Just a handful of days before the heist,
I received a phone call,
which led to just a shit storm.
I was driving through the desert,
back from Tucson.
I was taking the opportunity to pick up,
uh, a colony of honeypot ants,
and those are the kind of things
that you cannot send back on a plane.
And I get a call from this newspaper reporter.
Hello?
It was like,
"What do you think about Wlodek?"
And I was like,
"What are you talking about?"
And they were, like,
"He's looking at federal charges
and up to 20 years in prison."
And I'm thinking, "Oh, shit."
It turns out that Wlodek had been
importing and
distributing exotic species.
Wlodek was having giant millipedes
and poisonous scorpions sent from Africa.
And the packages were disguised
with indicators on the outside of the package,
plush toys for my friend's child
who is about to be born.
The boxes they were packed
in were not packed very well.
Scorpions, millipedes,
and things like that,
had escaped in the post office van.
And the USDA
was pressing charges against him,
and instead of a slap on the wrist,
they were gonna throw the book at him.
I said, "Whoa."
And the reporter says,
"Yeah, well, uh, I mean,
it also says that he is the director
of your Animal Care Department on his Facebook page."
I said, "No,
he is not still working at the museum."
He hadn't been for a while at that point.
I literally had no idea at the time
that this one phone call
was the event that set the heist into motion.
When Wlodek was here,
business was amazing.
Not only did we now have the exotic creatures'
from all over the world,
we had a lot of them.
Wlodek helped us start the program,
he helped us get everything set up,
train the staff.
Now, we have more educational coordinators,
now we're creating summer camps,
now we're doing after school programs.
And we got very busy,
which was great.
But after a year,
Wlodek left.
Director: Did he tell you why he was leaving?
No.
And he didn't give us much warning at all.
It became evident
that Wlodek left the Insectarium
on some murky circumstances.
It appeared that he was selling a lot
of illegal bugs and
making good money.
Wlodek had breeding operations
in the rearing room,
and collectors were coming
to the museum to buy stuff from Wlodek.
And it could be anything from mantids
to stick insects, to you name it.
If it was part of a breeding program, they...
It was sold out of the Insectarium.
Director: Were you ever ordering things
from other countries?
Um...
Director: How about Wlodek?
Well, he was involved in a USDA investigation
and, uh, decided
not to interfere with that.
Director: Do you know what his current legal status is?
Shocked he's not in jail.
The last I heard of Wlodek,
he was living in the basement
of his parents' house.
Wlodek got actually put on house arrest.
Looking at the timeline
of when Wlodek got arrested,
I'd realized that Wlodek
couldn't have pulled this off.
But based on Wlodek's activities,
one of the first things we looked at
was his connections with other employees.
When Wlodek left,
it was just a power vacuum at the top.
And nobody wanted the job
because the Animal Care Department
is a monstrous department
with all of these responsibilities.
We suddenly had this void.
Animal Care needs a director.
I understood that
when Wlodek left, Chris took over his job.
Chris really wanted it.
He wanted to be the director,
and at the end of the day,
that's actually worth a lot.
So after Chris took over,
I mean, at first, it was exciting,
so we're, like,
seeing all of these really cool creatures come through.
And there was a bunch of instances where,
"What the heck is that?"
But in order to maintain our permits,
we have a level of culpability
for everything that goes through our doors.
And so, it was really cool that Chris
was able to bring in some other stuff
but, um, that
couldn't happen here.
That frustrated him tremendously.
So, to go back,
after that phone call with the reporter,
I realized that if there is anything
that is going to cause
a surprise mega inspection,
it's a front page article
about your director of Animal Care
being caught smuggling
and selling exotic species.
My name is Wayne Wehling, uh,
Senior Entomologist
with the United States Department
of Agriculture's Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service.
If an employee of an institution
is arrested because they're involved
in smuggling bugs,
we would certainly completely review
the institution's operation
and we would have a thorough discussion
with management on next steps.
Director: And would those next steps include inspection?
Oh, absolutely.
So after that phone call,
I called back to Chrissy,
and I was like,
"Hey, this just happened to Wlodek,
just make sure everything's buttoned up
back at the museum,"
and that we have all our permits,
we have everything we're supposed to.
I just wanted to double check.
So she brings in Chris, the Director
of Living Exhibits at that point,
and starts to tell him what's going on,
you know, and Chris just, like,
he doesn't even wait for Chrissy to finish talking to him,
he just immediately bolts out of the office.
Chrissy tracks him down and says,
"What's going on with you, man?"
Apparently, he was afraid he was about to get raided.
Because it turns out that Chris
was in the same world as Wlodek.
These guys all dealing insects together
and I knew he bought
and sold and traded them.
Chris would call it the hobby,
he kept on using this phrase,
and I just assumed it meant
the insect husbandry kind of group,
but it also kind of seems like a veil
to cover,
like, some shady stuff that was going on.
Coded language for illegally importing
these animals into the United States.
I knew Chris had a friend
who would travel the country,
packing suitcases
full of whatever he collected,
and I do remember
a suitcase showing up here at one point.
We then found
that Chris was using our address
to have insects shipped
in and delivered.
Boxes that had tarantulas in them
from all over the place.
Chris' specialty was tarantulas
and we had a tremendous collection.
Director: Would it surprise you to learn
that a major target of the heist
actually were tarantulas?
I mean, that would not surprise me, no.
I don't know everything that's happening here.
And then
after interviews were conducted,
it was reported that federal evidence,
tarantulas were stolen that
was being maintained by the Insectarium.
We had, uh, eight tarantulas
which were evidence for a smuggling trial.
When we realized
the evidence tarantulas were taken,
we were concerned about,
"Okay, why were these ones taken?"
The investigation's ongoing,
our partners in the federal agencies
had joined us, due to the fact that some
of them were evidence in ongoing cases.
The FBI got involved in the case
because we didn't just have display creatures,
we also happened to be a facility
that held evidence.
Some smuggler had been bringing
tarantulas into the US
and we were one of the facilities
that would hold them until trial.
Whoever had robbed the Insectarium,
they stole federal evidence tarantulas.
It would have been a lesser crime
to have just walked into the front,
taken the cash out
of the register and walked out.
If in fact these tarantulas
were federal evidence
and they were stolen,
it would change the direction of this investigation.
One would consider
that it could be a bigger crime
with other criminals involved
with a different intent.
Sometimes, cases like this
take on a life of their own.
So during some research
and looking at the inventory
and looking at different types of tarantulas, say,
and find out there's huge markets
of tarantulas in Mexico.
During the heist,
one of the critters they took
was the Mexican fire-leg tarantula.
These are not common creatures.
So, this was
a very calculated move.
There was definitely a new motive for this heist.
I had no idea that this was going
to move in so many different directions.
Previously,
it was indicated that a smuggler
may have taken these bugs
for the purposes of selling them.
And now,
there was consideration that the reason
for this heist
was that a ring of smugglers
took these tarantulas
to suppress evidence in an ongoing trial.
Persons involved or people
with the goal and the nerve
to take on that type of activity
would have to be some sort of organized group.
As a result of this allegation,
a closer look was taken at the tarantula trade,
which is going on in Mexico.
There's a lot of illegal pet trade here in Mexico.
It's very, very big.
You can see tarantulas everywhere,
alive and dead.
And the most beautiful tarantulas
are the Mexican tarantulas.
If you have a collection of tarantulas
and you don't have a Mexican tarantula,
you don't have a collection.
My name is Rodrigo Orozco.
I'm the director and founder of this place
here in Guadalajara, Tarantulas De Mexico.
When I start all of this,
I knew I have enemies, right?
I knew I had to fight.
The black market of animals is huge.
They have their own cartel.
The mission here in Tarantulas De Mexico
is to capture and breed tarantulas,
and the education of the people
about the Mexican tarantulas.
Hey.
Welcome. Welcome.
And what we do
is that we breed captive tarantulas
and we send them in the market
so that tarantulas in the wild,
they're gonna leave alone.
Because tarantulas
are in great danger of extinction.
They are in great danger
because of the poachers.
The poacher,
I just take his market out of his hand.
I had some threats.
Like, yeah,
I know what you're doing, watch out.
But when I get the call to slow down,
that I was gonna get hurt,
it run me more.
It gives me more power.
Okay. So now,
you're afraid, I won't be afraid.
I got you now.
The tarantulas are a very hot item.
They're very popular.
There's an extremely defined market for Mexican tarantulas.
We needed to factor all that in.
It's very,
very sad, because the tarantulas
are almost gone in Mexico.
That I've been witness
and it's very, very sad.
The government budgets
for handling trafficking of illegal bugs
is minimal in comparison
to the money being made today.
You're dealing with a monumental task
to combat this type of trafficking.
It's important that there are private citizens out there
that are working with police departments
to combat this illicit trade.
Tarantulas are protected by Mexican law.
But, I was seeing tarantulas
in the market everywhere.
Huge tarantulas.
So that got me very, very, very scared.
So I went to the authorities
and I asked them,
where are all those tarantulas coming from?
They said, "We don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?
Nobody's breeding them in captivity?"
"Nobody."
So they're coming from the wild.
I'm gonna collect you.
And nobody was doing anything
because the black market
of animals is like a cartel.
It's a big one, it's a huge one,
and it's a scary one.
These organized groups
use intimidation
or any method to circumvent
the criminal justice system.
They definitely have the means
and the ability to tamper with evidence.
These trafficking networks have a reputation
for being extremely ruthless.
When I start to breed the tarantulas,
the word went around.
Somebody called me on the phone and say,
"Hey, man, you're making a lot of noise.
You better be careful."
Alberto: I'm Luis Alberto Cayo Cervantes and
I've worked for 15 years in wildlife
rescue for institutions like Semarnat.
Semarnat's mission is to legislate
everything that has to do with wildlife,
natural resources.
Collectors will go to great lengths,
even kill someone,
to get their hands on
a very specific item.
Director: What do you think about the bug heist in Philadelphia?
Alberto: I think,
I imagine, I believe that
for a robbery of anthropods of such
magnitude in Philadelphia
they have a very specific
trade somewhere
7,000 specimens already assembled
and processed is a lot of dollars.
Well, what about the Philadelphia,
that they stole 7,000 bugs?
If the suspect is a tarantula guy,
it doesn't surprise me at all.
It doesn't surprise me at all.
Director: Why not?
These guys have no feelings.
They have no heart.
They don't care about the war.
They're ... man.
The people that trade tarantulas
in the black market are not good people.
If these tarantulas were federal evidence
and they were stolen,
and whoever pulled this off
is directly involved
in some sort of organized crime.
I needed to take a harder look
at the people who work inside the Insectarium
and who had any contact
with dealing in the tarantulas.
It's fair to say that Chris was becoming the focus
of the investigation at that point.
Further investigation showed
that Chris was involved
in the shady side of the hobby.
His activities alone
became a key part of the puzzle.
Unfortunately, when looking into it,
the Insectarium was lacking in maintaining proper records
on the care
and disposition of these animals.
And it turns out that recordkeeping
was Chris' responsibility.
That by itself, uh,
raises some eyebrows.
It became clear that back in 2018
leading up to the day of the heist,
the Insectarium was not well run.
And that was going
to be more and more relevant.
I don't think many people in that building
had an idea what they were doing.
I think the kids may have been running it
how they felt it should be run.
But it wasn't being run by the letter of the law
and by USDA standards.
Several employees
were taking advantage of the situation
and obtaining bugs that they wanted
and not going through the proper channels
to obtain them.
The Insectarium potentially
had exposure because of these practices.
So obviously,
when you're buying these things,
it's like a handgun.
You just can't send it anywhere,
it has to go to a place
where they can verify who you are or what you do.
And in this case, some of the employees
were using the Insectarium
because it's known through the world.
So when these suppliers
were shipping things,
they were shipping them
right to the Insectarium
for the employees
who were then housing them there
or even taking them home
and keeping them in a shoebox.
I believe the US Department of Agriculture
under these circumstances could probably come in
and with a court order
shut down an operation
for not being compliant.
It would be a disaster,
so it would shut off all their,
uh, sources of income.
This could have brought a lot
of negative attention to the Insectarium.
If the facility knowingly was aware of these insects,
they're obligated in the permit conditions
to report that to us.
We can either provide further restrictions,
more frequent inspections,
we can also revoke or suspend their permit.
So this can be an enormous problem.
At that time here,
it was a shit show,
and I'm sorry to curse.
Director: How so?
Okay. So let's rewind back
to when everything went down.
I get that phone call from John saying
that Wlodek was in a lot of legal trouble
for different insects and whatnot.
Because Wlodek was tied to the Insectarium,
it would be an open investigation
for the USDA to check us out.
So I talked to Chris,
he immediately went upstairs.
And at that point,
it was brought to my attention
that there was a giant African snail on property
which is completely illegal
and goes against every possible USDA regulation.
The giant African snail
is indigenous to Africa, I believe.
The reason it's a big deal
is because it's illegal to import.
It's like super, super bad to have one.
That's all I know.
People have smaller dogs.
They're, like, a football sized mollusk
that could eat the stucco
off the side of a building, literally.
It contains calcium
and the calcium helps to build their shells.
I've seen one here, one here.
The snails also carry a parasite
that can cause a form of meningitis,
potentially deadly to humans.
The giant African snail
is an extremely dangerous situation.
The US Department of Agriculture
have very clearly banned it
from the United States.
People want giant African land snails because they're attractive,
but also that first word, giant.
But we have made the decision
not to allow permits for them.
It's just too big of a risk.
Evidently, Chris kept
the giant African snail somewhere
up behind tanks
where it was not visible.
At that point, I contacted Chris,
I said, "Where is the snail?
You need to bring it down."
He actually put it in a cooler
and brought it in my office.
Like, there you go.
So immediately,
my thing is to get rid of it.
I mean, my name's
on all these USDA permits.
So immediately,
took it, I froze it.
After I froze it for 48 hours,
I took it out.
And I took a hammer and I just smashed it.
To complicate matters more,
it was obvious either from reviewing the records
or the lack of records
that Chris was not being compliant
in what was required
of the Insectarium.
A lot of these bugs
pose serious agricultural risks.
It's extremely important
that they're carefully logged and tracked.
It was Chris' responsibility
to maintain those records,
and is every indication that
he was lacking in that responsibility.
When we went to go check all of the records
that Chris was supposed to be keeping,
there was nothing.
Like, for six months,
no records of what animals
we brought into the museum,
what species we currently had,
what had died.
Like, all of these things are, like,
basic pieces of information
that we're supposed to be keeping.
And none of it, you know, was there.
So I knew something was gonna happen.
Something was gonna come down on Chris.
With over 7,000 creatures here,
we were reliant on Chris at this point,
to sort of maintain all of the records
and best practices that were required.
Turns out, he wasn't.
Chris was intimidating.
He's gonna like,
yell at us and bark at us,
gotta be like,
"Go back to your, like, area.
You guys cannot be here."
He seemed kind of dark.
I don't know, uh, like,
I don't wanna say dark
but he seemed kind of dark.
Sometimes, like,
he definitely made me feel uncomfortable.
Him and John
were not really getting along
because Chris
was asking for a lot of money.
Like, every single week,
the Animal Care Department
is the most expensive department in the building,
because it's the one that has the animals.
It's the one that has to feed.
It's the one that has
all of the lighting and the aquariums.
So, I think that
there was this money clash
between Chris and John.
Based on the interviews of the employees,
it was clear that there was
some serious tension
between John and Chris.
Given, uh, Chris' history with John,
the snail incident
I think was the tipping point
in separating his association with the Insectarium.
I believe the snail put the business
and the employees at risk
and that was reason
for John asking Chris to leave.
When I found out that Chris
had been bringing in these snails,
I mean, this is something
that is potentially threatening
the entire ability of our museum
to continue operating.
I need to fire him.
This isn't even a close one.
The heist took place
shortly after Chris was fired.
That would be a serious red flag
in any investigation.
And then more evidence developed.
We have an update to a story
Action News first brought you.
We're getting a look at new surveillance video
in the theft of insects and small reptiles
in Northeast Philadelphia.
I'm trying to solve the crime
that happened at the Insectarium.
It was important to go
back to the days prior to the heist
and reexamine all the details.
Look here,
it has lots of butterflies.
So the week of the heist
also just happened to be
a hectic time in general at the Insectarium.
I was extremely busy.
The incident with Chris
was problematic
but I had other things I had to do.
We were shorthanded,
doing travel shows,
schools, summer groups, everything.
So I'm busily
flying around Philadelphia
trying to cover all of these programs
that we kept having employees call out of.
I was essentially out of the building
for most of the week.
But on Friday, um,
I think it was towards the end of the day.
I go upstairs to the third floor.
And then I went to the back of house,
it's like the area
where we keep all of the creatures
that aren't on the floor for exhibits.
And that thing was empty.
I go back out onto the floor
and the tanks
also don't have creatures in them.
And there's, kind of,
just like moment of, like...
"The creatures are gone."
After everything with Steve,
after everything with Wlodek,
and the giant African snail,
this was like... yeah, of course,
of course, like yeah, and oh, my God.
So, I started reviewing the video footage.
First off, for anyone
who has ever tried to go through
a bunch of security footage,
that's actually not super easy.
You're talking about hours,
and hours, and hours
from every single angle.
During the course of an investigation,
especially a robbery investigation,
video evidence is extremely important.
Videotape can make a case
or it can completely discount a case.
In this particular case,
there was a large volume of video evidence.
Obviously,
we had our suspicions about who it was.
Chris, for sure.
Allison, for sure.
And we found some interns
that were walking out
with some of the creatures.
We needed to really look through the footage
and try and figure out
exactly how many people
were involved in this.
So apparently, our Animal Care Department
has spent the last two days
systematically removing
all of the creatures from the shelves,
from the tanks,
from the exhibits, everything.
Bin after bin, after bin,
after bin, after bin.
It was as clear as it gets,
Chris had been organizing the whole thing.
Based on the history between John and Chris,
after viewing the videotape,
he drew the conclusion
that Chris was responsible.
John also maintained that Chris
had been helped by the animal care team.
I don't know the ins and outs of all of it,
but I do know that
there was a pact between Chris
and a lot of people in the Animal Care Department
that if he left or someone leaves,
they all leave.
And after everyone left,
I realized the gravity of the situation.
And then when they were done,
they walked straight upstairs,
took their jersey off,
stabbed it against the wall
with one of the large cutting knives
that we chop vegetables
for the creatures for.
If someone steals something
so that they can get a buck,
that's not personal.
But when someone stabs their work jersey
into the side of the wall
with a 12-inch blade,
it feels a little more personal.
I think that was their way of just saying.
"... you.
Hope this place rots in hell."
I just don't think
they were smart enough to realize
that to the extreme
measures they went,
that we had no other choice
but to contact the law.
I went to the police
and reported the crime.
The police came in with the best intentions.
John handed over the video
and indicated that Chris
was the person responsible.
However, that night when we're, like,
"Hey, police officer, here's a video
of the person stealing all of our stuff."
"Yeah, they're gonna go over to his house."
They go into Chris' room
and it is absolutely covered
with little tiny containers
of all of our insects all over the place.
And because we failed to call the USDA
before we called the police,
they went running in there without anyone
who knew how to identify these things.
It's fair to say
that the initial search
of Chris' residence did not go very well.
I know that the FBI
checked up on Chris
and was like, "Oh, do you have like this
whatever random species of tarantula?"
If they brought an actual agent
who knew what tarantula was stolen
or what species of roach was stolen,
they would have caught them red-handed.
The Philadelphia Police,
no disrespect to them,
they don't know the difference between an exotic insect
or one you would find on the sidewalk
on the side of the street.
I'm not a bug guy. I'm not a bug expert.
I couldn't identify the difference
between the Insectariums insects
or Chris' insects.
This guy's like, "Kids, you got
an AG... what's an AG gigas?"
So that's a Giant African millipede,
except they didn't have anyone there
who could actually confirm what that was.
And so he's like,
"These are all my pets."
And so Chris was not arrested.
The investigation is ongoing.
Our partners in the federal agencies
have joined us.
Let's fast forward a week later,
when the FBI is now involved and the USDA.
What does that do?
It has the FBI now going through the video
and seeing what
they can find on the cameras?
Well, there's a big problem with that
because everything was taken out
in these big gray and black totes
like a big tote things.
It's fair to say
the FBI did not see the video
as the smoking gun John thought it was.
Even though
we have Chris and Allison
and every other member
who walked out with stuff,
walking out with what is
indisputably containers of creatures,
they were not arrested
and the case is still open.
The FBI agent says to me,
"We can't tell what's in those bins."
They have got to be able to charge them
with specifics.
The law enforcement agencies,
the USDA, the FBI,
the Philadelphia Police,
they promised us
they were going to handle it.
Chris ended up being
a tremendous bag of ....
I mean, Chris very nearly took
the entire museum down.
Director: Okay, you can have a seat
whenever you're ready.
My name's Chris and we're here
to make the record straight.
I've never quite felt rage
the way that I did
when John accused me
of stealing all of his insects.
I mean, how would you feel
if the FBI came to your house
looking for $50,000 of insects
that don't exist?
This story
took on a life of its own.
What else could he lie about?
It was absolutely shocking.
We all started having the police
show up at our house.
All eyes were on us,
and it was scary.
Chrissy was always presenting herself
to be completely on our side.
I found out I was missing $19,000.
And I said, "What's going on?"
He says, "Well, eff you."
Either it's all of these people
who aren't being truthful,
or it's you who's not being truthful.
I'm gonna take a break.