It's August 24th, 2018,
and I'm at work
at the Philadelphia Insectarium
and Butterfly Pavilion.
I walk out onto the floor and the tanks
don't have creatures in them.
I went to the back room
and that thing was empty.
Shelves and shelves and shelves that should have been filled
with creatures aplenty were empty.
And there's kind of this just like moment of like...
Philadelphia police are bugged
by a theft at a local science museum.
High-priced heist
from the Philadelphia Insectarium.
Tens of thousands
of dollars' worth of bugs were stolen.
They, they took everything, millipedes,
centipedes, scorpions, tarantulas,
mantids, and grasshoppers.
You name it.
Now police are searching for those creatures.
Police detectives
have been interviewing potential suspects.
You know, I get why people steal,
but what's the plan after a theft like this?
People may not realize it
but insects are worth a lot of money.
Police said
the insects are worth up to $50,000.
So who is trying...
like this feels very like...
Could there be collectors out there?
I mean, could there be a...
No. No.
Well, no, but I bet they're farming...
Could there be an underground market
for this sort of thing?
Yes.
The insect hobby has grown.
The big money people from around the world
see something and they wanna have it.
The hobby is addictive.
It's a strange world.
You go to these super remote places
and keep hunting and collecting
and finding the next thing.
You see anything?
That's what these collectors want,
the next thing no one else has
or the, the, the latest thing that's been discovered.
Trying to understand the collector's mentality
probably requires a psychology degree.
There are those people in the world
who will do anything to make sure
they can get their hands on something like that.
And that is where the black market
gets rather nefarious.
The black market of animals, it's a big one.
And it's a scary one.
Somebody called me on the phone and say,
"Hey, man, you better be careful."
There is a huge criminal element
to the wildlife trade.
And bugs are right up there
with everything else.
Smuggling everything from insects to tigers
generates billions of dollars a year.
The more dangerous it is to get,
the more illegal,
the price goes up.
American officers,
investigators,
these are the people that are our archenemies.
If you commit a wildlife crime,
we will come after you
and we will catch you
and we will put you in jail.
Somehow this world may have found its way into the museum.
But this was not just a heist.
We're talking about embezzlement,
financial malfeasance,
the theft of millions of dollars' worth of things.
It was more.
Call the police again.
You should probably stop filming.
My name is Dr. John Cambridge,
and I'm the CEO of the Philadelphia
Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion.
Now!
From a young age,
we're taught to fear insects.
Or, at least, think that bugs are gross.
Haven't you heard about the roaches?
They're devouring people whole.
Just look at TV and movies.
Bugs! Bugs!
Not the bees!
And it is a shame because
it's important for people to understand
how reliant we are on insects
and the ecosystem services they provide,
like clean water and decomposition
and pollination.
Bugs are nature's little workers.
And we take these things for granted
in our day-to-day lives.
I love the variety of species
and the perfect adaptation.
I love my leaf insects.
I'm just really into invertebrates.
Now, it turns out there is a thriving
world of people who
love these creatures.
Stunning.
Look at that.
Though there are a number
of different levels of enthusiasm.
They can be really cute and funny.
There's that person
who wants to go to school to learn about
the behaviors of a particular damselfly
or there's people
who want to have a super cool pet
to show their friends.
Insects are fascinating.
And it is both fun and important
that people learn about them.
The Insectarium is more than
just a science museum.
It's like that first contact
where kids learn
about the workhorses of nature.
We are the ambassadors of nature.
We wanna teach people
to appreciate these things
which they might take for granted.
And that's exactly what we were doing.
At least, until the heist happened.
I'm fascinated by the story,
because, you know,
you always say news is new
because it's new.
- I have never done this one. - Nope.
Tens of thousands of dollars' worth of bugs...
- Uh-hmm. - Was stolen from a bug museum.
We had spent the last several years
building one of the most diverse,
interactive arthropod zoos in the country,
and now it was empty.
And what do you do?
I remember sitting in the, the police station
like trying to describe exactly what had happened,
and there's just like people like
peering over the cubicle like, "What?"
Some thefts are strange.
Domestics can be strange.
But I don't think there's anything
as strange as bugs being stolen.
My name is Mike Zanetich.
I'm a detective with the Philadelphia Police Department.
We've investigated here
everything from petty thefts
to armed robberies,
homicides, rapes.
Pretty much cover the whole gamut.
I have never investigated
anything with bugs before this one.
Who on Earth reports that their bugs were stolen?
The first thing we did
is me and my partner,
we went to the Insectarium
a couple hours
after the initial report was made.
We took a couple photos
and we were just trying
to get the property back and returned
to the owner as soon as possible.
When we put together the list of stolen insects
for the detectives, the staff was devastated.
Up here on the third floor,
it was empty.
It flips you out upside your head when,
you know, these are animals that I've been
working with for a period of time.
They were tarantulas that were mine that were gone, you know?
And that... that... that was sad.
When I went upstairs and realized
that all the stuff was stolen,
I felt completely overwhelmed and I was like,
"This is where we're at.
This is serious."
My friend was like,
"Your job is on the news."
I was like,
"What did you mean my job is on the news?
What is going on?"
I have people coming up to me on the street going,
"What happened at the Insectarium?"
Whenever I'm just doing my job,
they ask me, "What happened here?"
I was on Tinder and then they were like,
"Hey, so I heard you were at the Insectarium.
What happened during that bug heist?"
Like I can get out of it.
That first day,
we started knocking on doors,
we start making phone calls.
And then Jimmy Kimmel makes his joke on the Late Show.
A terrifying story out of Philadelphia,
the City of Brotherly Love,
where the citizenry fell victim
to one of the most unusual robberies ever,
the largest live insect heist in history.
Maybe the only live insect heist in history.
I don't know.
But thousands of bugs have been stolen
from the Philadelphia Insectarium.
And the job exploded.
CEO John Cambridge...
John Cambridge...
News Media, Channel 6, 6 ABC.
It's on Yahoo. It's on Google.
We've got exotic creatures
from all over the world up there.
I remember Channel 6 came in
and I remember Fox.
John Cambridge, you run this place?
We were not expecting anything
and then all of a sudden
we had people shooting videos
and interviews every day,
multiple times a day.
We received insect donations.
And it was awesome.
It was rather shocking that anyone
paid any attention to the theft here.
If you have any information
about the stolen bugs,
you're asked to call police.
A GoFundMe page
has been created for the Insectarium.
Orkin was kind enough to donate.
The Orkin Pest Control Company
donated $10,000 to the museum.
Because of one joke
that was said on a late night TV show,
all the upper levels of the police department,
I mean, through the whole city government
start getting involved.
And it just spread like wildfire from that point.
The most venomous spider on Earth
has been stolen from this exhibit.
A deadly sand spider
that buries itself under sand,
ready to ambush its next victim.
There's a tweet on the subject of warning.
It says, "If you see this six-eyed
sand spider that is highly venomous,
please let the Philadelphia Insectarium know."
Trust me, I'll let them know.
Probably with a loud and very girlish scream, so...
When the police brass heard about it,
and it was all hands on deck.
- Oh, my God. - That one is still missing.
If it was to bite someone,
yes, it could rot 25% of their body.
There were actually members of the police department
suggesting that spider
could be used in crimes.
That this spider could be thrown
on somebody in an act of terrorism.
There might have been a little bit of panic.
Are these bugs somewhere?
Are they gonna hurt people?
Are they poisonous? Things like that.
The USDA and the FBI came in.
We had them get moving with the investigation.
We had to call for expert advice.
Once something hits the news like that,
it becomes a national story,
jokes on late night TV,
there's definitely pressure to solve it.
This is not over
until we get those creatures back.
My name's Jim Maxwell.
I'm a private investigator,
a security consultant.
I started as an FBI
special agent in 1982
and I've held that position until 2006.
Most metropolitan police departments
have a huge caseload,
and the help of a private investigator can be instrumental
in solving certain bizarre and complicated crimes.
I was brought in to try to fill
in the blanks on this investigation.
On this particular case,
I met with Lieutenant Dennis Rosenbaum.
To handle a case like this,
it's important to identify
the group of people
that would have an interest
in dealing in this type of commodity,
in this case insects.
These bugs are specialty items.
You're not gonna be able to sell this
on a street corner to anybody.
You have to have a venue of people
that wanna buy these things.
Some people collect symbols
and some people collect bugs.
Director: When did you start to have a love for bugs?
Um... oh, Aragog.
Oh. Aragog pooped on me.
Hey, babe. Okay.
All right. So when
I was very young,
I started learning about insects.
Insects were always my passion.
I'd like to do a video today
of some tarantulas that I am selling.
This is a really cool jumping spider.
And there she goes.
There is an established network
of these people who are bug enthusiasts.
And you're always gonna find somebody willing to pay
almost anything
if they want it bad enough.
There is no good way to pinpoint
or to describe what a bug lover is.
It's a spectrum of people.
My name is Brent Karner.
I've been working in the bug trading
business now for about a decade.
It ranges from hobbyist that just like
to catch a bug in their backyard
or maybe like to keep a caterpillar in a jar and watch it
turn into a butterfly
all the way to people
who have meticulous collections
of millions and millions of specimens
that they've acquired or collected over a lifetime that they study
or sometimes just keep in ways that
people keep coin or stamp collections.
When we looked at this case,
you kind of understand
that people collect them.
Not that I ever knew anybody
who had a tarantula
but you knew that they were out there
and people collected them.
But on the level that it's done,
you just was unaware.
We were kind of like out of our element.
Detective Zanetich reached out to the outside world and said,
"I need someone that knows about this stuff."
There are bug lovers throughout the world.
South America is different than Africa.
Is different than Southeast Asia.
Is different than in the Arctic Region.
Well Japan, live beetles
have become a very popular item
for collectors and just hobbyists
who wanna keep a beetle pet at home.
In Europe,
their live walking stick trade is quite big.
There are treasures
in all of these places.
And for the consummate collector,
they often want as many representatives
of what they like from around the world.
There are also things that you wouldn't
expect that people would do with bugs.
Some Madagascar hissing cockroaches
are used as jewelry.
They'll take hot glue
and they'll glue gems all over these roaches.
And then they'll glue a chain to them
and a pin so that you can pin
their chain to your shirt
and have this bejeweled roach
crawl around your shoulder.
Over in China and Japan
where these like large Hercules beetles
can be found readily,
they will use them to fight each other.
Some of those fighting matches
can be worth money.
In some cases, the collectors are obsessed
with getting certain types of specimens,
and they're willing to spend enormous amounts of money
and go to great lengths to obtain them.
Hi. My name is Kelvin
and I am an insect hobbyist.
I actually started collecting insects
before I worked at the Insectarium.
Insects are probably one of the most
misunderstood animals in the world.
There's a lot of errors and misinformation.
I just love the sheer biodiversity of them.
I mean, there is over
400,000 species of beetles alone.
I have a whole bunch of different species.
Over the years,
it has amassed into a large collection
where I keep in my basement
where I breed insects
of various species.
I get my insects from a couple of different sources.
Some come from online.
Some come from friends who I've met on Instagram.
These individuals,
they're buying and selling on the internet.
And most of them
are legitimate collectors.
I keep probably a hundred, hundred and twenty
different species of tarantulas.
I've got stuff from the small... world's smallest species
all the way up to some of the world's largest.
I generally sell to a lot of enthusiasts.
And our hobby has grown in the US,
some people want some of these things.
For example, one egg sack
can produce two thousand babies,
and that's still sellable.
More and more people are getting into the hobby
and expanding their own collections.
It's accessible.
You don't need a lot of space.
You don't require a lot of extra things.
It is a very, very addictive hobby.
We were thinking
the person who did this crime
knew about that world of bugs.
Early on,
we found out most of the staff
had an avid interest in collecting bugs.
Thefts, in my experience,
it's usually 50% of the time
an inside job, if not greater.
We started directing our focus on the employees.
The list grew to the dozen people
that had to be investigated.
At this point, everyone's a suspect.
Even though the Philadelphia Police Department
doesn't necessarily have a bug division,
the investigation remains the same.
They conduct interviews,
follow-up leads,
and followed this case
to a logical conclusion.
The first place we go in in these types of job
is to the insiders, the employees,
the people who know the value of items.
There was the idea that these insects could have been stolen
for the suspects to profit.
One of the most expensive insects that we lost
during the insect heist
was a colony of rhino roaches.
You know, these things can go up to 500 bucks a breeding pair.
For a pair of roaches, $500.
Philadelphia Police Department
did everything by the numbers.
They conducted interviews
and started the process of elimination.
We usually start off
by sitting the victim down,
interviewing the victim,
find out exactly what happened.
We talked to John Cambridge regarding the incident.
He seemed like a smart enough guy.
He seemed to be working hard
to build the business.
I was interviewed several times
in regards to the bug heist.
Chrissy was interviewed.
She cared about the business
was the biggest thing I noticed.
She's given a tremendous amount.
The number of weeks that she hasn't received a paycheck.
The number of times
she's had to put stuff on her own credit card.
Chrissy bleeds for this place.
I've committed so much time
and energy and effort into this place.
Chrissy is the order.
I am the chaos.
She has been glue.
I almost feel like the plan was to just
steal everything and destroy this place.
Director: Why would anyone do this?
I... don't have an answer for you
of why they would do it.
I mean, I'm not a criminal
so I don't think like a criminal.
We realized Chrissy was not a suspect.
Chrissy seem to sincerely care
about the business.
A lot of these employees love that business.
Director: So when did you first hear about the heist?
I received a text.
I was in the airport,
on the way to Michigan.
And it's funny
'cause they chose the perfect weekend.
Myself, Chrissy, and John
were all out of the building that weekend.
I was in Michigan on a girls' weekend,
Chrissy was on a rafting trip,
and John was out of the state.
Director: So then,
who was in the building?
It was mostly animal care staff,
with a couple of other people.
The animal care department
has a lot on their plate.
They have to like take care
and feed so many animals.
We make sure all the animals
are happy and healthy.
We also guide tours for schools and camps.
We prepare the animals for travel shows.
We make salads for the lizards,
feed all the arachnids, all the insects,
chop up carrots,
whatever the animals' diet needs.
It seemed like a lot of these kids,
they all love these bugs.
Maybe they wanted the insects for their
own personal use, breeding, whatever.
But these investigations
can turn on a dime.
It became apparent,
after the initial interviews,
that there were conflicts
between management and staff
for various reasons
and it was not the wholesome museum
that everybody thought it was.
There was definitely tension at the Insectarium.
A lot of people in the Animal Care Department
were very pissed off.
The Animal Care Department runs in the third floor.
They are completely separated from the rest of the museum.
They feel like it's them against everyone else.
When I came to the Philadelphia Insectarium,
Wlodek was the Director of Animal Care.
Wlodek is like... he's a crazy guy.
I knew he was very highly-respected by John,
but he was also
a hard personality to deal with
and he did what he wanted to do.
The Animal Care Department here
has always sort of been the problem child.
One of the key elements
that came out of some of these interviews
was that there was friction between the management
and the people in the Animal Care unit.
It was critical to look at
the next head of the Animal Care unit
after Wlodek, Chris Tomasetto.
Chris was someone who had a lot
of experience with husbandry
and he knew how
to make a very beautiful terrarium
for something to live in.
However
he was also
very conniving.
John and Chris,
I know, definitely used to ... heads.
But Chris cared about the animals a lot.
It wasn't just his job.
It was his hobby.
Most everybody kind of
kind of followed Chris.
Once Chris became director,
he started hiring his friends.
And so he created the clique.
Chris and Alison built it
to take over the Animal Care Department.
Alison was the assistant director
of the Animal Care unit
for two years at the Insectarium.
Alison worked for us doing travel shows, schools,
summer groups, everything,
and created more of a
hands-on opportunity
for kids to get more engaged into the science field.
John kind of saw my tattoos
and hired me on the spot.
I was excited, you know?
It was a job opportunity in a place that
I've always wanted to work.
And I loved it. I loved it.
But that definitely changed
throughout the time that I was there.
Alison was a nice coworker,
but I knew the tension was starting to build.
She was a decent employee
but she got mixed in with the wrong group up there
with the Animal Care Department.
And they kind of transformed her into feeling like
the insectarium... were the bad people.
She unfortunately picked the wrong side.
Chris Tomasetto very clearly displayed
some animosity towards John.
Alison also displayed some gripes
and couldn't be disregarded
as a possible suspect in this matter.
As we started to sort out
the interviews of all the employees,
the Philadelphia Police Department developed information
that would steer this case in a completely different direction.
We had spent weeks investigating.
Then we find out that
this whole business is in dispute.
Steve was the original owner of the Insectarium.
Him and Mr. Cambridge had been involved in civil proceedings
in the courts about ownership and money
involving the Insectarium.
I created the Insectarium, 1992.
Twenty-eight years ago, you know?
And everybody there knows when I opened the Insectarium,
John Cambridge wasn't even born yet
or maybe was one year old.
John said he owned the company
but, believe me, that's my museum.
Those are the kinds of things we have to sift through.
And obviously there was something toxic there.
I've always been a good guy.
But I'm telling you, sometimes
you don't think about what you're doing,
you just do it.
Hi. My name is Steve Kanya.
I'm from Philadelphia.
My product is the Pest Control Marker.
It kills bugs.
It can be applied
to problem areas.
In any investigation,
it's important to have a historical perspective
of the location
you're dealing with.
Steve Kanya was the original owner
of the Insectarium.
Director: And what did Steve tell you
when you interviewed him?
Steve gave me a long list of stories and histories
with the Insectarium.
I've been involved with the pest control industry for 35 years.
I was the first person in the United States
that opened up an insectarium.
It's an insect museum.
I know bugs.
Let's bug off together!
I started a business in January 1975.
A pest control company called Steve's Bug Off.
Steve's Bug Off was very well-known
for identification of bugs.
People would bring in bugs
that they found in their homes
and people would come in
with bites all over them
and expose their body parts to us,
like, you know, their bellies or breast, you know,
and like, "Do you... can you tell me
what bit me here?"
I'm like, "No. I don't think so," you know?
The technicians would bring bugs
back to him for identification,
and then he'd started putting them in the window.
We'd put whatever the catch of the day
was in the front window.
As a kid growing up,
Steve had the exterminating company Steve's Bug Off.
And I remember we'd walk by it
and he'd have displays in the window
of different like cockroaches and centipedes and things like that.
And we always would all stop
and like look in the window.
So we have scorpion
or we'd have some kind of a rare spider.
And all of a sudden,
you hear a car pull up, and I look up,
and the children would come and look
what we had in the window.
Twenty minutes later, a half hour later,
another car would pull up,
get out, look what we had in the window.
I said, "There's a need for this.
I don't know what it is yet
but there's a need for it."
And that kind of triggered something inside of us.
You know what? We've got something here.
People need to see this.
So to start drawing attention to us,
we decided to have a cockroach contest.
The latest on a story that has
really been bugging a lot of Philadelphians.
Wanted dead or alive,
the largest cockroach in Philadelphia,
$1000 reward.
We partnered with the Philadelphia Zoo.
And then when it started, the media pool
was all taking pictures and cameras and like,
"Is this somebody in the outskirts
that is running for president?"
No. It's the roach Olympics
at the Philadelphia Zoo.
So if you could ever get that tape,
that would be phenomenal.
From Roxboro, #29, Brutus the Bruiser.
From Hunting Park, #15, Bella Oz-Bug.
From Mayfair, #6, Reginald the Roach.
That's how the idea launched in my head.
We're gonna open up an insect museum.
He was known
in the neighborhood, and it grew.
And then over the years,
you would see stories about it
featured on different TV shows
or news spots.
We were getting a lot of attention from the media.
I wanted to get the most exposure
to what we were trying to accomplish.
So who else do you go to?
David Letterman!
Folks, please say hello,
all the way from Philadelphia?
Yes.
That's right. Bob Scalzetti.
Hi, Bob. Nice to see you.
Nice being here, Dave.
And what I got here is some hissing roaches.
- Oh, Lord. - These are, uh...
Jiminy. Hoo!
Now, do you wanna hold it?
No. I don't wanna hold one.
Okay. But what I have here
is another large species.
So you just got like a dozen boxes full of cockroaches?
No. This is...
And that's your hobby?
Well, no. Not... well, this is only...
we're trying to start a zoo.
The first insect zoo in the world.
Oh, there's a moneymaker.
There's a gold mine, huh?
Well, if only...
The guy's sitting on a mother lode there, isn't he?
I trademarked the word insectarium.
And there was never a bug museum
or insectarium in the United States.
It was never ever done before.
So then we worked
on the building for years,
putting it all together.
Then we finally did the grand opening,
January 15th, 1992.
And I wanted a wow factor.
You gotta have a wow factor.
So in the middle of the second floor,
we came up with an idea of putting a roach kitchen.
They had Plexiglas walls,
I guess, maybe a little taller than I am.
One side's a kitchen.
The other side is a bathroom.
Literally, just roaches.
Hundreds of roaches just living in there.
He received attention both
from the local media and the national media.
Then all of a sudden,
I'm getting phone calls
from The Wall Street Journal.
They wanted to send a photographer out.
Then we get phone calls
from the Inquirer, The Daily News.
Everybody started...
wanna come in and do a story.
Next thing you know,
CNN's coming in, with Jeanne Moos.
Are there any crawling on me?
People loved it.
I mean, literally loved it.
Steve's Bug Off was a very successful business.
At one time, we had over
a thousand clients. Well over.
So now the Insectarium
has been going from 1992.
It's old.
Meaning that everybody knows about it
but there's no more pizazz with it.
I don't know why but it did.
It started to dwindle down.
Do you like roaches?
I love roaches.
Ew, man. That's nasty.
Steve, over the years,
is well-intentioned
in his pursuit of the Insectarium.
But sometimes we grow a business
and we don't grow with it.
And I think that's probably the case here.
When I created the Insectarium 28 years ago,
okay... what was I?
In my 30s? Late 30s?
I had a lot of energy.
I could do everything.
Work 24 hours a day.
But I can't do it today.
Mother Nature says,
"Uh, you gotta slow down a little bit."
I need a younger person
that had a lot of energy
and maybe has some good ideas.
John Cambridge was doing an internship
with New Jersey Department of Agriculture,
and he visited the Insectarium.
He was very knowledgeable.
I guess he's studying etymology, you know?
Looked like...
that he sincerely wanted to help.
And he was young.
He's had that thing that I don't have anymore. Youth.
And John came in with the idea that he would help out
and he just needed a thousand dollars'
worth of expenses a month.
He'd bring in people.
And that's how John got his foot in the door.
I believed that he was here to help,
because I believe in people.
And he wasn't.
I made the biggest mistake in my entire life,
getting involved with John.
One day, I come in,
my office is empty.
Everything from my office was in the dumpster.
Steve: Chrissy, where's all my stuff at?
John: Your stuff's in the back.
Chrissy: By the back door,
by the back exit. Through the pavilion.
It turns out that he was conceiving a plan
to take the business from me,
and that's what he end up doing.
He said he was the owner.
And for me to get out,
that I was trespassing.
John: You are being removed from this facility
and from any administrative duties.
John: Call the police again.
He had Chrissy call the 911 and said
that there was a trespasser in there,
which... meaning me.
You don't talk to him.
You don't talk to him, okay?
Let's do it that way.
Everything goes through your attorneys, okay?
Okay.
Thank you, sir.
Have a good day.
Thank you very much, officer.
Steve: I hope you got a good criminal attorney.
My entire life, he's the only person
that I actually hate.
After Steve was interviewed,
this investigation turned in...
kind of into a secondary investigation.
I thought maybe we were even leaning more towards an arrest
on part of the business practices,
between the two business partners.
But it turns out, once we got
deeper into that investigation,
it was just filled with twists and turns.
I didn't come here to try and take over the museum.
All he had to do was not * me.
The whole building had over a million dollars
of back taxes, liens,
and judgments on it,
which now was my problem.
If this was an inside job,
it has to be employees
that were actively involved
in trading in bugs, selling bugs.
People don't realize how widespread
the illegal wildlife trade is.
He had international contacts.
The fact that he quit right after the heist
set off some bells.
And I said,
"Look, you can't do this.
You're gonna get caught."