Chechen Mobsters, Bombs, Bumps and Special Ops: The Criminal Tale of Caviar
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Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash try. Go to shopify.com slash try now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. shopify.com slash try. It's 2011 and caviar chaos has hit the tiny town of Warsaw, Missouri.

Warsaw, which sits on a long lazy bend of the Osage River, right in the heart of the Ozarks, has long been a favoured spot for fishermen hunting the American paddlefish, a long-billed, distant relative of the sturgeon.

Thanks to the nearby Truman Dam, egg-laying females can't go any further upstream and they're trapped right down the street from a dive bar and a sonic drive-in. It's kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, with plenty of fatty food and cold beers to go around. Only the guys floating Warsaw aren't much into beer. They prefer vodka. Lots of it.

and they roll in white Mercedes SUVs and other cars that aren't six-wheeled Dodge trucks with Confederate flags flying out the back. Shifty as hell. The Warsawites, well, they've seen this all before. Back in the 1980s, in the dying days of the Soviet Empire, Russian gangsters arrived in town to scoop up paddlefish eggs or roe. They might have been poor quality compared to the stuff you might eat in a Michelin-starred Moscow restaurant,

But stick a label on those eggs, call them caviar, and smuggle them to the East Coast? Well, you've got yourself a six-figure catch. Back then, it took an enterprising Department of Conservation agent to break up the paddlefish poachers. But then the Berlin Wall fell.

and an underworld race for caviar heated up so bad in the former USSR that entire sturgeon populations died out, corrupt officials were assassinated, and at one point, in a remote war-torn Russian region, an entire apartment block was blown up, killing dozens. Caviar wars had become a fixture of modern Russia's dark economy. Warsaw's cops don't want one of those on their doorstep.

Thankfully, one of the guys from those bleak days in the 80s is still around and he's got a plan. Before long, Warsaw is welcoming tons of guys with East European accents and they're all buying permits from an over-friendly assistant with a bump on his shoulder. A few yards away, sleeping in a caravan, is a friendly old sea dog called Gary Hamilton. He's always interested in the day's paddlefish haul and who's catching what and how. He asks a lot of questions, in fact.

Welcome to the Underworld Podcast.

Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of the show where we take you on nut graphs that go all the way back to the Jurassic period. There ain't no editor letting that slip through the draft. I am Sean Williams. I don't even know what that means. A journalist in Berlin, and I'm joined by fellow poor life decision maker Danny Gold in New York City. We love you guys. We want to make this our full-time job so we can talk to each other instead of getting 1am calls from editors. Yeah, how's your week been?

I mean, I don't even know what that opening sentence means, but I'm very excited about this episode. That was a great intro, man. And you're right, though. We got to get those Patreon numbers up. Otherwise, I swear to God, I'm just going to go back to stealing catalytic converters. You can do that anyway.

um yeah that's true i mean as always we've got stuff going on the patreon we've got mini episodes interviews speaking to evan ratliff about his new podcast on israeli scammer next week so that'll be fun uh i also just published a big story for the atavist last thursday about gangster neo-nazi in cold war germany and vladimir putin give it a read or listen i think we'll do a show about it soon as well um

Yeah, there's a parrot smuggler in Berlin. I keep talking about this parrot smuggler in Berlin. Am I missing anything? No, I mean, we just have a lot of interesting stuff going up there for bonus episodes. Patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. But I have a bunch of people, too. I keep meaning to talk to you, but I'm just very lazy and unmotivated because we have to deal with contracts and lawyers and nonsense. We should be millionaires already off this stuff.

But, you know, eventually I'll get around to it because what else, like what else is there, you know? Yeah. Nothing. Nothing. Yeah. So, yeah. Caviar.

I actually heard about this whole thing ages ago when I was living in Oklahoma and yeah, some pals are telling me, I know, right. I've got, I've got stories, man. And some pals, they were telling me about a bunch of Russian guys coming down to the lakes there to steal paddlefish eggs, which is obviously a great story. I never did a single story from Oklahoma. I see. It's pretty pathetic, but yeah,

They must have got their facts mixed up because the problem is actually in neighboring Missouri where apparently the fishing laws are way more liberal than Oklahoma. So imagine that, a state with more liberal laws than Oklahoma. Nuts. Yeah, you know, every now and then I love to just buy into like fully some YouTube podcast, Reddit, bro science. That's where the money is. Yeah, of the carnivore diet for a few weeks when I got back from Ukraine just because I wanted to lose some weight. You know, just grass-fed beef and tallow. But there's a really big thing with that.

And I guess it is really healthy for you with Roe, with fish eggs. So I actually have been looking at, before this episode, I've been looking into where can I get this online or where can you do it? And the only affordable ones are paddle fish eggs. Do we need to send a message to your super just alerting him that there's a guy in the apartment complex only eating fish eggs? Because I feel like that's going to cause some problems. I think I was maybe an underworld field trip to rural Missouri

Russell's last meal was a pricey one.

And he said his stomach was full of caviar and some kind of dumpling. Now we just need to find who he ate it with. Vladimir Rezanov. That was Russell's dinner date? That was Russell, his real name. He immigrated from Russia 15 years ago. OCID has had him on their radar for a while. Russian mob.

I thought they were way past trucking into counterfeiting identity theft. Well, this recession is tough on everyone. Anyway, you enjoy that? That's pretty funny, isn't it? I mean, yeah, but don't disrespect law and order. You know, we are big supporters. Rest in peace. Rest in peace, Jerry Orbach. You're a legend. Yeah, buy the pod. Buy the pod.

Anyway, what the hell is caviar? So let's take it back now, guys, all the way back to the Mesozoic era, which I know you're all big fans of. Where am I in the world? Mesozoic gang at to kick us off. Here is Nicola Fletcher, the author of 2010's Caviar, a global history quote. Sturgeon are placid creatures. Pick them up and they don't struggle.

Relics of the most ancient creatures on Earth, fossils exist from the lower Jurassic period some 200 million years ago, showing that they remain virtually unchanged. They survived heat and ice that wiped out countless other species and coexisted with humans when they emerged 2 million years ago. But they seem to have no instinct to escape the clumsiest of fishing systems, and within the last 150 years, human activities have practically wiped them out.

So caviar is the roe or eggs of the female sturgeon, which is this massive fish, most of whose 27 species live in freshwater with the rest by coastlines. And whoever first had the bright idea of eating those so-called berries, as some people call them, well, that was in China, but it took off in ancient Persia, modern Iran.

The word itself comes from the Persian kav-yar, which means, quote, cake of strength, because ancient Persians believe it had a bunch of medicinal properties. Look, guys, you came here for the crime. You're left with a bunch of pub quiz knowledge about ancient Persian diets, all right? Just take it. Most of this stuff, this row, it comes from the Kura River, which drains into the Caspian Sea from modern-day Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Honestly, it's fascinating. I'm learning so much and I love it.

I can't tell whether that was earnest or not. No, it's earnest. Maybe we should just do a whole pub quiz knowledge opening every single episode. I'm kind of down with it. I wouldn't go that far. Anyway, moving on. As far back as the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle was tucking into caviar, and he described it even then as a delicacy. And even by the 2nd century BC, one jar of caviar could fetch a hundred sheep. That's a lot of fucking sheep.

Yeah, that is way more sheep than I spend on a Friday night. Many years later, Russians ate caviar on days when Orthodox Christians weren't allowed to eat meat, and Russian Tsars levied a tax on fishing for caviar sturgeon, which is what some people think caused it to be considered such an exclusive thing today.

And actually, America, this stuff was really big in your Wild West back in the saloons. And it was made into a business by Germans who came over in the big wave of European immigration in the 19th century. Sturgeon was swimming around in the Delaware River in their millions and companies popped up across the eastern seaboard, especially in Jersey.

By the end of that century, the US imports 90% of the world's caviar, most of which it re-imports to itself as, quote, Russian caviar.

Wait, what does that mean? Like it imports or exports 90% of the world's caviar? Because how do you re-import something that you're already importing? Like how does that work? So from what I was reading, it basically sends it out to Europe and then labels it and then sends it back to the US as Russian caviar. So it gets around some kind of like a, I don't know, like guidelines or rules or whatever. So was it exporting like 90% of the world's caviar? Is that what that means too? It was.

Yeah. Oh, most of what you're re-importing. Okay. So we're exporting a lot and then re- Okay. Whatever, man. Yeah. Yeah. The global economy makes a lot of sense to me all the time.

But to get this stuff, this caviar, right, you've got to cut open the sturgeon and you've got to get the eggs, right? It's not the most sustainable business. Unsurprisingly, that poor sturgeon is going to die. And throughout the 20th century, sturgeon numbers thin out in the Caspian and in the States. So...

Up to this point, you've got this ultra desirable luxury good and a bottleneck of supply, pretty much like cocaine or Bugattis or crime podcasts. Nice. Yeah. Thank you. During the first half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union and Iran are in the top spots for caviar exports with 2,500 tons and 250 tons respectively. Every man and every woman writes French author,

God, that is a hideous name. Maguilon Toussaint-Sommat. Reverently eating modern ambrosia in the form of caviar can identify as they indulge in the mad extravagance of swallowing it, even if they do not happen to like it with what they see as the last incarnation of the immortals. I mean, that's the most European thing you could ever say about food. Like you really don't have to like food to think it's like upmarket food.

In Soviet times, right, caviar, it becomes a favorite way to curry favor with corrupt officials. Says one historian, quote, caviar became an underground currency, a luxurious way of greasing palms and extracting favors. And actually, it's the same today.

So dirty is the caviar industry that the corrupt former Soviet state of Azerbaijan's method of bribing European officials to avoid investigation into its kleptocracy is known as, quote, caviar diplomacy. According to a senior Azeri lawmaker, quote, there are a lot of deputies in the Council of Europe whose first greeting after hello is, quote, where is the caviar?

Just want to say that the Underworld podcast has no issues with Azerbaijan and all the millions of dollars they're pumping into lobbying efforts right now. Both of us enjoy caviar, but also enjoy suitcases full of cash. Wait, are they paying for podcasts? I mean...

We could be the first. I don't know. Okay. All right. Fingers crossed. According to the European Stability Initiative, quote, caviar has always been a symbol of luxury. Prolific caviar eaters themselves, Russian Tsars and Iranian Shars, treated visiting royalty to the row of the beluga sturgeon. That's a really nice sentence, isn't it? With 90% of the world's caviar sourced from the Caspian Sea,

Azerbaijan is rich in caviar and generous with its wealth. Okay, it kind of went downhill there. Even in Soviet times, Azeri officials brought tins of caviar with them when they conducted businesses in other parts of the empire. And...

Briefly, and I'm really sorry about this, before we kick into the crimey meat of this episode, I'm going to make you all really, really angry. Here is a New York Times piece from early June that just makes me want to go on a Ted Kaczynski-style rampage. Quote, Jimmy Hahn, 41, a bar owner in Los Angeles, was in Coachella in April when he and four friends decided to do a bump in a pop-up seafood restaurant.

though not the kind you might be picturing. After ordering a seafood platter, he opened a gold tin of Regis Ova caviar, poured a spoonful on his fist between his thumb and index finger, and then proceeded to lick it off with his tongue like salt after a tequila shot. People used to get high off drugs, Mr. Han said, laughing as he crushed the fish eggs against the top of his mouth.

Now we're getting high off the food. I mean, I hate Jimmy Han. You have to hate Jimmy Han. I also hate this. Quote, caviar bumps in which a dollop of the fish roe is eaten, brackets, not snorted, off the back of one's hand have become a decadent and naughty way to consume the pricey delicacy at certain restaurants. Naughty. It's just disgusting. At certain restaurants, fashionable bars, art festivals and other showy gatherings.

You know, I saw this going around social media a few weeks ago, but it was just such obviously perfectly tailored rage bait that I had to ignore it. And I also like, is this a real thing? Is this like a thing that like two people did it? And the New York Times is like, this is a thing that's happening, you know?

It cannot be. I mean, there's like war and climate change and all kinds of things going on. But this is worse. You know, that's that's what happens. But it's also like it was a reading to get this reaction. You're just giving them what they want to. Yeah. Well, good job on making tons of money off the back of this as well. And in case you think Jimmy Hahn is the worst person on Earth.

Here, like enter stage left, is 37-year-old Christian Shirley, who owns a luxury lifestyle website. Of course she does. Quote, a watch collector came up to me yesterday at Freeze and said she saw a video of me doing one on Instagram and she wanted to try it. Then the article goes on. When Miss Shirley entertains friends at her apartment in Soho, they drink champagne and do caviar bumps around the kitchen island.

I mean, that's one of the worst sentences I've ever read in my life. I love caviar bumps because you don't need to put together a huge cheese board and get all the crudités, she said. You just need a tin and a spoon. And that's inspired a T-shirt idea, by the way. Can we do a caviar bumps for Changuito?

I just want to let Kristen Shirley know, Kirsten Shirley, whatever her name is, that we're not anti her at the Underworld Podcast. And if her great luxury website wants to advertise or give us suitcases full of caviar or cash, we're open to that too.

Are you seeing where we're at, guys, with this project? So according to one of the... That's the reason it's just seeping out. Oh, my God. According to one of the assholes in the story, you can do bumps of caviar to bond with your pals instead of shots when you're working. But as we're going to find out in this episode, you cannot bump caviar, guys, without contributing to the misery of people across the world. It's way, way worse than cocaine, heroin, even fentanyl. All right. Yeah, I mean, you can't...

Is this serious? I still don't know whether this is serious. Anyway, if you... Okay, right. Let's take it down a notch. If you've heard of caviar, you've heard of beluga caviar. This is the fanciest, the most expensive, rarest type of caviar, the Bugatti or Versace of caviar. Like, you get it, right? Yeah.

You ever had it, Danny? I mean, I went on this trip to St. Petersburg. I went on this trip to St. Petersburg a few years ago and bagged an insane hotel for a travel mag. Genuinely, I just gave you a top journalist tip there, guys. And they plied me with loads of this stuff. And I've got to say, it's just kind of goopy, salty blobs. I'm not a big fan.

Anyway, who gives a toss what I think? Because Beluga caviar is one of the most expensive products on earth, with prices ranging from seven grand to 10 grand per kilo or up to four and a half grand per pound, which is similar to saffron. I mean, it's no gold, which is about 22K. But unless you're two chains, you are not eating your gold. That caviar is gone in 60 seconds.

This reference doesn't even make sense. 2 Chainz wasn't in that movie. No, but he did do that video series, right? Where he eats the most expensive... Wasn't it called the most expensive-ish shit? Have you not seen this? He's like gold leaf ice cream and stuff like that. Friend of the pod Mitch Provero wrote a vice piece last year about saffron mafias, which is super interesting, including this quote. Saffron is total bullshit. It's like buying drugs. You must have a spice dealer you trust.

So yeah, I think we should get him on here to talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. Anyway, the largest sturgeon is the female beluga, which, and this is pretty nuts, can reach a length of 23 feet or around 7.2 meters. That's higher than a double decker bus.

So fishermen use these medieval-looking hooks to dig into them and catch them. It's all pretty grim. According to a recent report by the charity Traffic, 16 of the 27 species of sturgeon are endangered, with six key markets identified, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the U.S.

And there are loads of ways to smuggle illegal caviar. You could mix it in with legal shipments or just mislabel a crate. You can forge fishing permits with the help of a few dirty officials, of course. Or you could do something called blackwashing, which is selling aquaculture sturgeon, in other words, fish that have been farmed, often in terrible conditions, as so-called wild caviar. And that is the gold standard.

In the 1990s, newly formed Russia is beset by criminal gangs, as we've gone into a bunch of episodes, Brighton Beach, the Tollietti gang wars. That is no secret that Russia is a gang paradise in the 90s. And loads of these groups are contraband smugglers getting stuff out of the country across the Caspian Sea.

And now Russia is not short on corrupt officials for help either. In the 90s, Renato Salikov, who is the head of the Department of Combating Organized Crime, is himself sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in a massive caviar fraud that brings in two of the region's biggest mafias, the Russian Club and the Tatar Trade Union. I like that latter name. It's pretty cool.

The Caspian Sea just happens to be the eastern border of Dagestan, which is a breakaway Muslim region fighting for independence. And it sits right next to Chechnya at war at the time and exporting gangsters and terrorists all over the world. For the record, I just want to make sure everyone knows this is Sean who's saying bad stuff about Chechnya and Dagestan. So, you know, Jesus Christ, put that out there. I'm in Berlin as well.

Plus, Georgia is just to the south and the crime situation isn't much better there. Attempts to stop these guys are often met with grisly force. Again, I'm really sorry. Actually, Pakistan is getting so rich at this point that folks are building whole towns of luxury mansions just outside this capital city, Makashkala, and they're calling it Santa Barbara.

Famously later on, Macachkala pumps hundreds of millions of dodgy euros into its football team and buys a ton of stars before going bust. But corrupt Caucasian football teams, I mean, that could be a whole other episode altogether.

In the mid-90s, Russia, under Boris Yeltsin, who's constantly hammered and has a heart like a stamped prune, says it's going to ban the fishing of sturgeon in the Caspian Sea to stop crime and prevent the fish's extinction. And that, unsurprisingly, does not go down well with the local crooks.

Two dozen members of a Russian anti-poaching gang are murdered, murdered. And in 1996, all hell breaks loose in the war-torn Caucasian Republic of Dagestan, which becomes ground zero for a crazy Karyar gang war. I mean, I guess these guys must all be Scottish nationalists because they're trying to nickel the sturgeon. Do you get it?

I actually really do not get it. Oh, man. I'm not even going to explain it. I was so happy when I did that one. I'm sure someone out there will get it. Yeah, let's just keep it. We'll keep it going. Please, please email. Here's an LA Times report in 1997. Quote, Dagestan is now in the grip of a crime wave. Drive-by shootings, explosions, and unexplained assassinations are rife.

Fish police, I love the phrase fish police, are kidnapped and killed regularly. Finance Minister Ghani Gamadov was killed by a car bomb in 1996 and his rival, Deputy Prime Minister Saeed Amarov, has survived four attempts on his life.

Fish police is a pretty funny job title, but I guess like it's not that funny when Russian mobsters are just murking all of your coworkers. Yeah. I guess 25 years later, still funny though. I don't know. This reaches a deadly low point in November, 1996. Hold on. We'll have to like change the time. Cause this is definitely not funny.

When a bomb goes off at an apartment block in the city of Kaspisk, near the Dagestani capital, like I said, I keep making myself say this name, Makachkala, and it kills 56 people, 18 of them children. Most of them are border patrol officials and their families who've been sent to Dagestan to stop the illegal caviar trade. Boris Yeltsin, by then recovering from a quintuple heart bypass, like, I didn't even know you could do a quintuple, wow,

He issues a day of mourning. Weirdly, Russia's FSB says it's detained, quote, a foreign intelligence operative from a country outside the former Soviet Union. But it's the FSB and Russia, so you can make up your own mind. The main suspect, though, is Dagestan's fisheries minister, Magomed Kachileyev.

who it's fair to say doesn't really try too hard to disguise his wealth. He rolls around in poor Macachkala in an armoured Humvee with bodyguards. He gives a batshit interview to the LA Times writer who asks if he's the leader of a so-called caviar war. Quote, the Russian newspaper Top Secret wrote an utterly absurd and brazen article about me in connection with that. They almost came out and called me the head mafioso, the king of fish.

So they didn't actually call him that, but he's running with it. And so he goes on, I mean, yeah.

Plenty of people have definitely blown up buildings for money, mate. But he goes on, he's enjoying the attention now, quote, there is no official economy, just chaos. People are swept along by the tide of life and stay alive the best they can. Smugglers clearly work for people in power and a lot is lost, but I can't say how much.

Yeah, I kind of love how he's like, you know, the newspapers calling me the fish mafia kingpin are making people ask a lot of questions about whether or not I'm the fish mafia kingpin. But it's kind of like they actually didn't say that. You're just bringing it up out of nowhere. So, you know, it's it's it's very OJ. Yeah. But anyway, funny story. In 1998, the same guy, Kachalayev and his brother are convicted for weapon smuggling and seizing the local government building.

His brother is this super controversial Islamist leader who gets in trouble with Moscow after backing Chechen Islamofascist maniacs. Then in 2000, Magomed himself is gunned down and wounded in Makachkala. So, yeah, I think we can conclude that this is a legit guy.

Here's a 2001 Atlantic article entitled The Caviar Thugs by Jeffrey Taylor, and it goes into what the Russians call Chornaya Ikra, or black caviar. By this time in 2001, illegal poaching has depleted Russian sturgeon harvest from 10,000 tonnes in 1992 to just 500 tonnes in 2000. The famed beluga has all but disappeared.

Most of the guys actually getting the fish are ultra poor farmers from these republics that are ripped up by war and corruption and religious extremist violence. Says one of them to report a quote, I make $9 a month driving a tractor here and they don't even pay me that on time. I've got a family to feed so I turn to the river. I managed to catch about five fish a year. At $185 worth of caviar a fish, that means $900. If I didn't poach, we couldn't eat.

Yeah, you know, it kind of reminds me, I think, sometimes of the quotes you used to hear about articles about poaching in Africa of endangered animals and things like that, right? But it's kind of... Yeah, I mean, it's always like these guys, like the guys who are making the real money off this, you know, they're not the ones out there fucking, you know, fishing or shooting animals, right? It's always like the lower level that do that. It doesn't... And again, that's why I kind of don't bind to the excuse, right? I mean, it sucks, but like...

It's always going to be like that. Yeah, for sure. Actually reminded me of us. I like the phrase, I like the phrase, so I turned to the river. Maybe we can make a T-shirt about that. The services are supposed to engage these, like the law enforcement services, that is. They're supposed to engage these small-time poachers, but getting around those guys follows a pretty simple blueprint. Quote, when the authorities encounter a poacher,

They must by law take his fish and row, and even officers who accept bribes do so. This provision practically guarantees that poaching enriches the law enforcement agencies ostensibly working to eradicate poaching.

Former poachers I spoke with describe what typically happens when a militiaman intercepts a poacher. The officer releases the poacher in exchange for a bribe and then, following the law, takes the caviar to a store designated by the government as a buyer of conviscat or confiscated row. The store buys the conviscat for the equivalent of about $18 a pound, a price set by local authorities. It will later transfer the money to state coffers.

And Taylor goes on, quote,

some of which he returns to the store clerk in order to ensure continued business. But all of these people, these are the small fry. The big boys, the so-called Mafiosni Barakashi, or Mafia poachers, they make thousands a month. They live in big houses on the coast, and they ride into the middle of the Caspian on big skiffs with powerful Yamaha motors,

And no one else has got these boats, right? So these guys just drop anchor and fish for the deep water sturgeon out of the reach of cops or smaller crims. They cut open a live sturgeon, take the eggs and they dump the carcasses back in the sea.

They do most of their business in the Russian city of Astrakhan, which was just mentioned, where they take the caviar to safe houses, they pack them in ice in the trunks of their car, then they drive them the near thousand miles to mafia leaders in Moscow. From there, it often heads to Brest in Belarus, then out into Western Europe and eventually the States. Here's a quote from the website kaspika.org, quote, criminal clans daily bring to Moscow half a ton of black caviar.

This delicacy is delivered by rail, road and air. The valuable product is hidden in caches. Only trusted couriers, brackets, conductors in trains, stewardesses and truck drivers, close brackets, work for criminals. Trains, planes and trucks from the Caspian region are rarely inspected. The police, as a rule, do not stop smugglers. Black caviar is quickly delivered to the capital's restaurants, secret apartments and markets.

Man, so the Sturgeons are just completely wiped out these days, huh? There's just something about poaching, I think, as opposed to other way more violent crimes targeted at humans. For some reason, it just infuriates me way more. Is that weird? No, not at all. It feels like...

It's like littering. It's like, it's, it's things. So I don't know. It seems so like against the, against the world. Yeah, exactly. As opposed to like, uh, like against the unit, you're like getting rid of this thing that's existed forever. I don't know. It, it, it, uh, it enrages me. No, man. Um,

I just remembered one of my, my, my crazy uncle who's done a bunch of amazing things. He had a movie script he was trying to sell like 25 or 30 years ago, I think that was about a guy like a serial killer or like a, like a, who hunted down like poachers or people like poaching mafia. And he was like going around like sniping these people and stuff like that. I don't know. It was kind of cool. Yeah, that is pretty cool. Like what would I be totally against the guy like that? I don't know.

I mean, actually in September, I'm going out to do a story that's similar to that in Nepal. Yeah. Watch this space. This guy that like stops people poaching tigers. That is exactly why I wanted to do the story. Something about it felt like truly...

that someone would do this and poaching feels really shitty. But yeah, I was watching a journeyman documentary while I was researching this. And there's a woman talking about how sturgeon in, I think she was in Kazakhstan on the Caspian has gone down to like a one single figure percentage of what it was. And she's like basically crying. There's all these sturgeon dead cut open and the carcasses are floating to the top of the lake. And it is, it's heartbreaking. It's really, really horrible. Yeah, man. Yeah.

And so this crime isn't in Russia, right? You've got a problem in Kazakhstan, which is on the northeastern corner of the Caspian. And they've pretty much run out of fish. I mean, if you know about that area in the Aral Sea, it's just an environmental disaster in that part of the world.

There's also a ton of poaching in Romania where the sturgeon come up the Danube River to lay their eggs. Over 70% of sturgeon there, the scientists tag, so that's the ones that anti-poaching scientists are keeping tabs on, they are poached. So when you've got folks on a few hundred bucks a month on average at best, and these fish can earn them thousands, I mean, I'm not really sure what you can do to stop the crime. Vigilante justice.

True. Yeah. Bring back hanging for anything, really. Let's just have public executions. No, let's not. Let's not do that. But just like we heard in the cold open, right? This stuff is going on right in the heartland of the US. So how do you get from corruption and crime on the Caspian Sea to a mob flocking to the tiny Missouri town of Warsaw? Well, I'm going to start with a great 2019 long reads article by David Govey Herbert. Quote,

Not long ago, Mike Reynolds was working at Cody's Bait and Tackle when two men entered the shop with a jingle. He identified them right away by their accents as Russian. The two men began rifling through fishing poles that didn't yet have price tags. Reynolds asked them to stop. They ignored him and continued to lay rods on the floor.

Reynolds, then 57, had seen plenty of Russians come through the shop, which sits on a quiet dam access road in Warsaw, Missouri, deep in the Ozarks. He was tired of them poaching the town's beloved paddlefish, sick of their entitled attitude too. I mean, I'm just going to take a little aside to say that this is an incredible way of dressing up a guy being completely racist towards two Russian fellas shopping in his store as some kind of like a hero. But anyway,

It goes on, quote, so when he asked them to leave and they did not comply, I mean, come on, Mike. Like, that is not okay. There seemed to be only one option left. Do you want to take a little time out to guess what it is? Oh, yeah. He removed a .40 caliber pistol from under the counter, chambered a round, and placed it on the counter. I fear for my life, he said, in a slow, deliberate drawl.

I mean, that's some like Reddit attorney fucking YouTube guy being like, this is how you can get away with killing somebody in your store. I don't think it works that way. Yeah. Mike Reynolds is a fucking psychopath. Anyway, it goes on. He wanted to cover his bases legally for whatever came next. The two men looked up, backed out of the store and never returned. I mean, yeah, that's not how you do business.

It was just another dust-up in the long-running war between caviar-mad Russians, local fishermen, and the feds that centres on this unlikely town in the Ozarks and a very curious fish.

I mean, maybe he's trying to, you know, do what we were talking about, like get rid of the poachers. So on the one hand, kind of a psycho. On the other hand, you know, you got to do what you got to do. Yeah. I mean, luckily for Mike, there's there's more of the story that comes afterwards. But taken alone, that is that is not a good anecdote for his grandkids to read. These are these shady Russians then. And I mean, is there any any ever any Russian in a long form? I think it's a long form.

They're not after sturgeon, but they're after something called the American paddlefish. That is a long sturgeon-like creature with a shark's streamlined shape and what kind of looks like a wooden spoon for a snout, which I guess is why folks call them spoonbills as a nickname. Do fishes have snouts? I'm not sure. Herbert calls them, quote, the Roomba of the Ozarks, vacuuming up plankton with open mouths.

Little Warsaw, population just 2,000, is the self-titled paddlefish capital of the world. Congratulations to Warsaw.

Yeah, well done, guys. Well done. Another T-shirt in the making there. It's popular because spawning fish are blocked from heading upstream along the Osage River by this dam, but you guessed it, paddlefish eggs taste a little bit like Russian caviar, if a fair bit worse. And in the early 2000s, Warsaw starts filling up with eager beaver Russian emigres. Writes Herbert, quote,

A different breed of Russian was arriving in town. I mean, Herbert, he's got an issue with Russians. At the old ore house, flashy imported cars with out-of-state plates arrived every spring. Most of the men didn't have fishing experience, but they dropped hundreds of dollars on bait and tackle, hire guides, and drink vodka shots with breakfast. And they developed a reputation for overfishing. Oh, my God. Overfishing and out-of-state plates. Someone's got to call the feds.

Warsaw is hit by caviar chaos. That's the worst kind of chaos. Yeah, it really is. Folks are exchanging $10,000 of paddlefish eggs out of the back of beat-up motels. I mean, now I'm getting into Herbert style. Artisanal processing plants are popping up on Main Street, and they're all just paying $8 for a license to fish on the town's tiny little dock.

This isn't, like we said, the first time the spoonbills have attracted gangsters. In the 80s, Rob Farr, a local agent with the Department of Conservation, found pregnant females split open with their eggs snatched. That's spoonbills, by the way. That operation involved guys who took the eggs onto Tennessee and out to fancy spots on the East Coast. Around 2009, Greg Hitchings, an investigator with the Missouri Department of Conservation, he gets a call.

There's fish guts. I can't even say that with a straight face. There's fish guts showing up all over the roadhouse. That's the name for the watery region of the state in which Warsaw sits. Hitching spots a chance for an undercover op, something he's really good at. One time, he even put an agent behind the counter of a taxidermy store to catch hunters bragging about illegal kills.

He hooks up with Farr, who tells him about this new wave of paddlefish mafiosos and their strange Eastern European accents. Remember, guys, any Eastern European accent in Missouri is shady. Between them, Hitchens and Farr hatch a plan to bring the poachers of Warsaw, Missouri right to their door.

I mean, these guys sound like the kind of rogue officers who get results, you know, like they might not play by the book handed down to them by the Missouri Department of Conservation, but like they sure as hell get the job done by any means necessary. Yeah. Yeah. He's a maverick. These are maverick cops, conservation cops. Sorry.

Remember those $8 passes to fish at a dock? Well, the guy selling them is the Department of Conservation's stooge, and he's wearing a hidden camera on his shoulder. I mean, shoulder just sounds like a weird spot for a hidden camera. Like, oh yeah, here's just my 18th century epaulette. Cool, huh? Oh, and there's this friendly guy running the docks called Gary Hamilton, who lives in a camper van 15 yards up the hill nearby.

Yeah, yeah, that's obviously Greg Hitchens. Of course it is. And there are ethnic Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians, and they're just incriminating themselves left, right and centre on camera. They're even writing down all their personal details into the doc's logbook, which is, of course, evidence.

Far and Hitchings have this whole panopticon set up in Warsaw. They even snag a pair of Colorado and Belarusians buying three female paddlefish on a parking lot operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Whoops. Now you've just committed a federal crime, guys. Yeah, I mean, throwing a murder in this really is a perfect Law & Order episode.

Yeah, I mean, I refuse to believe that those scriptwriters didn't read this story first. For sure. And of course, these paddlefish gangsters, they love a vodka. And one night Hitchens, or Hamilton, wakes in his trailer to the sound of a fight breaking out nearby. Writes her book, quote, "'Weapons were everywhere. Beer bottles, fishing gaffs that resembled an oversized dentist's sickle probe, concealed handguns. A fisherman waved a paddle in self-defense.'

"'Knife!' another shouted. "'He's got a knife!' "'Fist began to connect with dull thuds. "'A man went down. "'Blood poured from his face. "'Yeah, I mean, I've got questions about that. "'First of all, do you know what a sickle probe is?'

Concealed handguns? Do you mention that if you're describing what happened in a scene? It's also... It's Missouri. Everyone is going to have a gun. I don't mean like someone getting punched in the face. That's a punch. Fists connect with dull fuds. That's a punch, man. Anyway...

He's wrung every answer out of a single dust-up there, but this is unsurprising, right, given that these eggs that these guys are after, they can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Russian black market if they're mislabeled, that is, as sturgeon caviar. And I mean, look, I'm sure you can taste the difference if you really know what you're talking about, but...

What does that mean?

I just assume that these, like, luxury website owners are anti-vaxxers. I don't know why. Anyway, here's where it gets kind of funny. This Missouri caviar ring that Farron Hitchens are busting, they think it goes all the way to the top. A paddlefish conspiracy roping in New Jersey dockers, stevedores in Baltimore. I mean, I've got to get that reference in there somewhere. And black-suited mafia bosses in Moscow. The truth?

Yeah, I mean, you know, you find that out and you kind of look back at this story and it's just kind of, it's a different movie now, right? Now it's like Seth Rogen and Kevin Hart or Kevin James and they're just like bumbling, delusional.

delusional like wildlife officers in Missouri. I think they've stumbled onto like a plot from, I don't know, what's it called? What's the Denzel Washington? Whatever. A plot from like Mission Impossible or like the Russian mafia all over the place. I mean, the pacifier, whatever that Denzel Washington thing is. Yeah. Equalizer. Equalizer. Instead of just like

That's a bunch of like drunken guys who probably, you know, work construction an hour and a half away that just really want caviar. I mean, I feel like the second half of this entire pod episode is really like a psychodrama of David Goebel, the guy that wrote this article. But anyway, moving on. It's hardly the gang thriller any of us are after here.

but it's definitely pretty comical. Anyway, that is the history of crime and caviar guys and how a weird little delicacy has ended up defining black markets all over the world. It's pretty mad, huh? Um, now I'm off to next and fish eggs and vodka. Always great that I'm six hours ahead of you. Yeah. I mean, in a enjoy yourself. That sounds like a fun little evening and,

In Berlin. Oh yeah. But yeah. I think that wraps it up. Enjoy. I guess you guys will hear this after the 4th. Or before the 4th. Whatever. Hope you enjoyed the weekend. Patreon.com. Slash The Underworld Podcast. Help us keep doing this. Also ad free. You know. I did the math. And if you listen to every episode. That comes out. That's like.

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