant
breeder and per PR quote a hobby breeder in France,
where growing GMOs is banned. Yeah, they probably blame a
French guy.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Blame the French to blame the front.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
The problem is that the purple tomato and the technology
used to breed it patented. So NHP was like, look,
just take the seeds off the market, but we do
want to know how did the seeds go from a
UK lab to some guy in France corporate espionage. So
NHP was like, look, GMOs low risk in you know,
(17:47):
terms of spreading and damaging biodiversity. When it comes to tomatoes, yes,
I mean they're just like, you know, there's they're just
trying to explain that, Look, these aren't poisonous tomatoes, gotcha.
And so there were threats of lawsuits, threats of investigations,
and it kind of stalled out. Those are two plant
(18:07):
scandals to get us warmed up today, Like next up,
serious crime. Okay, let's break for some ads and when
we get back we'll experience the smugglers.
Speaker 6 (18:16):
Blues Zaren Elizabeth, Welcome.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I'm sorry, I was thinking about Davis and tomatoes right
back to the summer that was wild on.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Welcome to my garden. The big dog of plant crimes
is smuggling. And there are a lot of reasons why
it's illegal.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Smuggling.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, because like well smuggling plants. So you know, if
you take plants from like really fragile ecosystems, disrupting natural processes,
you you get habitat loss for other species. Uh, you know,
there's like the over collection of rare and endangered plant
species that can push them to extinction, reducing biodiversity. If
(19:15):
you smuggle a plant zarin, there could be pests and
disease in it. Oh yes, yes, harming native plants, animals, whatever.
Some smuggled plants pose a health risk to animals humans.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Oh yeah, because if they're the wrong environment, they're like,
we have no natural defenses.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
People like this is a beautiful flower and they smell
it and they die because they don't know what it is,
because someone smuggled it somewhere. Anyway. So the plant trade
is often also linked to organized criminal networks, and that
is an episode of law and order organized crime. Then
(19:53):
I want to see, let me give you some example cases,
and you and I we can pretend that Elliott's Chris
Maloney detective Juicy Booty is the one investigating all these
all right, So, succulents and cacti very popular these days.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Seculents and cacti, Yes, I like them personally because they're
hard to kill.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
And then you don't have to water them for like
a week, sometimes two weeks. I can go on to vacation,
come back, and like, oh I should have thought about
my plants.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
And living in California, we can just leave them outside
all the time where it's like another climate. They got
to bring them in.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Go back, and what zone are we in? I just
learned that we have zones.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Of plants can be here.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Oh wow, Okay, I'm going to keep that for parties.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Don't quote me on that, because you know my brain
is Anyway. A very popular and highly coveted succulent these
days is the living rock cactus living cool. It is
close cousin to peyote.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
Oh yeah, does that.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Have any properties?
Speaker 7 (20:51):
No?
Speaker 3 (20:51):
People love them because there are no thorns, and they're
very plush. They're tiny, they're not tall, and the only
place that it's found is in the Big Bend region
of the Chihuahuan Desert.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Oh dope, hardy plant.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
It kind of looks like grogu hands. Nice, that's what
they look like. They aren't endangered, but they are protected
and they're only found in this very small area and
they take decades to mature.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
If it's not that, then it's a sparkling succulent.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yes, exactly, it's a it's a sparkling rock living rock.
So back in twenty twelve, US Fish and Wildlife they
got a tip there was smuggling going on in Texas
moving living rock cacti, thousands of them. Yeah, so smugglers
were offering these rare plants online to customers in Asia Europe.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Oh yeah, and they.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Would falsify custom slips to say the plants for something else.
And this, my friend, is a violation of the Lacy
Act of nineteen hundred. Okay, okay, so this is that
was the first federal law in the United States to
address wildlife conservation. Yeah right, thank you Lacey and Cagny.
(21:58):
It originally went into effect that so you can't eat
things that are made from the part of it. They
go hand in hand. Did you ever told you I
saw Tyne Daily in person? You have? She's across the
street from me.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Apparently was really memorable for you.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Really was. That's like my one celebrity sighting. No, I
didn't even get to Tyne Daily. There she is across Okay.
So the LASIAC goes into effect to stop illegal commercial
hunting and interstate shipment of wildlife, and it currently prohibits
trade in wildlife, fish, and plants that have been illegally taken, possessed, transported,
(22:40):
or sold. So what's crazy about this is that it
applies to both US and foreign laws. So if a
plant or animal is taken illegally under another country's law
and imported to the US, it's still illegal under the late. Yeah,
and it requires the declaration of plant and timber species
and country of origin when inward certain products. So Fish
(23:02):
and Wildlife they take this seriously as well. They should.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, it sounds like it's like one of their major
things to do.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
The director of their Southwest region amy looters, she said
in a statement. Quote. Those who came before US knew
the importance of protecting wildlife from unlawful trade. And this
law continues to stay relevant each time a poacher or
wild plants smuggler is charged. So booms erin, Yeah, this
is the laws to kill the law. So Fish and
(23:29):
Wildlife they got search warrants for six different houses, all
in West Texas. We don't know how many plants were
smuggled in total, but authorities seized around four thousand in
the raids.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
YEA.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
One of the plants that they seized was like thirty
years old.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
And they're taking them one and at a time in it, right.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
No, they're going out in the desert and scooping them
up and throwing them into a bag.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, but they have to pick each one. They're not
like just taking up like a big section of earth.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Oh yeah, no, one by what. Some of the plants
were just like stored in plastic bags, so they had
started to rot. Oh gosh, this was not cool, dude,
Come on, Don would never do that. Oh, Don would faint.
The surviving seas cacti they were turned over to soul
Ross State University. They have preserved a large number on campus,
but they also found like permanent homes home. They couldn't
(24:16):
really return most of them to the wild because they
didn't know what subpopulation they were from.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Anyone interrupt.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I mean it's like if you get taken from like
East Oakland and then planted back in West Oakland.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
That ain't right. No, you don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
You can't just go stick them anywhere. So the big
dog in the ring that was Harry George Bach the second.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Not Harry George Box. Second, Harry Box.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
He shipped forty one living rock cactuses that were seized
in an international mail facility in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
It was like a doctor se Harry box Rock.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Yeah, Bock was shipping rock twenty eighteen in Chicago. In
twenty twenty, he pleaded guilty before a magistrate in Pecos, Texas,
to one count of mislabeling exports in the scheme to
ship cactuses overseas. As part of a plea agreement. He
faced three years probation, seventy two hundred dollars in restitution,
and he had to forfeit the forty one living rock cactuses,
(25:14):
but no.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Time behind bars. So they threw the plant catalog out.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
They busted another dude he got he got like three
years probation, had to pay more than ten grand in restitution.
There's a seventy two year old fell out a study
Butte Texas. Yeah, he got misdemeanor charges going back to
twenty sixteen probation. So that all these guys they get probation.
One dude he got felony, three years probation and sixty
(25:39):
grand in restitution.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
Should you imagine.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Losing your voting rights because you were like running hot plants?
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Oh that how you go in like you go inside. No,
they're lucky. They didn't go behind bars. What are you
in caractice smuggling? It looked like grogu hand.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Did you say plump smuggling? No, cactus smuggling.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Guy, he had, he got He was busted on the charges,
but he also had to forfeit his firearms.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
They seized his colonies.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, yes, they're like, I know you're a You're a
plant smugg and a gun owner. Can't have the guns now, sir.
Here are some wise words from US Attorney John Bash
on the matter. Quote, when you miss with protected Texas cacta,
you're missing with Texas Pako's building.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
No other way.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
So these bad own rays, though, right, they have nothing
on the world's most notorious succulent thief, South Korean national
jongsu Kim.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Wait a minute, this sounds familiar.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Let's talk dude. Leah, okay, hey, let's talk about it.
Commonly known as live forevers, okay, I think so. These
are a type of rosette forming succulent plants that are
in the stone crop family super Desirable. They're native to
California and northern Baja California forty seven species, twenty one subspecies.
(26:54):
As a very popular, very trendy, very like Pinterest, insta esthetic.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Grin, I got you like an airplane, Like people want
these things because they're the thing.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Yes, And it's dawning on me that I think you
probably heard about it from another place that I heard
about it. Yes, we have a mutual friend. Yes, Kip,
yesse in the California Native Plant Society, and he will
go on a diatribe about it. Oh, totally.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
I think he helped some of the detective.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
I think he went under cover as a rock.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
They cling to the coastline right to get the area.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Yeah, and like if you get Kip started.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
About this, oh, he turned red.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah, he's just like this is really upsetting.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
You think he was talking about like like orphans, you know,
like children in.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
My word, talking about Dudleia.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Yes, they're a California game warden. He told the USC
Paper quote, it's like having a Fendi bag on rodeo
drive Dulia Farinosa from the wild bluffs of Mendocino, California.
Especially a five headed one is apparently a super cool
thing to have. And I was like, I didn't get
the game warden's name, but I wanted to know if
(27:59):
it was Kip. So many of the plants traffic to
South Korea probably ended up being resold elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
And they sold for a lot. Right, they're really desirable
and because they grow and they look really beautiful when
they sit there.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
But right, and so you know these things start getting
popular California Fish and Wildlife, they're like, oh I noticed that.
As they're going through their Pinterest, they're like, that's that's
not a houseplant. But so the truth is that the
hipsters in South Korea, they weren't the ones buying up
the plants because like, these plants don't do well in
domestic captivity for the average. So the one that was
(28:33):
both sought after that Pharaonsa. It's, according to The Guardian,
is quote particularly charismatic to humans. Experts say they boast
the precise mix of qualities that Americans demand from crime victims.
They are pretty and small, very fragile and yet curiously resilient.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
That's what we demand from crime.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
I guess I know.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
That about that. Yeah, like make them pretty and small. Anyway,
so that's not going to make you a lot of
money with mass consumers. Something that's you know, not going
to live very long. So once well, no, because they
smuggle them to South Korea because there are these high
end greenhouses there and the wild Dudley. It could then
(29:16):
be babied there for a few years in perfect conditions,
and then they're big and beautiful. They're not small and
gragule anymore. They're big and beautiful. These are big mamas,
and they get sold at these astronomical prices to like
elite collectors.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
When he told me, I couldn't believe.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Yeah, So how does mister Kim factor intoll? Well, first
of all, I need to let you know that his
alias was Neo, like like in the Matrix. I love
that movie. But being called Neo while stealing plants is
like big loser. No, I'm not going to He's like
(29:55):
spinning around in a trench stopped.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Stop, bend over, bullet time, stop it throw the plant
at me.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Watch this, mister Kim call me Neo. No. Neo flew
from Mexico into Los Angeles International Airport in October twenty eighteen,
and with them were his two assistants, Young and Back
and Bong Junkin. And they thought they were like slipping in,
but California fish and wildlife were all over them the
moment they set foot watch well. Yeah, so game wardens
(30:26):
tailed the trio. They watched as they went and rented
a minivan, and then they filled up the van with
like empty backpacks and plastic bins and boxes. They got
all their supplies.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Picturing the game wardens in like a rental car, but
they've got like dirty boots.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
In there, like like a tan jeep totally but with
like false nose and glasses on it. So then they
trailed the minivan up as they drive up the coast.
And for a week, the wardens watched and followed as
the guys stopped at state parks all along the northern
California and in each stop they like scramble up to
the rocky shore. Sometimes cliffs snatch up the plants and
(31:01):
like you know how the coast is up there in Mendocine,
Like you said.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
It's just like sheer.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
They got lucky.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
It's not sandy flat cliffs craggy and it is dramatic.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah you're hanging.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Yeah. So the three dudes they filled the van chok full,
took the loop van filled the van, took it back
down south to a business called Secret Garden Nursery in Vista, California,
it's kind of halfway between like La and San Diego,
so inland from ocean side. And I say that to
those who know the state, and I apologize to the
rest when who this means absolutely nothing? And yeah, but
(31:37):
like the inland from ocean side. No, yeah, anyway, so Vista,
California's secret garden nursery. So they drop off the stolen plants,
they get back in the minivan and then they go
up to Mendocino again. They're like Tomndo, another load. And
so you know who was with them, game wardens with
the state watching.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
They're in the car.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
They're like cleaning to the underside. So they waited and
they watched as Neo hooked up documents to have the
secret garden nursery legally export two hundred and fifty nine
pounds of julio and the manifest said all the plants
had originated in San Diego. And then the wardens watched
while Neo and the crew took scores of boxes of
(32:18):
plants to an export facility in Compton, and then they struck.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
Finally, Neo and the boys.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Were driving off when they were intercepted by the plant police. Oh,
they did like a pit move on it totally. And
it turns out the boxes held more than six hundred
pounds of succulents, three seven hundred and fifteen individual plants.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
These are not heavy plants. That's a lot, all of them.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
It's like maybe the size of your fists. Yeah, all
of them. More than double what the documentation closed. So,
folks from the California Native Plant Society like people stoked
and so Neo and his little goons, they were charged
with conspiracy and violating a California law against destruction or
removal of plant material on public land. And the wardens
(33:02):
estimated that the total for all of this that they
stole on the South Korean market was six hundred thousand dollars. WHOA, yeah,
So those were state charges. The Feds, specifically the US
Attorney's Environmental Crimes Unit, they wanted in on it too.
They wanted to make an example of these dudes. Whether
(33:22):
that department exists in the US Attorney's office today, who's
to say either way. Neo and the boys they caught
federal charges too. It's like they say, you know, as
California goes, so goes the nation. So May of twenty nineteen,
Kim Neo found out that the Feds were going to
bring the hammer down, so he ran.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Fact.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Yeah, well no, they had confiscated his passport when he
got busted, Well, he got busted on the California state charges.
He gets around it by going to the South Korean
Embassy in La and he's like, guys, I lost my passport,
which I mean, technically is not wrong.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
So they issued him.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
A new one and then he went down Mexico Way.
He crossed over to TJ's on Foot Tijuana and from
there he flew to China and from there South Korea.
So he's in the wind until he wasn't. After only
five months, he popped up again.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
He couldn't stay away the first time.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
In South Africa. What And it was there that South
African investigators busted him as he was illegally harvesting more
than two thousand rare succulents. South African climate is very similar.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, I just what I say. Yeah, imagine that they
would have like he's like, okay, I'll go to my
secondary spot the harvesting.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
One of the ones that he poached was more than
two hundred and fifty years old, were and like dozens
of them are more than one hundred years old, like tortoises.
Uh huh. So the prosecutor on the case gets a
phone call ring Ring Hello, michel A, I guess what.
I'm an American Fish and Wildlife officer. I work at
the embassy as an attache. It's a cool job, and
I have crazy news. Your plant smuggler is wanted back
(34:53):
in the US of A. So the South Africans they
were already like heated up about Neo and according to
the Guardian, they quote highlighted the severity and brutality of
Kim's crime against nature and how stealing quote large ancient
mother plants puts the entire species at risk, especially during
times of serious drought. The collection of these plants is
an ecological tragedy, they wrote. They were They're totally right.
(35:18):
So Kim pleads guilty to the South African charges, pays
a large fine, does a year in prison there, then
gets extradited to the US. US prosecutors they asked for
three years in prison. They're like, we want to make
an example of him. Neo's attorney it was like, slow down, Joe.
His client had been through the ringer. So yeah, he
(35:41):
got COVID in prison, he got the stuff and beaten
out of him. It was so bad that his jaw
had to be wired shut, which is how he showed
up in court and the attorney was like, you know,
this is what happens when you were locked up and
you don't speak the language. I think it's because he
went in there and was like, call me neo. They're
just like yeah, either way. He gets sentenced to two years.
(36:05):
Bureau of Prisons gave him credit for South African time served,
and then he gets shipped off again, just like the
plants he stole, this time to the tippy top of
California in none other than your favorite place, the Lamb.
That time forgot Crescent City.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Oh god.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
He had to face the music on the plant theft
and fleeing prosecution charges from the state. So twenty twenty
two he pleads guilty, sentenced to twenty four months. He
only had to pay like four grand in restitution to
the state of California for expenses related to replanting the
stolen plants after his arrest. So let's take a break.
(36:42):
I gotta go water my plants. When we come back.
Speaker 7 (36:45):
More smuggling, yeah, Zaren Elizabeth Daren.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Do you remember what.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
I was saying during the break. I've been like translating
what you were telling me because I think this is
a new world to me. So I'm like, let me
put this in smoking the bandit terms, and so I've
been using that as like a way to understand. I'm like,
you can't take cours east of the Mississippi. That's bootlegs.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
There it is.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I'm like, now I guess it's clicking.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Yeah, Okay, Well, do you remember when I was like
telling you about the Lacey Act time? It was a
good time. We were so young, so fresh, different times. Well,
I have what is supposed to be a perfect example
of a Lacy Act violation and battle with the government. Please,
and it involves Gibbson guitars.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Do they grow those?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Yeah? So they're famous for the Les Paul the SG
Gibson Guitar Corporation. They mainly make guitars and basses, Mandolins. Yeah,
Orville Gibson. He started making instrum Gibson eighteen four wow,
And the company was founded in nineteen oh two. As
like Gibson Mandolin guitar, Kalamazoom Michigan and as you can
(38:09):
tell by the name. They were very mandolin forward in
the early days. So the company they invented arch top
guitars that had the same principle behind violins, like how
they're kind of that arch face of it. Then they
started making flat top acoustic guitars, and then the first
commercially available hollow body electric guitars all Jangle Jangled soneteen forty.
(38:32):
It's true they do chief dobras. In the nineteen forty
four Gibson got bought by Chicago Musical Instruments, and then
they got bought nineteen sixty nine by Ecuadorian Company Limited,
which was actually a Cannanian firm. Eighty six nineteen eighty six,
the company got scooped up by a group led by
(38:53):
Henry Yuskovic and David Barman, and then in November of
twenty eighteen, private equity stepped in and it was bought
by Colberg, Kravitz Roberts.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Sorry, Gibson, it really is.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Throughout its history, Gibson has been involved in a lot
of lawsuits, almost all of which stem from copyright stuff
for design, because people rip off the less Paul design the.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Way, Yeah, because you see the knockoffs. I had friends
when we were They.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Have their own down market version of the epiphone.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Tons of them. But there's another legal issue, and this
one popped up during the Uskowitz.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Barrim in years towards the end.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Yeah, in two thousand and nine, US Fish and Wildlife
Services are heroes today. They raided a Gibson factory where
they grow It seems they were using ebony wood illegally
imported from Madagascar. Oh, this is a big problem. Madagascar
suffers terrible poverty, corrupt government, and the world suffers from
(39:58):
a terrible desire for beautiful at a low cost. And
they've got a lot of them, and they got a
lot of and one of them is fine green lumber. Yeah,
so stuff like rosewood, ebony, stuff that makes Gibson guitars
so gorgeous. So in its investigation, the US Department of
Justice found some smoking guns. They got their hands on
emails in which Gibson employees talked about how ebeny wood
(40:20):
was part of a quote gray market and that they
could get it from a German wood dealer and just
not ask questions about where he got it, and even
though they knew that it was coming from a supplier truck. Yeah,
so they made plans to buy the wood even though
they knew the sale wasn't on the up and up
violation of the Laciact. In June of twenty eleven, the
DOJ filed a civil proceeding and it was the first
(40:43):
of its kind under the recently amended Lacy Act. So
importing companies had to follow the environmental laws in the
country of origin, even if the place was corrupt and
no one was enforcing those laws.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
Okay, so that me and mar Yeah ma a gascar.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
So Gibson fought the suit. They said that the government
was quote bullying Gibson without filing charges. Then the owners
of Gibson made the whole thing political by getting the
Tea party segment of the GOP the Republicans, to side
against the government on this, saying that it was going
to impact jobs.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
What.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Yeah, So then there was another Gibson factory. Rate zaren
close your eyes. I want you to picture it. You
are a nineteen year old guy named Colby. You are
forklift certified, and you work at the Gibson Electric Division
(41:39):
rough Mill facility in Nashville, Tennessee. When you tell people
where you work, they think it's the coolest job ever,
and it sort of is. But you aren't surrounded by
cool guitars all day. You move palettes of wood to
and from the kilns. You don't ever really see guitars,
and certainly no rock stars or anything. You got this
job through your cousin who works repair and restoration next door.
(42:02):
Now she gets to see a cool stuff. She processes
all the guitars that come in and sometimes meets some
musicians come to check the place out. But you you're
in the mill. It's a warm late summer day. More
than warm, it's sweltering. This is when it's pretty bogus
working in the rough mill. You are at the wheel
of a forklift, backing out of the storage area of
(42:23):
the warehouse with a palletful of raw rosewood, headed for
the kiln to be dried. After that it'll be plain
and then headed to the manufacturing building. And that's where
the magic happens. Baby, You've spent the morning moving bundles
of Indian ebony wood. The manifest ticket on these reads
Indian ebony fingerboards, but there's another slip of paper that
(42:44):
says they're veneers for the body of guitars. You know
that's not true, but whatever must be a paperwork mix up.
Just as you're moving your load of new rosewood toward
the kiln, the warehouse doors open to get some sort
of air circulation, are crowded with guys in mid breakers.
They look like FBI guys, but their jackets read us
Fish and Wildlife. You've heard something about this before. But
(43:07):
the building was rated a few years ago and the
FEDS were looking for wood from Madagascar. But this stuff's
from India. You don't know what the big deal is.
Over the crackle of their walkie talkies, an agent yells
at you to turn off the forklift and step aside.
You do as you're told. There's a slam of an
office door. You know what that means. It's Eugene. Eugene Nix.
(43:28):
He's in charge of all the wood that comes in.
He inspects it and then okays it for the killed.
Then he sends it for milling and then off to
the factory. He's pissed. He marches up to the agents,
a tiny radio playing classic rock in the background. Yeah, brother,
you tell him you think Eugene grabs some papers from
the hand of the agent out front. It's a warrant.
(43:48):
The agent tells him, I can see that. Eugene says, listen.
The agent says, I know you're a craftsman, an expert,
but we have to do our jobs here. Eugene scans
the papers as agents fan out and shut the rest
of the operation down. Your coworkers slowly emerge and gather
around watching the standoff. Eugene size folds up the warrant paperwork,
(44:09):
tucks it into the front pocket of his thin, worn,
short sleeve button down shirt, and then whips his cell
phone from his belt holster. He pushes some buttons and weights.
After a moment, he barks, feds are here. It's the
Indian Wood. Yeah, call the lawyers into the phone and
hangs up. You and your coworkers look at each other,
then at Eugene. He looks at all of you and
(44:30):
tells you it looks like you have the rest of
the day off. You'll get paid out for the hours,
head on home and he'll see you tomorrow. And this
Zarin was the raid that ground everything to a halt.
So they hit a bunch of locations, including headquarters where
they seize computers, oh and fish and wildlife found that
Gibson had been importing lumber from India, which is fine, sure,
(44:51):
but what they were importing wasn't legal because here's the thing.
The International Tariff Code, also known as the Harmonized Schedule
GRISS items shipped all over the globe and it's standardized
across nations in order to smooth out trade, true globalization.
So India forbids export of items categorized under the Code
(45:12):
forty four oh seven quote wood sawn or chipped, lengthwise,
sliced or peeled, whether or not planed, sanded or enjointed,
of a thickness exceeding six millimeters. So basically, you can't
export lumber from India unless it's already been worked on
by Indian workers.
Speaker 4 (45:31):
Smart so they.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Want to protect their jobs.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
That makes sense, like everyone's.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Got to look out for their own. Every country does
this sort of thing. We do it got to protect
your industries. So Gibson, though, was importing unprocessed wood, just
bundles of the wood, and they knew they weren't supposed to,
And all those shipping documents that were supposed to keep
this in line to be transparent about sourcing and destination,
they were all off full of discrepancy. Yeah, and so
(45:55):
the bundles of wood that you were moving at the
Gibson rough Mill, they weren't supposed to be there. They're
remarked for destination Germany. This company called Luthier's Mercantile International
in California was the importer of record, but they had
nothing to do with this. The stuff was just being
sent straight to Gibson in Tennessee, and so US Fish
and Wildlife they showed up seized the wood. They'd been
(46:16):
watching this at customs and they'd seized some other shipments,
the tracking shipments, and so they took all the wood
at the kiln, at the factory, at the storage facility.
And like Gibson pitched a fit, they were caught red handed.
And so they went politically.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
How did they pitch a fit based on what?
Speaker 3 (46:33):
They blamed President Obama? They thanks Obama, all right, So,
despite despite evidence that they willfully flouted the law, they
said that Obama had it out for them and specifically
targeted them. Okay, so usk of its right. He said
that Martin Guitars did the same thing and they didn't
(46:55):
get raised. He said it's because Martin were donors to
the Democratic National committee.
Speaker 4 (47:00):
Oh god.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
But here's the thing. Martin Guitars had all their paperwork
in line, and they could prove they hadn't violated the
Lacy Act, an act that went into effect more than
one hundred years before Obama was elected. So of course.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
They made classic guitars like Willie Nelson's is a Martin.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Yeah, that's like the og. According to NPR, quote, Chris Martin,
chairman and CEO of the C. F. Martin Guitar Company
in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, said that when he first heard guitars
built from Madagascar rosewood, he dreamed it might be the
long sought substitute for Brazilian rosewood, whose trade was banned
in the nineteen nineties due to over harvest. Then the
(47:37):
situation in Madagascar changed. There was a coup. Martin says.
What we heard was the international community has come to
the conclusion that the coup created an illegitimate government. That's
when we said, Okay, we cannot buy any more of
this would Yeah. And while some say the Lacy Act
is burdensome, Martin supports it. Quote, I think it's a
wonderful thing. I think illegal logging is appalling. It should
(47:59):
stop up and if this is what it takes, unfortunately
to stop unscrupulous operators, I'm all for it. It's tedious,
but we're getting through it.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
That's the way, that's the approach, that's reasonable and responsible business.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
So after all the bluster, all the victimhood and moaning
a development, after one year Gibson yusk of it admitted
to violating the Lacy Act. Good because like if they
kept trying to fight it, they knew criminal charges for
the ownership was on the horizon. And so there's like
(48:31):
a major digital paper trail proving they knew what they
were doing.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
They it was bad and a lot of musicians are ethically,
you're going to start to these customers.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Well that was the thing too, is that online Like
the response apparently it was just like burning up Facebook
with all this like these are American heroes and the
Obama governments trying to go after them, right, But it
was not. Guitar folks. Guitar folks and forums were like,
this is actually I don't want to play something that
came from totally. So Gibson had to pay a three
(48:59):
hundred thousand dollars far and they forfeited the majority of
the wood that was seized, but they did get some back,
and what happened with it is the question.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
What happened with Elizabeth?
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Thank you? In twenty fourteen, they released the Government Series
Les Paul SG three point thirty five and Flying V
guitars the color Government Tan, and so the guitar featured
that rosewood seized by the Feds in the Nashville raids.
They made one thousand, seven and fifty guitars, and they
(49:30):
started out at around eleven hundred dollars retail. They sold
out all of them. Of course, company officials said the
guitars quote suitably marks this infamous time in Gibson's history.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Did they go to Cabo Wabbos? People liked?
Speaker 3 (49:46):
Well, it gets better. So each guitar features a pit
guard quote hot stamped in gold with the Government series
graphic a bald eagle hoisting a Gibson guitar neck. Are
you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (49:57):
That's no Willie Nelson's IRS tape?
Speaker 3 (49:59):
I'm gonna not at all. So the company gave pad
a press release quote when the Powers the Beat confiscated
stocks of tone woods from the Gibson factory in Nashville,
only to return them once there was a resolution and
the investigation ended. It was an event worth celebrating. Well, yeah,
it was. The investigation ended because you were guilty and
you paid for it. So they didn't really become the
(50:22):
collector's item that Gibson thought they were going to be.
I saw them online for maybe like twenty five hundred
thirty two hundred dollars according to Ultimate Guitar dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
Okay, amazing, one of my favorite reads every morning.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
Quote. Seven years after the raids, Yuskowitz had run the
company five hundred million dollars into debt since his departure.
He insisted to Guitarist magazine that any notion that he
had anything to do with Gibson guitars dwindling reputation is
quote fake news. A company, now under new management is
committed itself to making guitars without critically endangered lumber, and
(50:56):
the article continues. A report in the Nashville Business Journal
in October of twenty twenty claim that Yuskovitz is now
starting up his own healthcare company in Nashville. Apparently he
found a business with bigger ethical loopholes to be exploited. Anyways,
we look forward to what the future will hold for
Gibson under new management, and we wish them the very best.
(51:16):
Ultimate Guitar dot com Zaren was your ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
I knew so little about any of this, but after
hearing it all, I'm not surprised that the people involved
are doing the stuff, like the smugglers and then the
businessmen with the unethical like yeah, we'll take what from whatever?
Speaker 4 (51:33):
Yeah, Like why are people like this?
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Like why do need to respect exactly? I know, I
know what about you, Elizabeth, but my takeaway is that
I still manage to get all heated talking about plants.
It's supposed to be chilled.
Speaker 4 (51:48):
You worked it in.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
That's not the xanax I promised. But I he's going
to go watch some gardener's world and cool out, Dave.
I think we should have a talk back.
Speaker 8 (52:05):
God, I went, Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
I'm very, very sick right now and I'm listening.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
To you guys.
Speaker 8 (52:19):
This is actually is the vocal range of my voice
at the moment, and I've just add to the introductions
of the pac Man Fever episode and the chicken lozenges.
Ridiculous do not want We love you, but you're a sick, lady.
(52:40):
This is creepier than it sounds.
Speaker 4 (52:46):
Save your voice, My goodness made me have a chicken lost.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
You know you laugh chicken.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
By the way, if you're ever sick, chicken soup, orange juice,
shout out. Tequila will heal you every time. But not
for that. We were just works every time.
Speaker 3 (53:01):
Yeah, but just like what about like generalized malaise.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Like just on a Monday. I'll probably.
Speaker 3 (53:11):
That's it for today. You can find us online at
ridiculous Crime dot com. The website just won the Outstanding
Act of Bravery Metal from the Elko, Nevada Police Department.
Speaker 4 (53:20):
Wow, finally, I know.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
I'm so proud. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue
Sky and Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod,
and you can email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail
dot com. But most importantly, as you know, I love
these leave it talk back, save your voices, do it
with robust. I don't want to hear anyone hurting themselves.
Get the free iHeart app. Go through that reach out.
(53:48):
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette,
produced and edited by Fugitive Luther Dave coustm starring Annals
Rutger as Judith. Research is by GMO Truth Marissa Brown
and Keen Observation Quality Assurance Skills by Gray Witten. The
theme song is by Poor Dirt Farmers Just Trying to
make a Live and Grow and hollow Body guitars Thomas
(54:10):
Lee and Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided by Body
five hundred. Guest hair and makeup provided by Sparkleshot and
Mister Andre. Executive producers are Dandelion Smuggler, Ben Bollen and
Rogue Fish and Game Warden Noel.
Speaker 5 (54:23):
Broun, Gus Crime Say It One More Time, Geequeous Crime.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts.
My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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