Dropping Like Flies | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

they're all different you know some when you catch them hey they throw their hands up and you got them but it is kind
of you know a eerie feeling when you're out here by yourself and you're dealing with
four or five guys and you know three or four of them's carrying machetes because
that's a common tool to trade the machetes you got to be careful i mean it's not a
game you got to be on your p's and q's and you know no situation's the same so you got to expect unexpected
brandon dean is an officer with the north carolina wildlife resources commission the state nature cops
dean patrols the green swamp more than 17 000 acres of savannah and swamp land in the southeastern most corner of the
state it's known mostly for its bird watching and longleaf pines but it's also ground
zero for an obscure black market one that's exploded in the last few years and shows no sign of slowing down you
walk it you wouldn't even notice it see oh wow and that's what they would dig up right
there and sell they're so small it's like a fingernail yeah those are really small like i said
some of them you can get that's because the green swamp is one of the only places in the world where you can find
an especially rare plant one that's disappearing by the thousands the venus flytrap obviously this place here has
been hit pretty hard because youth could come out here and they'd be everywhere and now we're scrounging to find a
couple you could get so many yes every year for the past few years tens of thousands of fly traps have gone
missing from the wild from gardens from nurseries decimating the population and really
nobody knows where they go what's cropped up in rural north carolina is essentially a venus flytrap
crime ring with lackeys middlemen and a mysterious end buyer who's perpetuating the market
our producer eric metal decided to look into this black market to try to figure out who's running it who's funding it
and why he is today's story i'm phoebe judge and this is criminal could you just sort of describe when you
first walked in what the scene looked like like a hurricane it had it was pots everywhere
cindy evans and joe wood run a nursery and craft business in brunswick county north carolina called fly trap farm it's
about 10 miles south of the green swamp flytrap farm as you might have guessed specializes in the bulk sale of venus
fly traps one night last september a group of people broke into joe and cindy's greenhouses what they did was
pull the plants out of the pots they didn't take the pots they just pulled the plants out put them
in our bags that they had come in here broken and yeah stolen our trash bags and all the
windows out back here and they took them all out and laid them on the ground on pieces of cardboard so
they wouldn't break cindy pulled out her iphone and swiped through picture after picture of the
scene footprints in the spilled soil tire marks in the field behind the greenhouses this is where they came in
this is where they broke out the back of the of that greenhouse there all the way
in the back how many plants are we talking what audrey counted up was about sixty
five thousand dollars worth about eighteen 000 plants in total the vast majority of which were venus fly traps
as far as anyone i've talked to can tell it's the largest single theft of fly traps ever it totally shot our whole
fall and early spring shipping schedule we're so behind right now we're only behind we're weighing debt again too
because we've borrowed money borrowed money and borrow money try and get things caught back up it set us back 15
years just like when we started why would they do that because there's a black market for them
[Music] you tell people it grows here and they're like i thought it grew in the amazon rainforest angie carl works for
the nature conservancy the non-profit that owns most of the green swamp i say i'm a paid arsonist
she does controlled burns to keep the plant growth in check i'm enter not far from the green swamp in wilmington north
carolina aka fly trap central this part of the state is literally the only place
in the world where venus flytraps grow in the wild there's a park nearby called flytrap downs and a fly trap 5k run
every year you can't come down here and not be exposed to the fly trap but only grows within a 90 mile radius of
wilmington north carolina yeah it's a pretty incredible species it is pretty incredible but likely not for the
reasons you think first off and let's just get this reference out of the way it does not
look anything like the plant from little shop of horrors feed me now i can't must be blood
tui that's disgusting must be fresh people think that they're huge plants that can eat people
and they can eat your mother-in-law if you've got a good blender that's the only
gotta mulch them good again cindy and joe at flytrap farm the biggest fly traps only get to be about four or five
inches tall but that doesn't make them any less impressive the venus flytrap this bbc one documentary is basically
flytrap porn the plants are tiny green the inside of the actual trap is usually a bright red which makes them highly
visible to insects it makes itself very attractive oozing nectar across the brim
of each leaf now this might be silly to point out but the flytrap doesn't actually know
there's a bug in the trap because as angie carl had to remind me plants don't have brains what they do have is a
series of trigger hairs almost like whiskers think of it like a mouse trap where it's always in the suspended state
of tension until something comes along and taps the trigger hair the insect can hit one of those trigger
hairs and be totally fine but but a timer has been set two of those trigger hairs are touched really quickly
in succession snap closes shut and the fly is doomed it's likely fly traps were all over this
part of north carolina a hundred years ago but like with other plants and animals development did a number on the
population and what's left has been relegated to a few protected preserves and for years that was fine nothing to
be concerned about people knew about the plant but it was sort of a novelty until the last few years when something
in the market shifted somebody somewhere has increased their demand for fly traps and it's causing
all sorts of problems [Music] joe and cindy at flytrap farm aren't the only victims of flytrap burglary not by
a long shot just a few months before the break-in somebody dug up and stole an estimated 20 thousand dollars worth of
fly traps from a park in wilmington joe and cindy have all kinds of stories about thefts around town friend of ours
his wife died a couple years ago and they did a memorial garden for her we brought a bunch of plants up there
and they planted them and grew them and they were expanding and doing very well and then all of a sudden
they came in there and stole all them now they steal them all the time but but nobody's got that many flytrap for them
to steal even flytrap farm at 18 000 plants wasn't enough to satisfy the market plants are still disappearing mostly
from the biggest concentration of all the green swamp it's almost impossible to catch them this is brandon dean again
the officer with the wildlife resources commission they get dropped off and like
ghost in the darks you never know they're even there they run across the road get into the woods and normal passerby
they can't see them because of the savannas when people poach fly traps from the ground they're on their hands
and knees below the grass line but occasionally dean will be driving by and see a couple of heads pop up in the
swamp almost like prairie dogs he'll hop out of his car chase them down on foot and ideally have them arrested and
confiscate the traps i've gotten anywhere from 800 plants to over 2 000 plants it all depends on how experienced
the trapper is and what time of year it is and if they get into a good cluster of fly traps
so when you when you catch these people what do they have on their person are they what are they carrying the fly
traps in how many are they carrying what are they using to dig them up i've seen
them carry fly traps from a pillow case all the way to a backpack you know whatever kind of satchel they can get to
throw them in there i've seen tools from spades you use in your garden to crow bars that are cut off to swing sets
swing sets like the bar on a swing set they'll break the bar off you know it's probably half an inch diameter
flattening out the end to where it's flat they got a handle they stick it in the ground and pop them right up oh
that's kind of inventive oh yeah yes it's they they work harder at not working than they would if they had a job
what time of day does this happen it depends on their schedule whenever they wake up
a lot of them they already have charges pending such as drug charges so they they don't have a job so whenever
they get dirt to go take five traps they get somebody to drop them off and they spend all day out here digging traps
they're really hard to catch we've put cameras out they've stolen my cameras again angie carl with the nature
conservancy i think that their marking areas will go out and find spoons and stuff in areas wait so they're leaving
spoons behind or they're like leaving them there as like a signal like leaving breadcrumbs kind of thing they leave
them there so when they come back they know where they were digging and they can move on from there
in more ways than one the culture of poachers is pretty similar to that of other black markets
for instance it's every man for himself we've had poachers call me and say that i see poachers out in the savannah and
then two days later that same person who called me gets arrested because they were out poaching so they were calling
in their competition there's other fly trappers that are jealous because they're on there so quote turf they call
us and tell us they're out here doing it and we come out here and track them up and find them oh it's literally like a
turf war oh yeah the other fly trappers call on other fly trappers they'll tell you say i've been in there this is where
they're gonna go this is the time of day they're gonna do it and i mean you have
to go because you don't know when they're gonna be picked up and when they're not
pretty comical if you think about it admittedly it's hard not to laugh a little at the idea of a venus flytrap
crime ring but in the last three years things have gotten really bad the fly trap has some federal and state
protections but there's just not enough information to actually call it threatened or endangered
and this is one of the most frustrating parts of this story nobody actually knows how many fly traps there are
nobody knows exactly how many are being poached the only number any academic has
come up with is 35 000 left in the wild but it's unclear how accurate that number is
we do know they only grow in a handful of places we do know they're disappearing by the thousands from the
wild and it's also clear the poachers are not just hoarding the plants they're selling them
when brandon dean has caught poachers in the past they've told them they sell to
local nurseries who pay anywhere from 10 to 25 cents a plant 1 000 plants in a day could turn into a couple hundred
bucks where do you get a sense that they're selling them to we've never really looked into it you
know most of them say that they sell them to a place called flytrap farms um i just have to ask you because you
know it's part of my job just to be honest like have you ever knowingly bought from poachers oh sure
[Music] that was a little tough to hear but joe wood admits he has bought from poachers
in the past on a couple of carnivorous plant message boards people have accused joe wood in fly trap farm of buying
poached plants for years one person i talked to called the break in at joe's nursery quote karma
and joe doesn't hide the fact that he bought from locals in fact it's not illegal to buy the plants only to dig
them up from the wild but joe likes to make a distinction they had licenses to buy i mean we always had
licenses what is considered poachers now they used to all be considered farmers turns out people have been digging up
plants in brunswick county for decades but it was always sort of a controlled chaos the state would give out licenses
and you could ask permission to pull from other people's property problem is a fly trap from someone's
backyard looks exactly like a fly trap from protected lands there's no way to verify where it actually came from
so when someone showed up at flytrap farm with a license and a backpack filled with a thousand traps joe could
buy them but now joe says he won't even do that the state has gotten stricter and if he
got caught buying poached plants he's afraid he'd get shut down [Music] there are a handful of nurseries in the
state that deal mainly in carnivorous plants what everyone seems to agree on is that
these nurseries be it fly trap farm or some of their competitors are not the end buyer they're just the middle men
somebody is buying in bulk at a rate unlike anything before and most people have the same theory
there's a guy in new york and he's got a deal going where he claims the juice from these plants will
cure cancer there's something that's called carnivore that is being deemed like a thing that will get rid of your
cancer you know with and it has a picture of a fly trap on it so he's buying about four million plants a year
and crushing him and taking the juice from them so and then he's mixing it with something else and he claims it's a
cure for cancer carnivore research international carnivore was created by a german
physician in the 1970s named helmut keller the company has two products liquid drops and capsules made from what
it calls pure extract of venus flytrap it's billed as nature's nutritional powerhouse i called carnivora
headquarters hoping i might talk with helmut keller the creator he's around but not on this side eric this is
richard ostrow now the owner and ceo of carnivora he's on the other side he had passed away about four years ago
oh okay i'm sorry to hear that that's okay austral got interested in the company well over a decade ago when he
says he saw firsthand what the product could do the reason that i had met dr keller
originally is because my mother needed his services she had smoked since she was 14 and you
know what can happen there and so she ended up with a disease that were prohibited from
mentioning in this country he's talking about cancer and we brought her over to an irish clinic
where he was at the time and he was literally bringing her back to life but the story didn't end well because he
had to leave the clinic and go back to germany and the fda would not allow me to import
carnivora to the united states and she lost her battle because you couldn't get carnivora here
in the states uh 100 absolutely yes because of fda restrictions carnivora cannot claim to actually cure any
diseases we can say this is a a powerful immune defense supplement which of course it is
and that it wakes up specific immune cells to turn on your immune system to do the
job that it's meant to do right but but just to make sure i'm clear in other countries you're allowed
to claim that it either prevents or helps cure many diseases such as cancer i won't answer that question in the
united states but here's the butt uh we can say any damn thing we choose in freer countries of which there are many
chances are you've never heard of carnivora but as richard ostrow tells it the company is doing just fine in fact
the last couple of years they've been in the market for more fly traps a lot more
the growth in the us has been astronomical in the last five years what kind of growth are we talking about
can i ask how many customers give or take well how how do i show the growth here
the best way to find out is we're in the midst of hiring a pr firm because we're
launching our pet division and they're going to put the word out there in the united states
like never before [Music] do you import or rather buy fly traps from north carolina then
no no we don't touch north carolina they couldn't possibly supply us the amount of venus fly traps that we would
need ostro says carnivora buys fly traps by the kilogram not the plant and they're
not just buying wild grown plants they're also buying something called tissue culture
tissue culture is essentially cloned fly traps giant labs mainly in the netherlands and china have taken flytrap
tissue and used it to make a massive number of genetically identical fly traps yes even an indigenous american
carnivorous plant is now made in china astro says carnivora is a mix of wild grown and tissue cultured fly traps and
he says the company hasn't gone near north carolina traps in eight or nine years
the demand is higher than north carolina can handle he says but he won't go any further
can i ask maybe from what state or country or you're able to help meet those demands
i can't get into that either the reason i won't get into that is because i'm not tipping off
anybody who can use it against us at every step of the way it's harder to know who's telling the truth the
poachers could be lying about who they sell to the nurseries could be lying about who they buy from and if the
fast-growing alternative medicine market isn't driving the poaching it's unclear
what is so what do you do back in brunswick county the sheriff's office has charged someone with a
robbery at flytrap farm a local man he's 23 years old charged with two felony counts of breaking and entering and two
counts of felony larceny in a lot of ways it's one of the more serious penalties ever levied against
someone for fly trap theft which sounds great but frankly it'll probably just make poachers more cautious and keep
them out of nurseries and in the swamps where the penalties are negligible brandon dean the thing about it is it's
so hard to catch them when you do catch them they pretty much laugh at you and they tell you they're making too much
money because they only get caught once a year once every three years and they're doing it you know pretty much
every day they can so they're making out like a bandit yeah so even if they got charged 150 bucks in fines or whatever
that's one night's worth of fly traps that that's correct that's correct and you know that's that's the problem we
have until there's a stiffer penalty put in place they're going to continue to to
come out here and rape their resources so to speak there's always going to be a criminal
element if you if there's money to be made and a lot of it they're gonna steal the fly traps regardless angie carl at
the nature conservancy disagrees with officer dean she thinks going after the poachers won't have much effect at all
she thinks going after the middlemen the nurseries who are buying the poached plants is the best way to stop the
market cut the snake off at the head sort of thing there are efforts at the state level to
make flytrap poaching a felony but it's unclear how much weight there is behind the idea
so there's a possibility the plants will become even rarer and as silly as it may
seem anytime a species disappears there's one thought that comes to mind i mean what if it is a cure for cancer you
know and we've now just decimated all of our populations even if that's overstating it the other
alternative is simply that we lose an important part of american biodiversity the reality that if you want to see a
venus fly trap a plant endemic to the american south you'll have to buy a clone from a lab in
china so for now angie carl and the nature conservancy are doing the only thing they can think
of they're trying to learn more about the market they need more details in order to
pressure lawmakers to help protect the plan and they're going the route of any other
organization with limited resources they've hired a summer intern to look into it
she started this month [Music] eric menno criminal is produced by eric lauren spore and me julian alexander
does our episode art if you like the show you can subscribe in itunes our website is thisiscriminal.org we're also
on facebook and twitter at criminal show i'm phoebe judge this is criminal [Music]

Every year for the past few years, tens of thousand of flytraps have gone missing – from the wild, from gardens, from nurseries. And, really, nobody knows where they go. What’s cropped up in rural North Carolina is essentially a Venus Flytrap crime ring — with lackies, middle men, and a mysterious end buyer who’s perpetuating the market.

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://link.chtbl.com/n33u0HsA

Say hello on Twitter (@CriminalShow), Instagram (@criminal_podcast), and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ThisIsCriminal/.

Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice https://bit.ly/accomplicenewsletter.

We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery.

Artwork by Julienne Alexander http://www.yssrs.com/.

Check out our online shop https://store.dftba.com/collections/criminal.

Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 5 originally published April 24, 2014 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-five-dropping-like-flies-4-24-2014

Brief Summary

North Carolina's Venus flytrap black market is thriving, driven by poaching and mysterious buyers.

Key points

The Venus Flytrap Crime Ring. A black market for Venus flytraps has emerged, with poachers stealing thousands of plants.
The Largest Theft Ever. A nursery lost $65,000 worth of plants in a single break-in, marking a significant crime.
The Mysterious End Buyer. A mysterious buyer is perpetuating the black market for Venus flytraps, raising concerns.
The Fight Against Poaching. Efforts are underway to make flytrap poaching a felony, but how effective will they be?
Biodiversity at Risk. The disappearance of species could mean losing vital parts of American biodiversity.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's not a game; you got to be on your p's and q's.

Officer discussing the dangers of dealing with poachers.

0:22WatchSep 2, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from Criminal | A Podcast About Crime

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.